Why some Somalis don’t like Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter will be widely remembered as one of the greatest and most impactful US presidents, renowned for his work in brokering peace between Egypt and Israel, as well as for his post-presidency activities, which spanned everything from election monitoring to health advocacy. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden were united in having nice things to say about the man. Weighing in on behalf of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, also sent his condolences, calling Carter a “true statesman” for his “unwavering commitment to peace, democracy and humanitarian causes” around the world.  

That sentiment, however, did not reflect the views of certain quarters of Somali Twitter, where it was recalled that Carter refused to provide arms to Somalia during the Ogaden war, in which the Somali government, under Siad Barre, attempted to forcibly annex the neighbouring Somali-inhabited region. Fouwzi A. Osman posted a segment of an interview with Jimmy Carter in which he said he believed Somalia shouldn’t be permitted to seize what he called “Ethiopian territory”. Osman Hassan Badawi, a prominent Somali nationalist, posted that Carter was a religious Christian, possibly swayed into solidarity with Ethiopia on the basis of religious affinity, and failed to follow through on a promise to provide arms to Somalia if they rejected Russia. “We are still paying the price for ditching Russia and then being abandoned by the US. Was that US deceit, or Somali naivety to give in to promises so trustingly?” he wrote. Abdirizak Muhumed, another Somali Twitter user, furious at Carter said the late president “sabotaged” the Somali struggle to liberate the Ogaden. And Elham Ishmael, a popular Somali nationalist online opinion shaper bluntly posted: “May he ROT in hell.”

Strong emotions. But I'll give a bit of context about why some Somalis feel this way.  

The Ogaden war was the pivotal event in Somali postcolonial history. It was the moment when everything that had been going well suddenly wasn’t going well anymore, ultimately leading to state collapse in the early 1990s — a problem whose legacy we still struggle with today.  

In its early years, Somalia, like many newly independent African states, attempted to chart a non-aligned foreign policy, committing neither to supporting Washington DC's so-called “free world” camp, nor Moscow’s aim of achieving global socialism. That soon became a very difficult position to maintain for policymakers in Mogadishu.  

The US relied on Ethiopia’s provision of the Kagnew signals intelligence station in modern-day Eritrea which ensured Addis Ababa had surplus goodwill in DC. That prompted Henry Kissiner, then a senior security official, to call Ethiopia America’s “closest friend in Africa” in 1969. That kept arms and aid flowing from the US, but left Somalia at a disadvantage, as it wasn’t able to match the offer or provide the same value to the world’s leading power. By 1970, a significant gap had emerged between the military capabilities of Mogadishu and Addis Ababa. Somalia had 13,000 army personnel, according to a CIA estimate, while Ethiopia had nearly 39,000. The same figures estimated that Somalia had 350 air force personnel, while Ethiopia had almost 2,300. Somalia had more tanks and armoured vehicles, but even on this measure the difference wasn’t substantial. Ethiopia was the undisputed regional heavyweight.

Abdirashid Shermarke, a prime minister during the 1960s, attempted to rectify the problem by asking western partners to arm Somalia so that parity could be maintained. He addressed John P. Blane who served as US vice consul in Somalia, who eventually relented to Shermarke’s demands but confessed that they “came forward with a little package.” Shermarke took part in a 1965 oral history project about his relationship with John F. Kennedy, the US president at the time, in which he said the US offered Somalia “six jeeps mounted with six anti-tank guns. That’s all.” Even Blane admitted later that the offer was “pretty punk”. “We’re off to Moscow,” Shermarke reportedly told Blane, after inspecting what was on offer.  

This would mark the beginning of Somalia's long drift into Moscow’s orbit, a dalliance that would only come to an abrupt and disastrous end at the close of the 1970s, with Somalia defeated by Ethiopia and their old friend the USSR and without a superpower patron. 

Siad Barre’s 1969 military coup completely transformed the Somali state, decisively influencing its foreign relations. Moscow was no longer merely a partner at the state level but a comrade sharing a broader goal to change Africa and the world. Somalia went a step further than other countries and signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1974. The USSR had demonstrated in more than one theatre that it was a reliable ally of anti-imperialist movements in Africa and Asia, and so, when Siad Barre defined the mission of the new Somali state as resisting “the imperialists”, the Soviets emerged as obvious allies. Kissinger also believed that Ethiopia was a natural bulwark against “a Communist-Moslem thrust into the Horn of Africa". Why not throw your lot in with Moscow then? Kissinger doesn’t sound to me here like the type of person a discussion would get you far with and his comic 1976 meeting with Somalia’s minerals minister, Hussein Abdulkadir Kassim, likely sealed Mogadishu’s view of Washington as an unconstructive and poorly informed actor. Kissinger suggested that Kassim might be hiding “missiles in [mosque] minarets”. 

