___________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ No29 October 2, 1992. ISSN 1103-1999 ____________________________________________________________________ Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and fax. Questions can be directed to antbh@strix.udac.uu.se or to fax number +46-18-151160. All material is free to quote as long as the source is stated. ____________________________________________________________________ THE DECLINE OF CLANSHIP IN SOMALIA By Bernhard Helander The purpose of this paper is to present a slightly different perspective on the civil war in Somalia than that dominating the media reports. The aim is not to give a very thorough background to the conflict but rather to point to some salient landmarks in the recent political history and to identify some of the key-actors that are involved in the Somali civil war. I shall also point to some fundamental principles of Somali political culture. Before I dive into the turmoil of more recent event I like to provide an image drawn from the pre-colonial Horn of Africa. In many of the travel accounts from the previous century there is a recurring picture of the sense of relation that people had to one another. One gets the sense that although there was a feeling of a broadly encompassing identity called Somali that very identity was very non- compelling. It didn't evoke the sense of forming a nation or a unified field for political action until very late. Virginia Luling, who has worked extensively with local history in the Afgooye area, emphatically states that the people of Afgoye by the trun of the century had no notion whatsoever of forming part of a greater national unity. That very same idea has been reported by other oral historians working in other parts of Somalia. The idea of being a nation seems to have grown out slowly partially in response to the colonial penetration of Somalia. By the second world war a substantial number of Somalis had fought in the armies of the Italians and the British, not only on Somali soil but even elsewhere in Africa. Many of these ex-soldiers seem to have brought home with them an awareness of Somalia's position within the larger African anti-colonial struggle. Many people in Somalia must also have felt frustrated when Italy was given back the colony it had lost during the war in the form of a UN trusteeship. There is a remarkable report from 1948 called the four power commissions report on Somalia. Representatives of the four winners of the second world war went from house to house, from village to village and asked people how what type of long-term solution they saw for a post-colonial Somalia. The answers overwhelmingly demonstrated that the local self-sufficiency of the early century had vanished and given room for what was later to be known as Pan-Somalism; most people apparently felt that they wanted a united Somali state formed by both the British and the Italian colony. With independence 1960, and the merging of British Somaliland and the Italian trusteeship, Somalia came to develop two paradoxical relations to the rest of Africa. On the one hand the urban intelligentsia expressed themselves very much in line with the zeit- geist of African urban politics of the time. They denounced clanship claiming that old ties based on descent could not have any part in the forming of a modern nation state. Many of these intellectuals, when pressed for their own clan allegiance, would only agree to name what they called their "ex"-clan. On the other hand, however, in contraction to the expressed ambition of the OAU and other continental bodies, Somali declared at a very early stage that it saw the parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti inhabited by Somalis as forming a natural part of Somalia. One has to bear in mind that by this time these were popularly supported demands. One has also to understand that from the perspective of the subsistence economy of the Somali nomads, the state boundaries had no effect at all on their movements. The fragile party politics of the sixties descended rapidly into chaos. In fact, the accusations levied against ministers and parliamentarians of the late sixties have much in common with the complaints of corruption and power abuse that became so expressed during the latter years of Siyad Barre. The major difference was that in the sixties' politicians were a novelty. It was an entirely new type of people. Not colonialists, not clan elders, but perhaps something in between. Many of these politicians introduced an entirely new tone in Somali politics. While being seen as nothing less than representatives for their own clans by most of their rural electorate, they also acted to distance themselves from mere clan- politics. The effect of this in many cases was not that Somali moved into a new era where party-politics replaced clanship as the basis for political action. Rather, it served to distance the traditional leadership from involvement in crucial societal issues, thus depriving the traditional clan-structures of some of its vitality and shifting the power-basis within the clans from the councils of elders into the Assemblea Nazionale. When Siyad Barre and a group of high-ranking officers took power in a coup-d'itat in 1969 it was hardly surprising. What was surprising however was the rapid transformation of Somalia into an east-bloc ally. Another