The Wake

On February 1, Abdi Samatar, professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota, spoke to the public about the causes and effects of the war in Somalia. Samatar was born in Somalia and has spent years discussing the situation in the country. He also addressed what it will take to help the country become more safe and stable. He spoke about the history of Somalia and how he believes the civil unrest started.

The speech, part of the Headliners forum, was sponsored by the College of Continuing Education. Minnesota has the largest population of Somalian citizens in the country according to Mary Nichols, Dean of the College of Continuing Education. She explained that after 15 years of civil unrest in Somalia, the situation has recently escalated into a state of war.

“Somalia, in my opinion, entered the dark ages in 1969,” Samatar says of the history of the conflict. In 1884, there were four sections of Somalia: the British, Italian, French, and Ethiopian Somaliland. He explained that while Somalia used to be the most democratic country in Africa, a military coup changed that. Initially the military rule was not extreme, but it became incredibly aggressive and oppressive. “The rule of law changed to the rule of one man,” Samatar says.

In 1988, the second largest city in northern Somalia was bombed by Somali jetfighters because they were opposed to the military regime. This air strike leveled the city, according to Samatar.

In 1991, the Somali government collapsed and there has been no formal government since. The following year, there was no rule of law, no infrastructure, and warlords controlled the country using food as a weapon, creating a vast famine.

In response, the United States sent troops to help the suffering and dying people. However, Samatar says the rebuilding of the country was poorly done because those in charge were given bad advice as to the causes of the problems and were unable to significantly change the situation. “We got the wrong advice and the wrong recipe for rebuilding the country,” Samatar says. There were meetings with clan elders of tribes in Somalia but they yielded minimal results because the elders weren’t holding power in the country.

He then spoke about what happened to the country after the troops left. In 1995, the warlords selected the officials to run the country and this caused living conditions to deteriorate and literacy rates to drop. In addition, the 800,900 miles of road in the country vanished and the life expectancy dropped from 47 to 40 or under, Samatar says.

He then mentioned how just one year ago, the CIA had contracted warlords to hunt down terrorists in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The CIA wanted to find three terrorists who were suspected of being involved in the bombings of Kenya and two other countries in 1998. According to Samatar, the warlords used this opportunity to get even with their enemies, the Islamic leaders, beginning the war between the warlords and Islamic leaders in 2006.

Currently, the country is occupied by between 10,000 and 20,000 Ethiopian troops. He believes that the Ethiopian troops have the wrong priorities as one of the poorest countries in the world because they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their military instead of feeding their country, Samatar says.

The government in Somalia has grown because everyone wants equal representation. Since the country is divided into clans, only your clan can represent you in Congress, Samatar says. He says that there is quite a difference when comparing the government of the U.S. and that of Somalia. The U.S. has 300 million people and 13 cabinets. Somalia has 7 to 8 million people but 50 cabinets. Their elected officials are also twice as numerous as the U.S. government. The government increased problems because it was too big to be effective. “The government has become a shackle on the necks of the Somalia people because of the way they are being represented,” Samatar says.

There are two consequences of the war that will affect the future of the country, Samatar says. The first is that the Ethiopian and U.S. governments lack the integrity in a sense of leadership to serve the people of Somalia. Just by looking at what the current regime has done in the past two years would be sufficient to realize that they have not delivered what they said they would, he says.

The second consequence of the war is that the U.S. is seen as associates of Ethiopia, which is not good, Samatar says. In the 2005 election for the Ethiopian Parliament, people believed that it was not free or fair and was highly rigged, Samatar says. The Ethiopians that had dominated the country of Somalia had won but demonstrations in the streets opposing the results of the election caused over 200 people to be shot. Opposition members refused to take their seats in parliament because of the alleged rigged election, he says.

Samatar believes that the war will continue to go on for years and will need international help to rebuild the infrastructure of the country. The Ethiopian troops will stay to try to accomplish this goal and replicate the government in Ethiopia. “That, in my opinion, is not a promising future for Somalia. So we as citizens of the state of Minnesota have a lot of work to do not only here but overseas,” Samatar says.