Somalia had another major issue with America’s main African ally. It claimed that Ethiopia was occupying the Ogaden region, which it intended to reclaim by hook or crook. That was the raison d’être of the Somali state, an intention emblazoned on its flag. When Somalia eventually built a formidable military by the mid-1970s and saw Ethiopia descend into revolutionary fervour and instability, it saw an opportunity. America also wasn’t sure about Ethiopia when Mengistu took power. Kissinger confessed as much in a 1974 meeting with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat: “Sadat asked me what I thought of developments in Ethiopia, and I said I hadn’t the foggiest idea; and he didn’t believe me. He thought I was hiding out, hiding from him." Whether the Americans were sure or not though, Mengistu was a Marxist with Leninist tendencies. He was unlikely to be an amenable friend to the Carter administration, which had assumed power in 1977, just as tensions in the Horn of Africa reached unprecedented levels. Ethiopia was weak and unstable and Somalia was strong and on the ascendency. Barre told G.V. Samsonov, the Soviet ambassador in Mogadishu, he wouldn’t invade Ethiopia if Mengistu considered the Ogaden issue “positively positively in the future”. Mengistu didn’t and Barre would later make his own decision.

Despite the Marxist-on-Marxist violence, Carter viewed Somalia’s invasion as a violation of international law rather than an opportunity to steal a Soviet ally, as the USSR couldn’t continue supporting both states while they fought one another. It was an unprecedented moment in the cold war, not dissimilar to the issues the US had with Turkey and Greece three years earlier. If we zoom out, the picture looked like this: in 1977, three countries in the Horn of Africa – two were pro-Soviet (Ethiopia being the newbie to the club), and Djibouti had only just gained independence and didn’t have time to test the respective hypotheses of both powers to see what would work best for them. They would remain within France’s orbit for years to come. It was Pax Sovietica until Somalia moved on the Ogaden. Moscow failed to broker a deal to end the fighting and ultimately sided with Ethiopia, a much larger and in their view, more promising laboratory for socialism than Somalia. Even Fidel Castro attempted to get Siad Barre and Mengistu Haile Mariam to peacefully resolve the issue, but it didn’t work. Castro concluded that Barre wasn’t a true socialist, but rather a nationalist, and in his own words, a “chauvinist”. “Socialism is just an outer shell that is supposed to make him more attractive,” Castro said. The Somalis kicked the Soviets out and entered geopolitical limbo. They were “left in the lurch”, Bob Koepp, a Lutheran humanitarian in Somalia, said. The Washington Post called Somalia the “Orphan of the cold war”. Carter watched even as his parts of his administration and his British allies lobbied him to support Somalia.

Then-Secretary of State Cyrus Robert Vance was aware that, despite Barre’s ideological proclivities, it was an opportunity for the US to score another victory over Moscow, having recently flipped Egypt with Anwar Sadat. In his book, Hard Choices, Vance wrote: “Siad Barre was perfectly willing to treat the horn crisis as an East-West confrontation in order to gain American political and military support.” During a debate in the British parliament on Somalia’s invasion of Ethiopia, Hugh Fraser, a Tory MP and advocate for the west to begin supporting Somalia against Ethiopia, asked the Labour foreign secretary, David Owen: “While I agree about the complexities of the situation, surely the Somalis are just as good a customer for British arms as the Salvador Republic?” Owen could only reply that the offer was being considered “carefully in consultation with allies”. None of this advocacy cut through though, as the US fundamentally saw Somalia as the aggressor.

Hussein Abdulkadir Kassim, Somalia’s minister for minerals and a close ally of Barre, called US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and attempted to persuade him that the Soviets had a plan to destabilise the region. Brzezinski told Kassim that “we did not believe it was wise for the US to encourage large-scale territorial conflict.” In other words, no guns for you.  

Somalia was eventually pushed out of the Ogaden by a combined force of Cubans, Soviets, Ethiopians, and according to some reports, Israelis. A dejected Somalia was forced to accept its borders, having lost what was its last opportunity to redress what was considered a post-colonial injustice when Ethiopia was granted the Ogaden in the 1940s. The US would keep Barre at an arm’s length into the Reagan administration, encouraging Somalia to cultivate ties with the US’s middle eastern allies.

“That defeat in many ways de-legitimised the Barre regime’s right to govern,” Abdi Ismail Samatar, a Somali academic and senator, told me a few years ago. “I think it was a turning point in the sense that it exposed the bankruptcy of the regime in terms of public governance and management of the country.” The defeat weakened the Barre regime’s asabiyyah and provided Ethiopia with an opportunity to begin arming rebel groups who had their own grievances with Barre. “Internal squabbles came out into the open, factionalism became rife and Barre’s government started to deteriorate and the creeping authoritarianism turned openly brutal,” Samatar said.  

That is the story of how some sections of Somalia’s chattering classes came to see him as a man at least partly responsible for what went wrong in the country.