When was somalia colonised

The English took the north and the Italians took the south. The English occupied the territory to the north in order to safe guard their trade route through the Suez Canal that had been open in This was a strategic location for their ships going back and forth from Asia.

The Italians took a similar approach, because they needed a foothold along the Indian Ocean Coast. During colonization in both the Americas and Africa, occupation of key terrain is seen allot. The European countries were not only trying to take from the countries they were colonizing, but also compete against other European countries by blocking them off from territories or forcing them out.

The other country that had their hand in the colonization of Somalia was Ethiopia. During the colonization period Ethiopia remained free from European occupation. The two countries shared the east and west boarders, which allowed Ethiopia to gain power over Somalia and become a treat to European Nations. Emperor Menelik prevailed and received small divisions of the land that they competed over. A similar comparison to this would be that of the Native Americans during early colonization of the United States.

In the s the Natives fought against the Europeans, and continued resistance later as the colonist pushed west through their lands. There are two main reasons for this. Shermarke succeeded him and led the country for two years until his assassination in Though northern and southern Somalia were united under one government, they operated as two separate countries, with different legal, administrative, and educational systems.

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Skip to content. What Are Upstanders? Take Action Join Events. EIN: Search for:. Colonialism: Between and , the British East India Company established a series of trade treaties with various Somali chiefs.

But the ideology was acknowledged--partly in view of the country's economic and military dependence on the Soviet Union--as the most convenient peg on which to hang a revolution introduced through a military coup that had supplanted a Western-oriented parliamentary democracy.

More important than Marxist ideology to the popular acceptance of the revolutionary regime in the early s were the personal power of Siad Barre and the image he projected. Portraits of him in the company of Marx and Lenin festooned the streets on public occasions. The epigrams, exhortations, and advice of the paternalistic leader who had synthesized Marx with Islam and had found a uniquely Somali path to socialist revolution were widely distributed in Siad Barre's little blue-and-white book.

Despite the revolutionary regime's intention to stamp out the clan politics, the government was commonly referred to by the code name MOD.

These were the three clans whose members formed the government's inner circle. In , for example, ten of the twenty members of the SRC were from the Daarood clan-family, of which these three clans were a part; the Digil and Rahanwayn, the sedentary interriverine clan-families, were totally unrepresented.

The Language and Literacy Issue One of the principal objectives of the revolutionary regime was the adoption of a standard orthography of the Somali language. Such a system would enable the government to make Somali the country's official language. Since independence Italian and English had served as the languages of administration and instruction in Somalia's schools. All government documents had been published in the two European languages. Indeed, it had been considered necessary that certain civil service posts of national importance be held by two officials, one proficient in English and the other in Italian.

During the Husseen and Igaal governments, when a number of English-speaking northerners were put in prominent positions, English had dominated Italian in official circles and had even begun to replace it as a medium of instruction in southern schools. Arabic--or a heavily arabized Somali--also had been widely used in cultural and commercial areas and in Islamic schools and courts. Religious traditionalists and supporters of Somalia's integration into the Arab world had advocated that Arabic be adopted as the official language, with Somali as a vernacular.

A few months after independence, the Somali Language Committee was appointed to investigate the best means of writing Somali. The committee considered nine scripts, including Arabic, Latin, and various indigenous scripts. Its report, issued in , favored the Latin script, which the committee regarded as the best suited to represent the phonemic structure of Somali and flexible enough to be adjusted for the dialects.

Facility with a Latin system, moreover, offered obvious advantages to those who sought higher education outside the country. Modern printing equipment would also be more easily and reasonably available for Latin type. Existing Somali grammars prepared by foreign scholars, although outdated for modern teaching methods, would give some initial advantage in the preparation of teaching materials.

Disagreement had been so intense among opposing factions, however, that no action was taken to adopt a standard script, although successive governments continued to reiterate their intention to resolve the issue.

On coming to power, the SRC made clear that it viewed the official use of foreign languages, of which only a relatively small fraction of the population had an adequate working knowledge, as a threat to national unity, contributing to the stratification of society on the basis of language.

In the SRC revived the Somali Language Committee and instructed it to prepare textbooks for schools and adult education programs, a national grammar, and a new Somali dictionary. However, no decision was made at the time concerning the use of a particular script, and each member of the committee worked in the one with which he was familiar.

The understanding was that, upon adoption of a standard script, all materials would be immediately transcribed. On the third anniversary of the coup, the SRC announced that a Latin script had been adopted as the standard script to be used throughout Somalia beginning January 1, As a prerequisite for continued government service, all officials were given three months later extended to six months to learn the new script and to become proficient in it.

During educational material written in the standard orthography was introduced in elementary schools and by was also being used in secondary and higher education.

