It is 30 years since June 1977 and a nostalgic flashback to that period may sound such a long time ago for many Somalis. Given the life expectancy of an ordinary Somali is less than 40 years, one might expect less than half of the present Somali population to have been around at that year or to be old enough at the time. All the same, that year was such an epoch-making one that it has permanently entered into the Somali folklore. Somalis, young or old, now remember it as the time when the mighty Somali army of that era had finally accomplished its long awaited mission and in a matter of one month or two crushed the Ethiopian-army and liberated its administered Somali territory, better known internationally as the Ogaden, a name detested by Ethiopia for good historical reasons and resented by some Somalis for its apparent clan connotations..

 

The Somali- Ethiopian war over the Ogaden in the summer of 1977, as it came to be known, was not confined to those two antagonists. If it was, Ethiopia would have for ever lost the territory and that would have been the end of the story. Sadly for Somalia and Somalis everywhere, big powers intervened mainly on the side of Ethiopia. The former USSR, hitherto Somalia’s protégé, had to choose between two irreconcilable client states and, having failed to dissuade Somalia from its military intentions or actions, decided for its own geopolitical and strategic interests to ditch Somalia and back Ethiopia to the hilt militarily, economically and diplomatically.

 

On the other hand, the USA initially wooed Somalia with promises of economic assistance and military aid for self defence. Having lost Ethiopia, then under its Marxist leader, Mengestu Haile Marian, to the Russians, the USA main interest in Somalia was to wrest it from the USSR and hopefully gain a military foothold in order to contain the expanding Soviet dominance straddling South Yemen on the Arabian side of the Red Sea and the strategic Horn of Africa.

Real politic being what it is, the Americans in no time reversed their position on the military assistance once it became clear that it was the Somali national army which was doing all the fighting in the territory and not the militia of the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) as Somalia had all along claimed despite all the incontestable evidence on the ground. Not only did the USA went back on their promise of military assistance, but they went further and sponsored through the UN Security Council an arms embargo against Somalia that was binding so long as its forces were in the terrotory.

 

It was this embargo, more than anything else, and the shipment of billions of dollars worth of Soviet arms s to Ethiopia, together with over 40,000 Cuban soldiers, that overwhelmingly tipped the balance of power in Ethiopia’s favour.

 

That reality persuaded Siyad Barre to cut his losses and withdraw his army from the Ogaden or face a certain defeat entailing incalculable consequences.

Some Westerners refer to the outcome of the war as a victory for Ethiopia and a defeat for Somalia. It was certainly a political defeat for Somalia to the extent that it was not able to hold on to the territory in the face of the overwhelming military odds it faced. Ethiopia did not defeat the Somali army in any battle but recovered the territory on the back of the massive military help from USSR and its Cuban ally, and to the concomitant arms embargo imposed on Somalia.

 

My article is concerned mainly with recounting my own story of those glorious days in Somalia in June/July of 1977. As it was, I was an insider to the great drama unfolding in the Ogaden having been assigned as war correspondent for the BBC’s Focus on Africa just before my joining the United Nations in Geneva late 1977. In this article, I will relate my memorable observations from the war front as we followed the breathtaking sweep of the Somali army over the vast territory. Mogadishu and its glory in June 1977 is the point of departure for this story. Good stories have a happier ending but this one sadly ends with the gloom and doom engulfing Mogadishu in June 2007. It is this twist and turns of fortunes in the two periods that is the essence of the story

 

Mogadishu where it all started

 

My first ever visit to Mogadishu was in July 1967, then a relatively small sleepy town. That was the time when President Aden Abdalla Osman and his Prime Minister Abdirazaak Haji Hussein were replaced by President Abdirashiid Ali Sharmake and Prime Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Egal.

 

When I returned to Mogadishu for my second visit in June 1977 after ten years absence, I flew in for the first time with the newly established Somali Airline whose enchanting atmosphere and typically Somali bonhomie could not had been a better way for my homecoming. What struck me immediately on arrival in Mogadishu was the staggering change that took place during my absence. Not only has the capital expanded beyond recognition, but it was the social and infrastructural development, the national cohesion, the vibrant confidence and the nationalistic fervour exuding from everywhere that gripped my attention and those of the swarms of foreign media reporters who were descending on Mogadishu like me to report on the war.

 

They chose to cover the war from the Somali side rather than from Addis Ababa knowing that the winning side would be only too eager to take them to the battle zones in the Ogaden. A losing side of course would hardly be keen to permit its humiliating defeat be paraded in the international public arena. This intoxicating atmosphere in Mogadishu was only a foretaste of what I were later to experience as we set off to Godey, the crown jewel of Ethiopia’s military outposts in the territory.

