Country profilesSomalia

Humanitarian profile

Years of fighting between rival warlords since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, combined with frequent drought and rampant inflation, have turned Somalia into one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations. Huge numbers are displaced within the country because of an insurgency that has been raging since 2007.

Country snapshot

Since central authority imploded two decades ago, Somalia has turned into an archetypal failed state, a place awash with weapons – on land and at sea - where few outsiders dare venture.

Outside-backed attempts to re-establish order, culminating in a transitional government formed several years ago, have so far failed to bring peace and stability.

The government and transitional parliament have met mainly outside the country.

Warlords, Islamists, Ethiopian troops and other forces have fought, not just each other but among themselves, in a shifting pattern of allegiances.

Offshore, Somali pirates have attacked international shipping passing the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, corrupt intermediaries steal much of the food aid desperately needed by hungry people and local entrepreneurs somehow offer first-class mobile phone services and banking without a banking system.

A bloodied humanitarian intervention in Somalia in 1993 embarrassed U.S. military might, leading to a period of more cautious overseas engagement by Washington.

Seen as the world’s most corrupt state, Somalia remains of deep concern to the West as the star rises of the al-Shabaab (“The Youth”) Islamist group, which in 2010 declared allegiance to al-Qaeda and is strong enough to threaten the capital Mogadishu.

Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been killed by famine and fighting over the last two decades.

Two relatively peaceful corners of Somalia – Somaliland and Puntland - have broken away and rule themselves.

Somalia’s two biggest neighbours are Kenya and Ethiopia. Both have helped promote peace efforts, but Ethiopia has also militarily aided the transitional government against Islamists.

Government

Somalia’s transitional government was formed in 2004 but has at times had to meet abroad due to lawlessness. It plays little role in the everyday lives of most Somalis, though it controls several thousand soldiers.

Local clan and Islamist leaders control most parts of the country.

A transitional parliament was also formed in 2004, its five-year term later extended by two years until October 2011.

Clans appoint the bulk of its over 500 members, with civic and business leaders filling 75 seats. There are no formal parties. Some clan factions support the government, others are in opposition.

Sitting in nearby Djibouti, the parliament elected moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as president and head of state in January 2009.

Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the son of a post-independence president who is seen as a bridge between Islamists and the international community, was named prime minister the following month.

He is from the Darod clan, ensuring Somalia’s three major clans have key positions in the leadership.

The self-declared Republic of Somaliland in the northwest has its own government, as does Puntland in the northeast. The former seeks independence, the latter does not.

Somaliland has a multi-party system and democratic elections. Puntland is semi-autonomous and rules itself, but supports Somalia’s transitional government.

Dahir Riyale Kahin became Somaliland’s leader following the death of his predecessor Mohamed Ibrahim Egal in 2002, and remained president after election in 2003 deemed free and fair by international observers.

Economy

Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world but shows how an economy can still function – but not flourish – without national government.

Agriculture is the main sector in a country where most people are still nomads and pastoralists, living off their livestock and selling surplus animals and hides.

The country also exports fish, charcoal and bananas and imports sugar, maize and the popular intoxicating plant, khat. Banana plantations in the south use modern irrigation systems and machinery.

Mobile phone companies are thriving and offer relatively cheap calls.

Despite the lack of a proper banking sector, private money transfer services ensure that vital remittances from Somalis living abroad – on which many people depend – make it to even the smallest village.

Remittances are estimated at up to $1 billion a year.

The country is heavily dependent on aid – with about a third of the population of 10 million relying on donated food - but insecurity and corruption mean delivery is erratic.

The World Food Programme suspended some operations in the south in 2010 after attacks on aid workers.

Due to insufficient data, Somalia – like North Korea – does not figure on the U.N.’s Human Development Index charting life expectancy, education and GDP, but would certainly be near the bottom of the pile.

Health indicators are also among the worst in Africa. The maternal mortality rate is around one in 100.

History

The most fateful year for Somalia in its half century of independence was 1991, when President Siad Barre’s socialist regime was overthrown by rival clans.

A hated dictatorship was replaced by something even worse for most people: turmoil, factionalism and a large degree of anarchy that has lasted to the present.

The country is a fusion of old British and Italian colonies and was granted sovereignty in 1960. Barre came to power in a coup nine years later, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and held power firmly for two decades, ruling through fear and looting the country’s coffers.

The 1970s were marked by severe drought and starvation and a war with traditional enemy Ethiopia over the latter’s Ogaden region.

When Barre lost his grip on power and fled into exile in 1991, northern clans immediately carved out Somaliland – the old British protectorate - and declared independence.

Puntland, adjacent to it, has governed itself since 1998.

Vicious clan fighting in Somalia proper killed thousands. As the country descended into famine, the United Nations moved in to help in 1993, backed by U.S. military support, in Operation Restore Hope.

Somali militias downed two U.S. helicopters, leading to a U.S. pull-out in 1994. The whole U.N. aid mission ended the next year in the face of unstemmed violence.

In the fourteenth attempt to restore central order, clan elders meeting abroad agreed on a transitional government and parliament in 2004.

Parliament appointed a president, but forces hostile to the new authorities – among them warlords and a growing Islamist movement – ensured they could not establish their rule.

In 2006 Islamists – calling themselves the Islamic Courts' Union (ICU) - ousted warlords from most of the south and took control of the capital Mogadishu, feted by a population weary of warfare. But Ethiopian troops, siding with the transitional government, moved in to oust them.

An African peacekeeping force arrived in 2007 amid what the Red Cross called the worst fighting in 15 years, between insurgents and government forces backed by the Ethiopians.

The United Nations said more than a million Somalis, many from Mogadishu, fled their homes in 2007.

Some of the Islamists reached reconciliation with the government. Their representatives – the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) - took up seats in an enlarged parliament which elected Ahmed, the former Islamic Courts chairman, as president in early 2009.

But more militant Islamists, foremost among them al-Shabaab, fought back and retook much of the country. After the unpopular Ethiopian troops left in early 2009, al-Shabaab took the main southern city of Baidoa - where the parliament had sat in 2006 - and then set its sights on Mogadishu. Clashes erupted there again in June 2010.

Offshore, Somali pirates stepped up attacks on international shipping – including a cargo of tanks and two oil supertankers – which prompted NATO members to send naval vessels in 2008 to protect ships.

Legal snapshot

There is no functioning nationwide legal system. Justice relies mainly on traditional customary law used by the clans, or on Islamic sharia law.

In earlier decades the country had also used a mixture of English common law and Italian civil law, reflecting its colonial past.

There is no constitution in force.

Somalia came last out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2009 index measuring perceived levels of public-sector corruption (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

Even emergency food aid is not sacrosanct. The United Nations said in 2010 that about half the food it delivered there was being stolen – by its own staff and contractors as well as armed militias.

Somalia receives an overall "very weak" rating from U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity in its report measuring anti-corruption measures, government accountability and civic freedoms.