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Somalia Sources of Opposition
From 1969 until the mid-1970s, Siad Barre's authoritarian
regime enjoyed a degree of popular support, largely because it
acted with a decisiveness not displayed by the civilian
governments of the 1960s. Even the 1971 coup attempt failed to
affect the stability of the government. However, Somalia's defeat
in the Ogaden War signaled the beginning of a decline in Siad
Barre's popularity that culminated in his January 1991 fall from
power.
Before the war, many Somalis had criticized Siad Barre for
not trying to reincorporate the Ogaden into Somalia immediately
after Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie's death in 1975. The
government was unable to stifle this criticism largely because
the Somali claim to the Ogaden had overwhelming national support.
The regime's commitment of regular troops to the Ogaden proved
highly popular, as did Siad Barre's expulsion of the Soviet
advisers, who had been resented by most Somalis. However,
Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden War refocused criticism on Siad
Barre.
After the spring 1978 retreat toward Hargeysa, Siad Barre met
with his generals to discuss the battlefield situation, and
ordered the execution of six of them for activities against the
state. This action failed to quell SNA discontent over Siad
Barre's handling of the war with Ethiopia. On April 9, 1978, a
group of military officers (mostly Majeerteen) attempted a coup
d'état. Government security forces crushed the plot within hours
and subsequently arrested seventy-four suspected conspirators.
After a month-long series of trials, the authorities imprisoned
thirty-six people associated with the coup and executed another
seventeen.
After the war, it was evident that the ruling alliance among
the Mareehaan, Ogaden, and Dulbahante clans had been broken. The
Ogaden--the clan of Siad Barre's mother, which had the most
direct stake in the war--broke with the regime over the
president's wartime leadership. To prevent further challenges to
his rule, Siad Barre placed members of his own clan in important
positions in the government, the armed forces, the security
services, and other state agencies.
Throughout the late 1970s, growing discontent with the
regime's policies and personalities prompted the defection of
numerous government officials and the establishment of several
insurgent movements. Because unauthorized political activity was
prohibited, these organizations were based abroad. The best known
was the Somali Salvation Front (SSF), which operated from
Ethiopia. The SSF had absorbed its predecessor, the Somali
Democratic Action Front (SODAF), which had been formed in Rome in
1976. Former minister of justice Usmaan Nur Ali led the
Majeerteen-based SODAF. Lieutenant Colonel Abdillaahi Yuusuf
Ahmad, a survivor of the 1978 coup attempt, commanded the SSF.
Other prominent SSF personalities included former minister of
education Hasan Ali Mirreh and former ambassador Muse Islan
Faarah. The SSF, which received assistance from Ethiopia and
Libya, claimed to command a guerrilla force numbering in the
thousands. Ethiopia placed a radio transmitter at the SSF's
disposal from which Radio Kulmis (unity) beamed anti-Siad Barre
invective to listeners in Somalia. Although it launched a low-
intensity sabotage campaign in 1981, the SSF lacked the
capabilities to sustain effective guerrilla operations against
the SNA.
The SSF's weakness derived from its limited potential as a
rallying point for opposition to the government. Although the SSF
embraced no ideology or political philosophy other than hostility
to Siad Barre, its nationalist appeal was undermined by its
reliance on Ethiopian support. The SSF claimed to encompass a
range of opposition forces, but its leading figures belonged with
few exceptions to the Majeerteen clan.
In October 1981, the SSF merged with the radical-left Somali
Workers Party (SWP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Somalia (DFLS) to form the Somali Salvation Democratic Front
(SSDF). The SWP and DFLS, both based in Aden (then the capital of
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen--South Yemen), had
included some former SRSP Central Committee members who faulted
Siad Barre for compromising Somalia's revolutionary goals. An
eleven-man committee led the SSDF. Yuusuf Ahmad, a former SNA
officer and head of the SDF acted as chairman; former SWP leader
Idris Jaama Husseen served as vice chairman; Abdirahman Aidid
Ahmad, former chairman of the SRSP Ideology Bureau and founding
father of the DFLS, was secretary for information. The SSDF
promised to intensify the military and political struggles
against the Siad Barre regime, which was said to have destroyed
Somali unity and surrendered to United States imperialism. Like
the SSF, the SSDF suffered from weak organization, a close
identification with its Ethiopian and Libyan benefactors, and its
reputation as a Majeerteen party.
