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Somalia's societal breakdown and the famine that accompanied it in the early 1990s were results of political and economic problems common to most sub-Saharan African countries. The U.S. and UN interventions in Somalia were unlikely to resolve the country's crisis because they did not offer solutions based on Somali initiatives. Indeed, dozens of UN and U.S. troops have already been killed by Somalis angry with those forces for trying to impose a settlement to Somalia's complex political disputes, and hundreds of Somalis have been killed in clashes with the occupying forces. That should not be surprising since outside attempts to resolve Africa's problems have regularly proven ineffective and even counterproductive.

The chronic crises in Somalia and sub-Saharan Africa in general have
been caused by a succession of repressive regimes and their disastrous
domestic policies. Flawed economic and political models have led to dismal growth in per capita income, falling rates of food production, periodic famines, systematic disregard of basic liberties, institutionalized corruption, and ongoing civil wars.

A long-term solution to those problems can come only from Africans themselves, not from well-meaning occupying powers or grandiose nation-building schemes of the United Nations. Traditional African systems of participatory government and free markets should serve as the model for the region's societies. The transition to such systems may not be easy, but it is the only way free and prosperous societies will emerge and thrive in Africa. The United Nations and the United States must allow Africans to work out their own destiny.

LOOKING BACK THE PAST

For much of 1992 most of Somalia lay in ruins--effectively destroyed. It had no government, no police force, nor even basic services. Armed thugs and bandits roamed the country, pillaging and plundering, and murderous warlords battled savagely for control of the capital, Mogadishu. The carnage and the drought claimed over 300,000 lives, and heartbreaking spectacles of emaciated bodies of famine victims were daily visited upon the public by the International media.

During 1993 Somalia was occupied by U.S. soldiers in the name of humanitarian assistance and by UN peacekeeping troops attempting to establish order in the country. The U.S.-UN intervention, of course, was prompted by a desire to end the hunger and violence. Although the goal of the humanitarian mission was quickly achieved, the United Nations found itself dragged into the Somalis' battles, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of UN peacekeepers and hundreds of Somalis at the hands of U.S. and UN forces. Even the United States has suffered casualties in its efforts to impose stability in Mogadishu. When 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in October 1993 during a Somali-U.S. confrontation, it became apparent to U.S. policy makers that establishing a functioning society in Somalia was more complex than they had thought.

Although the United States has refrained from committing itself further to nation building in Somalia and has promised to withdraw from that country by March 31, 1994, the United Nations has pledged to remain there to work out a political settlement--a strategy that ended in failure, since disputing factions regarded the United Nations as an obstacle to peace and "an occupying force." Indeed, the violence aimed at the United Nations has been due precisely to many Somalis' resentment that the solutions to their problems would be dictated from outside and to suspicion about the United Nations' political agenda. That is why it is important that any future political settlement comes from within Somalia. Contrary to this, even the current Transitional government lacks a legitimacy because mainstream Somali political, economic, and religious leaders were not involved in the process, In a direct results of those failures, this government is doomed to fail as well.
Somalia's problems are characteristic of those of many African nations.

Unfortunately, as has been the case in other African countries, outside forces will probably not provide an enduring solution to Somalia's difficulties. After all, despite massive economic assistance from the world famines have been occurring with depressing regularity in Africa in recent years, and African economies have been in dismal shape. Although droughts have played havoc with agricultural production, the food supply has been far more threatened by never-ending armed conflicts.

It is true that external factors, including the colonial legacy, the Cold War, and other foreign meddling in African affairs, in particular the Somali affairs, have played a role in creating the region's problems. But the primary causes of Africa's crises are of internal origin: misguided political leadership, corruption, capital flight, defective economic systems, senseless civil wars, and military vandalism. Although foreign powers can help with the resolution of Somali-type conflicts, it should be recognized that Africans themselves
bear the ultimate responsibility for solving their problems. Indeed, they are the only ones capable of providing a lasting solution.

Somalia's descent into chaotic lawlessness did not occur overnight and could have long been predicted. Though the Somalis are ethnically homogeneous, their plight under and after colonial rule bore testimony to the apriciousness of colonial boundaries. The Somali found themselves in five jurisdictions:

British Somaliland, Italian

Somaliland, Ethiopia (in the Ogaden), Kenya, and Djibouti. The nation of Somalia was formed and granted independence in July 1960 when the British protectorate and the Italian trust were joined and the rest of the Somali people were abandoned in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya.

