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Refugee Exodus from Somalia: Revisiting the Causes Hassan A Refugee Exodus from Somalia: Revisiting the Causes Hassan A. Mohamed Rhmc? needed to be rescued from themselves Cet article se propose d'exarniner les causes du conflit Somalien qui a (Rakia 1992). provoque l'exode de plus de deux millions de rkfugies. Par une approche It is unfortunate that the discourse historique du developpement de la tra@die, l'auteur offre une perspective on the crisis in Somalia has so far ig- plus complexe et tres differente de celle offerte par les medias qui se nored the complex historical develop- cantonnent dans des discussions simplistes et superficielles des symptbmes ment of the tragedy. Abdi Samatar actuels. Pour Hassan Mohammed, les causes de la crise Somalienne sont liees (1992, 626) aptly described the prob- Bun processus de desintegration de la societe civile et de ses valeurs sociales, lem: culturelleset politiques, une desintegration qui resulte de quatre evhements One of the casualties of the gruesome historiques: le decoupage de la nation et du territoire Somalien en plusieurs nightmare that is gripping Somalia entites; l'impact de la guerre froide; l'imposition de systemes politique, has been the capacity to thinkhistori- culture1 et educatif &rangers B la culture Somalienne; et enfin, la manipula- cally and systematically about the nature of the malady, and to find tion et l'exploitation des divisions claniques par l'elite politique afin de practical ways of controlling the demeurer au pouvoir. present in order to build a more sus- tainable future. Introduction stream explanations. The severity of the crisis in Somalia was largely un- The failure of "Operation Restore The most recent and probably the larg- known to the outside world prior to Hope" is an apt illustration of this est refugee exodus in the history of the the televised images of starving multi- point; the good intentionsof the opera- Horn of Africa started in Somalia in tudes and marauding armed young- tion made many innocent Somalis vic- 1988. By the end of 1992, the world had sters which attracted the world's tims rather than beneficiaries of the witnessed the ugly consequences of attention-eventually leading to the supposedly humanitarian interven- four years of civil war and famine that now famous "Operation Restore tion. had devastated Somalia and led to the Hope." But the impressions portrayed To understand fully the causes of disintegration of the state and civil so- gave neither an accurate picture nor the crisis, it is necessary to go beyond ciety. The destructive forces of war and adequately explained the genesis of the traditional scholarship which famine have claimed the lives of ap- the crisis. In most cases, the causes of tends to reduce the causes to a single proximately 350,000 Somalis and sent the current chaos and crises in Somalia factor, namely, Somali segmentary more than one million refugees to have been attributed to internal fac- clanism (Abdi Samatar 1992 and every corner of the globe. Most of the tors, such as "a senseless tribal war Keynan 1992). The causes behind the refugees fled to neighbouring coun- over state-control." This became the crisis are the result of an interplay of tries. According to sources such as U.S. standard premise for most of the popu- political, economic, sociocultural and Committee for Refugees (1993) and lar and academic writings on the crisis ecological factors that have been in the UNHCR (1993) there were about in Somalia. making for a long time (Wisner 1992; 400,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia in The fixation on the immediate social Keynan 1992 and Abdi Samatar 1992). 1992, another 320,000 in Kenya and crisis-such as lawlessness, anarchy The correlations of these can be under- approximately 85,000 hosted by tiny and starvation-an be both mislead- stood from a historical perspective that Djibouti. Another 250,000 refugees ing and unjust. It is misleadingbecause views the disintegrationof indigenous were dispersed in Asia, Europe and the emphasis is on the symptoms and social systems and civil society as the North America. Besides, about two not on the causes of the situation. This consequences of: million people were internally dis- approach not only leads to inadequate 1. the impact of the colonial legacy placed (see Tables 1-4). understanding of the problems but is especially the partition of the So- This article discusses the causes of also unjust when the diagnosis prima- mali nation and territories; the Somali disaster from a different rily focuses on the single dimension of 2. the legacy of the Cold War; perspective than the standard main- internal factors, while ignoring exter- 3. the imposition of alien centralized nal and historical aspects. Such a sin- structures, systems of governance, gle-sided approach tended "to blame culture and education which con- the victims for their misery and agony" tributed to the disintegrationof the Hassan A. Mohamed is a doctoral candidateat