Somalia's literacy rate was estimated at only 5 percent in After adopting the new script, the SRC launched a "cultural revolution" aimed at making the entire population literate in two years. The first part of the massive literacy campaign was carried out in a series of three-month sessions in urban and rural sedentary areas and reportedly resulted in several hundred thousand people learning to read and write.

As many as 8, teachers were recruited, mostly among government employees and members of the armed forces, to conduct the program. The campaign in settled areas was followed by preparations for a major effort among the nomads that got underway in August The program in the countryside was carried out by more than 20, teachers, half of whom were secondary school students whose classes were suspended for the duration of the school year.

The rural program also compelled a privileged class of urban youth to share the hardships of the nomadic pastoralists. Although affected by the onset of a severe drought, the program appeared to have achieved substantial results in the field in a short period of time.

Nevertheless, the UN estimate of Somalia's literacy rate in was only 24 percent. Under Soviet pressure to create a communist party structure to replace Somalia's military regime, Siad Barre had announced as early as the SRC's intention to establish a one-party state.

The SRC already had begun organizing what was described as a "vanguard of the revolution" composed of members of a socialist elite drawn from the military and the civilian sectors. The National Public Relations Office retitled the National Political Office in was formed to propagate scientific socialism with the support of the Ministry of Information and National Guidance through orientation centers that had been built around the country, generally as local selfhelp projects.

The council included the nineteen officers who composed the SRC, in addition to civilian advisers, heads of ministries, and other public figures. Civilians accounted for a majority of the Supreme Council's seventy-three members. In theory the SRSP's creation marked the end of military rule, but in practice real power over the party and the government remained with the small group of military officers who had been most influential in the SRC. Decision-making power resided with the new party's politburo, a select committee of the Supreme Council that was composed of five former SRC members, including Siad Barre and his son-in-law, NSS chief Abdullah.

Military influence in the new government increased with the assignment of former SRC members to additional ministerial posts. Somalia, Entrenching Siad Barre's personal rule Siad Barre portraitThe Ogaden War of between Somalia and Ethiopia and the consequent refugee influx forced Somalia to depend for its economic survival on humanitarian handouts. Domestically, the lost war produced a national mood of depression. Organized opposition groups began to emerge, and in dealing with them Siad Barre intensified his political repression, using jailings, torture, and summary executions of dissidents and collective punishment of clans thought to have engaged in organized resistance.

Siad Barre's new Western friends, especially the United States, which had replaced the Soviet Union as the main user of the naval facilities at Berbera, turned out to be reluctant allies. Although prepared to help the Siad Barre regime economically through direct grants, World Bank-sponsored loans, and relaxed International Monetary Fund regulations, the United States hesitated to offer Somalia more military aid than was essential to maintain internal security. Western countries were also pressuring the regime to liberalize economic and political life and to renounce historical Somali claims on territory in Kenya and Ethiopia.

In response, Siad Barre held parliamentary elections in December A "people's parliament" was elected, all of whose members belonged to the government party, the SRSP. Following the elections, Siad Barre again reshuffled the cabinet, abolishing the positions of his three vice presidents. This action was followed by another reshuffling in October in which the old Supreme Revolutionary Council was revived.

The move resulted in three parallel and overlapping bureaucratic structures within one administration: the party's politburo, which exercised executive powers through its Central Committee, the Council of Minsters, and the SRC. The resulting confusion of functions within the administration left decision making solely in Siad Barre's hands. He had responded to growing domestic criticism by releasing from detention two leading political prisoners, former premier Igaal and former police commander Abshir, both of whom had been in prison since On June 7, , apparently wishing to prove that he alone ruled Somalia, Siad ordered the arrest of seventeen prominent politicians.

This development shook the "old establishment" because the arrests included Mahammad Aadan Shaykh, a prominent Mareehaan politician, detained for the second time; Umar Haaji Masala, chief of staff of the military, also a Mareehaan; and a former vice president and a former foreign minister.

At the time of detention, one official was a member of the politburo; the others were members of the Central Committee of the SRSP. The jailing of these prominent figures created an atmosphere of fear, and alienated some clans, whose disaffection and consequent armed resistance were to lead to the toppling of the Siad Barre regime.

Political insecurity was considerably increased by repeated forays across the Somali border in the Mudug and Boorama regions by a combination of Somali dissidents and Ethiopian army units.

In mid-July , Somali dissidents with Ethiopian air support invaded Somalia in the center, threatening to split the country in two. The invaders managed to capture the Somali border towns of Balumbale and Galdogob, northwest of the Mudug regional capital of Galcaio. The government declared a state of emergency in the war zone and appealed for Western aid to help repel the invasion.

The United States government responded by speeding deliveries of light arms already promised. The new arms were not used to repel the Ethiopians, however, but to repress Siad Barre's domestic opponents.

