Understanding the Secession of Somaliland: History of the Formation and Failure of the Somali State (1960-1991)

Authors

  • Author

  • Suhaib Mahmoud

Keywords:

Nation State, Post-independence, Somalia, Somaliland

Abstract

This article examines the secession of Somaliland by exploring its historical, political, and legal foundations. It argues that secession was an inevitable result of the structural, political, and cultural context of the emergence and unification of the post-independence Somali state. The historical perspective helps explain not only the secession of Somaliland, but also how Somalia became a textbook example of a failed nation-state. The article starts with a general background on the modern social history of the Somali peninsula and analyses key moments, starting from the history of the formation of the modern state in British Protectorate Somaliland and Italian Somaliland until the establishment of Somalia as a unified nation-state. The article also discusses the motives of and obstacles to Somaliland's separation from Somalia in 1991 and evaluates the stances of the international community toward this secession.

References

  1. Robert Hess, Italian Colonialism in Somalia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 15-23.
  2. Hugh Chisholm (ed.), "A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information," The Encyclopedia Britannica , vol. 25 (1911), p. 383.
  3. British Orientalist, Ioan Myrddin Lewis argues that the northern Somali clans felt the threat of being devoured by Ethiopia, and thus accepted British protection. Through signing a series of treaties in the 1880s, colonialism granted the northern chiefs political powers and began to pay them salaries. See: I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 85-88.
  4. Abdurahman Abdullahi Baadiyo, Making Sense of Somali History , vol. 2 (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, 2018), p. 90.
  5. Ibid., pp. 90-91.
  6. Adwa was the decisive battle in the First Italo-Ethiopian War, where the Ethiopians defeated the invading Italian forces on 1 March 1896, curbing Italy's campaign to expand its empire in the Horn of Africa. See: Raymond Jonas, The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
  7. Britain claimed that its primary goal in colonizing Somaliland was to supply meat to the British India colonial stations in Aden, and it was in fact called "Aden's Butcher's Shop". See: Ahmed Ismail Samatar, Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Zed Books, 1988), p. 16. Similarly, Britain's objectives included "protecting the slave trade and repelling the influence of foreign powers". See: Abdi Ismail Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884-1986 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 43.
  8. Andreas Wimmer, Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), pp. 100-113.
  9. Ibid., pp. 99-100.
  10. It is important to note that Italian colonial rule in the south had far greater political and social impact than the British did in Somaliland; in the south a vast urban class of Western-educated colonial bureaucrats, the so-called comprador bourgeoisie, arose. But the colonial administration remained focused on an export industry dominated by Italian settlers and did little to establish state institutions.
  11. Baadiyo, p. 103.
  12. The Somali region of Ethiopia, or Region 5, according to the state's administrative division, has been under Ethiopian sovereignty since the middle of the 20 th century. Its population is about 8 million, all of whom are ethnically Somali, and share close cultural ties with Somalis in Somaliland, Djibouti, and Somalia. They speak Somali as their mother tongue.
  13. Richard Ogden, "The Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference," International Journal , vol. 19, no. 4 (Autumn 1964), pp. 545-550.
  14. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia , p. 133.
  15. Lewis states that the number of Somali civil servants rose significantly after World War II thanks to economic programs introduced by the British colonial administration as part of its "Welfare Scheme". See: Ibid., p. 70; Abdi Samatar points out that the rise of livestock exports brought Somaliland into the global capitalist system, as the economy of the protectorate was linked to the Protectorate of Aden. Thus, economic inequality became more prominent in society, which led to the emergence of a petty bourgeois class among the merchants, associated with the colonial economy. See: Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation , pp. 81-82.
  16. Marleen Renders, Consider Somaliland State-Building with Traditional Leaders and Institutions (Boston: Leiden, 2012), pp. 35-36.
  17. SNL won 20 of the 33 seats, while USP won 12 and NUF just one. Thus, Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal headed the first elected legislative council as prime minister of a cabinet made up of: Jarad Ali Jarad Jameh (Member), Haji Ibrahim Nour (Member), Ahmed Haj Dawali (Ahmed Qais) (Member), and Haji Youssef Iman (Member).
