Greater Somalia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Greater Somalia refers to those regions in the Horn of Africa in which ethnic Somalis live. Greater Somalia thus encompasses Somalia (the former British and Italian colonial areas), eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti and northeastern Kenya. Pan-Somalism (Somali: Soomaaliweyn) refers to the irredentist vision of unifying these territories under an enlarged Somali state. The pursuit of this goal has led to conflict, with Somalia engaging in armed warfare repeatedly with Ethiopia over the Ogaden region, as well as supporting Kenyan separatists in the Shifta War.
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[edit] Italian East Africa
After the Second Italo-Abyssinian War of 1935–1936, Italy swept away the borders between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland with the creation of Italian East Africa as a united colony. This brought together Somali tribes who had been living on both sides of the border. It also brought the Somali tribes of British Somaliland into its control after the August 1940 East Africa Campaign. French Somaliland (now known as Djibouti) remained outside of Italian control, though the surrender of France placed it tacitly under the sphere of the Axis powers, and Somali areas of Kenya remained under control of the British Commonwealth. This unification of nearly all the Somali tribes was reversed with the counterattack of the British Commonwealth of January–May 1941. Territories taken from Ethiopia were returned, but more so, in the 1948 settlement brokered by the United Nations, Ethiopia was granted control over the Ogaden, and Italy was given trusteeship over its former colony.
[edit] Somali Republic
The first armed conflict following the independence and unification of the former British and Italian colonies, known collectively as the Somali Republic, began in 1963 in an ethnic Oromo and Somali area, Elkere in Bale province, instigated by the Oromo founder of the United Liberation Forces of Oromia, Waqo Gutu. The Bale revolt, a peasant revolt stemming from issues involving land, taxation, class, and religion,[1] raged in the province for several years until a number of developments took the energy out of the militants, including the decision of Somali Prime Minister Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal to focus his country's resources on economic development.[citation needed] Rebels began to surrender to the Ethiopian government at the end of 1969; Waqo Gutu, who had been the foremost of the insurgents, was surrounded with his command of barely 200 men in Arana by the Ethiopian army in February 1970 and surrendered. Pacification was complete by the next year.[2]
From the late 1970s onward, Mogadishu was forced to abandon the dream of recreating Greater Somalia. On 27 June 1977, Djibouti became a sovereign nation after 95% of its population voted against joining Somalia. Ethiopia, with the help of the Communist Bloc turning on Somalia in favor of Ethiopia, scored a decisive victory in 1978 that ended the Ogaden War. In 1981, Siad Barre visited Nairobi, Kenya and stated that Somalia was relinquishing its claim on Kenyan territory. Improved relations with Kenya led to the signing of a pact in December 1984 ceasing hostilities along the border. Following renewed hostilities in Ogaden with an August 1982 border clash[3][4], Ethiopia and Somalia signed a peace treaty in 1988.
[edit] Somali Civil War
With the disintegration of the nation in the anarchy of the Somali Civil War, the vision of a Greater Somalia was sidelined. Talk of pan-Somali unification movements remained mostly rhetorical as many smaller regional or clan-based states emerged. The government of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, comprising the area of former British Somaliland, which broke away in 1991, remains adamantly opposed to unification with the south. It further clashed with Puntland over control of the Sool and Sanaag regions. Though there was no unified government, thus no formal policy towards irredentism, individual warlords pursued cross-border clashes with Ethiopia between 1998 and 2000.[5]
[edit] Islamic Courts Union
In late 2006, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, head of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that then controlled much of southern Somalia, declared, "We will leave no stone unturned to integrate our Somali brothers in Kenya and Ethiopia and restore their freedom to live with their ancestors in Somalia."[6] These aims were sidelined after the decisive defeat of the ICU in the Battle of Baidoa and the subsequent actions of the war in Somalia by the allied forces of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the autonomous Somali states of Puntland, Southwestern Somalia, Jubaland, and Galmudug and their military backer, Ethiopia.
[edit] References
- ^ Gebru Tareke, Ethiopia: Power and Protest: Peasant Revolts in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1991.
- ^ The details of this paragraph are based on Paul B. Henze Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 263f.
- ^ Somalia, 1980-1996 ACIG
- ^ Ethiopian-Somalian Border Clash 1982 OnWar.com
- ^ Ethiopia Middle East Desk
- ^ "Islamic Leader Urges Greater Somalia", Associated Press, 2006-11-18. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
[edit] Further reading
- Pierre Petrides, The Boundary Question between Ethiopia and Somalia. New Delhi, 1983.
[edit] External links
- Somalia Online News and Discussions
