Big Man Politics: The Somali Civil War

Many interstate and intrastate wars have taken place in the long history of Africa. One of the most infamous is the Somali Civil War. Since its beginning in 1991, the Somali Civil War has ravaged the lives of its citizens. It has taken the lives of an estimated 350,000 to 1,000,000 people in the process and displaced many people from their homes in the process. (Pike 2016, 1). Though many organizations have attempted to intervene such as the African Union and United Nations, there has been no progress made towards the end of the war. Due to the ongoing violence in Somalia, many considered Somalia to be one of the biggest examples of a failed state as many problems have surfaced due to the war. One of the major issues includes the fact that

Big Man politics is often characterized by the rule of a single person that is not only seen as the president, but also as the “father of the nation” (Moss 2011, 39). There are many characteristics of Big Man politics. These include personal rule, the emergence of a one-party state, and the fact that most Big Man leaders reign for a long time as seen in many cases such as Robert Mugabe (Moss 2011, 41). They are usually able to stay in power for a long time due to blatant breaking of laws on term limits and through the absence of elections due to one-party systems. However, Big Man politics creates many problems which include the disillusionment of its own citizens. As a result of the small power concentrated to the Big Man and a lack of resources, citizens have revolted against governments. One of the leaders that experienced this was Siad

To keep himself in power, he created a propaganda machine in order to instill fear into those who did not support him (Ahmed and Green 1999, 117). For those that did not support him, he created a repressive security force that would extensively limit the freedom of speech that was seen in the preceding years. He suspended the constitution of Somalia in order to freeze any limits on his term addressed in the constitution, create a socialist government and suspended other political party affiliations and installed the rule of his one-party system (Ahmed and Green 1999, 117). Despite his new installation of socialism, this would spell future problems for the status of Somalia. Due to Barre’s “socialist experiment”, a widespread famine broke out in 1974 (Ahmad and Green 1999, 118) which led to major distrust of Barre and the direction he wanted the country to head in. However, the main turning point that weakened the Barre regime was the Ogaden War which pitted Somalia and Ethiopia against one another in 1977 (Ahmed and Green 1999, 118). The results of this war included 1.3 million refugees and due to the limited resources in Somalia as a result of Barre’s consolidation of power, many turned against Barre (Ahmed and Green 1999, 118). Though I will discuss this later, many groups were formed in order to revolt against Barre due to their distrust in his leadership as a consequence of his