$Unique_ID{COW03285} $Pretitle{286} $Title{Somalia Chapter 1B. The Colonial Period} $Subtitle{} $Author{Robert Rinehart} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{italian british somali ethiopia colonial somalis mohamed somaliland abdullah government} $Date{1981} $Log{Figure 3.*0328501.scf Mohamed Abdullah*0328503.scf } Country: Somalia Book: Somalia, A Country Study Author: Robert Rinehart Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1981 Chapter 1B. The Colonial Period In the second half of the nineteenth century, several countries vied for control of Somali-populated territories, encountering little opposition from the Somalis. The contending powers were not only European but included Egypt (at that time an autonomous Ottoman province) and the independent African kingdom of Ethiopia. The division of territory was carried out by local representatives of the colonial powers rather than over negotiating tables in Europe. The process by which boundaries were delimited contributed directly to the irredentism that became a significant political issue for the Somalis in the postcolonial period. In 1865 the Ottoman sultan issued a decree ceding port towns on the western shore of the Red Sea to the khedive of Egypt, who was nominally his subject. The khedive cited the grant as pretext for assuming Ottoman claims to jurisdiction in the Horn of Africa. By 1874 Egypt had occupied towns on the Somali north coast, but Britain blocked additional Egyptian efforts to establish the khedive's authority in Baraawe on the Benadir Coast, which was loosely administered by Zanzibar. During a ten-year presence in Berbera, Seylac, and smaller northern coastal towns, the Egyptians improved port facilities, built mosques, and introduced limited control over the hinterlands by utilizing Somali clan headmen nominated by the khedive. Determined Egyptian attempts to expand inland with tough Ethiopian resistance, but their troops succeeded in taking Harer. The Mahdist rebellion in Sudan compelled the khedive to recall his forces in 1883, however, and to abandon Egyptian holdings in the Horn. The Ethiopians occupied Harer the next year. Britain's initial interest in the Somali coast was logistical. After the British annexation of Aden in 1840, treaties were entered into with two Somali sultanates to ensure an uninterrupted supply of cattle to feed the garrison there. Richard Burton's expedition to Harer in 1854, which attracted British attention to the region, was the first visit by a European explorer to the interior. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made more apparent the strategic importance of the coastal towns, and vice consuls were assigned to Berbera, Seylac, and Bulhar to protect British interests. In 1884, following the Egyptian departure, a resident political agent was appointed, and further treaties were concluded with the clans, leading to the establishment of the Somali Coast Protectorate (subsequently British Somaliland Protectorate) administered by the India Office in London. Under the treaties, protected clans allowed Britain to represent their interests in return for a subsidy paid by the British government. But as the name of the new dependency indicated, colonial authorities made no specific claims to jurisdiction in the interior. In 1898 responsibility for administering the protectorate was transferred to the Foreign Office, operating through a consul general, and in 1907 to the Colonial Office. In 1859 France had obtained a treaty with the Afar people for rights to the small port of Obock, north of present-day Djibouti, but had used the area only as a trading station. Anglo-French rivalry along the route to India in the 1880s led the British to close the port of Aden to French shipping. As a result in 1883 the French began to develop a coaling station at Djibouti. The Italians entered the colonial race quite late and became interested in the Horn as one of the few parts of the continent not already claimed by a major power. The port of Aseb in Eritrea had been purchased by an Italian shipping firm for a coaling station in 1870. Ownership passed to the Italian government in 1882, and in 1885, with the agreement of the British, the Italians took over Mitsiwa from the departing Egyptians, simultaneuosly laying claim to the entire Eritrean coast. In 1889 Italy and the new Ethiopian emperor, Menelik II, agreed to the Treaty of Ucciali. According to a unilateral Italian interpretation of its provisions, the treaty made Ethiopia a protectorate within the Italian sphere of influence and authorized Italy to act on Ethiopia's behalf in dealing with Britain and France on boder questions. The Italian entry into Somalia proper started in 1889, when the Somali sultans of Hobyo (Obbia) on the coast of the Indian Ocean and of Caluula (Alula), facing the Gulf of Aden, began to accept annual payments from Italy in exchange for protectorate status. That same year Italy obtained rights to the Benadir Coast, partly by direct twenty-five-year lease from the sultan of Zanzibar and partly by sublease from the Imperial British East Africa Company, which had earlier leased territory from the region's nominal ruler. The leases covered the area from Warshiikh (Uarsciech) southward to the mouth of the Juba River and included Mogadishu, Marka, and Baraawe. The Italian government chartered a commercial firm, the Filonardi Company, as its representative to administer