At first glance, it seems a bit strange to label the ongoing civil war in Somalia as “lesser-known.” Indeed, Somalia has in and of itself become something of a symbol of the quintessential “failed state” — a country perpetually at war with itself, its state institutions and central government crumbling or ineffective at best — for the past few decades. Among those who have some knowledge of the state of affairs in Somalia, images of Islamist militants, crowds of refugees, and, perhaps most notoriously, pirates on the Indian Ocean coast are often the first that come to mind. Indeed, almost all news stories about the nation of Somalia mention a single positive development within it, besides, perhaps, the occasional inklings of a peace deal that never comes to anything or a ceasefire that is broken within days.
All of this is not to say that these perceptions are completely mistaken. Despite negative stereotypes about Somalia sometimes reaching a point of absurdity, it remains true that Somalia has been in a near-constant state of war or insurgency since the late 1970s, and that it universally ranks near the bottom on every index measuring quality of life. What is important, then, is not to insist that Somalia is actually doing well, but to understand why it is in the situation it faces today, instead of assuming the poor state of affairs exists because that is simply how it has always been. This article intends to approach the current state of affairs in Somalia by exploring the long-term historical context behind that situation, in addition to focusing on developments that have taken place within the past few years.
An Introduction to Somalia and Early Historical Background
Somalia is a nation located at the eastern fringe of the African continent, its coastline stretching for thousands of miles and jutting out far into the Indian Ocean at its easternmost point. Its climate is broadly hot and dry; besides a small area of tropical savannah in the south and areas of greater humidity along the coast, the vast majority of Somalia is covered by desert. Its relatively hostile natural environment has not necessarily been an obstacle to human settlement, however. People have inhabited what is now Somalia for hundreds of thousands of years, making it one of the longest-inhabited places on earth.
Perhaps more important to Somalia’s history than its geography is its location. For thousands of years, the Indian Ocean has been the location of one of the largest trade routes in human history. Located near one of the most important junctures of that trade route, the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, is Somalia. Traders in modern-day Somalia, then, were a dominant force in economic exchange between India, the Middle East, and Europe since at the very least the time of the Ancient Greeks. Spices were among the most common goods handled by traders in the Horn of Africa; the Romans, for example, imported so much spice from the region that they assumed the spices originated from there, and not India.
Starting shortly after the religion was founded in the seventh century, the peoples of the Horn of Africa — particularly those living along its northern coast, which was closest to the Arabian Peninsula — began embracing Islam. Various Muslim-ruled kingdoms sprang up across the region, some stretching from parts of modern-day Somalia into large portions of modern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. Also present were numerous small city-states that often allied with the larger kingdoms around them for protection. While the states of the region saw conflict with each other, and empires rose and fell, the medieval period was generally characterized more by a prosperous flow of commerce in and out of the region than anything else.
Inevitably, however, other powers seeking to influence trade within the region began to make larger and larger encroachments. When the forces of the Muslim Adal Sultanate — located in northern Somalia and parts of eastern Ethiopia — invaded the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia in the mid-sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire joined in on the side of the Muslims, while the Portuguese intervened on the side of the Christians. Portuguese encroachment in the Horn of Africa increased as the nation expanded its commercial empire: later in the century, and into the sixteenth century, the Ajuran Sultanate and its Ottoman allies repeatedly succumbed to or repelled Portuguese attempts to conquer Indian Ocean ports such as Mogadishu.
As the Portuguese and Ottoman empires declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, foreign involvement in the Horn of Africa generally decreased as well. Generally speaking, the only major foreign power in the region for around 200 years was the Omani Empire, which generally only expanded into the south and maintained peaceful relations with Somali empires and city-states. In the late nineteenth century, however, as the Scramble for Africa swallowed up much of the rest of the continent, European powers set their sights on the Somali states along the Indian Ocean coasts as well.
In general, the beginning of European colonization in Somalia occurred mostly without drama. Various Somali kingdoms entered into treaties with European powers — mostly Britain in the north, known as British Somaliland, and Italy in the south and east, referred to as Italian Somalia — that allowed them to retain a significant degree of autonomy. Further inland, a movement known as the Dervish led an armed resistance to both the European powers and Ethiopia, which, despite also facing the risk of European colonization, was itself invested in expanding into the Ogaden region, an inland area mostly inhabited by Somalis. The Dervish held out for almost two decades, continually foiling colonial ambitions and restricting effective colonial control to small areas along the coast until the 1920s. Eventually, though, the British were able to assert full control in the north, and the Italians — newly motivated by the fascist government of Benito Mussolini to expand their colonial holdings — expanded inland as well.
Colonization, Decolonization, and the Modern Conflict
Italian colonization was generally marked by intensive development and settler colonialism in urban areas, accompanied by preservation of the existing clan system in the rest of the colony. British colonization followed a similar pattern, as authorities were hesitant to provoke anything on the scale of the Dervish movement again. Broadly speaking, as during the era of prosperous Indian Ocean trade, the quality of life in early twentieth-century Somalia remained relatively high, though British neglect in the northern region led to a gradual but consistent divergence.
