How Somalia Crumbled

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

SOMALIA, A SICKLE-shaped expanse on the Horn of Africa, stretches across an unforgiving desert, arid and commanding. For centuries nomads have crossed and recrossed the territory in search of food and water. Akin in language and religion, this homogeneous people should have been destined to live in unity, without the tribal strife that tears apart other African countries. But limited natural resources and internal disputes have historically kept stability at a distance, and the clans of Somalia have regularly battled one another into a state of anarchy.

The hatred seems ironic in a people steeped in the unifying belief that they are all descended from one man: the mythical founder Samaale. From him sprang a vast genealogical tree of clans that form the basis of the social system. Somalis still pride themselves on their ability to recite their clan histories for generations back. But a divisiveness has infected them since ancient times, when rival groups laid claim to the same wells and grazing lands.

Colonialism came to Somalia in the late 19th century, when Britain took the northern third and Italy the south. Once the borders were set, many of the nomads suddenly found themselves citizens of neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. What little political organization the Somalis had collapsed, and the Europeans replaced it with Western centralized governments that brought the nomads their first schools, police and courts. But the colonialists also gave the Somalis a common threat to rally against. The nationalist Somali Youth League gained strength by stressing clan unity and encouraging territorial reunification.

Hopes of independence were sidetracked by Italy's defeat in World War II. Under British military rule, part of Somalia's territory was turned over to Ethiopia to atone for pre-war European aggression. In 1950, the United Nations allowed Italy to return as a caretaker until Somalia was deemed self- sufficient.

When the country was finally liberated and reunified in 1960, the Youth League seized most of the power. Still, important posts were assigned according to clan. Leaders quickly found themselves overwhelmed, too inexperienced to run a Western democracy, too removed from the old ways to go back. They stood little chance of building a viable economy: natural resources were scarce and the land poor. Corruption, bribery and nepotism infested the bureaucracy and turned the people against a government they felt no longer represented their interests. Citizens were also embittered by continued separation from kinfolk under Kenyan and Ethiopian sovereignty.

The discontent exploded in October 1969. The President was assassinated and Major General Mohammed Siad Barre imposed one-man rule. He moved swiftly to install a Marxist doctrine called scientific socialism, but also gave the country a written language and women the right to vote.

Siad Barre's main pursuit, however, was the dream of Greater Somalia, uniting his country with Somali areas of Ethiopia and Kenya. He courted the assistance of the Soviet Union, giving Moscow naval and air stations on the Gulf of Aden. In return, he received supplies of heavy artillery, which he used to help the Somali guerrillas in Ethiopia battling the U.S.-backed government for rights of secession. But once Ethiopia's leaders were displaced by the socialist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1974, Moscow abandoned the Somali cause. By early 1978, Somalia's forces had been beaten back by the Ethiopians, suffering enormous losses.

Burdened by nearly a million refugees, years of drought and an enfeebled economy, Siad Barre turned to the U.S. for help. Washington was eager for a strategic outpost near the Arabian oil fields and struck an agreement to take over the old Soviet military facilities. For the next 10 years the U.S. poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arming the country.

But Siad Barre's regime began to crumble. His massacres of rival clans and politicians became too blatant to ignore. By the time Washington turned its back in 1990, the ruler was a sick octogenarian, wholly dependent on his clan and the manipulation of rival clans to stay in power. In classic fashion, three of these clans linked up in temporary alliance to depose Siad Barre. After three years of civil war that killed thousands, destroyed much of the country, and sent hundreds of thousands of refugees over neighboring borders, Siad Barre finally fled the capital, Mogadishu, in January 1991.

As in the past, the three factions quickly fell to fighting one another. Nearly two years later, the divisions -- and the chaos -- are even greater: the two most prominent warlords, General Mohammed Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohammed, are both of the same clan, but from different subclans. Their hold on their followers is tenuous, and neither flinches at using starvation as his most powerful weapon. Somalia has little left but a huge arsenal of weapons and a man-made famine that is killing the population even more relentlessly than the bullets.