 

Off to the Ogaden

 

I was among the first group of journalists to be invited in June 1977 to visit “the first “liberated” areas. Godey, captured only a week or two earlier by the “WSLF” as Somalia claimed, was our main interest. Our convoy consisted of 6 Land Rovers carrying nearly a dozen radio, press and T.V crew. In my car, which was the lead car, we had a middle aged American lady, Newsweek’s Chief bureau in Paris, an Italian journalist, one armed “WSLF” body guard (in reality a colonel from the Somali army) and a public relations official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 

As we crossed the Somali border, and before reaching Fer Fer, we came across the first visible casualty of the war: an overturned T-34 tank. It was unmistakably a Somali one as it carried the familiar Somali insignia. Since Somalia did not invade the terrotpry, as it was claiming, its tanks would not logically be there.

 

All the same, it was difficult to understand how it came to its undignified end. Perhaps the old banger might have hit a ditch in the rush to get to Fer Fer and Mustaxiil. Whatever the cause of the tank’s overturning, no one has prepared us for this surprise.. Naturally, we the Somalis in the car pretended not to have seen it. But it was a sight that was not going to escape the attention of the watchful, eagle-eyed American lady .She asked our car to be stopped and with one closer look at the object screamed:” what is this? It is a Somali tank!!”

Facing this first crisis, we remained speechless except for the man from the

 

Foreign Office. He was given a stern brief from his Minister before departure from Mogadishu to deny at all costs Somalia’s military intervention. Having no choice under the circumstances, his incredulous, knee-jerk response only made the situation worse as he officiously yelled: “No, it is not a tank, it is a tractor!!”

 

If the spectacle of the deserted tank was ignored by the rest of the accompanying press as a mere sideline distraction, it represented for the American lady reporter the perfect evidence she was looking for implicating Somalia directly in the war. Using this episode as the centre piece of her feature article in Newsweek, and mocking the Somalis for believing they can outwit the rest of the world, or pull wool over their eyes, she was the first journalist to report first hand evidence of Somalia’s military intervention. Be that as it may, her article was otherwise a damning critique of Ethiopia’s barbaric occupation and colonisation of the territory.

 

Face to face with the realities of Ethiopia’s rule

Wherever we stopped in this trip, at Fer Fer, Mustaxiil, Qalaafo and Godey, people turned out in their thousands, revelling in their newly won freedom and deafeningly venting their long pent-up hatred of their Ethiopian tormenters. Such public outpourings, and the overall realities on the ground that we witnessed here -and in other towns in the Ogaden that we were to visit in subsequent trips- have collectively conveyed a clear message to the visiting media about the true colonial nature of Ethiopia’s presence in the territory and the desire of its people for freedom and for unity with their brethren in Somalia. Almost without exception, that was a message that resonated well with the foreign media, judging by their unmistakable empathy and their supportive coverage.

 

Looking around those towns, a striking feature of the Ethiopian military garrisons in the territory was their locations. Invariably, these were located for defensive purposes on higher grounds or hilltops and at a safe distance from towns or other human settlements. Such defences were clearly not against a possible invading foreign army but against the local people. These are the hallmarks of an occupying army among hostile occupied populations.

 

The scatter of destroyed tanks, artillery pieces, burn-out military vehicles and countless unidentifiable debris; and of course captured Ethiopian prisoners, including women and children whose men left them behind in their rush to escape for their lives, were all that reminded us of the presence of the Ethiopians at these garrisons The rout of the Ethiopian army at every garrison we visited in this trip was inescapable and everywhere.

 

While the military aspects were journalistically newsworthy, no less eye-catching was the heart-rending backwardness and misery under which the people in the territory had been kept. Ethiopia has always claimed that the Somalis in the Ogaden were Ethiopians enjoying the same right as other Ethiopians in the country. But the realities on the ground were so different. In none of the towns we visited did we find the minimum basic social services or economic development: Not a single school, hospital, or roads worth mentioning.

 

Rather than being recipients of development, the Somalis in the territory were often easy prey to unpaid or ill-paid marauding Ethiopian soldiers for whom feeding on the locals, or raping their women at will, was part of a long-established Ethiopian colonial practices in the distant parts of its Empire. But they even fared far worse than others, paying the price of the century-old, deep-seated hostility between Somalis and Ethiopia. Somalia’s independence in 1960 and the quest for the liberation of other Somali territories had added to the ill-treatment of the Somalis under Ethiopia rule. The harsh colonial realities we observed in this first trip were to be found in all the other places we visited in subsequent trips

 

