Ethiopia and Somalia

Somalia as a state did not exist until 1960 when the British and Italian colonies were joined to form a Somali Republic.  Its new leaders adopted a flag with five stars to express their aim of uniting all territories inhabited by Somalis–including Djibouti and huge chunks of Ethiopia and Kenya.  British academics idealized Somali nomadic culture as “pastoral democracy”.  The concept proved inadequate as a basis for a viable governmental system.

Independent Somalia was a disruptive element in what until then was a relatively stable region.  Meddling by the Soviet Union made it more so. Moscow, which had sought a hand in Eritrea in the immediate aftermath of WWII, had failed to manipulate common adherence to Orthodox religion to gain influence inEthiopia.  Unlike so many new African rulers, Haile Selassie saw no fascination or promise in Marxism or any kind of “African socialism.” Moscow began shipping arms toSomaliain the mid-1960s in quantities far greater than American military aid for Ethiopia.  Somali guerrillas started operations in the Ogaden.  In 1969 the Russians backed the Somali chief of staff, General Siad Barre, in a coup which deposed what until then had been a formally democratic government in Mogadishu and introduced Marxism.  Siad Barre’s ambitions seemed realizable when Mengistu, the Ethiopian Marxist dictator, reduced the country to such a state of commotion and confusion that it appeared ripe for collapse.  The Soviets did nothing to hinder Siad Barre’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1977.  Mengistu had just severed most relations with the United States.  The double game the Soviets had begun to play soon left them with no alternative to sending in Cubans and great quantities of arms to prevent the Somalis from defeating Mengistu.  By 1978 Moscow appeared to have gained hegemony over the entire Horn of Africa.

All the major forces that contended in the area for the next decade and a half were nominally Marxist–Mengistu’s Ethiopia, Siad Barre’s Somalia, Marxist rebels in Eritrea and in the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray.  But Marxism did not encourage any of these competing Marxists to cooperate.  While Mengistu tried to turn Ethiopia into a classic Stalinist police state, Moscow sent him 12 billion dollars worth of arms to fight against the northern Marxist guerrillas.  The guerrillas captured much of this weaponry and used it against Mengistu’s armies.  Siad Barre, in spite of support from the Carter and Reagan Administrations, failed to turn Somalia into a bastion of pro-Western strength. Somalia collapsed into bloody chaos in early 1991.  As the Soviet Union moved closer to collapse itself, Gorbachev cut off the flow of weapons to Mengistu.  Meanwhile the Tigrayan guerrillas led by Meles Zenawi came to understand what was happening in the world.  Unlike the Eritreans, they had never enjoyed Soviet support.  They shifted to a pro-Western stance and drew other anti-Derg groups into an Ethiopian Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).  It pushed Mengistu’s armies southward during 1989 and 1990.  He fled to Zimbabwe in May 1991 and EPRDF forces marched into Addis Ababaa few days later.  The Eritrean Marxists liberated themselves and achieved de facto independence which became official in 1993.

The EPRDF restructured Ethiopia along ethnic lines, devised a liberal constitution, and energized the economy.  During the 1990sEthiopiaagain became a respected member of the international community.  Good harvests and competent management reduced the chronic threat of famine.  The country made steady progress toward an open society, a market economy, and democratic governance.  Until the mid-1990sEritrea, too, appeared to be on its way to prosperity and international respectability, but Isaias Afewerki found it difficult to abandon authoritarian habits he had acquired as a young Marxist trained in Communist China.  He picked quarrels with Yemen, Sudan and Djibouti.  Internal dissatisfaction grew.  In the spring of 1998 he suddenly sent his army across the Ethiopian border, claiming territory that had never been part of Eritrea when it was an Italian colony.  His real purpose in invading Ethiopia was to divert attention from mounting domestic problems and tighten his control.  Though Ethiopia had left its norther border unprotected and reduced its military forces, Meles Zenawi shifted course and mobilized.  By spring 2000 Ethiopian forces had driven deep into Eritrea.  International pressure kept Meles Zenawi from sending them on toAsmarato topple Isaias–a mistake comparable to the first President Bush’s failure to finish off Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and with similar consequences.