  18. With regard to Somali unification, Britain organized a meeting for the SYC in the presence of representatives from all Somali clans to convince them of the idea. British policy changed after Bevin's announcement in the British House of Commons that Britain was prepared to fulfil the Somalis' desire for Somali unity and independence within the framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations if the Somali people agreed to that. By negotiating with the party's central committee, Bevin linked Somalia to the British Commonwealth. The British administration in southern Somalia distributed official leaflets inviting all Somalis from the colonial administration, police, and army to join the SYL and offered those who became members of the party the privileges of high-level posts and access to jobs in general. Meanwhile, two prominent Somaliland protectorate politicians, Michael Mariano and Adam Aweys, were transferred to Mogadishu to represent Somaliland in the party ranks. The party's constitution provided for the unification of the five Somali regions under one state. Eventually, a major conference was organized in Mogadishu, with Sultan Abdillahi Deria of Hargeisa presiding. However, southern politicians refused to move forward under the British administration, preferring to be placed under the tutelage of the United Nations. Thus, the UN Security Council took control of Somalia from Italy and set a deadline of ten years to give it independence.
  19. Gordon Waterfield, "Trouble in the Horn of Africa? The British Somali Case", International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs), vol. 32, no. 1 (January 1956), pp. 52-55
  20. The King of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, had stated his right to include the Somalis in his kingdom. See the memoirs of Ambassador Ahmed Qibi: Adan Ahmed Mohamed, Danjire Qaybe Iyo Caalamka , Duale Bobe Abdirahman (ed.) (Hargeisa: Sagaljet, 2013), pp. 44-50; See also the report of Haile Selassie's visit to the United States in 1954. A few years later, Ethiopia illegally took control of Eritrea in 1961; see: Theodore M. Vestal, "Emperor Haile Selassie's First State Visit to The United States in 1954," International Journal of Ethiopian Studies , vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer/ Fall 2003), pp. 133-152.
  21. Motion made, and Question proposed", Foreign Affairs , 4 June 1946, accessed on 7/3/2023, at: http://bit.ly/3yfwwVq
  22. Historical sources suggest that the British encouraged the latter to subvert the Italian presence in the south.
  23. Eugene Cotran, "Legal Problems Arising out of the Formation of the Somali Republic," The International and Comparative Law Quarterly , vol. 12, no. 3 (July 1963), p. 1010.
  24. As Lewis points out, the British encouraged the idea of Somali nationalism because India's independence in 1947 had greatly reduced the strategic importance of the British presence in Aden and, hence, of British control of the Somaliland coast. As a result, the British government announced that it would not oppose unification with Italian Somaliland, should it be desired by the Somali nationalists. See: Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia , p. 152.
  25. The Somali language had no official script until 1972, and the post-independence bureaucracy has been compared to the "Tower of Babel", whereby English, Italian, and Arabic were all haphazardly employed as official languages. See: Hussein M. Adam, "Formation and Recognition of New States: Somaliland in Contrast to Eritrea", Review of African Political Economy , vol. 21, no. 59 (March 1994), p. 21.
  26. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia , p. 171.
  27. Abdalla Omar Mansur et al., "Country to a Nation, The Cancer of Somali State", in: Ali Jimale (ed.), The Invention of Somalia (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1995), pp. 107, 116.
  28. Cotran, p. 9; I.M. Lewis, "The Somali Republic: An Experiment in Legal Integration", Africa: Journal of the International African Institute , vol. 32, no. 3 (July 1962), pp. 219-238.
  29. Supplement No. 2: The Union of Somaliland and Somalia Law", The Somaliland Gazette , vol. 1, no. 3 (Hargeisa: 5 July 1960).
  30. Cotran, pp. 10-11.
  31. Ibid., pp. 12-14.
  32. Proponents of Somaliland's secession use this argument as evidence of the fundamental illegitimacy of the union. This is examined in the third section of the study.
  33. Paolo Contini, The Somali Republic: An Experiment in Legal Integration (London: Cass Library of African Law, 1969), p. 9.
  34. There were campaigns is some southern cities against the constitution. The Party for Defence of Democracy launched a boycott campaign in Beledweyne.
  35. Burhan Ghalioun, The Sectarian System: From State to Tribe (Doha and Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2017), p. 164.