If one was to rank Ethiopia’s defeat among all the places we were taken to in all the trips, the capture of Jigjiga stands out, in my non-military judgement as the biggest loss of the Ethiopian army. The plains of the area all the way to Kaaraa Mardha were littered with dead Ethiopians and destroyed tanks. As we got closer to the mountains, we could hear the terrifying artillery noise perhaps close to the Town of Harar, the ultimate objective of the Somali army but which they never managed to capture as the onerous arms embargo imposed on Somalia began to deplete the fire power of the Somali army

 

Once the occupying Ethiopian forces were chased out from everywhere, apart from Harar and Dirir Dhawa, and given the absence of any lingering bonds with the territory, ethnically, linguistically, culturally and economically, there was nothing left to show that the area has ever been part of Ethiopia except for the physical colonial scars and the relics their army left behind. The media reports and their revelations exposing the true colonial nature of the relations between Addis Ababa and the Ogaden were no less bitter for Ethiopia as the military defeats themselves.

 

International relations weaknesses

The downside of Somalia’s stunning military successes was its weak international public relations. Many in the West, particularly in Europe, were sympathetic to Somalia’s historical claim to the territory, having been the ones responsible in the first place for the partitioning of the Somali homeland among themselves and Ethiopia. After all, it was a former British Foregin Minister who after the second World War called for the unity of the four Somali territories under British control: British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, the Ogaden and the NFD.

 

But whatever sympathy Somalia enjoyed, it did not extend to militarily invading its neighbour, though it would have been a totally different story if it was the much vaunted WSLF which were truly waging the liberation struggle. To counter diplomatic isolation, and the crippling arms embargo, it was all the more important for Somalia to have robust international public relations.

 

As it was, Somalia’s neglected international relations with the West were its Achilles hill. The country was emerging from years of self-imposed isolation where contact with Westerners could only be conducted at the official level but not otherwise permitted. Though the government was beginning to understand the value of getting its cause across to western opinion makers, it was hesitant to ease its repressive communist style restrictions on free speech and assembly lest they lose their tight grip on the population. In the early months of the war, it was two steps forward, one step back.

 

The charismatic Omar Arteh Qalib, who was the foreign Minister until the beginning the war, was suddenly dropped at a time when he was needed most perhaps because he was becoming too popular and effective for his own good. The post remained vacant during the first critical months of the war and was finally given to Abdurahman Jama Barre, a lacklustre, ineffectual brother of President Mohamed Siyad Barre.

 

The weaknesses of the Foreign Ministry would have mattered less if the WSLF- the principal organisation purported to be waging the war- was itself an effective functioning body. It was nothing more than a dummy and a tool serving government propaganda. Its leaders were frequently changed at the behest of President Mohamed Siyad Barre. Under the circumstances, there was no coherent explicit WSLF policy on the territorial extent of the Somali inhabited territory they were claiming to be liberating.

 

The leader of the WSLF at the time would often inform foreign reporters that their territory extended all the way to the town of Nasret - not that much far from Addis Ababa- and that it included large chunks of Sidamo and Bale regions whose Oromo inhabitants were referred to as Somali Abow much to their chagrin. His wild, preposterous claims should be seen in the context of the prevailing euphoria of those days when Somalis everywhere were intoxicated with the military successes of their army, engendering a free for all claims among ministers, high-level government officials and the public at large. Such claims did not win much kudos with the visiting reporters and did no good to the liberation cause. A good foreign minister, if Somalia had one at the time, would have counselled against such damaging excesses and would have evolved a common reference position for the guidance of all concerned.

 

Press Reports on the War

Somalia’s military intervention had both negative and positive consequences. On the negative side, an arms embargo was imposed which ultimately forced it to withdraw from the territory. On the positive side, however, was the worldwide awakening to the continued Ethiopian colonisation of the territory and the support it engendered for the yearning of the Somalis under its rule for self-determination and freedom. That positive achievement has not come about through any successful diplomatic campaign by Somalia but thanks to the foreign media who witnessed the realities of that colonisation and conveyed it to the outside world.

Unlike the Security Council’s amentable focus on legal technicalities, for the media, Somalia’s violation of the UN Charter was less important than Ethiopia’s occupation of the Somali territory and its denial of the right of its people to self determination. If there was any reservation on their part, it was against the expansionist tendencies of the Somalis to claim at times non Somali-inhabited areas that everybody else saw as Ethiopia proper.

It is worthwhile mentioning that for good historical reasons, the reporters of those days during the war, and those after them to the present day have invariably referred to the territory as the Ogaden. Look at any map of Ethiopia not issued by that government (see the one above from Google) and the Ogaden name is the one most prominently displayed. This is for good reasons. First because that is the name that the territory came to be known internationally when European and Ethiopian colonisers curved up the Somali homeland in the late 19th century and gave that particular area to Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia. But the region came to acquire much international prominence during the World Wars when Italy used it as a conduit for its invasion of Abyssinia. Since then, Somalia’s independence in 1960 and the quest for Greater Somalia had once again put the spot light on the territory as its people began to struggle for their freedom.

