/soy/ - Soyjaks

Any third worlders here? ITT we explain how our country went to shit

So back when Europeans colonized Somalia during the Scramble for Africa, they ignored linguistic and ethnic Somali places and instead focused on what random parts of East Africa Britain, France and Italy got to control. They let Ethiopia control Ogaden, Brits controlled the North Somalia and Ethnic Somalis in northern Kenya, Italians controlled South Somalia and France controlled Djibouti. In 1960 after like 60ish years of European colonialism, northern Somalia declared independence from Britain, and 4 days later Italian-controlled Somalis declared independence from Italy and unified with the North. Things were going well in the 60s, we were trying to improve education across the country, building roads, infranstructure etc etc we tried our best with UN help. and we were a slow, but developing country.

However in 1969, our president got assasinated. This left a power vaccum, and shortly after, millitary commander Siad Barre took control after in a bloodless coup detat. He was a commie secularist who described his ideology as "scientific socialism". This move was welcomed due to how slow and weak the previous government was.

Siad Barre’s first 8 years were amazing and effective. He heavily expanded the somali military, the passport under him actually meant something, he improved agriculture, improved the economy, ran one of the most sucessful literacy campaigns in world history by adopting the latin script and teaching the entire country (similar to ataturk) and made efforts to modernize the country. He also supported women’s rights heavily. Literally everything. He treated all somalis equally no matter the clan, and built one of the strongest armies in Africa. We were looked up across africa as an inspiration.

Randomly, one day in 1977 he decided he wanted to achieve Greater Somalia by invading Ogaden (Entierty of west ethiopia), a region with mainly ethnic Somalis as shown in the map. The Ethiopians needed like a gorillion different countries to stop us, and the soviets switched sides, with america backing us now.

We eventually lost the war, and it hit our economy and military really badly. Somalis began turning against Barre.

His response? Xe completely changed. He quit the scientific socialism ideology, and became an extreme tribalist opressing Hawiye, Isaaq etc. denying certain clans government jobs. The Isaaq protested and threatened to secede, and Siad Barre absolutely carpet bombed Hargeisa to the ground, denying food, electricity to the 2nd biggest city in Somalia. Around 100k-ish were killed. The Isaaq had enough and declared independence in 1991 making a state called Somaliland. Around this era Somalia became absolute chaos, eventually creating the civil war, leading to millions of somalis leaving the country and taking refuge, or being displaced in kenya and ethiopia.