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  38. Ibid., pp. 92-93.
  39. Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa's First Democrats: Somalia's Aden A. Osman and Abdirazak H. Hussen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 62.
  40. Adam, pp. 27-28.
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  44. A student demonstration that broke out on 20 February 1982 sparked what would become a protracted struggle against the authoritarian regime, immortalizing this date in the national memory following Somaliland's secession. For more on that day and its symbolism, see the doctoral dissertation: Ebba Tellander, The Wind That Blows before the Rain: Acts of Defiance and Care in Northern Somalia in the 1980s , International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 2022.
  45. Ibid., pp. 60-71.
  46. Crisis Group, "Somaliland: Time for African Union Leadership," Africa Report , no. 110, 23/5/2006, accessed on 28/4/2022, at: https://bit.ly/30YCquL
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  48. Investigating genocide in Somaliland," Al Jazeera English , 20/5/2017, accessed on 28/4/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3eZsntw
  49. Anna Lindley, The Early Morning Phonecall: Somali Refugees' Remittances (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), p. 34.
  50. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, "We Swallowed the State as the State Swallowed Us: The Genesis, Genealogies, and Geographies of Genocides in Somalia," African Security , vol. 9, no. 3 (July-September 2016), pp. 237-258.
  51. Mary Harper, Getting Somalia Wrong?: Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2012), pp. 105-109.
  52. A proposal submitted by SNM leader Ahmed Silanyo — the fourth president of Somaliland after the secession (2010-2017) — discusses a general framework for transitional governance after the overthrow of the regime. The proposal dated March 1991, that is, two months before the declaration of secession, is based on the adoption of a federal system between the north and the south. See a copy of the proposal: Ahmed M. Silyano, "A Proposal of the Somali National Movement," London, March 1991, accessed on 5/9/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3it7YPw
  53. BBC and SNM 1988. Waraysi Axmed Siilaanyo," YouTube, accessed on 28/4/2022, at: https://bit.ly/2ZF7FIO
  54. This conference successfully implemented its decisions, especially with regard to the disarmament of armed militias, helped by the presence of the House of Elders (Guurti), a traditional parliamentary institution made up of clan leaders representing each Somalilander clan, established in 1989, which took over the reins of power from the SNM. The Guurti achieved a smooth democratic transition in Somaliland, aided by the lack of external interference. See: Sarah G. Phillips, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020).
  55. In its statement dated 19/5/1991, the movement accuses Israel and Ethiopia of being behind this separation, without reference to any evidence for such an accusation. The movement describes the secession as a real tragedy for the Somali people, an implementation of the colonial agenda against the Somali people. In its statement, the movement called for besieging the separatists and taking a unified stance towards them. See: "Bayān min al- Ḥaraka al-Islāmiyya fī al-Ṣūmāl Ḥawl Muḥāwalat Taqsīm al-Bilād," 19/5/1991, accessed on 7/3/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3cW3Jbu
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  58. Dirdeiry Ahmed, for example, talks about the AU's "wall of silence" as a strategy to deal with secession claims, deliberately leaving the demands of the separatist region out of the agenda in its official meetings. See: Dirdeiry Mohammed Ahmed, al-Ḥudād al-Afrīqiyya wa-l-Infiṣāl fī al-Qānūn al- Dawlī (Beirut: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and al-Dar al-Arabi lil-Ulum, 2017).
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  61. Syria gave up its seat in the UN General Assembly when it merged with Egypt in 1958, and when it withdrew from the union in 1961, it applied to resume its membership in the international organization without the need for a new recommendation from the Security Council, and without a resolution. Under Article 4(2) of the UN Charter, The President of the General Assembly asked at the outset of the meeting whether there was any objection to Syria regaining its seat, and, when no one objected, invited the Syrian delegation to join the session without any procedures. See: Ahmed, p. 230.
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  63. See: Ahmed, p. 230.
  64. Resume: AU Fact Finding Mission to Somaliland (30 April to 4 May 2005)," African Union, 2005, para 8, accessed on 4/9/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3F0SbEF
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