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State Collapse Somalia

After ousting dictator Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia collapsed into a state of anarchy and violence as clan militias fought for control of the country. Between 1991-1992, inter-clan violence led to massacres and ethnic cleansing that killed over 240,000 people. Warlords fought over ports to control the "economy of plunder" and tax humanitarian aid. The country fragmented into poorly defined clan territories with little governance. This period was marked by the most intense conflict between clan factions seeking to control land and resources in southern Somalia.

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72 views2 pages

State Collapse Somalia

After ousting dictator Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia collapsed into a state of anarchy and violence as clan militias fought for control of the country. Between 1991-1992, inter-clan violence led to massacres and ethnic cleansing that killed over 240,000 people. Warlords fought over ports to control the "economy of plunder" and tax humanitarian aid. The country fragmented into poorly defined clan territories with little governance. This period was marked by the most intense conflict between clan factions seeking to control land and resources in southern Somalia.

Uploaded by

Marcu Dragos-Ionut
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4.

State Collapse & Clan wars / warlords (1991-1992)

Main ideas:

 No other country in the world has been in such a prolonged situation of state collapse;
 The Regime’s genocidal campaign in the north and freezing of foreign aid led the rise
of clan base liberation fronts among which the United Somali Congress (USC) which
ousted Barre in 1991;
 Inter-clan violence between 1991-1992 notably between factions of the Darood and
Hawiye clans led to massacres, ethnic cleansing, mass exodus and killed about
240,000 people;
 Humanitarian aid became part of the economy of plunder whereby warlords fought to
control key ports and charged taxes to “guard” food aid while diverting some;
 Absence of central government authority has left vacuum where violence and
lawlessness prevailed and customary and Islamic laws became irrelevant.

The Somali Republic gained independence on 1 July 1960. Somalia was formed by the union
of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, while French Somaliland became Djibouti. The
country was led by Major General Muhammad Siad Barre. Rebel forces ousted the Barre
regime in 1991 and as a result anarchy ensued. The Somali National Movement (SNM)
gained control of the north, while in the capital of Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia,
the United Somali Congress achieved control.

The capital of Somali, Mogadishu, was in the hands of warlords and wrecked by clans
claiming to the city as a property of their own tribe. Somalia disintegrated into a number of
poorly defined tribal territories, for example: Puntland, Somaliland, Jubaland, Rahaweynland,
Marihanland, etc., most of which had little capacity to provide bare minimum services to their
own members. They had no intention to unify the country, their interest was only clan
supremacy.1

The period 1991-1992 was marked by the most intense conflict, when the different clan
factions wanted to have control of land and resources in southern Somalia. This resulted in the
devastation of the inter-riverine areas, consequently causing famine and the disruption of

1 Lidwien Kapteijns - Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Turn of 1991 (2013),
http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/10/17/clan-cleansing-in-somalia-the-ruinous-turn-of-
1991-2013/
farming and livestock production. The 1991 formation of independent Somaliland in the
northwest created an enclave of reconstruction and relative peace.2

The crises also came in Somalia with warfare and armed criminality which attracted
international community attention and become a humanitarian emergence.

The moment consider as the beginning of Somalia’s collapse was in May 1988. The Somali
National Movement attacked Isaaq clan in the north of the country committing a genocide. As
a result, many citizens moved to Ethiopia and became refugees. The lack of a central authority
conducted to inter-clan massacres. Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees crossed the
Kenyan and Ethiopian borders. Also the capital Mogadishu became a war scene between USC
militias of General Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Madhi.

An important factor was the massive famine which started in 1991 through 1992, when
approximately 240.000 died. Tragically, the population was suffered the most of the famine
and it had the slightest responsibility for the crises.3

The national economy was affected. Somalia had an economy of plunder, in which a wide
range of social groups – from illiterate gunmen who fought to loot, to merchants of war who
made millions of dollars exporting scrap metal from dismantled factories.

Unintentionally, U.N helped the combatants to continue the war because the food and supplies
for the war victims was reached by clans and warlords.

For a state which hasn’t a national government, Somalia is a unique country. The functions
states are performing, such as the provision of social services, including health and education,
the regulation, for example, of the movement of goods and persons, control of the
environment, airspace and coasts, and so on, as well as the representation of the Somali
people in intergovernmental and international fora, are absent, notwithstanding the fact that
administrations in some parts of the country, notably in north-western Somalia ('Somaliland')
and north-east Somalia ('Puntland'), have begun to provide some basic services to their
people.

2 PROFILE OF INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT : SOMALIA, http://www.internal-


displacement.org/assets/library/Africa/Somalia/pdf/Somalia-November-2004.pdf
3 Ibidem

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