and develop the leasehold. Agents of the company expanded the area under Italian control, signing treaties with local clans in return, in some cases, for armed protection against the Ethiopians. Division of Somali-Occupied Territory Without consulting Ethiopia, Britain and Italy agreed to treaties in 1891 and 1894 that defined the boundaries between their respective zones of influence. The inland boundaries divided the territories claimed by Ethiopia by placing the Ogaden region in the Italian sphere and the Haud region in the British sphere (see fig. 3). In 1896 Italian forces invading Ethiopia from Eritrea to enforce Italy's claim to a protectorate were resoundingly defeated by Menelik's army at the battle of Adowa. Despite the resulting opposition in Italy to colonial ventures and the financial collapse of the Filonardi Company, the military disaster did not weaken Italy's position in Somalia. But it did make necessary a redefinition of the interior boundaries between the European-held territories and Ethiopia. Arrangements for delimination began in 1897 when a British negotiator, Rennell Rodd, led a special mission to Menelik, the main purpose of which was to ensure Ethiopian neutrality in the British campaign against the Mahdists in Sudan. The Ethiopian position was strengthened by the fact that Ethiopia had already claimed suzerainty over the whole of Somalia and had rapidly expanded its control over Somali-populated areas. A strong Ethiopian garrison had been established at Harer, just beyond the border tentatively claimed by Britain in its role as protector of Somali clans inhabiting the area. Furthermore Ethiopia had recently obtained territorial concessions from Britain's colonial rivals, the Italians in Eritrea and the French in Djibouti, the latter having voluntarily withdrawn their claimed boundaries by 100 kilometers. These factors, combined with the British government's lack of enthusiasm for extending its commitments in the Horn of Africa, placed Rodd in a poor bargaining position. [See Figure 3.: Frontiers and Colonial Boundaries, 1891-1960 Source: Adapted from Irving Kaplan, et. al., Area Handbook for Somalia, Washington, 1977, p. 22.] Britain's only claims in the interior were based on the treaties signed with Somali clans whose primary motivation for signing had been to obtain protection against the better armed Ethiopians. Nevertheless the British agreed to pull back the protectorate's boundaries by about eleven kilometers opposite Harer and to concede most of the Haud region to the east. The only reflection of Britain's promised protection of the Somalis appeared in two clauses of the treaty, one requiring the Ethiopian government to provide them with "good treatment" and orderly government and the other guaranteeing the nomads pasturage on either side of the new frontier. Rodd expressed misgivings over the loss of territory, which included half of the generally fertile northern highlands and the vital seasonal grazing area of the Haud, but the Foreign Office considered the Ethiopia's goodwill was of primary consequence. The treaty was not published, the boundary was not immediately demarcated, and Ethiopian rule over the region was only lightly felt. Immediately after the Rodd treaty was concluded, Italy's representative in Ethiopia, Cesare Nerazzini, conducted negotiations to define the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia. The treaty arrangements, while definitive, were arrived at informally. Nerazzini and the emperor marked out the agreed boundary on two copies of a German map without recording in writing the limits on the treaty itself. Both copies of the map promptly disappeared and have never been found. The only information on the location of the border was Nerazzini's report on his return that the agreed line was parallel to the coast about 300 kilometers inland and terminated at the cataracts of the Juba River. The Ethiopians claimed that the boundary line decided on was much closer to the coast. In 1908, eleven years after the Menelik-Nerazzini Treaty, an attempt was made to resolve the matter. Italy paid an indemnity to Ethiopia for the territory it had already occupied, but no agreement was reached except for the delimitation of the point at which Kenya, Italian Somaliland, and Ethiopia met and the tracing of the border to a location 130 kilometers north of Doolow (Dolo) on the Juba. Somalia's present-day border with Kenya is a result of the secret arrangements that brought Italy into World War I on the side of the Allies. Britain promised to cede part of its own colonial holdings in compensation for Italy's exclusion from the division of German colonial territory already agreed to by Britain and France. A treaty drawn up in 1920 and ratified in 1924 provided that Italy take over the area west of the Juba River up to the forty-first parallel, including the port of Kismaayo (Kisimayo). Known as Jubaland, it was incorporated into Italian Somaliland the following year. The new boundary left a Somali-populated area (Northern Frontier District) within Kenya that was equal in size to the ceded territory. Mohamed Abdullah The only impediments to the expansion of colonial rule were the competing territorial claims of the European powers and the Ethiopians. Somali clans acquiesced in-and frequently sought-treaties of protection offered by Britain and Italy as well as the subsidies and trading privileges that accompanied