The descent into chaos

In retrospect, the peace accord signed by the Ethiopian and Somali heads of state in April 1988, obliging each party to terminate support for the other's Somali dissidents, can be seen as the final precipitant to the vicious civil wars which, with the general collapse of governmental institutions as well as the economy (on an external aid life-support system for years), effectively destroyed Somalia well before the actual overthrow of Siyad in January 1991. The pressure of human rights activists on Western governments, appalled at the ferocious suppression of the populist rebellions in Somaliland and Majerteynia, led to the drying up of foreign aid by 1990, when Siyad s control scarcely reached outside Mogadishu. His opponents now tauntingly referred to him as ‘Mayor of Mogadishu’. A desperate flurry of activity by pressure groups inside Mogadishu, belatedly supported by Somalia's external friends (especially Italy), sought to secure Siyad's agreement to a transfer of power to a civilian government. Siyad, however, was stubbornly unprepared to make any significant concessions and events had now gone far beyond the possibility of any such peaceful resolution.

In January 1991 the Darod dictator and his bodyguard were ignominiously chased out of the already battle-scarred city by forces of the United Somali Congress (U.S.C., formed in Rome in 1989), drawn from the Hawiye clans and led by the intrepid Habar Gidir General Muhammad Farah Aideed’ (whose nickname - ‘one who does not take insults lying down’ - was fully borne out by his ferociously touchy character: those who displeased him ran the risk of summary execution by his bodyguard). ‘Aideed was a national army career officer, held in detention for years by Siyad, who regarded him as a threat, and then attached to the great leader as aide-decamp before being posted out of the way as ambassador to India. By the time of Siyad's flight, Somalia had fallen apart into the traditional clan and lineage divisions which, in the absence of other forms of law and order, alone offered some degree of security.

The general situation now vividly recalled the descriptions of Burton and other nineteenth-century European explorers: a land of clan (and clan segment) republics where the would-be traveller needed to secure the protection of each group whose territory he sought to traverse.