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Somalia Siad Barre and Scientific Socialism
Somalia's adherence to socialism became official on the first
anniversary of the military coup when Siad Barre proclaimed that
Somalia was a socialist state, despite the fact that the country
had no history of class conflict in the Marxist sense. For
purposes of Marxist analysis, therefore, tribalism was equated
with class in a society struggling to liberate itself from
distinctions imposed by lineage group affiliation. At the time,
Siad Barre explained that the official ideology consisted of
three elements: his own conception of community development based
on the principle of self-reliance, a form of socialism based on
Marxist principles, and Islam. These were subsumed under
"scientific socialism," although such a definition was at
variance with the Soviet and Chinese models to which reference
was frequently made.
The theoretical underpinning of the state ideology combined
aspects of the Quran with the influences of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and
Mussolini, but Siad Barre was pragmatic in its application.
"Socialism is not a religion," he explained; "It is a political
principle" to organize government and manage production.
Somalia's alignment with communist states, coupled with its
proclaimed adherence to scientific socialism, led to frequent
accusations that the country had become a Soviet satellite. For
all the rhetoric extolling scientific socialism, however, genuine
Marxist sympathies were not deep-rooted in Somalia. But the
ideology was acknowledged--partly in view of the country's
economic and military dependence on the Soviet Union--as the most
convenient peg on which to hang a revolution introduced through a
military coup that had supplanted a Western-oriented
parliamentary democracy.
More important than Marxist ideology to the popular
acceptance of the revolutionary regime in the early 1970s were
the personal power of Siad Barre and the image he projected.
Styled the "Victorious Leader" (Guulwaadde), Siad Barre fostered
the growth of a personality cult. Portraits of him in the company
of Marx and Lenin festooned the streets on public occasions. The
epigrams, exhortations, and advice of the paternalistic leader
who had synthesized Marx with Islam and had found a uniquely
Somali path to socialist revolution were widely distributed in
Siad Barre's little blue-and-white book. Despite the
revolutionary regime's intention to stamp out the clan politics,
the government was commonly referred to by the code name MOD.
This acronym stood for Mareehaan (Siad Barre's clan), Ogaden (the
clan of Siad Barre's mother), and Dulbahante (the clan of Siad
Barre son-in-law Colonel Ahmad Sulaymaan Abdullah, who headed the
NSS). These were the three clans whose members formed the
government's inner circle. In 1975, for example, ten of the
twenty members of the SRC were from the Daarood clan-family, of
which these three clans were a part; the Digil and Rahanwayn, the
sedentary interriverine clan-families, were totally
unrepresented.
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