Divided: The Somali

The map on the left shows all the regions of the Horn of Africa with Somali speakers, sometimes known as Greater Somalia, the red lines are the international border, also shown are the numerous, unrecognized states within Somalia.

Many of the situations I discussed concern people speaking more than one language sharing one country, the situation in Somalia (like Rwanda , the Pashtun and the Kurds ) is the reverse. The Somalis are people who speak mutually intelligible languages and were, at the time of independence, spread across French, Italian, British, Kenyan and Ethiopian "Somalilands." The British and French united their portions to make modern Somalia. French Somaliland became Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia kept their portions.

For decadess after independence the Somali people elected dictatorial rulers who advocated war, and started wars, in order to unite the Somali speaking peoples, pictured above. All the political parties attempted to outdo each other in proclaiming their commitment to recovering Somalia speaking areas of northern Kenya and Ogaden in Ethiopia. French Somalia was rarely mentioned, likely because of the military power of France.

Small scale skirmishes of the WSLF began in the 1960s, reaching full scale war in 164 and 1967 with no major changes.

In Kenyan Somaliland in 1962 the British did a poll and found 87% of Somalis in Kenya (400,000 of them) wanted to unite with Somalia.1 These leaders failed to achieve any part of this goal, although they had some very short term successes in Ethiopia.

It could be argued, although none have done this, that the repeated failures of all Somali political forces to gain Greater Somalia, even though they all promised it, led to the lack of faith and/or legitimacy in the government.

Without that logic of unification, what is the basis of the Somali state?

Regardless of the answer to that question, the Somalis in Somalia have sub-divided based on the next most logical unifier, tribal membership 2 .

In May of 1991, Somaliland became the first of many sections to secede. There has been no central government since that time.

Sadly, the Kenyans used counter-insurgency techniques the British used on the Kenyan rebels during the Mau-Mau rebellion to fight Somalis agitating in Kenya. Thousands have been killed.