Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa

230 Pages·2013·6.41 MB·English

by  Saadia Touval

SOMALI NATIONALISM
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PREPARED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Created in 1958, the Center fosters advanced study of basic world prob-
lems by scholars from various disciplines and senior officers from many
countries. The research at the Center, focusing on the processes of change,
includes studies of military-political issues, the modernizing processes
in developing countries, and the evolving position of Europe. The
research programs are supervised by Professors Robert R. Bowie (Director
of the Center), Alex Inkeles, Henry A. Kissinger, Edward S. Mason,
Thomas C. Schelling, and Raymond Vernon.
A list of Center publications will be found at the end of this volume.

SOMALI NATIONALISM
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND THE DRIVE
FOR UNITY IN THE HORN OF AFRICA
SAADIA TOUVAL
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS · I963
© Copyright 1963 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All Rights Reserved
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press · London
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-13817
Printed in the United States of America
Foreword
BY RUPERT EMERSON
A FRICA is a continent rich in nationalisms but poor in nations. At
the two extremes of the continent at least a reasonable approximation
of nations can be found in the Mediterranean countries of North
Africa and among the Afrikaners in South Africa, although in the
latter instance it is evident that the nation embraces only a fraction
of the people of the country. Elsewhere in Africa, in the vast
stretches south of the Sahara, many states have sprung into exist-
ence but few among them can lay claim to a people which has
been welded together in national solidarity. Although the demand for
independence and equality is posed in the name of the nation, the
task of imposing national coherence and of leading a variegated and
divided people to a sense of communal identity is for the most part
still to be accomplished.
One of the distinctive attributes of the Somalis, whose political
existence Saadia Touval surveys in this book, is that they possess
a good measure of the elements, derived from the example of the
classic Western European prototypes, which have in the past been
assumed to be the essential ingredients of the nation. In contrast
to most other African peoples, the Somalis are united in language,
although there are dialectical differences and there is no written
language. They are also united in the Muslim religion and in the
belief of a common descent and heritage. In addition they regard
as their rightful patrimony a great expanse of territory, part of
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VI FOREWORD
which they inhabit only in nomadic fashion. It is here that trouble
enters in, since a large part of the claimed territory is outside the
frontiers of the Somali Republic and is embraced within Ethiopia,
Kenya, and French Somaliland. The dimensions of the problem
may be seen in the estimate that Ethiopia and Kenya would each
be called upon to surrender one fifth of its territory, and French
Somaliland might well be faced with total extinction though Somalis
make up less than half its population.
The demand of the Somali Republic that there should be a
"restoration of Somalia irredenta" is an authentic successor to the
similar nationalist claims which have been advanced in almost every
part of the world. It is a central tenet of the nationalist creed that
the proper role of the state is to serve as the vehicle of political
expression for the nation. Hence when nation and state fail to co-
incide, as in the case of the Somalis, the state system must be
reshaped to bring it into harmony with the national foundations
on which it should rest.
No less in the Horn of Africa than elsewhere, however, such an
opposition of state and nation inescapably produces a head-on colli-
sion between two conflicting rights derived from different orders
of legality. The Somali position is sustained by the rights gathered
under the rubric of self-determination which have had the blessing
not only of all nationalists but also of the United Nations Charter
and, repeatedly, of the General Assembly, which in 1952 laid it down
that the Covenant on Human Rights must contain the provision
that "all peoples shall have the right of self-determination." This
inherently revolutionary doctrine runs afoul of the juridical and
political reality of the existing state structure, which rests upon the
proposition that the sovereignty and integrity of the political units
composing it is to be respected. The normative postulates of national
self-determination challenge the positive law which safeguards the
maintenance of the established order.
This is an issue which has been, and presumably will continue
to be, of peculiar concern to Africa because the independent states
FOREWORD Vil
which are now coming to compose it are the arbitrary creations of
the imperial powers which lumped disparate tribes together within
the colonial boundaries and often drew those boundaries in such
fashion as to divide a single tribe between two or more European
countries. Thus the Bakongo people found themselves parceled out