After Italy annexed Ethiopia in 1936, Somalia was incorporated into Italian East Africa, which also included the territories of modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. In 1940, shortly after the outbreak of war with Britain, British Somaliland was incorporated into Italian East Africa as well. Only a year later, the British reconquered Somaliland, liberated Ethiopia, and took control of the rest of the Italian colonies in East Africa. After the war, Italy regained control of its portion of Somalia, though the United Nations also had significant authority.
Two developments that occurred between the end of World War II and the independence of Somalia in 1960 had repercussions that would come back to haunt Somali leaders in the coming years. The first had to deal with Somaliland: as mentioned previously, Somaliland began to lag behind its southern counterpart beginning in the colonial era, and by the time it was merged with Somalia at independence, a noticeable gap between the two regions in terms of quality of life had arisen. The second relates to the Ogaden region: instead of giving the majority-Somali region to the state of Somalia, the British decided to give the territory to Ethiopia.
Growing resentments in Somaliland and revanchist sentiment over the Ogaden aside, the first two decades of an independent Somalia were not exceptionally unstable. A coup d’etat in 1969 by General Mohammed Siad Barre was the main occurrence of instability; however, Barre’s highly centralized Marxist-Leninist government was able to quickly stamp out any opposition, and the next few years were characterized by a rigid program of modernization.
The real turning point for the worse in modern Somali history, then, is 1977. It was in that year that Somali forces crossed the border into Ethiopia, rapidly capturing large swathes of the Ogaden region. These rapid victories were soon countered by Ethiopia, which, with the assistance of soldiers and arms from Cuba and the Soviet Union, retook the captured territory and inflicted devastating losses on the Somali army. Barre’s regime, humiliated by its defeat, quickly found its authority challenged by a variety of rebel groups. Throughout the 1980s, the central government’s authority gradually collapsed, and by the end of the decade, Barre effectively controlled a small area surrounding Mogadishu.
In 1991, Barre was finally overthrown. The militant factions who had overthrown him, however, were unable to agree on who would run the government, and the nation quickly collapsed into yet another stage of civil war. That same year, the local government of Somaliland declared its independence, precipitating a further breakdown in central authority. A transitional government — known as the Transitional Federal Government (“TFG”) — was finally established in 2000, but failed yet again to exert any real control over the country.
Over the course of the 2000s, a political coalition of Sharia courts known as the Islamic Courts Union (“ICU”) began growing in influence. The Sharia courts were established after the fall of the Barre regime, and had, according to their supporters, provided a semblance of stability in areas that otherwise lacked a central governing authority. By 2006, the ICU had taken control of much of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu, and began establishing formal government institutions. An Ethiopian-led and United States-backed invasion in 2006, however, toppled the ICU. Islamist resentment against Ethiopia and the TFG soon grew, resulting in the emergence of a militant group known as al-Shabaab.
Recent Developments
While the TFG was able to reconcile itself with various rival factions, including the ICU, in the years following the rise of al-Shabaab, it has so far been unable to fully assert its control over the entire area legally recognized as the territory of Somalia. Operations in 2011 removed al-Shabaab from Mogadishu, and a Kenyan military operation in the nation’s south that same year reduced the presence of militants somewhat, but when the TFG announced the establishment of the Federal Government of Somalia (“FGS”) in 2012, it could not yet claim to truly govern the whole nation.
Since around 2022, after a few years of being gradually pushed back — but not fully eradicated — in the 2010s, al-Shabaab has made a significant resurgence. By July of that year, al-Shabaab was in control of roughly 70% of south and central Somalia. That same month, al-Shabaab launched an incursion into Ethiopia, advancing over 100 kilometers before the Ethiopian government could reassert control.
In August 2022, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud announced a state of “total war” against al-Shabaab, significantly scaling up military operations. After the announcement of constitutional amendments in March 2024, however, the FGS faced yet another threat to its operations, this time from within. On hearing of the amendments, the government of Puntland, a state in northern Somalia bordering Somaliland, announced that it no longer recognized the current government. In October, the government of Jubaland, in the far south, also suspended relations with Mohamud’s administration.
Still reeling from the revolts of Puntland and Jubaland, in February of this year, the FGS found itself facing another, much more intense offensive from al-Shabaab. In the first few months of the offensive, al-Shabaab made rapid gains, particularly in the south. While its progress appears to have slowed in the past few months, the prospect of continued gains, and perhaps even a full al-Shabaab takeover of Mogadishu, remains a possibility.
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When looking at the broader history of Somalia, one can clearly see that it has not universally been a land of strife and ineffective governance. Indeed, it has really been only over the past 50 years that Somalia has fallen behind almost all of the world in terms of quality of life and governmental stability. A long series of poor decisions on the part of both Somali governments and foreign actors led to this situation, and it will take a long series of good decisions to get it out. For how hopeless and difficult that prospect seems, however, it is necessary to remember that, viewed in a broader context, no country’s situation is ever truly hopeless.
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