Somalia: The Forgotten Story | Al Jazeera World

Civil War warlords famine pirates all images most commonly associated with Somalia in people's minds the country once labeled the Switzerland of Africa has suffered a steady and tragic decline for decades but we need the prolonged suffering and chaos is a land rich in history and heritage and the people struggling to maintain a semblance of normality in the absence of estates in the Horn of Africa Somalia is the continents most easterly country it has the longest coastline in mainland Africa stretching more than 3,000 kilometers along the Indian Ocean the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea it's location turned Somalia into a strategically important trading center in the ancient world but the history of Somalia dates back much further to some of the earliest human settlements in the world these cave images of a life of herding in the last Gale wall paintings in northwestern Somalia are estimated to date back between three and six thousand years BCE they're the first chapter in Somalia's now largely forgotten story we're just known for being skinny and pirates we're not known for having you know a strong history a strong culture we're not known for the things that we know ourselves about it they're probably not even known by Somalis you can walk you can you can walk around here and see the history of just this nut town itself we have a very very deep long history that you know even Somalis are unaware of and that's a shame I think if you look at the other orange and you say well this has sort of a blemishes okay so it might not taste too well so you can throw it away but if you actually take the husk out and you look there are no blemishes inside and it's sweet and juicy okay and so if you look at what has happened to some other people the tragedy that has befallen them in the last twenty five years or so so these people are sort of a rubbish okay but if you go to Mogadishu if you go to her gay save you go to gutter wife you go to kiss my and you go to schools that ordinary people have put together those young and women in those schools are more eager to learn than my students here at the University of Minnesota Somali is emerging from a very long difficult period and we are now moving away from the caius instability extremism piracy to an era of peaceful and development around 12 million Somalis most of them herders farmers and fishermen live in the country's 600,000 square kilometers despite being a member of the Arab League Somalia's main language is Somali the only Arabic speakers are people who studied the language or lived in Arab countries it always makes me very cross when I hear some official somewhere saying Syria is the next Somalia or Libya is the next Somalia or Aleppo is mugged issue but you hear that smile is behind become a catch word for the most disastrous chaotic violent terrible state with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 Somalia strategic location became even more significant being at the intersection of Africa and Asia did not go unnoticed in the West in 1884 the United States and thirteen European countries met in Berlin their aim to divide the African continent between them they divided what we know as Somalia into three provinces each ruled by a different European country British Somalia Italian Somalia and French Somalia the mainly Somali region of Ogaden was taken by the Ethiopian Empire and the NFD by Kenya the incredible thing about Somalia is that if you go way back in its history it's always been either fought over or had foreign powers intervening in some way both British and Italian Somalia gained independence in 1960 french somalia voted to remain under French rule despite accusations of ballot rigging but later voted firmly for independence in 1977 and became Djibouti the former British and Italian territories immediately United forming Greater Somalia on the 1st of January 1960 Somalis elected atom of the lost man as the first president of the United he ruled for 7 years and was succeeded after a free and peaceful election by Abdul Rashid Ali Shah Rukh Khan this was when Somalia's peace and stability earned it the nickname the Switzerland of Africa however corruption was rife and frustration began to mount char marca ruled for two years but he was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards on the fifteenth of October 1969 and succeeded by Prime Minister Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein he ruled for just six days before being overthrown in a military coup it was led by general C ad vari who would be the dominant figure in Somalia for the next two decades Somalia's experiment in democracy was over the rifle not the ballot box would now govern the country Bari dissolved parliament suspended the Constitution banned political parties arrested politicians and limited press freedom we had only accepted the undead from da dong there was a downward