them. Direct European involvement was limited to the ports, which historically had been under non-Somali control, and was primarily concerned with improving trade. During the 1890s, for example, the British presence in the protectorate consisted of only about a dozen civilian officials, a company of Indian troops, and some local employees stationed in Berbera, Seylac, and Bulhar. In 1899, however, the process of peaceful colonial occupation was brought to an abrupt halt by an insurrection inspired by a remarkable figure, Mohamed ibn Abdullah Hassan. An imam of the puritanical Salihiya tariqa (religious order or brotherhood), Mohamed Abdullah preached his order's fundamentalist version of Islam in Berbera, inveighing against the foreign influences that violated its precepts. He was particularly enraged by the availability of alcohol and by the opening of a French-run Roman Catholic orphanage that had taken in Somali children. Mohamed Abdullah won few converts in Berbera where urban Somalis, who had prospered from improved opportunities for trade under colonial rule, cooperated with British authorities. Opposed by members of the larger and less severe Qadiriya order and the Isaaq, who were prominent traders in the town, the imam departed for the interior to preach to nomadic pastoralists less susceptible to foreign blandishments than were the coastal people. His ability as an orator and a poet-much-valued skills in Somali society-won him a large number of disciples, especially among his own Dolbahante and Ogaden clans (both of the Darod clan-family). He referred to his followers as dervishes rather than calling them by their customary lineage names. The imam's followers venerated him as a saint endowed with a charisma that conferred on him not only prestige as a teacher but also personal immunity from attack. The authority that he exercised over them was essentially religious rather than political or military, but British officials who dismissed him as a religious fanatic-calling him epithetically the "Mad Mullah"-seriously underestimated the strength of Mohamed Abdullah's appeal to the Somalis. His insurgency was apparently touched off when authorities demanded that he surrender one of his followers who had been accused of stealing a government-issue rifle. (To promote peace on the frontier with Ethiopia and to discourage clan warfare, the colonial administration had as a matter of policy sought to deny modern rifles to protected Somali groups, who complained as a result that they were deprived of the means of defending themselves against harassment by soldiers in Ethiopian-controlled areas.) Summoning an army of 3,000 dervishes, Mohamed Abdullah seized the traditional watering place of the Isaaq at Bura and massacred the inhabitants of a Qadiriya settlement at Sheekh (Sheikh) about sixty kilometers from Berbera. His warriors also laid seige to the Ethiopian garrison at Jijiga and spread the insurrection among their Darod kinsmen in Kenya. Between 1901 and 1904 four expeditions were mounted to hunt down the imam. The first two were composed of British-led Ethiopian soldiers and Somali irregulars, and the last two were upgraded with several thousand reinforcements that included British regulars, Indian units, elements of the King's African Rifles, and Afrikaner mounted troops from South Africa. The Somali contingent was the largest in each of these military exercises. Although British troops met the dervishes in several engagements, the imam always eluded capture. Still smarting from the disaster at Adowa in 1896, Italy refused to cooperate with British efforts to suppress the insurrection, but in 1905 Britain accepted Italian mediation in arranging a truce that conferred on the imam an Italian subsidy and autonomous protected status in the Nugaal (Nogal) Valley. Mohamed Abdullah did not gain extensive support in Italian Somaliland, although some clans there declared themselves dervishes and robbed cattle from the herds of other Somalis who were deemed too accommodating to the Italians. The truce lasted only three years-long enough for Mohamed Abdullah to regroup the dervishes for a jihad (holy war) against the British and Ethiopians as well as Somalis who rejected his teachings. At the height of his strength the imam had as many as 10,000 dervishes under arms. In 1910 the British government, unwilling to invest more manpower and resources in the colony, ordered a withdrawal to the coastal area and abandoned the interior to him. Protected Somalis were issued rifles and left to devise their own defenses. Over the next few years the dervishes terrorized the entire region, taking a heavy toll among the clans that opposed them. (It has been estimated that one-third of the male population of British Somaliland died during this period as a result of the insurrection.) In 1913 they annihilated the British-led Somali Camel Constabulary in an action at Dul Madoobe (Dul Madoba). During World War I Mohamed Abdullah received German and Turkish support, including assistance in building a formidable stronghold at Taleex (Taleh), and he made an accommodation with the pro-German Ethiopian emperor, Lij Iyasu, who had lately converted to Islam. At the end of the war London's attention turned to colonial trouble spots that had been neglected for the duration, but the dervish movement in British Somaliland had already been weakened by desertion and the defection of entire clans grown