Perspective: Africa (Sep 2016) Perspective: Africa (Sep 2016) | Page 8

Perspective: Africa - September 2016

that, it rapidly became one of Italy’s colonies.

The revolutionary army suspended the
constitution, banned political parties, dissolved Parliament, and started a nationalization program to try and restore Somalia’s importance in the Arab world, while
their paranoia grew into oppressive actions
which saw the execution of many opponents to the regime. As the government
became more unpopular and discontent
grew, various resistance movements sprang
up, and civil war was inevitable.

Under Italian rule from 1889 – 1936,
the Italians bought the port in 1905, and
made it the capital city.
Mussolini considered ‘Somaliland’ the
crown jewel in the Italian colonial empire,
and saw the strategic importance of its
location in launching into Africa and the
Second Italo-Abyssinian War from 1935 –
36. That resulted in Italy occupying poorly
equipped Ethiopia, a move considered the
peak of Mussolini’s popularity.

The United Nations stepped in to try and
stabilize the situation, placing peacekeepers in the country in 1992 and forming
UNOSOM to secure humanitarian efforts.
The UN involvement was seen as a slight
to the government’s independence, and
various violent battles between government
forces and UN peacekeepers ensued, including the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993,
which resulted in peacekeepers being withdrawn completely.

By the time the Second World War erupted, Italian Somaliland accommodated
over 50,000 Italians with 20,000 living in
Mogadishu, comprising around 40% of
the city’s population.

All men and boys able to carry a spear
go to Addis Ababa. Every married man
will bring his wife to cook and wash for
him. Every unmarried man will bring any
unmarried woman he can find to cook
and wash for him. Women with babies,
the blind, and those too aged and infirm
to carry a spear are excused. Anyone found
at home after receiving this order will be
hanged. - Selassie’s Mobilization Order

From 2000 to 2004, the internationally
recognized government of Somalia was the
Transitional National Government, which
in 2004 was replaced by the Transitional
Federal Government (TFG). The TFG
re-established Somalia’s military, and in
2006, after Sharia Law was instituted by
the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) a group
that had taken control of most of the
southern part of the country, drove the
fundamentalists out of Mogadishu

A series of treaties passed Somalia between
Italian, British and United Nations rule
until 1960, when the British-controlled
British Somaliland, united with Italian-controlled Somaliland, to form an
independent Republic.

This pivotal move meant the federal government controlled the capital and most of
the country for the first time since 1991.

As the colonials left Somalis to govern
themselves, the generations of conflict had
left their mark and when President Abdirashad Ali Shermarke was assassinated in
1969, followed by a military coup the day
after his funeral, things rapidly went from
bad to devastating.

The ICU, splintering into various smaller groups of varying strength, dissolved,
but the most radical element, Al-Shabaab
continued the fight, with bloody battles
forcing the Ethiopians and UN to leave,
and only the ill-equipped African Union
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