trend and so re everything after the MP that is integration and every time things were going down the military regime was becoming more brutal and more dictator so people were arrested robots were confiscated without compensation any ship that brings you know material to Barbara the materials under G were confiscated by the Siad Barre regime with no composition so things were getting worse and worse baris government was supported by the two superpowers of the day the United States and the Soviet Union it built the country's infrastructure and radically improved literacy but in 1977 bar a made a move to take the auger tin region which was majority Somali from his neighbor Ethiopia I think what the Ogaden war was about was actually staking a claim to a to a more realistic border which did not comply with the colonial border the colonial border was the line across the map the real border was what the Somalis tried to establish and of course you remember it was it was a very strange war because she had very pretended that it was not a war being fought by the Somali army but was being fought by the Western Somali Liberation Front which didn't really exist at all I mean you know we went out to try and find the Western Somali Liberation Front and we discovered a cross that their tanks their armored cars were all Somali military vehicles with just a bit of paint on them saying WS LF you know I mean so the whole thing was was a fiction of course what was a fact was that the Somalis wanted their territory wanted what was naturally organically Somalia but that Siad Barre did not want to be seen to be fighting for that himself Jon Snow News at Ten [ __ ] [ __ ] however the Somali army was forced to withdraw when the Soviet Union sided with Ethiopia in the conflict the army came back demoralized defeated after defending were victorious that what was one these Somalis nationalism became something of the past clans came up Warlord's came up the fashions came up lidge's groups chemo opposition to the military government increased encouraged by ethiopia tribes in the north rejected baris dictatorship he turned his rockets and warplanes on them and attacked her Gaza the capital of former British Somalia in may 1988 killing thousands of northern Somalis in 1991 the southern and northern tribes armed by Ethiopia moved to overthrow Bari the generals grip on power had weakened and his allies had abandoned him at the time the government fell at the end in 1991 neither the Soviet Union nor the United States was was backing ciub are they they both had given up on him even if SIA berry tried over those decades of rule to ban the clan what happened to Siad Barre was that he eventually actually used clan politics to try to dominate the whole territory and he marginalised some clans and promoted others so the way in which he eventually fell from power was clans rose up against him and kicked him out former British Somalia declared its independence from Greater Somalia it calls itself the Republic of Somaliland but has little international recognition even today the rest what had been Italian Somalia became the Federal Republic of Somalia see akbari was gone al-ahmadi became temporary president but was opposed by General Mohamed Farah high tides the two fought for 4 months as ceasefire was agreed but the civil war continues today Oh yeah if yet but I was to leave power two years earlier and said now somalis you have to organize in new elections and I would be happy to leave none of this would have happened but when he brutalized different groups of people in different parts of the country people were just literally mindlessly wants to get rid of him but they never thought of what was going to come and the leaders who were leading them against he had barfi were singing the music of sectarianism rather than cease is sort of a the music of commonality and brother I think most people in the international community believed that Somalia became a failed state in 1991 with the collapse of the CI bari government which had been in power since 1969 and many governments have failed around the world that is not unique however in this case there was no replacement government I usually use the word collapse the state rather than a failed state in large measure because it's the government that has collapsed rather than the state of affairs for the whole country this is a country at one point that was the best democratic country in Africa now it has become in a sense two wars because it has there has been no government in place for 25 years and so the absence of government means there are no public schools there are no public security services there are no public health facilities there are no public sort of environmental protection there are no infrastructure that's being built by the state so the absence of the state means that the government has collapsed but society is trying to make a life in the midst of that madness because of the nature