Although the Siad Barre regime received some verbal support at the League of Arab States summit conference in September , and Somali units participated in war games with the United States Rapid Deployment Force in Berbera, the revolutionary government's position continued to erode. In December , Siad Barre sought to broaden his political base by amending the constitution. One amendment extended the president's term from six to seven years. Another amendment stipulated that the president was to be elected by universal suffrage Siad Barre always received 99 percent of the vote in such elections rather than by the National Assembly.

The assembly rubber-stamped these amendments, thereby presiding over its own disenfranchisement. On the diplomatic front, the regime undertook some fence mending.

An accord was signed with Kenya in December in which Somalia "permanently" renounced its historical territorial claims, and relations between the two countries thereafter began to improve.

This diplomatic gain was offset, however, by the "scandal" of South African foreign minister Roelof "Pik" Botha's secret visit to Mogadishu that same month, where he promised arms to Somalia in return for landing rights for South African Airways. This decision was impelled by the drought then ravaging the Ogaden and by a serious split within the WSLF, a number of whose leaders claimed that their struggle for self-determination had been used by Mogadishu to advance its expansionist policies.

These elements said they now favored autonomy based on a federal union with Ethiopia. This development removed Siad Barre's option to foment anti-Ethiopian activity in the Ogaden in retaliation for Ethiopian aid to domestic opponents of his regime. To overcome its diplomatic isolation, Somalia resumed relations with Libya in April Recognition had been withdrawn in in response to Libyan support of Ethiopia during the Ogaden War.

They agreed to hold further meetings, which took place on and off throughout Although Siad Barre and Mengistu agreed to exchange prisoners taken in the Ogaden War and to cease aiding each other's domestic opponents, these plans were never implemented. In August , Somalia held joint military exercises with the United States. Diplomatic setbacks also occurred in , however. The charge precipitated a diplomatic rift with Britain. The regime also entered into a dispute with Amnesty International, which charged the Somali regime with blatant violations of human rights.

Wholesale human rights violations documented by Amnesty International, and subsequently by Africa Watch, prompted the United States Congress by to make deep cuts in aid to Somalia. Economically, the regime was repeatedly pressured between and by the IMF, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank to liberalize its economy.

Specifically, Somalia was urged to create a free market system and to devalue the Somali shilling so that its official rate would reflect its true value. Repression Faced with shrinking popularity and an armed and organized domestic resistance, Siad Barre unleashed a reign of terror against the Majeerteen, the Hawiye, and the Isaaq, carried out by the Red Berets Duub Cas , a special unit recruited from the president's Mareehaan clansmen.

Thus, by the beginning of Siad Barre's grip on power seemed secure, despite the host of problems facing the regime. The president received a severe blow from an unexpected quarter, however.

On the evening of May 23, he was severely injured in an automobile accident. Astonishingly, although at the time he was in his early seventies and suffered from chronic diabetes, Siad Barre recovered sufficiently to resume the reins of government following a month's recuperation. But the accident unleashed a power struggle among senior army commandants, elements of the president's Mareehaan clan, and related factions, whose infighting practically brought the country to a standstill.

Broadly, two groups contended for power: a constitutional faction and a clan faction. Opposed to the constitutional group were elements from the president's Mareehaan clan, especially members of his immediate family, including his brother, Abdirahmaan Jaama Barre; the president's son, Colonel Masleh Siad, and the formidable Mama Khadiija, Siad Barre's senior wife. By some accounts, Mama Khadiija ran her own intelligence network, had well-placed political contacts, and oversaw a large group who had prospered under her patronage.

In November , the dreaded Red Berets unleashed a campaign of terror and intimidation on a frightened citizenry. Meanwhile, the ministries atrophied and the army's officer corps was purged of competent career officers on suspicion of insufficient loyalty to the president. In addition, ministers and bureaucrats plundered what was left of the national treasury after it had been repeatedly skimmed by the top family. The same month, the SRSP held its third congress. The Central Committee was reshuffled and the president was nominated as the only candidate for another seven-year term.

Thus, with a weak opposition divided along clan lines, which he skillfully exploited, Siad Barre seemed invulnerable well into The regime might have lingered indefinitely but for the wholesale disaffection engendered by the genocidal policies carried out against important lineages of Somali kinship groupings. These actions were waged first against the Majeerteen clan of the Daarood clan-family , then against the Isaaq clans of the north, and finally against the Hawiye, who occupied the strategic central area of the country, which included the capital.

The disaffection of the Hawiye and their subsequent organized armed resistance eventually caused the regime's downfall. The coup failed and seventeen alleged ringleaders, including Usmaan, were summarily executed. All but one of the executed were of the Majeerteen clan. During their preeminence in the civilian regimes, the Majeerteen had alienated other clans.

The Red Berets systematically smashed the small reservoirs in the area around Galcaio so as to deny water to the Umar Mahamuud Majeerteen sub-clans and their herds. In Galcaio, members of the Victory Pioneers, the urban militia notorious for harassing civilians, raped large numbers of Majeerteen women.