the ogaden and the fragility of somali segmentary nationalism by: i.m. lewis

The Royal African Society

The Ogaden and the Fragility of Somali Segmentary NationalismAuthor(s): I. M. LewisReviewed work(s):Source: African Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 353 (Oct., 1989), pp. 573-579Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/723037 .

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THE OGADEN AND THE FRAGILITY OF SOMALI SEGMENTARY NATIONALISM

I. M. LEWIS

THE OGADEN, who traditionally live as herdsmen in the region named after them in eastern Ethiopia, bordering the Somali Republic, are part of the wider Darod family of Somali clans. They attracted world attention a decade ago during their abortive attempt to secure independence from Ethiopia in the 1977-78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia.

In retrospect, it is easy to see that this represented the high point of Somali nationalist fervour in recent Somali history. It was also a testimony to the strenuous efforts of the present Somali head of state in seeking to transform Somali nationalism from its old segmentary style to a modern organic mode. Shortly after seizing power in 1969, the present Head of State, General Mohamad Siyad Barre, adopted 'Scientific Socialism' to unite the nation and eradicate its ancient clan divisions. 'Tribalism', which was associated with nepotism and corruption, was officially banned and ritually buried in 1971. Tribalistic behaviour became a serious criminal offence. The collective payment of blood money was correspondingly outlawed, and marriage officially emptied of its corporate lineage sigrlificance. The universal term of address 'cousin', implying clansman, was replaced by the term jaalle (comrade). Lineage genealogies and their use to identify people were banned; even the old circumlocation 'ex-clan' was forbidden. In their place, the Head of State was presented in the revolutionary rhetoric as the 'Father' of a nation whose 'Mother' was his Revolution. This stirring ideology, legitimated by reference to the holy trinity of Marx, Lenin and Siyad, was thrust upon the masses through intense radio propaganda and through the Orientation Centres which were set up throughout the state, which had itself been divided into new provinces cutting across traditional clan boundaries. Radiating out from the Presidency, the locally organized people's vigilantes (or 'Victory Pioneers', led by the 'Victorious Leader' Siyad) and the sinister National Security Service shared the task of ensuring that this elaborate propaganda rhetoric fell on receptive ears. The repeatedly proclaimed objective was to replace archaic, divisive lineage loyalty, by productive revolutionary allegiance to the nation. The National Security Courts also spared no effort in their zeal to enforce the new order of revolutionary nationalism. l This article is a revised version of a talk given at the School of Oriental and African Studies in February 1989. Ioan Lewis is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 1. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia (Westview, Boulder, revised and updated, 1 988).

573



574 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

In the view of Ernest Gellner and other theorists of modern nationalism, the decisive ingredient in national self-consciousness is literacy. Where previous civilian governments had faltered, here the military acted decisively, adopting a lloman script for the national language and launching intensive nation-wide urban and rural literacy campaigns in 1973 and 1974.2 The intention was, as President Siyad put it, 'to give everybody the opportunity to learn reading and writing . . . to give our people modern revolutionary education ... to restructure their social existence ... to eradicate social balkanization and fragmentation into tribes and sects . . . to bring about an absolute unity.'

While these measures directed at eliminating clan divisions and establish- ing enduring bonds of national solidarity were vigorously promoted at all levels within the state, the Head of State himself was covertly relying on older, time-honoured ties of loyalty. He had, in fact, constructed his inner power circle of members from three related clans, each critically significant in its own way . His most trusted ministers were drawn from his own patrilineal clan, the Marehan. Next came members of the clan of his son-in-law (head of the National Security Service), the Dulbahante. Stradding the borders between the former British and Italian Somalilands, whose union constituted the Somali Republic, this clan was a lynchpin in the new state. Finally, the third clan in this triangle was that of the President's mother's brother, the Ogaden of crucial significance in this discussion. This connection gave the President a privileged relationship with the turbulent Ogadeni nationalists who had been chaffing against Ethiopian rule since its effective imposition in the late 1940s.3

It is important to emphasize that these three clans (the President's, his mother's brother's, and his son-in-law's) all belong at a higher level of

segmentary grouping to the Darod clan family. Although the regime at all times included representatives of other non-Darod clans, the magic letters MOD (Marehan, Ogaden, Dulbahante) represented the inner circle of power. This, of course, remained unofficial public knowledge; officially, the regime was implacably opposed to 'clanism' and strenuously discouraged clan activity outside its own circle. Indeed to breath the acronym MOD publicly would have been to invite instant arrest.