discontented with the imam. Pacification, assigned to several Indian battalions and the newly formed Somaliland Camel Corps, was carried out efficiently. In February 1920 British warplanes bombed Taleex, where Mohamed Abdullah had chosen to make his stand. Rejecting surrender and pursued by Somali irregulars, the imam fled to a camp in Ethiopia to reorganize his followers but died there of natural causes later in the year. Leaderless and demoralized, the dervish movement dissolved. Mohamed Abdullah's twenty-year defiance of the British Empire was more than a local insurgency against colonial rule. To some modern Somali observers, it contained the elements of a war of national liberation. For the imam it was a holy war aimed not only against the infidel but also against the Muslims who collaborated with the nonbeliever. In proclaiming the holy war, Mohamed Abdullah had cited as his objectives the purification of Islam, the ousting of foreigners from Somali territory and, significantly, the unification of the Somali people. So great was his personal appeal that he could command a loyalty that superseded that of lineage. But to a great extent the insurrection was a continuation of the traditional feuds among rival clans, a confrontation between nomadic and coastal Somalis, and an excuse for large-scale cattle rustling. In the final analysis Mohamed Abdullah was defeated as much by his fellow Somalis as by the British. They turned against him, tired of the chaos, destruction, and famine that were the consequences of his insurgency. British-led Somali forces took part in all the campaigns against him. Yet, with the emergence of nationalism in its modern form, Mohamed Abdullah has been hailed as a popular hero in Somalia and the prime source of the Somali sense of national identity. Italian and British Colonial Administration After suppressing Mohamed Abdullah's insurgency, Britain determined for security reasons to extend effective control to the borders with Ethiopia. Italian territorial expansion occurred during the same period but was largely the result of a desire to exploit the agricultural potential of the region between the Shabeelle and Juba rivers and to provide economic opportunities for Italian colonists. In 1905 the Italian government had terminated the charter of the Benadir Company, successor to the failed Filonardi Company, and assumed direct responsibility for governing the colony. Not until 1927, however, when a military campaign was required to end the semiautonomous status claimed by the sultans of Obbia and Majerteyn, did all of Italian Somaliland actually come under direct colonial administration. Completion of the railroad connecting the French port of Djibouti with Addis Ababa in 1917 diminished the value of Seylac and Berbera as depots for trade with the interior, but the Italians were able to exploit the ancient trade routes between the Ogaden and Mogadishu and thus to gain control of the import and export trade with southern Ethiopia. Intensified economic activity in the region facilitated gradual infiltration of the underadministered areas of Ethiopia adjoining Italian Somaliland. Early hopes for resettling farmers from Italy's poorer regions in the colony's fertile areas foundered, and other ambitious agricultural schemes involving concessions for large commercial plantations were slowed by the unforeseen difficulty involved in recruiting local labor. The potential labor market was composed largely of the sedentary peoples who had formerly been slaves or clients of the dominant Somalis. These people, however, preferred work on their own lands to wage labor, whereas the pastoralists were uninterested in agriculture. The colonial government at an early date began compulsory labor recruitment, which continued even after passage of new labor laws that provided for better conditions for workers. Despite these difficulties, agricultural production in the colony increased at a good rate. In some measure this was due to the initiative of a member of the Italian royal family, Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, duke of Abruzzi, who in 1920 found the Italo-Somali Agricultural Society (Societa Agricola Italo-Somala-SAIS) to develop about 200,000 hectares of concessionary land in the Shabeelle valley for mechanized commercial agriculture. Export crops intended for the Italian market included bananas, sugarcane, and cotton. The colony's only other significant products were livestock, hides, skins, and salt from an Italian plant begun at Ras Hafun in 1920. SAIS was liberally underwritten by financial and industrial interests in Italy, but it was obvious that the colony's economic development required substantial public funding which the government of the day was not prepared to provide, to supplement private investment. Widely felt changes in the colonial policy were instituted by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, which came to power in 1922. The first fascist governor of Italian Somaliland, Cesare Maria de Vecchi, brought with him to the colony a propensity for construction. By 1928 more than 6,000 kilometers of earthen and gravel roads had been built, and a light railroad (subsequently destroyed in World War II and never reconstructed) connected the plantations at Villagio Duca degli Abruzzi (Jowhar) and Afgooye (Afgoi) to Mogadishu. The fascist administration was highly centralized, although amenable indigenous leaders