Despite its shortcomings, the SSDF played a key role in
fighting between Somalia and Ethiopia in the summer of 1982.
After a SNA force infiltrated the Ogaden, joined with the WSLF
and attacked an Ethiopian army unit outside Shilabo, about 150
kilometers northwest of Beledweyne, Ethiopia retaliated by
launching an operation against Somalia. On June 30, 1982,
Ethiopian army units, together with SSDF guerrillas, struck at
several points along Ethiopia's southern border with Somalia.
They crushed the SNA unit in Balumbale and then occupied that
village. In August 1982, the Ethiopian/SSDF force took the
village of Goldogob, about 50 kiloeters northwest of Galcaio.
After the United States provided emergency military assistance to
Somalia, the Ethiopian attacks ceased. However, the
Ethiopian/SSDF units remained in Balumbale and Goldogob, which
Addis Ababa maintained were part of Ethiopia that had been
liberated by the Ethiopian army. The SSDF disputed the Ethiopian
claim, causing a power struggle that eventually resulted in the
destruction of the SSDF's leadership.
On October 12, 1985, Ethiopian authorities arrested Ahmad and
six of his lieutenants after they repeatedly indicated that
Balumbale and Goldogob were part of Somalia. The Ethiopian
government justified the arrests by saying that Ahmad had refused
to comply with a SSDF Central Committee decision relieving him as
chairman. Mahammad Abshir, a party bureaucrat, then assumed
command of the SSDF. Under his leadership, the SSDF became
militarily moribund, primarily because of poor relations with
Addis Ababa. In August 1986, the Ethiopian army attacked SSDF
units, then launched a war against the movement, and finally
jailed its remaining leaders. For the next several years, the
SSDF existed more in name than in fact. In late 1990, however,
after Ethiopia released former SSDF leader Ahmad, the movement
reemerged as a fighting force in Somalia, albeit to a far lesser
degree than in the early 1980s.
In April 1981, a group of Isaaq emigrés living in London
formed the Somali National Movement (SNM), which subsequently
became the strongest of Somalia's various insurgent movements.
According to its spokesmen, the rebels wanted to overthrow Siad
Barre's dictatorship. Additionally, the SNM advocated a mixed
economy and a neutral foreign policy, rejecting alignment with
the Soviet Union or the United States and calling for the
dismantling of all foreign military bases in the region. In the
late 1980s, the SNM adopted a pro-Western foreign policy and
favored United States involvement in a post-Siad Barre Somalia.
Other SNM objectives included establishment of a representative
democracy that would guarantee human rights and freedom of
speech. Eventually, the SNM moved its headquarters from London to
Addis Ababa to obtain Ethiopian military assistance, which
initially was limited to old Soviet small arms.
In October 1981, the SNM rebels elected Ahmad Mahammad Culaid
and Ahmad Ismaaiil Abdi as chairman and secretary general,
respectively, of the movement. Culaid had participated in
northern Somali politics until 1975, when he went into exile in
Djibouti and then in Saudi Arabia. Abdi had been politically
active in the city of Burao in the 1950s, and, from 1965 to 1967,
had served as the Somali government's minister of planning. After
the authorities jailed him in 1971 for antigovernment activities,
Abdi left Somalia and lived in East Africa and Saudi Arabia. The
rebels also elected an eight-man executive committee to oversee
the SNM's military and political activities.
On January 2, 1982, the SNM launched its first military
operation against the Somali government. Operating from Ethiopian
bases, commando units attacked Mandera Prison near Berbera and
freed a group of northern dissidents. According to the SNM, the
assault liberated more than 700 political prisoners; subsequent
independent estimates indicated that only about a dozen
government opponents escaped. At the same time, other commando
units raided the Cadaadle armory near Berbera and escaped with an
undetermined amount of arms and ammunition.
Mogadishu responded to the SNM attacks by declaring a state
of emergency, imposing a curfew, closing gasoline stations to
civilian vehicles, banning movement in or out of northern
Somalia, and launching a search for the Mandera prisoners (most
of whom were never found). On January 8, 1982, the Somali
government also closed its border with Djibouti to prevent the
rebels from fleeing Somalia. These actions failed to stop SNM
military activities.