The chaos which spread in Ethiopia in the initial years of the Ethiopian revolution following Haile Selassie's deposition in October 1974 encouraged the Ogadeni Somalis to prepare to seize their opportunity. Following successful risings against Ethiopian rule in neighbouring provinces by allies of the Somalis, the forces of the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), aided by troops from Somalia, began in the summer of 1977 to push the

2. E. Gellner, Nationals and Nationalism (Blackwell, Oxford, 1983). 3. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia, pp. 29 ff; J. Markakis, National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 169 ff.



575 THE OGADEN AND SOMALI SEGMENTARY NATIONALISM

Ethiopians out of the Ogaden. The Somali victory was, however, short- lived. The conflict triggered a seismic shift in super power alignments in

the Horn of Africa with the Russians turning to support the Ethiopians and enabling them to regain control of the Ogaden.

This defeat was followed by the huge refugee influx of the best part of a million Ogadenis into Somalia in 1978 and 1979. This created immense problems for the Somali state which became increasingly dependent on humanitarian aid, bilaterally from the Western bloc and via the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).4 Perhaps as many as half the refugees were placed in refugee camps in the centre of the northern Regions of the Republic where their main local hosts were people of the Isaaq clan family. Relations between the refugees and the local residents were surprisingly good, given the long history of confrontation and conflict over foraging and water between pastoralists of these rival groups. The majority of the refugees remained in the huge camps, up to 60,000 strong, in which they were gathered. These were often poorly supplied with sources of water, let alone endowed with other natural resources which might have enabled them to achieve some degree of self-sufficiency. The refugees were consequently totally dependent on international relief supplies and treated by the Somali authorities as temporary residents of the Republic who would eventually return to their Ogaden homeland in Ethiopia. This assumption was also fostered by naming sections of refugee camps after their places of origin in the Ogaden. Of course, this did not prevent refugees trading surplus rations with the local northern and largely Isaaqi population. Some refugees also found local work outside the camps, and a few, who managed to gain passports, even joined the migrant Somali 'muscle-drain' to Saudia Arabia and the Gulf States.

The Ogaden war had been immensely popular in Somalia and President Siyad's public standing was never higher than at that time. The terrible defeat and refugee invasion quickly led to widespread public demoralization and to an upsurge of 'tribalism' as different groups sought scapegoats to explain the debacle. Thus, hard on the heels of the Somali retreat, an unsuccessful attempted coup was mounted against the regime in April 1978. This was led by military officers of the Majerteyn (Darod) clan who had played a dominant role in the old civilian governments. After the failure of this attempted coup, those who had escaped arrest regrouped, forming a guerrila opposition group called the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) which made its operational headquarters across the border in Ethiopia. After some initial successes, with Ethiopian support, this organisation and its clan-base in Somalia were savagely subdued. Today, the Majerteyn seem divided and, for the time being, neutralized as a united opposition front, although the SSDF has not totally disappeared. That 4. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia, pp. 246 ff.



576 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

the Majerteyn rebels sought support in Ethiopia is both a sign of their desperation and of the disintegration of Somali national solidarity.