to the French and Belgian Congos and Portuguese Angola, the Ewe
were divided between the Gold Coast and the two Togolands, and
the Yoruba between Nigeria and Dahomey. The Somalis them-
selves, already internally divided on tribal lines, were broken up
into a number of segments under Italian, French, Ethiopian, and
two types of British rule. For the Somalis as for others these colonial
divisions meant not only the formal fact of a frontier cutting across
a people but also that on the two sides of the frontier different lan-
guages were taught and different political, legal, and economic
systems imposed.
In this colonial setting it was a reasonable expectation that the
frontiers which the imperial powers had created would be swept
away as the newly independent peoples redrew the map of Africa
to meet their own needs and conceptions. Instead, with the rarest
of exceptions, the colonially established frontiers have remained
and the African states which have taken their place in the inter-
national society are the precise heirs of the colonial regimes. Far
from seeking to overturn the existing boundaries, almost all the
ruling groups in the new countries have committed themselves to
the proposition that the political and territorial integrity of the
colonially defined states should be preserved. Even President
Nkrumah of Ghana, who, on grounds of tribal affiliation, had
voiced claims to Togo and a slice of the Ivory Coast, appears to have
receded from active advocacy of a program of reshaping states to
achieve greater ethnic unity. The earlier doctrine came to the fore
again, however, in a communiqué issued in October 1961 when Presi-
dent Aden Abdulla Osman of the Somali Republic visited Nkrumah.
The two presidents took the position that although African frontier
problems, inherited from colonial days, would be made obsolete by
vili
FOREWORD
the achievement of a union of African states, they "recognized the
imperative need to remove the existing frontiers artificially demar-
cated by the Colonialists without respect for ethnic, cultural or
economic links." This objective, they maintained, could be achieved
"by adherence to the principle of self-determination."
Because of the Somali Republic's broader national base, its claims
have a somewhat different bearing from those of other African
countries where what is immediately at stake is the joining together
of tribal communities, forming only part of the larger state-nation,
which have been severed in the course of the colonial scramble for
Africa. But the Somalis are a part of Africa, and the kind of solu-
tion which is found for their problems cannot help having an effect
on other peoples and territories in the continent.
With skill and objectivity Dr. Touval has given us a book which
sketches the history and composition of the Somali people, depicts
their emergence into the modern world, and indicates the major
issues which lie before them.
Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
Author's Preface
T H IS IS a study of one of the more complex and little-known
problems of contemporary Africa—the Somali claims for national
self-determination and unification, and their effect upon regional
and international politics. My purpose is to present a balanced and
useful survey of the problem and the many issues involved, not to
make a "study in depth" of particular aspects such as the history of
the region, Somali society and politics, or the politics of Ethiopia
and Kenya.
The writing of this book, which grew out of a Ph.D. thesis pre-
sented at Harvard University, was made possible through the most
generous assistance rendered by Harvard's Center for International
Affairs. Special thanks are due Mr. Robert R. Bowie, Director of
the Center, who has shown an interest in this study from its early
stage. The Center enabled me to travel and study in the Horn of
Africa and then to spend several months as a Research Fellow on
the Center's premises while working on the book.
It would be infeasible to list all those from whose advice and
assistance I benefited in this work. Yet, the book would be incom-
plete if I failed to mention certain persons without whose advice
and assistance the book would have been much poorer. Foremost
among them is Professor Rupert Emerson of Harvard University
whose teaching first aroused my interest in the phenomenon of
nationalism in general, and in its African variety in particular. I
have also greatly profited from the teaching and advice of Professor
Stanley Hoffmann, also of Harvard, and from the helpful criticisms
ix
χ AUTHOR'S PREFACE
of Dr. Jo W. Saxe, former Adviser to the Fellows at the Center for
International Affairs. I wish also to mention the late Reuven Shiloah
of the Israel Foreign Ministry who first suggested that I write about
Somali nationalism. I should like to avail myself of this opportunity
to thank the many knowledgeable and helpful people—government
ministers, scholars, political leaders, soldiers, civil servants, and plain
citizens, in the United States, England, France, Italy, Ethiopia,
French Somaliland, the Somali Republic, and Kenya—whose hos-
pitality and assistance greatly contributed to this book.
Finally, my thanks to Mr. Max Hall, the Center's Editor of
Publications, for his dedicated and thorough work in improving the
manuscript.
The responsibility for the book, of course, is solely mine.
Saadia Touval (Weltmann)
Jerusalem, January 1963