In October 1982, the SNM tried to increase pressure against
the Siad Barre regime by forming a joint military committee with
the SSDF. Apart from issuing antigovernment statements, the two
insurgent groups started broadcasting from the former Radio
Kulmis station, now known as Radio Halgan (struggle). Despite
this political cooperation, the SNM and SSDF failed to agree on a
common strategy against Mogadishu. As a result, the alliance
languished.
In February 1983, Siad Barre visited northern Somalia in a
campaign to discredit the SNM. Among other things, he ordered the
release of numerous civil servants and businessmen who had been
arrested for antigovernment activities, lifted the state of
emergency, and announced an amnesty for Somali exiles who wanted
to return home. These tactics put the rebels on the political
defensive for several months. In November 1983, the SNM Central
Committee sought to regain the initiative by holding an emergency
meeting to formulate a more aggressive strategy. One outcome was
that the military wing--headed by Abdulqaadir Kosar Abdi,
formerly of the SNA--assumed control of the Central Committee by
ousting the civilian membership from all positions of power.
However, in July 1984, at the Fourth SNM Congress, held in
Ethiopia, the civilians regained control of the leadership. The
delegates also elected Ahmad Mahammad Mahamuud "Silanyo" SNM
chairman and reasserted their intention to revive the alliance
with the SSDF.
After the Fourth SNM Congress adjourned, military activity in
northern Somalia increased. SNM commandos attacked about a dozen
government military posts in the vicinity of Hargeysa, Burao, and
Berbera. According to the SNM, the SNA responded by shooting 300
people at a demonstration in Burao, sentencing seven youths to
death for sedition, and arresting an unknown number of rebel
sympathizers. In January 1985, the government executed twenty-
eight people in retaliation for antigovernment activity.
Between June 1985 and February 1986, the SNM claimed to have
carried out thirty operations against government forces in
northern Somalia. In addition, the SNM reported that it had
killed 476 government soldiers and wounded 263, and had captured
eleven vehicles and had destroyed another twenty-two, while
losing only 38 men and two vehicles. Although many independent
observers said these figures were exaggerated, SNM operations
during the 1985-86 campaign forced Siad Barre to mount an
international effort to cut off foreign aid to the rebels. This
initiative included reestablishment of diplomatic relations with
Libya in exchange for Tripoli's promise to stop supporting the
SNM.
Despite efforts to isolate the rebels, the SNM continued
military operations in northern Somalia. Between July and
September 1987, the SNM initiated approximately thirty attacks,
including one on the northern capital, Hargeysa; none of these,
however, weakened the government's control of northern Somalia. A
more dramatic event occurred when a SNM unit kidnapped a Médecins
Sans Frontières medical aid team of ten Frenchmen and one
Djiboutian to draw the world's attention to Mogadishu's policy of
impressing men from refugee camps into the SNA. After ten days,
the SNM released the hostages unconditionally.
Siad Barre responded to these activities by instituting harsh
security measures throughout northern Somalia. The government
also evicted suspected pro-SNM nomad communities from the Somali-
Ethiopian border region. These measures failed to contain the
SNM. By February 1988, the rebels had captured three villages
around Togochale, a refugee camp near the northwestern Somali-
Ethiopian border.
Following the rebel successes of 1987-88, Somali-Ethiopian
relations began to improve. On March 19, 1988, Siad Barre and
Ethiopian president Mengistu Haile Mariam met in Djibouti to
discuss ways of reducing tension between the two countries.
Although little was accomplished, the two agreed to hold further
talks. At the end of March 1988, the Ethiopian minister of
foreign affairs, Berhanu Bayih, arrived in Mogadishu for
discussions with a group of Somali officials, headed by General
Ahmad Mahamuud Faarah. On April 4, 1988, the two presidents
signed a joint communiqué in which they agreed to restore
diplomatic relations, exchange prisoners of war, start a mutual
withdrawal of troops from the border area, and end subversive
activities and hostile propaganda against each other.
Faced with a cutoff of Ethiopian military assistance, the SNM
had to prove its ability to operate as an independent
organization. Therefore, in late May 1988 SNM units moved out of
their Ethiopian base camps and launched a major offensive in
northern Somalia. The rebels temporarily occupied the provincial
capitals of Burao and Hargeysa. These early successes bolstered
the SNM's popular support, as thousands of disaffected Isaaq clan
members and SNA deserters joined the rebel ranks.