In the meantime, the spotlight has fallen on the main protagonist opposed to Barre in the current civil war in Somalia, the Somalia National Movement (SNM) which, despite its name, draws most of its support from the Isaaqi clans of central northern Somalia and articulates their profound disaffection from the Siyad regime. Like the SSDF, the SNM was able to make its operational headquarters across the border in Ethiopia from which it launched a number of daring raids. From the early 1980s, the north was administered by increasingly harsh military rule with savage reprisals meted out to the assumedly pro-SNM local population who were sub ject to severe economic as well as political harassment.5 The north, as I saw when I last visited it in 1985, began to look and feel like a colony under a foreign military tyranny.

Since the Ogaden war defeat, Somalia had still continued to support, albeit somewhat nominally, the Ogadeni Western Somali Liberation Front which remained an irksome thorn in Ethiopia's side. However, the destabilizing pressures exerted by the SSDF and SNM drove President Siyad to seek an accomodation with Ethiopia. The Somali regime's anxiety to secure a deal with Ethiopia was increased by the insecurity which his clansmen felt when the President had a nearly fatal car crash in May 1986. Following the President's election, unopposed, as Head of State for a further seven year term in office at the end of that year, a new government was formed in February 1987. For the first time since the coup, the cabinet now included a Prime Minister in the shape of the faithful General Samatar. In reality, however, President Siyad had consolidated the position of his own clan and family within which rivalry over who should succeed him was beginning to become acute. The Marehan now unquestionably dominated the military, and Siyad's son, General Maslah, was put in charge of a special northern Command Unit. The old MOD alliance was beginning to crumble, at least at the highest levels, as the Marehan closed ranks in the face of mounting insecurity. The time had come to secure Ethiopian co-operation in cauterizing the SNM and SSDF.

Further signalling the demise of pan-Somali solidarity, Presidents Siyad and Mengistu finally signed a peace accord in April 1988, normalizing their relations and undertaking to stop supporting each other's dissidents. Thus Siyad withdrew support from the WSLF, which was now opposed by an anti-Siyad organisation the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), and Mengistu withdrew support from the SSDF and SNM. This triggered the latter's audacious onslaught on military installations in Northern Somalia which quickly led to the present civil war between the regime and the Isaaq clansmen. This now seems to have reached an impasse, with Siyad's forces 5. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia, p. 252.



577 THE OGADEN AND SOMALI SEGMENTARY NATIONALISM

in control of the ruined Isaaq towns while the countryside remains largely in the hands of SNM guerillas and their civilian allies.

The human cost has been terrible. Thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded, and at least half a million have fled their homes seeking asylum across the border in Ethiopia and in the Republic of Djibouti. Some 400,000 Isaaqis, mainly women, children and old people, are now in hastily constructed refugee camps in the Ogaden. Meanwhile, male Ogadeni refugees in northern Somalia, who have long been subject to illegal recruitment into Somalia's armed forces, have been conscripted as a para- military militia to fight the SNM and man check-points on the roads. Ogadeni refugees have been encouraged to take over the remains of Isaaqi shops and houses in what are now ghost towns. Thus, those who were received as refugee guests have supplanted their Isaaqi hosts, many of whom, in this bitterly ironic turn of fate, are now refugees in the Ogaden. The sudden reversal in status of the erstwhile Ogadeni refugees, as well as the general insecurity, led the UNHCR to announce that it would cease to supply food to the northern refugee camps. This is bound to have serious repercussions for the Somalian military in the north let alone the 'refugees'. No wonder the Siyad regime is currently desperately appealing to the West for renewed aid for what it calls 'reconstruction'.

If the Ogadenis were once the tail that wagged the dog, drawing Somalia into their fight for liberation from Ethiopian rule, the situation today is very different. Those still in the Ogaden have been deserted by Siyad while those outside in Somalia have been co-opted into fighting to maintain the regime. Here the appeal, also addressed to the disunited Majerteyn, is to Darod solidarity against the Isaaq. Thus other northern Darod clans have been armed by the regime and urged to join the fight. Other northern groups, who are neither Isaaq nor Darod, have also been armed and exhorted to turn against the Isaaq. The regimes appeal for Darod solidarity has evoked a corresponding attempt, so far unsuccessful, by the Isaaq to invoke a wider-based 'Irrir' solidarity to include the important Hawiye clans in whose territory Mogadishu) the capital of the Republic, is located. Part of the difficulty here, I suspect, lies in the prior existence of the SSDF with which the SNM also seeks alliance and which is a predominantly Darod organization. Equally, as we have seen, while seeking Darod support where it is appropriate, the regime also endeavours to secure the loyalty of all non-Isaaq clans and also, of course, to penetrate the ranks of the Isaaq.