of the Somali people and because the fact that they have been a nation prior the formation of the state the modern state system has collapsed but the nation itself did not collapse and the people have managed manage to understand that it has been documented it has been talked about it has been elaborated the case that Somalia is teaching well presumably that they can live without a state so I think they have shown something totally different than what was expected to come up maybe somalia has had a failed political system failed government but it's not a failed society so many things work in Somalia better than they do in lots of other countries they have one of the most cheap and efficient telecommunication system in the world there immittance system is incredible you can pay mobile payments in in Somalia that you can't do here you can go to get your petrol you just pay by your phone it's very sophisticated and successful in lots of ways so I think it's wrong to call it a failed state to have a stage is important because now anybody can come the country whatever name they come whether they are coming for Operation Restore hope whether they are coming for Amazon Africans looking for the best and whatever name they commit the good thing about the state is state controls the security of the country but the good thing about being a Somali is that despite all that they have you know exhibited remarkable resilience and work and dynamics the civil war caused widespread famine the UN sent humanitarian aid but both the famine and the civil war dragged on Somalia was unable to prevent foreign forces entering the conflicts imagine seven thousand tons of food aid literally bursting out of a warehouse on a dock in Mogadishu while Somalis starve less than a kilometer away because relief workers cannot run the gauntlet of armed gangs roving the city confronted with these conditions relief groups called for outside troops to provide security so they could feed people it's now clear that military support is necessary to ensure the safe delivery of the food Somalis need to survive so in December 1992 the u.s. launched a military operation on the pretext of protecting the UN humanitarian effort in 1993 US forces tried to capture self proclaimed president Aidid resulting in the Battle of Mogadishu but the operation failed two American helicopters were shot down and their crews dragged through the streets around a thousand Somalis and 18 Americans were killed in the violence this past weekend we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of our American soldiers and displayed a captured American pilot all of them soldiers who were taking part in an international effort to end the starvation of the Somali people themselves these tragic events raised hard questions about our effort in Somalia when will our people come home American troops had withdrawn from Somalia by March 1994 fighting continued between the rival Somali militias as they splintered into more and more different factions in 2004 a us-backed transitional government was formed but it ran into opposition from the Islamic Courts Union the ICU this was a group of Sharia Courts that United to form a rival government it made major gains in 2006 taking control of almost the entire south of the country including the capital Mogadishu it also reopened the air and sea ports after over a decade if he Opia intervened to prop up the transitional government it managed to rollback the Islamic Courts Union and finally retook Mogadishu in December 2006 the ICU was weakened and forced to the south in 2007 the UN deployed a combined African Union peacekeeping force called AMISOM Ethiopia sent in its own troops along with those of the African Union but M asam's reputation suffered when Human Rights Watch accused it of several abuses including sexual assault and civilian killings this reinforced the view of many Somalis that M asam was an invading force an occupation by stealth they also saw Ethiopia as funding clans and sub-clans too so division and prolong the conflict as the ICU became marginalized a more radical splinter group emerged al-shabaab prepared to use violence it took control of vast waves of the South of Somalia Gaetano my son okay pieces OMI mark applause coma slim Callaghan Hubbell got a Harlequin Alan come on time do not grieve you never know Louie I wonder ooh so do they I know going in in month Annika kuma dueling it will be Okuma dueling a [ __ ] kiyokawa dueling and ago hand yoga master ah see my shampoo - a roger goodell my Matt Holliday tanana go hannes codify ionically nya I don't usually or bernanke the areas under Al Shabab control became more stable but in 2011 a foreign power intervened again this time can Yelp more than half a century on from independence Somalia was once again at the mercy of a foreign army coming up in part two Somalis turned to piracy to protect the rich waters from illegal fishing a group of youngsters in the little