the Centerforlntmtional Education, University (Keynan 1992) and resulted in the por- indigenous political, economic of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a research trayal of Somalis as "either gun-crazy and sociocultural modes of life and associate at CRS, Ymk University. looters or as hapless victims" that structures that were compatible 6 Refirge, Vol. 14, No. 1 (April 1994) I with the harsh and precarious en- which Britain later ceded to Kenya); by stable colonial rule elsewhere [in vironment of the Horn of Africa; Italian Somaliland in the south; French Africa]" (Harbeson 1991). Conse- ' and finally Somaliland (now Djibouti); and a large quently, this legacy gave birth to 4. the failure of the mentally colo- region known as Ogaden which all strong sentiments of Pan-Somalism, nized ruling elite to develop viable three European powers relinquished whose pursuit helped precipitate spo- alternatives to western values and portions of to Emperor Menelik of radic wars between Somalia and Ethio- systems of governance rather than Ethiopia as a reward for his collabora- pia. For example, the wars of 1960, resorting to the manipulation and tion (Lewis 1988; Harbeson 1991; 1963-64 and 1976-78 directly contrib- exploitation of the segmentary na- Zolberg 1992 and Sheikh-Abdi 1993). uted to several refugee populations. ture of the Somali social system in Only two parts of the Somali nation- Before we discuss Pan-So~alismletus order to stay in power. the former British Somaliland and first look at the role of the superpowers former Italian Somaliland--out of five during the Cold War era in the Horn of The Partition of the Somali Nation: gained independence and united, on Africa. A Colonial Legacy July 1,1960 to form the present Somali A major causal factor in the current Democratic Republic. For Somalis, one The Role of the Superpowers crisis is the impact of the colonial par- of the most devastating results of the The proximity of the Horn of Africa to tition of Somali nation into five sepa- colonial .partition was that it "frus- the Suez Canal and the oil rich Middle rate parts: British Somaliland in the trated Somqli national aspirations and East have made it attractive to foreign north; North Frontier District (NFD, fractured the basis for statehood laid involvement in its affairs. The United States and the former Soviet Union, driven by geopolitical and ideological motives, turned the Hornof Africa into one of the most bitterly contested bat- tlefields of the Cold War. Since the early 1960~~the superpowers-partly in response to the demands of their local clients-dumped massive amounts of deadly weapons into the region. Somalia and Ethiopia are among the poorest countries in the world, yet during the 1970s and 1980s their mili- tary rulers diverted tremendous amounts of national resources to build and sustain huge standing armies. One Somali writer, Keynan (1993) esti- mated that Somalia spent between 60 and 80 percent of its annual budget on defense. He put the annual public ex- penditure per soldier at $US 2,065; compared to, say, the salary of $US 100 to a senior lecturer at the Somali Na- tional University. The cost of soldiers weapons to the local people-deliv- ered in the form of loans and aid- exceeded $US 12 billion. For example, atfhe height of Ogaden war in "just five months, between November 1977 and March 1978, the Soviet Union dumped $US 2 billion worth of sophis- ticated weaponry in the Horn (Keynan 1992,6-7)." Today, the deadly arms in the hands of the Somalis that confront the UN multilateral military mission are the legacy of the Cold War (Zolberg 1992). There is no need to elaborate the Refuge, Vol. 14, No. 1 (April 1994) 7 role these arms have played in Soma- Ethiopian rule in Ogaden. Second, the were diverted to the diverse warring lia's ongoing destruction and refugee defeat had a negative psychological factions among the elite. exodus. impact on the morale and self-esteem of the population and set the stage for Tribalism in African Social Pan-Somalism: The Faded Dream the political disintegration of Somali Systems The post-colonial regimes of Somalia unity. Once the last hope for Pan- Son, the tribalism business is the spent considerable amounts of energy Somalism had vanished, all-of the re- work of the urban people. They cook and resources toward unification of sources, energy and sentiments that it there and then serve it to us. (Issa, the dismembered Somali nation. Pur- had been directed toward the external a peasant in Jowhar, spring 1990; suing this dream led to constant hos- enemies became a double edged sword Quoted by Abdi Samatar 1992,625). tilities and open warfare between that was now turned inward. Third, One of the major contentions of this Somalia and the neighbouring coun- people could no longer endure the paper is that the majority of Somalis do tries of Ethiopia and Kenya during the political, economic and social hard- not view tribalism as the cause of their 1960s.
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