Thus, I am not claiming that current Somali politics represent a perfect application of segmentary lineage principles at the highest levels of segmentation. Lineage solidarity has rarely if ever been perfectly expressed at such high levels of grouping, where the 'lineages' involved in several cases have populations of over a million each. What I am claiming is that in its desperate fight for survival, Siyad's family and clansmen are



578 AFRICAN APFAIRS

seeking to exploit to the full segmentary lineage rivalry within the Somali nation.

They are also, of course, making abundant use of coercion and rewards of all kinds; corruption flourishes. In the present Somali vortex, then, clan and lineage ties are definitely born-again. In fact, of course, they never died, despite all the rhetoric which, as we saw, President Siyad himself ignored. How Siyad's successors will exploit this segmentary legacy remains to be seen. In the meantime, things have turned out well for Ethiopia. Somalia is hopelessly destabilized and Ethiopia is host to a Somali population which is bitterly hostile to the present Somali government. At the same time, those Somali Ogadenis who remain in Ethiopia have been incorporated in three new Cautonomous' regions and it remains to be seen how much support will be forthcoming for the recently formed ONLF or the gravely weakened and discredited WSLF.

The Somali nation today is clearly deeply divided along traditional lines. The Pan-Somali ideal founded on a cultural identity rather than the political unity, which was so strong in the 1950s and 1960s, has taken a severe battering.

This is not to say that the future will not see a swing of the segmentary pendulum, with a renewed upsurge of Pan-Somali nationalism. But any realistic assessment of possible future trends has to acknowledge that Somali nationalism evidently retains its segmentary character and has not been transformed into a modern organic mode. It also has to register the importance of the formation of the state of D jibouti in 1976, thus producing two adjoining Somali states, however dissimilar in size and population. Thus, one point of the five-pointed Pan- Somali star has been broken off and taken root in Djibouti. Two other points of this national symbol are, of course, combined in what currently seems a highly problematic union in the Somali Republic. Events over the last decade suggest that the large Somali community in Northern Kenya, the fourth point in the star emblem, tends to follow its own star and to be quite firmly integrated into Kenya. As long as conditions in Kenya are markedly better than those in neighbouring states, it seems reasonable to suppose that this situation will continue.

Conditions may not be quite as rosy for the Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia (the fifth point in the Somali star). Nevertheless, thousands of Isaaq Somalis have found asylum there, and the local Ogadenis seem to be seeking a modus vivendi with the Ethiopian authorities. By September 1989, some Ogadenis had gone even further, breaking Darod ranks to attack Siyad's forces.

President Siyad's peace initiative with Ethiopia, which is so beneficial to Ethiopia, has, as we have seen, brought civil war to Somalia. Any hostile pressure exerted by the Siyad regime in Mogadishu, or by its successors, might encourage the Ethiopians to aid the SNM guerillas to dismember



THE OGADEN AND SOMALI SEGMENTARY NATIONALISM 579

Somalia permanently, either by annexing the north of the Republic (the former British Somaliland Protectorate), or by facilitating its secession to join D jibouti. Thus Ethiopia has Somalia in a corner which makes it in the Somali Republic's interest to maintain peace with her powerful neighbour. We may note in conclusion that there is no paradox between this external peace between Ethiopia and Somalia and the co-existent clan anarchy which currently rages inside the latter state. This is entirely consistent with the segmentary character of Somali nationalism.



the ogaden and the fragility of somali segmentary nationalism by: i.m. lewis

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