village in Portland fed up with the activities of these illegal fishing companies order the ship one day to protest and they were told until what do you need to go away they were given money that was how it began when Somalia freed itself from colonial rule in 1960 its future seemed bright it was peaceful and stable had free and fair elections and its geographical position in the world was commercially important but when Siad Baris 22-year dictatorship ended in 1991 the country was plunged into an interminable civil war a UN peacekeeping force called AMISOM was deployed but it was accused of abusing its powers and its reputation plummeted the presence of foreign forces was a problem for many Somalis and the constant conflict also badly affected the economy example cabbage clean your thumb and other and I know quite greater now can come out of it by a balcony makan and to know didn't hate it yeah you good buddy I know Lamont and little key for I got Theresa well the Intel qu body I am where control key Sahara wearable cool legacy ste a yeah n Alonso ruby in Tasso Camilla or borrow laga ke to be allocating yeah affordable crew who night yeah in a market Donbas Darden bodyguard olu olu olu I believe she well the market or a local agree to a multitude item at Italia Sade in addition the legs will anchor seen the delay enemy shukran yeah doc you on the Carol Haney do Ludhiana trav sorry no day and hay de Rojo Amarillo muy re Jelena you know widget a Quattro fine Casa yellow hell the food supplied by eight agencies was sometimes unfit for human consumption some saw the West as simply offloading excess produce rather than providing genuine help but Somali fishermen also had problems foreign vessels began encroaching on their waters leading to an even more dangerous development piracy ha ha ha gingka Tibetan food of my era marked ahead Robert Markey Markey oh now I could be had the other market that hello mister I but they could never kill away in Oh Maura heap sheesh a fellow magician at the epidemic Oh hiya fella P Kalama say Bobby inch or do you gbn ordered a beer Bhola Kosovan half a spoon over to that column esta es que differ and maraquita sir otaku Coloma Sinisa a marquis de Bracy mera hippie column ACL graft a dub okay Judy Cheryl to deal a bubble or muscle hot body but the LaBrie Iowa Hague Austin in a kadhai gala man okay Libyan a Marcus inna Oaxaca de la fille Bradbury Anna Maria credit measure will resume my clarity hey-ay headache and then I bought us it all started for me when I went to a region in Somaliland called Sanok and the little village a little fishing village on the coast where my my family came from and the first time I went there it was wonderful obviously I only saw what people wanted me to see but as I started to go there on a regular basis annually I noticed that the the fishermen and their activity was getting less and less and less and less and I noticed at the same time that in the far horizon there would be these big foreign boats mother ships with their little tenders crawling around the sea scooping up all the fish and the activity of the Somaliland is getting less and less ease and at the same time what was happening was the growth of piracy on the Somali coast and that was the headline news the piracy the Somali pirates Oh a group of youngsters in the little village in Portland and they fed up with the the activities of these illegal illegal fishes fishing companies boarded the ship one day to protest and they were told they told what do you need to go away they were given money that was how it began and of course it then escalated into a proper proper long-term business with many people benefiting from a goof-off toward donkey do we know if after the birth of the externality hello miss acacia Ned Narada mercury atom kazoo guru MIDI Marah keep the garlic in a envelope defied a defiant Bradman define America today define a another I could define an iron but then in ecology and saloon Iligan was a scientist well could you run my Moroccan salad but dog food an international community talks about Somali pirates there are four kinds of pirates if you study this and the most costly pirates are not the Somalis who hijacked ships are the Italians they Spaniards the Belgium's sort of a Chinese the Indians the Tanzanians the Egyptians and everybody else who is looting the Somali waters and guess how much they take away every year in free fish have a billion dollars every year and so the country is big enough and rich enough to be able to provide a decent livelihood for all of its citizens if it's managed properly for the international community neighbors don't want Somalia to stand on its foes they want some unease to be needy and to be beggars let me cut the month I'm shagging a nine in the bottle discovered by heavy or Alan measure to the Columbus ticket in MIDI and Marcus a doin imma get you an silane hardly mother F caucus at em what you saw an idea I'm a lot whatever