were allowed to exercise a degree of influence not permitted in the British colony and were employed by the Italians to open the way for the "peaceful penetration" of the interior. Somali judges were appointed to administer Islamic and customary law. Somalis staffed the lower ranks of the paramilitary colonial gendarmerie (Corpo Zaptie) established in 1923. Limited educational facilities were created at the primary level for Somalis, a small number of whom held minor clerical positions in government offices. During the 1930s the fascists adopted racial legislation intended to ensure, in theory as well as in fact, the superior status of the Italian colonists and the subject status of the Somalis, who sometimes were made to endure brutal treatment at the hands of officials. Colonial society was more open than would appear, however, and individual settlers, who eventually numbered about 8,000, often bent the rules to accommodate the Somalis. Economic development in British Somaliland between the two world wars was limited. After 1920 the colonial administration was required by the home government to finance all operations in the country from its own resources, but attempts to impose direct taxation proved impossible to implement because of Somali intransigence. Most revenue was derived from import and export duties, but the important trade route to Ethiopia, initially cut during the insurgency, was permanently closed by the completion of the Djibouti railroad. As a consequence, government expenditure for development was largely restricted to well digging and the provision of veterinary services. Some assistance was also given to encourage improvements in agriculture carried out by the Somalis on their own initiative in the better watered areas of the northwestern highlands. Other British efforts were aimed at the expansion of the extremely limited educational facilities. The first effort to increase the number of schools, however, was linked to the imposition of direct taxation, and opposition to taxation became popularly linked with opposition to the schools. This opposition was reinforced by conservative religious sentiment that considered British-sponsored education a threat to Islam. Wartime Somalia The Italian infiltration of the Somali-populated Ogaden area had begun before 1930 and was assisted by several factors. Italians had come to dominate the economy through their control of the external trade routes. Moreover the boundary between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland, although confirmed by a 1908 convention, had never been marked off on the ground and was subject to different interpretations by the two parties. Because of shortages of trained personnel, the Ethiopian government had never been able to extend its administration into the eastern half of the region. In addition some Somali clans demanded Italian protection for their people who lived in Ogaden. The Italians posed as the champions of Somali irredentism and attempted, with some success, to win the support of the Somalis of the Ogaden. Since 1930 Somali troops of the Corpo Zaptie had occupied territory to a depth of more than 150 kilometers inside Ethiopia, a fact that was evidently known but tacitly accepted by the Ethiopian government. In November 1934 the Italians provoked an armed confrontation with Ethiopian troops at Wal Wal, the site of wells used by Somalis regularly traversing the Ogaden in an area clearly inside Ethiopia. Despite feeble attempts by the League of Nations to mediate the dispute, Mussolini used the incident as an excuse for opening hostilities with Ethiopia. Italian forces invaded Ethiopia from Somaliland and Eritrea without a declaration of war in October 1935, commencing a seven-month campaign that concluded with the capture of Addis Ababa and the Italian annexation of Ethiopia in May 1936. The Ogaden was detached from Ethiopia and included in the new, enlarged province of Somalia, which together with Eritrea and a reduced Ethiopia constituted Italian East Africa. Nearly 40,000 Somalis had been mobilized for service in the war with Ethiopia in combat, support, and labor units-6,000 of them in the Corpo Zaptie. [See Mohamed Abdullah: Monument to Somali patriot Mohamed Abdullah occupies a prominent site in Mogadishu Courtesy Somali Embassy, Washington] Italy entered World War II in June 1940, declaring war on Britain and France. In August three Italian columns invaded British Somaliland and within two weeks had overrun the protectorate, forcing the evacuation of the small British garrison there. Meanwhile an Italian brigade had crossed into Kenya and advanced toward Lake Rudolf. By the end of the year, however, the Italians had drawn a defense line at the Juba River in the face of a British buildup in East Africa. In early February 1941 the British launched an offensive against Italian forces in Somalia with three divisions-one South African and two composed largely of East African colonial troops-that was coordinated with a simultaneous attack on Eritrea. Mogadishu was taken within the month, and in March British units based in Aden effected a landing at Berbera. Addis Ababa was liberated in April, and the last isolated pocket of Italian resistance in East Africa was compelled to surrender in November. British forces captured nearly 200,000 Italian prisoners, including Somali troops, during the campaign, in addition to large quantities of war materiel.