Issue No. 878

This is the first editorial in a series of introductory reading lists on Somalia and the Horn of Africa, with an emphasis on security, politics, and economics. Please do contact us if there are works that you believe deserve inclusion in future lists. 

A Beginner's Reading List For Somalia

September heralds a change of guard amongst diplomats and aid workers assigned to Somalia, and with them request for primers about their new mission. Somalia’s rich culture, byzantine political economy, and intractable security dilemmas render it one of the most impenetrable contexts for outsiders to decipher. Whether it is the nuanced ways in which clan dynamics pervade public life, the kaleidoscopic nature of alliances and enmities, or the opaque Islamist movements that compete to shape their nation’s future, it can be daunting, to say the least, for those new to Somalia and the region. The Somali Wire team is therefore offering a small selection of introductory works and essays for those new to the extraordinarily vibrant nation and people of Somalia – and perhaps some motivation to more seasoned observers to catch up on their reading. By no means exhaustive, the reading below is intended to outline some of the better-known works on Somalia, by non-Somalis and Somalis alike.

Perhaps there is nowhere else to start but with the seminal work of the renowned Scottish Professor Ioan M. Lewis's 'A History of the Somali.' Originally published in 1965, it has been repeatedly updated and remains pre-eminent in the analyses of Somali society. Tracing the Somali people from the precolonial era across Italian and British rule, and through independence in 1960 to the Siyaad Barre dictatorship, Lewis asserts the primacy of clan. He argues that kinship ties are responsible for the country's enduring struggle to build a cohesive national identity around a state, and durable institutions of government. In turn, some have criticised Lewis for this centring of clan within his analysis, but the academic is nevertheless a brilliant and nuanced writer, with a great affinity for the Somali people.

Saadia Touval's 'Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa,' published in 1963, was one of the first major scholarly works on Somali nationalism, dissecting the partition under the British, Italian, French, Ethiopian, and Kenyan governments, which shaped modern Somali identity. Touval's work endeavours to describe how the optimism of Somali nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s began to come apart at the seams in the immediate post-colonial era.

Sticking with the theme of society and insights into Somalia's distinct culture are two more famous works, Said Samatar's 'Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism' from 1982 and 'Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis' by Gerald Hanley, which narrates the author's time as a British soldier in northern Somalia during World War II. Samatar, a titan of Somali studies, analyses the poetry of the historical Dervish leader, ‘Sayyid’ Muhammad Abdallah Hasan, whose forces resisted the British and Ethiopian presence in Somali territory, earning the ‘Mad Mullah’ an almost mythical – but fiercely contested – status as nationalist icon. Samatar reflects on the oral nature of Somali society-- the language did not have an official script until 1972-- and how poetic forms like Gabay were wielded for political mobilisation. Hanley’s text has not aged quite as well, but his prose is eminently readable and atmospheric, with engrossing descriptions of the heat and boredom of his remote station in northern Somalia. However, it is a product of its time, with many of Hanley’s characterisations of Somalis verging on the colonial.

'The Somali Dilemma: Nation in Search of a State,' co-authored by Said Samatar and David Laitin, exquisitely captures the tension between Somalia as a state, and the supranational identity shared by Somali people through the Horn of Africa. The book's central argument is that Somalis have always been bound by a powerful cultural-linguistic nationhood, but that attempts to establish a functional 'state' and its institutions have floundered. The work explores Somalia's political culture, exposing the contradictions between a shared language and religion and the enduring clan divisions, as well as the nationalist project. Written in the final months of the faltering Barre dictatorship, the authors aptly spell out some of the complexities of reconciling such a powerful identity with modern state-building. It remains a seminal text for all those working on Somali affairs.

Sticking with the latter years of the Barre regime and the decline into state collapse, Ahmed I. Samatar captures another key flashpoint in 1991-- 'Somalia: A Nation in Turmoil.' In his book, Samatar cogently captures how years of militarisation and corruption had brought the country to its knees before its rapid unravelling. And in this vein, any reading list would surely be incomplete without the much-respected Hussein M. Adam's 'Militarism and Warlordism: Rethinking the Somali Political Experience' from 1993, which challenges conventional accounts of Somalia's collapse. He argues that the descent into warlordism was not driven by clannism, but rather the result of Siyaad Barre's militarisation.

It would be remiss to discuss the literature of the 'state collapse' years without Lee Cassanelli and Catherine Besteman's 'The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War' from 1996. Providing a scything anthropological and political analysis of the internecine clan violence of the fertile Juba and Shabelle river valleys, the authors delve into the land appropriation and the pernicious clan identity manipulation by Barre. Among other topics, Cassanelli and Besteman explore how forces empowered by Mogadishu fuelled the violence against Digil-Mirifle agro-pastoralist communities and in south-central Somalia during the 1990s. Many of the insights remain essential today for understanding the enduring clan violence and patterns of internal displacement throughout south-central Somalia.

Matt Bryden's 'New Hope for Somalia? The Building Block Approach' essay at the end of the calamitous 1990s is an examination of the attempts to rebuild Somalia through empowering clan-based autonomous 'building block' administrations like Puntland and Somaliland. It is another seminal essay, and a key reference point for anyone to understand the origins of Somalia's federal system. Sticking with the federal theme, written in the early 2000s, Maria Brons 'Somalia: Security, Sovereignty and the State' captures the emergence of these regional administrations that informed Somalia's evolution towards federalism, and is still relevant to understanding Somalia's 'uncentralised' political character. Her central thesis is that authority in Somalia became devolved after the collapse of the Barre regime, with state functions violently dispersed, and local, clan-based entities — such as Puntland and Somaliland — stepping into the vacuum. Such an analysis prefigures Somalia's federal model, and why successive attempts to centralise the country — including the continuing efforts by the incumbent administration of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud —have failed.

In 2004, Ken Menkhaus's 'State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism' was released, another seminal work in the 21st century that goes beyond the binaries of the 9/11-era' state collapse' and terrorist safe havens. The fungible, perpetually negotiated nature of authority and power is paramount within Menkhaus's writing, as he similarly emphasises hybrid governance-- dubbing it 'mediated statehood.' Another shorter paper, 'Governance without Government in Somalia' by Menkhaus in 2007 in International Security, remains hugely insightful as well, arguing that despite the core's collapse, a range of other informal, clan-based, and religious formations stepped in, pushing back against simplistic notions of anarchy to a 'governance without government' mechanisms.

Moving on to Islamist groups of this era, and for those looking for some shorter but essential reading, the International Crisis Group’s couplet, 'Somalia's Islamists' (2005) and ‘Somalia’s Divided Islamists’ (2010), map out the evolution of Islamist groups from the collapse of the Barre regime through the late 2000s. They moves beyond the broad brush depictions of Islamist movements as monolithic, casting al-Itihaad al-Islamiya and the heterogeneous ‘Islamic Courts Union’ in their clan and ideological contexts. Stig Jarle Hansen's 'Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group' remains the definitive academic study of Al-Shabaab, delving into its origins and development, but Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph's 'Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda's Most Powerful Ally' from 2018 makes for key reading as well. 

Lastly, for readers looking to Somalia’s future, Prof. Afyare Elmi’s ‘Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding’ offers an optimistic, but grounded, perspective on the prospects for recovery. Only in the context of state building, he argues, can the long process of peace making truly unfold.

There are, of course, too many works to list here, but we hope that this list may provide some initial insight into the rich history and complex politics of Somalia. There will be more reading lists to follow, to provide more in-depth resources for specialists and enthusiasts. In the meantime, please let us know if there are any topics you would like us to present in future, and enjoy your reading!

The Somalia Wire Team