collision any I don't know got a between moronic idea Liberty hey see that kick hello mr. tada a hobby okay sir are a devoted economists Aloha Silla Bradbury and the mother your maracas francesc a a certain impedance global can vanadium Miguel Almaguer kill any cash in a Monica columnist Ann its lot diverted excellent listener a cooler daddy Islam eagerly the mood to show a hunter so on corrosive karna and murky terrible go ahead every Roman cognition laboratory not local Shanta Hollister having cue Halas okay a tolerance a heavenly moon i'ma could see the Louisville Louisville Tirana telephone Kelly okay aldehyde guna but the Lord will appear or her blue habit doing a poodle heaven happily doing committee I'll carry her will have EFT car Neil Tyrell McKay had a lobby to Monica she loved is to not a free to engagement a Vulcan come back article of limo I think ohon Tecna me Loretta almond mocha body al Kazan she begins elegantly the ratio see holy use our facility hunk a sardonic erotic Miguel move the show to see the Sarah era burka al khazneh uncle Okolona gouache of Akutan 11 a middle a turkey a notional Shivaji Nagar una no assassin no hurry any an ago Noah the kana am west una pluma didn't intend 100 n the heart there you go Annika about your bar Malamud ahamill Muslim so the corrupt Assad sahaja burka hello combat about oh god I wish I could really do to reboot this all the very weak ecologically obsolete anger a cigars a gordita Donetsk assault oh I guess a lot about the higher-value have to imitate duty so violent intervention aroma do to the ratio the woman honor duty when I got those horrible so I'm not a man he'll a alhamdulillah and gets him the other : I'm gonna go shoddy I'm Hoshi on with an A and linen I also jennyline hopefully a superb seasoning she worked in a level one at the moment i or element a shadow know the messy lavada dealer see tomorrow's moisturize pala blanco should I see anyone complain butanol Canada on earth okey-dokey RSS we have EFT markets where the Osaka I know we hung the hand cook and cook couple all night in on marinas Koran Virgilia know you heard the Columbia see and we're getting diverted assalamu alikum - were regarded as an atom night then i am julian sketch - in Coloma see aeronite at the other one i had cast o acaba captain oh hang out soon in in a Arrington waking up pan for zona zona local Oh mister eurozone Holly Holly oh no a Hagan la do a Actium hair to a zone election like a lolly the kid the yearbook eurozone economies en la casa o morado bein a Lexington intern - and later - hello mr. da it doesn't a lie the piracy problem has largely ended and as a result you're now starting to see the return of some of the illegal foreign fishing going on which is an unfortunate development and it's up to the international community in my view to try to ensure that that come to an end in some cases the the foreign fishing vessels are interacting with local Somali officials basically buying them off in order to get permission to fish in these very rich Somali waters with the longest coastline in mainland Africa these fishing waters are crucial for Somalis and Somalia Berbera in the Republic of Somaliland is the main port for the export of livestock to the Arabian Gulf and North Africa these exports represent 65% of the national income of Somaliland the breakaway state to the north of Somalia that declared independence after the fall of sea at Bari Marga dakedo movie mode will be good hi Africa bamaca Lego Kwakiutl armor imbued - who do vodka American tomahto Oh Lozado Chile I am rahiba young camerton Lozado to create the kingdom to sober arakata let's a load of creosote a crescendo he murmured Dorian al-qaeda Keira creme de kado fiela also Elodie a cup of them I Moran I was so done okay doing pájaro Fischer Helena 24 hours have a mantle decay delegate de Mayo Emmanuel Vasa da Mahalo Aloha leash on our tuna whole alone orale Oh Gilly or Laura Halloween Havoc up convey the layoffs are new to finish king muhuali Rado Herrick hayabasa agus Mercado goober on our new look at the row when we were accidents working to hit the proprietor star it's a bridge between Africa and the Middle East much of the oil that comes from the Gulf passes through Babel mended between Djibouti and Yemen Somalia is sitting at that gate everything that comes from the Suez Canal has to run by Somalia to the east all the commodities that are brought from China and Taiwan and Korea and Singapore and Malaysia that's going to Europe transfer to the doorstep of the Somalis okay so geographically it's a very very strategic location da da da ha su Maryland wall of Roberta Takeda Barbara wolf lever to cook you see I in Kabul Kiva for the Las Animas didn't I had a challah budget to Maryland Barbara is one of the main reasons Somaliland has achieved a greater degree of prosperity and security then central and southern Somalia but Somaliland has yet to receive universal international recognition and so