 

Both Ethiopia and Somalia had their own different reasons for their phobia against the Ogaden name. Losing sight of the wider picture, Somalis are allergic to it since it smacks of the clan by the same name and wrongly consider it as tantamount to the denial of other clans in the region, most of whom are late comers including my own. For Ethiopia, it kept alive unfavourable history and, in its desperate and vain effort to prevail over that history, had given the territory various names at different times. Hararghe was the official name for territory during the 1977 war. But much to its consternation, the foreign reporters would have none of it, preferring instead the region’s historical name to fake ones. In this article, I had followed that line. If the Somalis were to overlook their myopic, clan obsession, the Ogaden name much serves their national interest in their contest with Ethiopia over the territory.

 

Meeting the old warrior

 

Meeting President Mohamed Siyad Barreh after return from field visits to the war zones was much sought by the foreign press as a fitting finale to their assignment. You can say what you like about him but you have to give the devil his due There he was, the old warrior, at these special press meetings, chain smoking, and oozing presidential pride, charisma, confidence and nationalism that Somalia has not seen anything like it since him. He personified more than anyone else the mood and confidence of Somalia at the time. His English may have been poor, but he always managed to communicate his message. No one has impressed the foreign press more than him.

 

Mogadishu June 2007

 

Mogadishu’s descent from its thousand years long glory has started with the fall of the Somali state from when it remained in the hands of rapacious and egregious warlords for 15 years . They had inflicted incalculable damage on that once beautiful capital. But that has been totally eclipsed by its occupation and destruction by Ethiopia in 2007 in cahoots with its Somali collaborators. By what can only be described as wanton indiscriminate vengeance, Ethiopia razed large parts of the city to the ground and forced a third of its population to flee for their lives into the inhospitable countryside facing hunger, disease and exposure to the vagaries of the weather. Those actions would go down in the annals of Somalia’s history as its darkest days.

 

Meles Zenewi, the monster Somalia reared and pampered to bring down Mengestu Haile Marian and the Ethiopian Empire, has instead turned on his former host country with ungrateful venom and vengeance. It is a measure of his amazing feat how he succeeded to turn Somalia into a vassal state under Ethiopia’s hegemony thanks in no small measure to the support from his Somali cohorts. Under him, an old Ethiopian dream has come true and Somalis have only themselves to blame.

 

Mogadishu was Somalia’s mini Mecca. And nothing could be more humiliating than when Ethiopian soldiers desecrate the honour of our sacred capital by their mere presence, occupy former bases and posts that were once the nation’s pride, and commit heinous crimes against its occupied people. There could not be anything more insulting to the memory of the mighty Somali army of 1977 than the sight of those ramshackle clan militias masquerading as the national army and serving as camp followers for the Ethiopian army. Ethiopia’s writ now runs everywhere from the Ogaden to Somalia proper. And Meles Zenewi has installed himself as the de fact new emperor over the region. The more that gets to his ego, the more dangerous he will be.

 

Worse than the Ethiopian occupation are those Somalis who, for myopic clan interests, support and justify the occupation. And nothing could be more insulting to ones intelligence than when they argue that Ethiopia has been invited, or that their stay is only for a short period, or that its actions are for our own common good!!. What is good about colonising Somalia and destroying its capital and perpetrating genocide? It is already six months since the Ethiopians occupied Mogadishu and their departure is not in sight.

 

Those apologists for the Ethiopian occupation represent the cream of the society and include elites, former high level government officials and above all former ambassadors. It is ironic that some of those ambassadors are the very same ones who, in the days of Mohamed Siyad Barre, would ritually denounce Ethiopia at the United Nations and other forums for its incursions into Somalia.

I am not aware of what we culturally share with Ethiopians, but I do know how much we differ from them. When it comes to loyalty to ones country, we are poles apart. An Ethiopian may be anti Mengestu Haile Marian or anti Meles Zenewi but never against the interest of his country. I cannot recollect any time during the 1977 war, or any time since, when any high-level Ethiopian official ever defected to Somalia and betrayed his country. In our case, it goes from the top office holders all the way down. As someone has said, we are a nation bedevilled with traitors and turncoats.

 

Ethiopia, like all other successful invaders before it, is riding high on its sweet glory. But as history is a witness to it, there is no permanency about those successes and ultimately, all invasions end in disaster. And sooner or later, the Somali nation will rise from its moribund state and reassert itself more stronger than ever before thanks to its bitter experience over the last 16years and in particular to its traumatic experience under the Ethiopian occupation..

 

 

Osman Hassan
Email: Ohassanomar@yahoo.co.uk