Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:49:09.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideology and Leadership in Somalia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Abdi Sheik-Abdi
Abdi Sheik-Abdi
Affiliation:
Department of History and African Studies Center, Boston University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The 1977–8 war in the Horn of Africa and its traumatic aftermath has brought Somalia to a critical junction. The expulsion of the Soviets in November 1977, following their overtures to Ethiopia, and the subsequent rout of the Somali army, along with Ogadeni guerrillas, by a combined Cuban–Ethiopian–Yemini force led by Russian generals, has left this nation demoralised, isolated, and ideologically sundered. A fluid and somewhat confused socio-economic and political situation, only made less chaotic by President Mohamed Siad Barre's powerful personality and will to survive, characterises this post-war Somalia.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 163 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 163 note 1 The occasion was the Third International Frantz Fanon Conference on ‘Human Development Models in Action’, Mogadishu, June –July 1979.

page 164 note 1 Aden Abdulla Osman, who served as Somalia's first President, was voted out of office in 1967 and remains a private citizen.

page 164 note 2 See Major-General Mohamed Siad Barre's collected speeches, 1969–1974, My Country and My People (Mogadishu, 1974), pp. 81–8.

page 164 note 3 These were Brigadier-Generals Salad Gavere and Mohammed Ainanshe. Also executed in July 1972 was Abdulqadir Dheel, a former Colonel.

page 164 note 4 Seemingly modelled after the 114 sura's of the Quran, this represents one of the numerous contradictions in a supposedly Marxist state. See Xiddigta Oktoobar (Mogadishu), 22 December 1979 and 9 February 1980.Google Scholar

page 164 note 5 New York Times, 31 August 1979.

page 165 note 1 Dastuurka Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqaraadiqa Soomaaliya [The Constitution of the Somali Democratic Republic] (Mogadishu, 1979).Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 Mehmet, Ozay, ‘Effectiveness of Foreign Aid – the Case of Somalia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 9, 1, 05 1971, p. 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 166 note 1 See New York Times, 23 March 1975; also Foreign Report (London), 16 11 1977.Google Scholar

page 166 note 2 Sheik-Abdi, Abdi, ‘Somali Nationalism: its origins and future’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 15, 4, 12 1977, pp. 657–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 166 note 3 Newsweek (New York), 24 12 1979,Google Scholar suggests that the Saudis did indeed influence the Somali–Sudanese decision to join the Arab rejectionist camp.

page 166 note 4 New York Times, 23 1979 and 25 February 1980.

page 167 note 1 See Laitin, David D., ‘The War in the Ogaden: implications for Siyaad's rôle in Somali history’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 17, I, 03 1979, pp. 95–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 168 note 1 The last prominent Majerteini in President Barre's régime, Abdirizak Hagi Hussein, a former Prime Minister (1964–7), was removed from his post as Somalia's Permanent Representative at the United Nations in 1979.

page 168 note 2 Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, a deserter from the Somali army, is said to head the military wing of the S.S.F.

page 170 note 1 My translation from the Somali sung by the girls of the Revolutionary Youth Centre at Afgoi.

page 170 note 2 See Kaplan, Irving et al. (eds.), Area Handbook for Somalia (Washington, D.C., 1977), pp. 301–2.Google Scholar

page 170 note 3 The hydro-electric dam on the Juba River near Baar–Dhere is the most important of these stalled projects. Others include the fish and meat-processing plants at Las Qoreh in the north and Kismayo in the south, mainly because of difficulties in the supply of raw materials and in maintenance.

page 170 note 4 See Contini, Jeanne, ‘The Somalis: a nation of poets in search of an alphabet’, in Kitchen, Helen (ed.), A Handbook of African Affairs (New York, 1964), pp. 301–11.Google Scholar

page 170 note 5 Adam, Hussein M., ‘A Nation in Search of a Script: the problem of establishing a national orthography for Somali’, M.A. thesis, University of East Africa, Kampala, 1968.Google Scholar See also Laitin, David D., Politics, Language and Thought: the Somali experience (Chicago, 1977).Google Scholar

page 171 note 1 Namely the poet-nationalist, Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, 1864– 1920.

page 171 note 2 New York Times, 23 June 1974 and 13 April 1975.

page 171 note 3 See Andrzejewski, B. W., ‘The Development of a National Orthography in Somalia and the Modernization of the Somali Language’, in Horn of Africa (Summit, N.J.), 1, 3, 1978, pp. 39–45.Google Scholar

page 171 note 4 This could include the appointment of a Prime Minister with an independent stature, and with proven administrative abilities.

page 172 note 1 Afrique (Casablanca), 12 11 1979 pp. 48–9.Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 New York Times, 11 and 12 February 1980. For more recent reports concerning Somali–U.S. arms and economic accords on American terms, see ibid. 23 August 1980.