January15, 2007:
A "perpetual" peacekeeping operation may work in Haiti, where the
peacekeepers essentially are serving as a police force intended to keep the
wilder criminal elements out of political power, but it's doubtful it would
work in Somalia. There are no clans or tribes ( with significant militia forces
on call) in Haiti. In Somalia, there are dozens of well armed clan militias,
and past attempts to disarm the clans have all failed. It would be well to
examine that history. For thousands of years, Somalia consisted of trading
ports along the coast, each with large Arab and Indian minorities, and often
controlled by those foreigners, who owned the trading organizations. The
interior was populated by dozens of clans. The term "tribe" doesn't really
apply, because all these people were of one ethnic group, what we know of as
Somalis. These were an independent and feisty people, who depended on their
weapons more than anything else. Somali didn't even have a written form until
the 1970s. Before that, if you wanted to be literate, you usually did it in
Arabic.
In
1886, Britain replaced Egypt as the primary foreigners in northern Somalia, and
the area became known as Somaliland. In 1889, Italy displaced the various Arab,
Indian and Somali rulers in the south, and formed a colony called Somalia. In
1960, both colonies were combined into a new country; Somalia. For the first
time ever, there was a united Somalia. The country contained most, but not all,
of the Somalis in the region. Many more still lived in Ethiopia, Kenya and
Djibouti. Many Somalis wanted to combine all the Somalis, and the territory
they occupied, into a "Greater Somalia." But the other countries in the region
were against this, for they had been the victims of raids by Somali bandits for
centuries. There was also a lot of bad blood between Ethiopia and Somalia,
mainly because the Ethiopians had conquered, and ruled, most of present day
Somalia, many times in the past two thousand years. Somalia could be conquered,
but there really wasn't much there worth having, and most conquerors eventually
got tired of the cost, and withdrew.
As
soon as the new Somalia came into existence, it began attacking Ethiopia and
Kenya, in an attempt to create Greater Somalia. This effort failed. The
democracy the colonial powers left behind also failed. Clan loyalties were more
powerful, and by 1969 Somalia had become a dictatorship. A coalition of clans
enforced their rule over the entire country. This couldn't last, and it
didn't.
The
new dictator tried to eliminate the clan loyalties, and create a socialist
dictatorship and police state. This appealed to many young Somalis. The
dictator, Siad Barre also tried to curry favor by going to war with Ethiopia
again in 1977. That failed, and the clans became more troublesome throughout
the 1980s. By 1991, the government fell apart, as did the country. Since then,
the clans have squabbled with each other, and continue to do so. Try and fix
that with peacekeepers.