Democratic Republic of Somalia

Repubblica Democratica Somala (Italian) Somali Democratic Republic (English) Jamhuuriyadda Dimuqraadiga Soomaaliya (Somali) جمهورية الصومال الديموقراطية (Arabic)
Jumhūriyyat as-Sūmāl ad-Dīmuqrātiyya (Arabic)
Democratic Republic of Somalia
1969-1991
flag coat of arms
Official language	Italian and English from 1972 Somali and Arabic
Capital	Mogadishu
Form of government	People's Republic
Government system	Socialist one-party system
Head of state	President Siad Barre
Head of government	prime minister Mohamed Farah Salad (1969–1970) Position abolished (1970–1987) Muhammad Ali Samatar (1987–1990) Muhammad Hawadle Madar (1990)
surface	637,657 km²
population	3.4 million (1979, estimate)
currency	Somalia shilling
founding	October 21, 1969 by coup
resolution	January 26, 1991
National anthem	Somaliyaay toosoo

Democratic Republic of Somalia ( Somali Jamhuuriyadda Dimuqraadiga Soomaaliya ; Arabic جمهورية الصومال الديموقراطية, DMG Ǧumhūriyyat aṣ-Ṣūmāl ad-Dīmuqrāṭiyya ; Italian Repubblica Democratica Somala ; English Somali Democratic Republic ) was the official name of Somalia under President Mohamed Siad Barre .

After former major general Barre took power in a bloodless coup in 1969, he established a socialist dictatorship. It existed until he fled Somalia on January 26, 1991 and culminated in the Somali civil war , which continues to this day.

history

Coup

Since gaining independence from the colonial administrations of Italy and the United Kingdom in the summer of 1960, the Republic of Somalia has been a more western-oriented democratic state. However, a very high level of corruption caused increasing displeasure among the population. As Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke , the reigning second president of the country on October 15, 1969 in Las Anod was murdered by one of his own bodyguards, took only six days later, a group of army and police officers bloodless power. Numerous politicians were arrested, political parties banned, the constitution suspended, the National Assembly (the Somali parliament) and the Supreme Court closed.

The Somali Democratic Republic was proclaimed for a new beginning and the Consiglio Supremo Rivoluzionario (CSR) , a Supreme Revolutionary Council, was formed on November 1st . Major General Siad Barre was chairman of this council and thus also the new head of state with practically unlimited powers.

Revolutionary Council

Barre declared "scientific socialism" to be a state ideology and took over the banking, insurance, power generation and oil sectors. Foreign property was "nationalized" in 1970. However, he left large areas of agriculture and, above all, livestock farming, traditionally important in the Somali economy, in private hands and limited himself to controlling trade in the products. There was rapprochement with the Soviet Union and the Arab states. In 1974 an agreement on military cooperation was reached and finally a friendship treaty was signed with the USSR. It was mainly through their support that he was able to fight the famine in Somalia from 1974 to 1975 and its consequences relatively successfully. His subsequent attempts to relocate nomads from the northeast of his country who had lost their cattle during the drought to state farms and fisheries in more fertile areas in the south were unsustainable.

On the advice of the Soviet Union, the Revolutionary Council dissolved in 1976 and formally transferred power to the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party , creating a one-party system based on the Soviet model.

The failure of Greater Somalia and the consequences of the war

In 1977, however, there was a break with the Soviet Union. Siad Barre's long-term goal was to unite the Somali-inhabited areas in Ethiopia and Kenya into one Greater Somalia . In addition to the massive armament of his own army, he founded a new West Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) in 1975 . Its predecessor organization had already participated in armed uprisings between 1960 and 1969 for the connection of the Ogaden border region to Somalia. In the Ogaden War instigated by Somalia in 1977 , the Soviet leadership first tried to broker a ceasefire, but then gave the new, Marxist-Leninist Derg regime in Ethiopia massive military support with advisors and Cuban ground troops. The initially victorious Somali National Army (SNA) and the WSLF were repulsed and the war ended on March 15, 1987 with a defeat and the withdrawal of the SNA to Somalia. Siad Barre decided very quickly to turn to the USA , but they were not prepared to intervene in the conflict on a scale comparable to that of the Soviet Union.

Unrest and internal dissolution

A coup against Siad Barre was put down in 1978, but the subsequent repression resulted in a significant deterioration in the mood in the country, which had already been depressed by the defeat. The regime arrested numerous military and influential members of the administration on suspicion of being involved in planning the coup. Most of the allegedly involved were unceremoniously executed. The persecution probably also hit the political opponents in general. Some managed to flee abroad in time, where they founded various dissident and guerrilla groups, which have since been waiting for the opportunity to bring about a violent ousting of the Barre regime. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed escaped to Ethiopia and with his support led troops of the Somali Democratic Redemption Front (SSDF) to the border regions of Mudug, Galguduud and Hiiraan in 1982 .

Although he received extensive military and development aid from the USA and several other countries after he moved to the West, the economic situation worsened massively due to the consequences of the war, especially the influx of refugees from Ethiopia estimated at 650,000 to one million, but also due to the drought and increasing corruption.

In terms of social policy, Barre sought to overcome the differences and discrimination based on the Somali clan system . In terms of power politics, however, he increasingly had no choice but to rely more and more on the so-called “MOD Alliance” from his own clan, the Marehan-Darod, and the Dolbohanta-Darod clan, from which his mother came. He included the other clans in the state apparatus in order to maintain the appearance of fair participation or to maintain his power on the principle of divide and rule . Surprising promotions to high offices, but also arrests or recall from embassy posts abroad, were more frequent and led to a further loss of trust in the state. The growing discontent spawned by clans supported opposition movements, such as the United Somali Congress (USC) of the Hawiye -Clans in the south and especially the Somali National Movement of Isaaq in the North, with which the conflicts from 1988 widened to open war.

As human rights violations by his regime became increasingly obvious and his role as an ally lost after the end of the Cold War , he received less and less support and in the end was only able to assert himself against the rebel movements in the capital, which earned him the nickname “Mayor of Mogadishu” . On January 26, 1991 he had to give up the capital and marched south with the remaining troops. After one last attempt to establish himself in the city of Baidoa and retake the capital, the USC urged him south and to flee across the border into Kenya.

However, the victorious militias failed to build a new government. Somalia was divided into individual areas of power contested between the clans and militias in the Somali civil war, which continues to this day.

literature

• Peter John de la Fosse Wiles: The New Communist Third World: An Essay in Political Economy . Taylor & Francis, 1982, ISBN 0-7099-2709-6 , pp. 392 ( here in the Google book search).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ US Department of Commerce (Ed.): World Population 1979 . 1980 ( full text in the Google book search).
2. ^ Peter John de la Fosse Wiles: The New Communist Third World: An Essay in Political Economy . Taylor & Francis , 1982, ISBN 0-7099-2709-6 , pp. 1590 .
3. ^ John Donnelly Fage , Roland Anthony Oliver (eds.): The Cambridge history of Africa , Volume 8. Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 478.
4. ^ The Encyclopedia Americana: complete in thirty volumes. Skin to Sumac , Volume 25, (Grolier: 1995), p. 214.
5. ^ ^{A b} Moshe Y. Sachs: Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations , Volume 2. Worldmark Press, 1988, p. 290.
6. ↑ The great Ploetz . 35th edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Freiburg i.Br. 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-32008-2 , pp. 1914 ff.