Somalia | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Somalia occupies the horn on the eastern coast of Africa, bordered by Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya on the west and by the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden on the east. With an area of 637,657 square kilometers (246,135 square miles) it is slightly smaller than the state of Texas. It is primarily a desert country. In the twenty-first century it remained one of the few countries in the world that had no effective central government, a condition it has been in since 1991.

Somalia's population is very difficult to estimate because of its history of civil war and instability, the lack of a recent census, and the nomadic nature of many of its people. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook estimated the population at 8,304,601 in June 2004. Whatever its size, the wellbeing of the population is poor: Somali per capita income in 2004 was estimated to be only $500 per year, tying the country for poorest in the world.

The independent Republic of Somalia was formed by the union of British and Italian Somaliland dependencies in 1960. The constitution adopted in 1961 provided for a parliamentary democracy, which operated in Somalia for eight years, with political parties and movements being organized primarily around ethnic or clan loyalties. The parliamentary period came to an end in 1969 when General Mohamed Siad Barre (c. 1919–1995) staged a coup d'etat that overthrew the elected government and installed himself in power. Siad Barre's rule was characterized by political repression, gross violations of human rights, and clan and regional loyalties and rivalries that were manipulated to Siad Barre's benefit. Playing Cold War politics, Siad Barre aligned his regime first with the Soviet Union and, after a falling out with his communist benefactors, for a time with the United States. In the process his country began to fall apart. Clan and factional groups warred against Siad Barre's government. In 1991 they forced him from power.

Siad Barre's departure from his position as ruler did not lead to a unified or stable succession. Armed militias led by clan-based warlords clashed with one another and prevented the establishment of a central government. Their battles not only produced a high death toll but also destroyed the nation's economic and social infrastructure. Drought aggravated the situation, producing a humanitarian crisis that led in late 1992 to a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping intervention intended to protect relief workers and the devastated noncombatant population. Those efforts were unsuccessful—indeed the United States in 1994 withdrew the troops it had committed to the effort after they suffered several highly publicized military reverses in fighting in the capital city, Mogadishu. The UN peacekeeping effort succeeded in stemming famine but was unable to establish peace or stability before it ended in early 1995.

The inability to develop a central government led to efforts to establish regional governments, with a Republic of Somaliland declaring its existence in the north and Puntland, which had been self-governing since 1998, taking steps toward creating its own independent republic in the central part of the country. A transitional national government was established for a three-year period after a conference in Djibouti in 2000. However, its authority was not recognized in Somaliland or Puntland or by several factional leaders, and its official existence ended in August 2003.

The year 2004 saw new efforts to create a central government for Somalia. In January 2004 warlords and politicians meeting in Kenya agreed to set up a new transitional national assembly (TNA). Although sporadic conflict continued, the TNA did begin functioning in August 2004. On October 10, 2004, Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed (b. 1934), leader of Puntland, was elected president of Somalia by the TNA. In December Ali Mohamed Ghedi (b. 1952) was selected

as the prime minister by the TNA. Because President Ahmed was denounced as a war criminal by the leaders of Somaliland immediately after his election and border relations between Ahmed's Puntland and Somaliland are sharply contested, optimism about the new transitional government probably will remain a scarce commodity.

Peacekeeping Forces; Transitional Political Systems.

Afrol News. "Somalia's New President Gets Mixed Welcome," 2004. <http://www.afrol.com/articles/1 4495>.

BBC News. "Timeline: Somalia," 2005. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/worl d/africa/country_profiles/1072611.stm&# x003E;.

Fegley, Randall. "Somalia." In Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social, and Cultural Encyclopedia, Vol. 4. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002.

Freedom House. "Somalia." Freedom in the World 2004. New York: Freedom House, 2004. <http://www.freedomhouse.org/res earch/freeworld/2004/countryratings/som alia.htm>.

Grey House Publishing. "Somalia." Nations of the World 2005, 5th ed. Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2004.

"Somalia." CIA World Factbook 2004. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2004. <http://www.cia.gov/cia/publicat ions/factbook/geos/so.html>.

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