Over the next few years, the SNM took control of almost all
of northwestern Somalia and extended its area of operations about
fifty kilometers east of Erigavo. However, the SNM did not gain
control of the region's major cities (i.e., Berbera, Hargeysa,
Burao, and Boorama), but succeeded only in laying siege to them.
With Ethiopian military assistance no longer a factor, the
SNM's success depended on its ability to capture weapons from the
SNA. The rebels seized numerous vehicles such as Toyota Land
Cruisers from government forces and subsequently equipped them
with light and medium weapons such as 12.7mm and 14.5mm machine
guns, 106mm recoilless rifles, and BM-21 rocket launchers. The
SNM possessed antitank weapons such as Soviet B-10 tubes and RPG-
7s. For air defense the rebels operated Soviet 30mm and 23mm
guns, several dozen Soviet ZU23 2s, and Czech-made twin-mounted
30mm ZU30 2s. The SNM also maintained a small fleet of armed
speed boats that operated from Maydh, fifty kilometers northwest
of Erigavo, and Xiis, a little west of Maydh. Small arms included
120mm mortars and various assault rifles, such as AK-47s, M-16s,
and G-3s. Despite these armaments, rebel operations, especially
against the region's major cities, suffered because of an
inadequate logistics system and a lack of artillery, mine-
clearing equipment, ammunition, and communications gear.
To weaken Siad Barre's regime further, the SNM encouraged the
formation of other clan-based insurgent movements and provided
them with political and military support. In particular, the SNM
maintained close relations with the United Somali Congress (USC),
which was active in central Somalia, and the Somali Patriotic
Movement (SPM), which operated in southern Somalia. Both these
groups sought to overthrow Siad Barre's regime and establish a
democratic form of government.
The USC, a Hawiye organization founded in 1989, had suffered
from factionalism based on subclan rivalries since its creation.
General Mahammad Faarah Aidid commanded the Habar Gidir clan, and
Ali Mahdi Mahammad headed the Abgaal clan. The SPM emerged in
March 1989, after a group of Ogaden officers, led by Umar Jess,
deserted the SNA and took up arms against Siad Barre. Like the
USC, the SPM experienced a division among its ranks. The
moderates, under Jess, favored an alliance with the SNM and USC
and believed that Somalia should abandon its claims to the
Ogaden. SPM hardliners wanted to recapture the Ogaden and favored
a stronger military presence along the Somali-Ethiopian border.
On November 19, 1989, the SNM and SPM issued a joint
communiqué announcing the adoption of a "unified stance on
internal and external political policy." On September 12, 1990,
the SNM concluded a similar agreement with the USC. Then, on
November 24, 1990, the SNM announced that it had united with the
SPM and the USC to pursue a common military strategy against the
SNA. Actually, the SNM had concluded the unification agreement
with Aidid, which widened the rift between the two USC factions.
By the beginning of 1991, all three of the major rebel
organizations had made significant military progress. The SNM had
all but taken control of northern Somalia by capturing the towns
of Hargeysa, Berbera, Burao, and Erigavo. On January 26, 1991,
the USC stormed the presidential palace in Mogadishu, thereby
establishing its control over the capital. The SPM succeeded in
overrunning several government outposts in southern Somalia.
The SNM-USC-SPM unification agreement failed to last after Siad Barre fled
Mogadishu. On January 26, 1991, the USC formed an interim government, which
the SNM refused to recognize. On May 18, 1991, the SNM declared the independence
of the Republic of Somaliland. The USC interim government opposed this declaration,
arguing instead for a unified Somalia. Apart from these political disagreements,
fighting broke out between and within the USC and SPM. The SNM also sought to
establish its control over northern Somalia by pacifying clans such as the Gadabursi
and the Dulbahante. To make matters worse, guerrilla groups proliferated; by
late 1991, numerous movements vied for political power, including the United
Somali Front (Iise), Somali Democratic Alliance (Gadabursi), United Somali Party
(Dulbahante), Somali Democratic Movement (Rahanwayn), and Somali National Front
(Mareehaan). The collapse of the nation state system and the emergence of clan-based
guerrilla movements and militias that became governing authorities persuaded
most Western observers that national reconciliation would be a long and difficult
process.
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