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rial power (Brogan 1998). Following Italy s defeat in World War II, It-
aly agreed to prepare its colony, Italian Somalia, for independence in
1960. In a surprise move, Britain also decided hastily to grant indepen-
dence to its colony, British Somaliland, only three months before the
independence of Italian Somalia. This would allow the two parts of So-
malia to be united as a single country (Laitin and Samatar 1987).
Although the Somali people were delighted to be united, integration
created serious challenges and inequities in the new state. Neither col-
ony had been prepared economically or politically for independence.
Instead, both had been characterized by  a condition of neglect and
marginality as colonies (Laitin and Samatar 1987:61). The northern,
British half of Somalia had been less economically developed than the
66 Neverending Wars
southern, Italian half. On the political front, nearly all of the work
on the preparation of the constitution had been completed by Italian
Somalia before Britain decided to allow the independence of its half
of Somalia. Thus the northern British half of Somalia had little say
in the new political structure and resented the dominance of the south-
ern Italian half in setting the political agenda (Laitin and Samatar
1987).
In addition to economic and political inequalities, the bureaucratic
integration of Somalia posed a major challenge. As remnants of their
recent colonial past, each half of Somalia had its own judicial system,
currency, administrative rules, taxation rates, accounting systems, and
legal histories, which somehow had to be unified into a single system
(Laitin and Samatar 1987; Lewis 1988). The problem of deciding upon
an official language illustrates the significant structural heterogeneity
of the new Somalia as well as its extreme cultural homogeneity. Nearly
all of the citizens of the new Republic spoke Somali, a linguistic homo-
geneity that was quite unusual for a newly independent state. Somali
was not a written language, however, so the government was faced with
the option of creating a written Somali language and teaching it to ev-
erybody, or choosing one of the colonial languages of English or Ital-
ian. Since the decision was politically fraught, it was postponed and the
new republic floundered for a decade without an official language. The
educational system and government bureaucracy were forced to oper-
ate in three different languages (Laitin and Samatar 1987). This cre-
ated serious problems of communication, as one might imagine, since
civil servants within the government were frequently unable to com-
municate with each other without the aid of English-Italian translators
(Lewis 1988). Gradually English became the de facto language of gov-
ernment and education, disadvantaging the Italian-speaking Somali of
the south, and creating new resentments between the northerners and
southerners (Laitin and Samatar 1987).
Somalia also faced the standard quandary of lack of resources. As
one observer noted, Somalia confronted  a depressing future as a per-
petually impoverished Third World country with very few natural re-
sources, constantly burdened by drought and the refugees from Ethio-
pia (Brogan 1998:99). To the extent that Somalia did function as a
state, this may be attributed to massive amounts of international sup-
port. At independence, both Italy and Britain recognized that neither
Weak States and the Difficulties of State-building 67
half of Somalia, much less both together, was economically viable.
Both former colonial powers pledged large amounts of money and
other types of aid to help Somalia in its early years (Lewis 1988). After
independence, Somalia received military and development aid from a
wide variety of sources, including the United States, the Soviet Union,
China, the European Economic Community, the World Bank, and the
United Nations. Somalia joined the Arab League in 1974, and there-
after benefited from the generosity of some of the OPEC countries
as well (Adam 1995). Despite this aid, the outlook for Somalia was
bleak. As one scholar commented:  It is astonishing that the new state
worked as well as it did for its first 20 years (Arnold 1995:427). When
civil war broke out in 1982, predictably along the fault line of the for-
mer British half of Somalia and the former Italian half fighting each
other, the weaknesses of the state were revealed in its inability to termi-
nate the war.
The course of Somalia s civil war illustrates typical dynamics of the
civil wars in weak states. The Somali government and armed forces
lacked the capacity to contain the growing conflict, and did not possess
the organizational and military capacity to conduct precision opera-
tions that might keep civilian casualties low. Somalia faced an all-too-
common dilemma: allow insurgents to operate freely or engage in bru-
tal tactics that would generate sympathy for rebels. Unable to root out
insurgents, the Somali government adopted tactics in which entire cit-
ies held by opposition forces were bombed flattened to rubble (Ar-
nold 1995). While this tactic had a minor effect in quelling guerrilla
operations, the effect on the civilian population was catastrophic. By
1990, the human rights group Africa Watch claimed that 50,000 civil-
ians had been killed and 500,000 had fled due to the brutal tactics of the
state (Arnold 1995). The massacres earned the Somali state widespread
domestic and international unpopularity. Horrified by the killings, in-
ternational backers such as the United States began to retract their
support. Without international aid the government could not survive,
and eventually collapsed in 1991 when President Siyad Barre fled the
country.
As is typical in weak state civil wars however, the victorious rebel
forces proved to be even more disorganized than the state had been.
Rather than form a coherent movement united by a common leader-
ship and a shared ideological vision, the various factions of the opposi-
68 Neverending Wars
tion coalition were prone to internal strife, with frequent quarrels
among leaders. The opposition was composed of several groups, each
controlling different territorial regions and attempting to control res-
tive sub-groups with little coordination among groups. This lack of
unity became particularly evident once  victory was achieved. The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]