very apparent development was the swift military build-up. During the sixties Somalia had received a total of 57 million dollars in foreign military aid. The figure for the seventies is nearly 20 times higher or well over a thousand million dollars. Throughout the early seventies Siyad Barre was able to hold on to power by appealing to the pan-somali sentiments. The steady import of Rumanian, Russian and Cuban security and military advisors made that rhetoric into something scaringly real. The very same advisors helped to design a scheme fro governing the country that placed the head of state in control of all instruments of power. At the same time Siyad sought to manoeuvre within the domain of the clanship system. Often when political opponents were executed he personally paid diya or blood-money to that person's clan to steer of antagonism and calls for vengeance. He also saw to that the clanship system, although formally prohibited, came to serve his purposes. Most of the cabinets throughout his regime maintained a careful balance between representatives of the different clans. Again, this meant that people had to turn to politicians rather than to their clan leaders to obtain benefits. In the country, clan leaders became salaried and often appointed by him personally. He also many times sought to fuel local conflicts between different clans and then supporting both sides. This, in effect, was a continuation of the erosion of power within the traditional clan-structures that had been initiated during the sixties. With the loss of the war against Ethiopia in 1978, Siyad Barre was forced into more openly relying upon his own kinsmen to be able to stay in power. The rule of Siyad also became more apparently than before, a rule of a group of clans over the others. It was now his own clan, the Marehan and the clan of his mother, the Ogadeen and that of his favourite son in law, the Dhulbahante that more or less ruled Somalia. The end of the eighties also saw the establishment of some armed resistance movements. The SSDF was formed within the Majerteen clans by previously high-ranking officers. A few years later the SNM was formed among mainly the Isaaq clans in the Northwest. On the international arena Somalia made a few remarkable moves. Having got rid of the Russians and Cubans following the defeat in the Ogadeen war, Siyad Barre turned to the Americans and the West for support. From having been a comparably closed Marxist state in the seventies, the eighties saw Somalia transform into a scientific socialist state supported by United States, the EEC and Italy. This meant that in the eighties Somalia opened up for Western aid: in 1987 foreign development assistance accounted for 57 per cent of the GNP. The deal with the Americans was that they would take over a Soviet naval base in Berbera in the North for a total of 100 million dollars a year in development aid, military assistance and credits. The American interest in all this was to have a base in reserve for the more important Mombassa installations and also to build a landing strip that could act as an emergency landing faciltity for the space shuttle. Economically, Somali did some progress in the 80's. Domestic grain production increased, or at least the amount of grain that was available in the markets increased. However, there were a number of other trends that effectively blocked any possibility for the country to achieve self-sufficiency. As grain prices were liberalized it became increasingly attractive for the urban middle class to obtain farming land. Thanks to the farm registration programme that was run by the USAID it became possible for urban families to obtain fully legal titles to plots of land that already were owned by local farmers along the river valleys. This, of course is just one of many examples of how the spreading corruption impeded economical growth. In the spring of 1988 the SNM in the North were able to establish control of large parts of northern Somalia. In response to this Siyad called in six south African mercenary pilots to bomb Hargeysa, the largest city in the North. Hargeysa that had housed at least half a million inhabitants was reduced to pebbles. Armed resistance against Siyad in the South gained momentum in 1989. Ogaden units of the army mutinied and formed an organisation they called SPM. Among the Hawiye clans in and around Mogadishu and in the central regions discontent without the regime grew and the USC movement was formed. A group of largely pro-Italian urban intellectuals and business men formed something they called the manifesto group, calling upon Siyad to step down from the throne and hold multi-party elections. In 1990, as a group of elders in Siyad's own clan protested against his rule in an open letter, it became apparent that the class of politicians surrounding Siyad Barre acted unsupported by the leadership in their own clans. After a two-month siege of the capital by SPM and USC forces in late 1990, Siyad Barre fled to his clans home territory on January 26, 1991. At a fairly early stage after Siyad Barre's defeat conflicts arose within and between the various factions involved in his overthrow. Many Hawiye inside Mogadishu took the opportunity to punish members of the Daarood clans that they felt had been the people benfitting from Siyad Barre's rule. A mass-exodus of Daarood towards the safer areas