Military history of Somalia
In the early Middle Ages, the Ajuran Empire expanded its territories and established its hegemonic rule through a skillful combination of warfare, trade linkages and alliances,[1] and defeated the Portuguese many times in the Indian Ocean.
The early modern period saw the rise and fall of the Gobroon Dynasty, a southern military power that successfully subdued the Bardera militant's and forced the Omanis to pay tribute.
These competing influences gave birth to the Dervish State, a polity wherein the monarch was Diiriye Guure, whilst its emir was Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan ("The Mad Mullah").
Many similar battles were fought between the Adalites and the Solomonids with both sides achieving victory and suffering defeat but ultimately Sultan Sabr ad-Din II successfully managed to drive the Solomonic army out of Adal territory.
[13] The Portuguese had been in the area earlier in early 16th centuries (in search of the legendary priest-king Prester John), and although a diplomatic mission from Portugal, led by Rodrigo de Lima, had failed to improve relations between the countries, they responded to the Ethiopian pleas for help and sent a military expedition to their fellow Christians.
[17] Over the next several decades Somali-Portuguese tensions remained high and the increased contact between Somali sailors and Ottoman corsairs worried the Portuguese who sent a punitive expedition against Mogadishu under João de Sepúlveda, which was unsuccessful.
The British, Italians and Ethiopians partitioned Greater Somalia into spheres of influence, cutting into the previous nomadic grazing system and Somali civilizational network that connected port cities with those of the interior.
With the establishment of important Muslim orders headed by Somali scholars such as Shaykh Abd Al-Rahman bin Ahmad al-Zayla'i and Uways al-Barawi, a rebirth of Islam in East Africa was soon afoot.
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a former nomad boy that had traveled to many Muslim centers in the Islamic world, returned to Somalia as a grown man and began promoting the Salihiya order in the urban cities and the interior where he found major success.
Given the defeat of the Dervish movement in the early 1920s and the rise of fascism in Europe, on 10 July 1925 Mussolini gave the green light to De Vecchi to start the takeover of the north-eastern sultanates.
In the pre-dawn darkness they moved silently and unseen almost up to the Transvaal Scottish line, before the glimmer of daybreak revealed to the waiting South Africans scores of crouching figures clearly silhouetted against the glow of the eastern sky....
With great gallantry the enemy came on again and again in the face of withering fire....Italian officers, with admirable courage, rallied their men and themselves mounted machine-guns on the open plain without cover of any sort to add their fire to the unequal contest against the Bren-and Vickers-gunners in the Transvaal Scottish bridgehead....it was said by the defenders of the (British) bridgehead that of the attacking force of half a battalion not one returned to Jumbo[41]Additionally during WW2 many Somali troops fought in the so-called Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali of the Italian Empire.
On 16 June 1963, Somali guerrillas started an insurgency at Hodayo, in eastern Ethiopia, a watering place north of Werder, after Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie rejected their demand for self-government in the Ogaden.
At the end of the month, the two sides signed an accord in Khartoum, Sudan, agreeing to withdraw their troops from the border, cease hostile propaganda, and start peace negotiations.
The province thus entered a period of running skirmishes between the Kenyan Army and the Northern Frontier District Liberation Movement (NFDLM) insurgents backed by the Somali Republic.
The Manyatta strategy is seen as playing a key role in ending the insurgency, though the Somali government may have also decided that the potential benefits of a war simply was not worth the cost and risk.
[50] Shermarke's assassination was quickly followed by a military coup d'état on October 21, 1969 (the day after his funeral), in which the Somali Army seized power without encountering armed opposition — essentially a bloodless takeover.
[52] The SRC subsequently renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic,[53][54] arrested members of the former government, banned political parties,[55] dissolved the parliament and the Supreme Court, and suspended the constitution.
[1] When Idi Amin toppled Ugandan President Milton Obote through a military coup, Somalia and several countries in East Africa refused to recognise the new regime.
Behind the scenes the militaries of Tanzania, Sudan and Somalia had co-operated and contemplated to send a joint force of several thousand troops through the Kagera Salient into Uganda to topple Amin.
On 27 June 1977, President Kenneth David Kaunda speaking to a crowd of Zambians in Lusaka announced that Somalia's armed forces were prepared to aid his country against the Rhodesians.
The South African government also hoped to secure a position as an armaments supplier for the Somali military, with a view toward using Somalia as an entree into the Middle Eastern weapons market.
Soviet military aid (second in magnitude only to the October 1973 gigantic resupplying of Syrian forces during the Yom Kippur War) and advisors flooded into the country along with around 15,000 Cuban combat troops.
The local defenders were no match for the assaulting Somalis and the Ethiopian military was forced to withdraw past the strategic strongpoint of the Marda Pass, halfway between Jijiga and Harar.
However, the Somalis were unable to press their advantage because of the high attrition on its tank battalions, constant Ethiopian air attacks on their supply lines, and the onset of the rainy season which made the dirt roads unusable.
From October 1977 until January 1978, the SNA-WSLF forces attempted to capture Harar, where 40,000 Ethiopians had regrouped and re-armed with Soviet-supplied artillery and armor; backed by 1500 Soviet "advisors" and 11,000 Cuban soldiers, they engaged the attackers in vicious fighting.
Recognizing that his position was untenable, Siad Barre ordered the SNA to retreat back into Somalia on 9 March 1978, although Rene LaFort claims that the Somalis, having foreseen the inevitable, had already withdrawn its heavy weapons.
After a SNA force infiltrated the Ogaden, joined with the WSLF and attacked an Ethiopian army unit outside Shilabo, about 150 kilometers northwest of Beled weyne, Ethiopia retaliated by launching an operation against Somalia.
The EPLF leaders and members were given Somali passports to travel the world in search of education and jobs to finance the movement, and to increase political support for their liberation struggle from other countries.
[73] Following the Marxist–Leninist coup in Ethiopia in 1974 which toppled its ancient monarchy, the Ethiopians enjoyed Soviet Union support until the end of the 1980s, when glasnost and perestroika started to impact Moscow's foreign policies, resulting in a withdrawal of help.