receives very little international aids at the Unown height here Somaliland i'm bond nitrogen carry Keisha abandon I and they wouldn't dare Salam in soon external Rahu I'd sooner Senora oh you re my Tagalog official own Reza I need each tank we do the deed without their entire Arab Sara Traffic Unit yer - kovanda malasiya a day later Kolubara SIA Oh Mahalo Maria Cara estilo ha stole a bientot and Mecca wire off reboot Cudahy danilot summary I am so glad I seen earlier all year what are you so Somaliland even though it is documented it is admire it is studied but also it's not recognized they rebuilt that territory on their own nobody's recognized them they've had very little international help they did it from the bottom up they devised the political system you don't get a penny of up support of aid from the other nations because they say once we don't recognize you it has to come to us from alia and we say anything that comes Somalia we don't want it to keep we can be a survive we survived for 200 years now we can survive another 10 20 years we are independent are you dependent it doesn't matter whether they recognize us or not we're in depends we have got over flat we have got our army they've got over please we have got our offices we are independent lakeil and aconcagua cam degree over Sharia de ganancia Oh danke Giavotella with me well Bangu gonna connect dirty words anti in the medieval acosta listen I'm live a workable yeah o karna Hassan wicked Cinderella guanabana in a motor controller module donor electron donor Laura travel yeah and I die Elena he could do look the net refundable in allocating to do you go eight hours Chuck - yeah the mine I remind you tomorrow Bahia ah whatever Felix he has of the government people except that it was obviously the peace we have here is people own the government want people on people with peace there is traditional mechanisms of subtle and clan be speeds and that was for Maryland engaged hello a traditional look blended with Islamic law so they come out of all that they built a bottom-up approach the build a state and a piece we had elections or the elections here to zero time we had local government elections to Zarate crescent elections to 0-5 parallel elections to zero time present elections I was a minister violence of the last government we lost election and the other part could be a came to power and presence now via plan and you see the students of tomorrow a comedian too serious a cigar partially assessing idea vanilla sauce a la Vodafone EDD schools of tomorrow what I love living in table health which ran a burger Shiva Somaliland wha-ha-ha-ha-ha Bonilla hand here so Mel Elena upon Judah and Natalya Hoda in your cat adorable hooray any mother if Somaliland you bushu in Somaliland upon te le robertiello an accent yet her Vidya Lagoon accent in a class our son you see the more collaborative come by assessment Duke's ago Sarah parish Allah are you serious Mutasa wickedy hey MNH go Brad assume la novia Yosef lemon tree darada Oh Hawaii and last Co and cabassa ministries um Ellen how Hollywood here Duke see we have a and medium kids who are English hallelujah we have do sigue health you see hi are dengue noirish et le or Avanti Medicaid hello in ooh Turbie idea ha ha and la dee dee [ __ ] hide in ooh hello slumber Canada Thank You Somali he didn't he Nina in winter before the castle new cigarette floor I will meet you too waha help odum vanna vazhi 70 waha comida this way a show and room to July table Boudinot Amica will eat a br in a siddha mr. no no hoshi sentai muhammad yousuf Gemma's optimism is encouraging but Somalia's future is still uncertain while there is government Al Shabaab still controls many parts of the country and clan militias compete with one another for power the Civil War caused hundreds of thousands of Somalis to seek refuge in the West at the time I was 5 years old we had to flee our country immediately because of the war and Ken to Kenya the refugee camps in the neighboring country of Kenya and I knew even though I'm subject age something was going on I could hear you know shootings and you can see all these people traveling and trying to run away too and you hear the stories of the elders telling us about there was a civil war going on people getting killed in the next episode of Somalia The Forgotten story

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 1,247,833

Keywords: somalia, Hamza Ashrif, Al Jazeera World, Al Jazeera English, General Siad Barre, aljazeera english, aljazeera, somalia documentary, al jazeera documentary, al jazeera documentary english, somali documentary, history of somalia, somalia the forgotten story, somalia history, gulf of aden, poverty, al-shabab, somalia al jazeera, somalia forgotten story, Somalia's modern history, somalia civil war 1991, somalia civil war explained, somalia independence day, colonisation, refugee

Id: -io_RfLBpgc

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2016