west of the Jubba river, was paralleled by a mass-invasion of rural people from the central and inter-river regions into Mogadishu. A power struggle within the USC arose between supporter of the military wing and its leader, general Aydiid, on the one hand, and the manifesto group and its leader the business man Ali Mahdi on the other. This conflict is more than a personal power-struggle between the two men in person, but involves unsolved disputes from the fifties and sixties. Aydiid's basic fear is to have a weak Abgaal president supported by the mighty Majerteyn tribes in the Northeast. Ali Mahdis supporters' fear is to hand over business interest and power to competitors within the Hawaadle and Habar Gedir clans. In the beginning of the summer 1991 a so-called national reconciliation conference was held in Djibouti. The conference agreed to reinstall the constitution of the 19604s and to have a parliament with 123 seats to elect an interim president. The delegates at the meeting had little or no accountability vis-`-vis their own groupings and the outcome was that Ali Mahdi declared himself president of Somalia. The North had already decided to form an independent state under the name of Somaliland republic. Heavy fighting broke out between Ali Mahdi's forces and Aydiid's forces inside Mogadishu in November 1991. While Aydiid's side was the military stronger side, Ali Mahdi enjoyed the support of the Italians and of being presented as the good guy in the media. There is evidence to suggest that Ali Mahdi's ambition was to create a humanitarian disaster to obtain a foreign intervention by forces that would secure his position. A fragile cease-fire was signed in March this year. This effectively divided Mogadishu into a northern Abgaal, Ali Mahdi part and a southern Aydiid Habar Gedir part. The port was controlled by another Hawiye clan, the Murusadde that attempted to straddle between the two camps, The airport fell into the hands of yet another Hawiye clan, the Hawadle. Even within the various factions there were differences. For instance, Abgal, the principle supporters of Ali Mahdi, are made up of 9 different subclans and each one of these clans manoeuvred on its own to obtain benefits for its members. Together there are more than thirty different factions inside Mogadishu alone that are involved in the current struggles. In the south direct hostilities and artillery duels continued longer than inside Mogadishu. A former general to Siyad Barre called Morgan, long sought to win control over the city Kismayo. When he was finally pushed in to northern Kenya he destabilized large parts of Lamu district until he recently withdrew into Ethiopia. In South- westernmost Somalia the Marehan clan in the organisation called SNF entertained clear plans to play a role in the politics of Somalia. During may this year motorized infantry reached as far as Afgoye, 30 kilometres outside Mogadishu. With the establishment of Aydiid's headquarters in Baardheere the SNF are at least in part blocked from access to the inter-river area. The fragile alliance between the Ogaden forces in the SPM and Aydiid has established a hegemony over most of the inter-river area. The sufferers from this alliance are of course the Rahanweyn and Digil clans whose organisation, the SDM, has been more or less forced into accepting the supremacy of the mighty Ogaden-Habar Gedir alliance. On the other hand the Habar Gedir hasn't had much of a choice since large numbers of them were forced to flee from their home territory bordering on the Majerteyn clan in the Northeast. Throughout this civil war the humanitarian situation has lapsed into something that may well be the worst catastrophe in Africa ever. Two spring rains have failed and large numbers of people are displaced from their home territories. Wells have been poisoned and live-stock looted. A normal year in the eighties Somalia imported something like 500 000 metric tons of food. During the past twelve moths only half of that amount has reached the country. The relief food now reaching the country has become a part of the power base of the different armed gangs that also constitute the supporter of the various factions. The uncoordinated shipments of food by many of the smaller NGOs have paved the ground for organized looting. Armed guards hired by the organisations to accompany the lorries destined for the hinterland, grab hold of the vehicles and sell them back to the organisations. Groups controlling the airstrips demand high fees to allow the relief planes to land. Behind all this is of course the late awakening of the international community and the shortage of food. However, another important reason relates to the weakening of the power of the traditional clan leaders how have little or nothing to put up against the military might of the war lords who recruit soldiers along clan lines. Very briefly, the only thing that would seem to effectively stop the famine would be to flood the country with food and to hand over the control of transports to a massive force of UN troops. An initiation of a food-for-weapons or food-for-money scheme could work out together with lower level clan leadership and that would also help to erode some of the power basis of the war lords. Somalis had definitely had enough and there are few Somalis in Somalia at least, that still believe in any form of a military victory.