The civilian administration that assumed power after independence became
hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. On October 21,1969, it was overthrown in a bloodless coup by Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre, who adopted the socialist model and the designation "Jalle," or "Comrade." Government was centralized under a "supreme revolutionary council," and Somalia turned to the Soviet Union for tutelage during the period 1970-77.

The break with Moscow came when the Soviets refused to support Barre's
grand scheme of uniting the Somali in one "Greater Somaliland." Both Somalia and Ethiopia were Soviet allies in the Horn of Africa, and the Soviets were unwilling to support military incursions into Ethiopia. Although Barre seized the Ogaden in southern Ethiopia in a successful military campaign in 1977, he was routed and expelled by Ethiopian forces with help from Moscow in March 1978.

Warlordism Replaces the Barre Dictatorship

Two rebel movements--the United Somali Congress and the Somali National
Movement--set out to overthrow Barre. In January 1991, the same month
the Persian Gulf War erupted, they succeeded in driving Barre from power.

After his ouster, however, internecine rivalry erupted between the rebel groups. The USC controlled the south, including Mogadishu, while the SNM controlled the north. In March of that year the north seceded to form the Republic of Somali- land. Then factionalism emerged within the ranks of the USC. One faction was led by interim president Ali Mahdi Mohamed and the other by Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid. Mogadishu became a divided city, as the two battled for control. Aidid controlled most of the southern sector, while Mahdi's stronghold was the Kaaraan district and other northern areas.
That turn of events shocked many. The country, in the process of removing Barre, had already been devastated-- reduced to an ash heap of charred buildings and burned-out vehicles, with decomposing bodies littering the streets. Yet "educated" barbarians were waging a fierce battle to determine who should be president, totally unconcerned about the plight of their people.

There was more ammunition in Somalia than food and medicine. Africa Watch affirmed that "the level of discipline among the troops [was] so low, the number of free guns so high and the need to loot for food so great that firefights [would] undoubtedly continue Between November 1991 and March 1992 an estimated 41,000 people were killed. Most of the victims were civilians, half of them women and children.

Postcolonial Africa's Political and Economic Disaster

Unfortunately, the excesses of the Barre regime are not the exception in Africa. In the late 1980s many African governments, including those of Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Sudan, Togo,and
Zaire, declared war against their own citizens in their mad obsession with political power. In Mozambique, for example, ragged government troops and a shadowy guerrilla army took turns terrorizing villages and stealing their meager crops. Entire units stooped to banditry. For many people, guns became a source of income. Mozambican soldiers have been known to hire out their weapons to criminals for a fee or a part of the loot.

The plight of Somalia encapsulates the experience of most black African nations: years of colonial misrule, the establishment of arbitrary state boundaries, independence, repressive governments, violence, and widespread hunger or famine. Somalia's latest crisis only makes it more
urgent to examine the region's bitter history to help prevent similar developments elsewhere.

In the 1960s when Africa gained its independence from colonial rule, its people were "Free at last!" they chanted. The colonial infidels had been
driven out of Africa, and Africans no longer had to submit to the indignities of foreign domination. Africa was capable of charting its own course in its own image, not that of the "racist" colonialists.

Today the optimism ofthe 1960s have been replaced by a deep sense of
disappointment, anger, and betrayal. The entire African continent that was chanting the slogans of freedom in the 1960s, and thought they had a bright and prosperous future now find themselves once again in darkness, and worse, No one to blame for their ills.

Independence did not herald the era of freedom and prosperity trumpeted
by the nationalists. Almost f five decades of independence and "freedom"
have witnessed a steady increase in the incidence of hunger and a systematic deterioration of living standards across Africa. More perfidious, the economic exploitation and political oppression of the African people have intensified--at the hands of the same elites and nationalists who denounced the colonial powers for exploiting Africa to develop their European countries. With few exceptions, the nationalists who took over were worse than the departing colonialists. For Somalia, if the Somalis, and only them alone don't change the direction that they are headed now, I am afraid there is more despair and destruction ahead.

But INSHA ALLAH A NEW GENERATION OF LEADERS WILL ONE DAY EMERGE AND WE WILL ALL BE BETTER OFF.

Murshid Barud
Former Eden Prairie City Council Candidate-USA
E-mail: [email protected]