Somalia FOREIGN RELATIONS
One of numerous foreign relief grain shipments being
unloaded in Berbera port for distribution, 1991
Courtesy Hiram A. Ruiz
An elderly woman from Burao, a town in northern Somalia
severely damaged in the civil war, 1991
Courtesy Hiram A. Ruiz
Village children near their hut
Courtesy Hiram A. Ruiz
The provisional government established in February 1991
inherited a legacy of problematic relations with neighboring
states and economic dependence on aid from Arab and Western
nations. Relations between Somalia and its three neighbors--
Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya--had been poisoned for more than
two decades by Somalia's irredentist claims to areas inhabited by
ethnic Somalis in each of these three states. The 1977-78 Ogaden
War with Ethiopia, although a humiliating defeat for Somalia, had
created deep suspicions in the Horn of Africa concerning the
intentions of the Siad Barre regime. The continuing strain in
Somali-Ethiopian relations tended to reinforce these suspicions.
Civil strife in Ethiopia and repressive measures in the
Ogaden caused more than 650,000 ethnic Somalis and Oromo residing
in Ethiopia to flee to Somalia by early 1978. The integration of
so many refugees into an essentially agrarian society afflicted
by persistent drought was beyond Somalia's economic capacity. In
the absence of a peace agreement, prospects for repatriation
continued to be virtually nonexistent. The Siad Barre
government's solution to this major political, social, and
economic problem was to make the search for generous financial
assistance a focal point of its foreign policy.
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