Italian Somaliland

• 1. Introduction

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  Italian Somaliland existed for barely half a century, and it began to unravel with a single ambush few people remember. In November 1896, Consul Antonio Cecchi set off on what was meant to be a pleasure trip near Lafoole, a village near Afgooye. He was the de facto governor of the Italians' southern territories at the time. Biimaal and Wa'daan fighters attacked his party, killing fourteen Italians, Cecchi among them. Colonial writers later called it "The Somali Adwa," a name that captured how thoroughly it wrecked Italian confidence.

  That single ambush sat inside a much longer contest. How did a country with no prior foothold in the region end up ruling it for decades? What wars did that rule provoke? What kind of colony did Italy build out of Mogadishu and the Benadir ports? How did the whole project collapse within a single generation?

• 2. Treaties And Outposts

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  Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid sent Italy a treaty request in late 1888, hoping to turn his Sultanate of Hobyo into an Italian protectorate. Italy signed that treaty on the 8th of February 1889. His rival, Boqor Osman Mahamuud, signed a similar agreement over the Majeerteen Sultanate on the 7th of April 1889.

  Both rulers had their own reasons for inviting Italy in. Kenadid wanted Italian backing in his power struggle with Osman. He also hoped for help in a separate dispute with the declining Hiraab Imamate south of Hobyo. Both sultans further hoped that playing rival European powers against each other would help keep their territories independent.

  Italy's own interest was narrower. The coastline offered access to the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, both strategically vital, even though the inland territory was mostly arid. Under the treaty terms, Italy stayed out of internal administration. In exchange, it paid the sultans an annual subsidy and supplied arms for a minimum of oversight and economic concessions.

  Italy's consul at Zanzibar, captain Filonardi, was tasked with building outposts along the Banaadir coast. He occupied the port of Adale in February 1891 and renamed it Itala, marking the start of Italy's actual territorial occupation in Somalia. Rome and London settled the borders of their zones through a series of protocols, including an Anglo-Italian agreement signed on the 5th of May 1894.

  Not every early contact went peacefully. On the 24th of April 1890, the Italian frigate Volta anchored off Warsheikh. Sub-lieutenant Carlo Zavagli went ashore to invite local leaders aboard for gifts. He was attacked and wounded, dying as the crew scrambled the ship out to sea, firing wildly to cover their retreat. A sailor named Bertorello was mortally wounded working the anchor during the same escape. Sheekh Ahmed Gabyow later recited a poem marking the killing of Zavagli and 60 Italian colonial troops. Some accounts credit that event as the first call for Somali nationalism. One line of it reads, "before the wind of death takes you."

  In October and November 1893, Filonardi and the Italian navy occupied Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa and Warsheekh. On the 2nd of October 1893, in Merca, Somalis assassinated Lieutenant Maurizio Talmone, one of the ship captains. It marked the first recorded act of Somali resistance to the occupation. Italian ships answered by bombarding the coasts of Nimmo and Jasira, then withdrew to their limited coastal footholds for years. The commander of the Staffetta deposed Merca's local chief and captured several town leaders.

  The Filonardi company, which administered these ports, was charged with growing trade and customs revenue, suppressing slavery, and controlling local walis and tribes. A further Filonardi expedition occupied Giumbo on the 1st of May 1895. When Filonardi's sub-concession later expired, a new 48-year contract handed port management to the Italian Benadir Commercial Company, following a transitional administration under Consul Cecchi.

• 3. Reprisal At Lafoole

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  On the 1st of February 1897, captain Giorgio Sorrentino led a punitive expedition to Mogadishu, tasked with avenging the dead at Lafoole. Troops disembarked from the ships Elba and Governolo, which had already bombarded Nimmo, and recovered the unburied remains of the Italians killed there. Sorrentino held a funeral with military honors and built a chapel near the shore. He then chose a nearby coastal dune, about fifty metres high, as the site for a new fort. That stronghold, armed with four 75mm guns, was named Fort Cecchi.

  After recovering the bodies, Italian forces burned the village of Nimmo and captured seventy Somalis in Gesira. On the 12th of April 1897, 150 Eritrean askaris arrived aboard the ship Volta as reinforcements. Sorrentino's combined force went on to destroy the towns of Gellai, Res and Lafoole itself. Somalis attacked the column in a battle lasting several hours. Fifty of them were killed, against a single Askari death on the Italian side.

  Historian Robert L. Hess later judged the campaign's effect harshly. He wrote that "the impression made by the punitive expedition after Lafoole could hardly have been called lasting." Italian troops largely retreated to the coast afterward. During the campaign, though, they had razed every village east of the Shebelle River, seizing livestock and killing residents along the way.

• 4. The Bimaal War

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  Italian resident Giacomo Trevis was assassinated during 1896 and 1897, one sign among several that the Banadir territory was slipping toward open revolt. The Bimaal clan, dominant across the region's slave trade routes, rose up after the Benadir Company moved to suppress that trade. Their resistance doomed Rome's planned "pacification" policy outright.

  By the 1890s, Italian-occupied Marka had become the center of Bimal culture. Hostility spread into a chain of attacks by the Bimaal, Wa'daan, Geledi and other clans. Two Islamic teachers of the Bimal clan, Sheikh Abdi Gafle and Ma'alin Mursal Abdi Yusuf, led this resistance from Marka.

  In 1905, Italian forces won battles at Bula-Iach, Gilib and Mellet. The battles fell on the 19th of June, the 26th of August and the 14th of October. Those defeats forced part of the Bimaal to submit, though others fought on.

  In February 1907, a large gathering of Bimaal fighters assembled at Moialo, near Merca. Italian forces under lieutenant Streva marched on them and burned the town. An Italian square formation came under attack from roughly 2,500 Bimaal warriors at the Battle of Danane, on the 10th of February 1907. The Italians won. More than a hundred Bimaal were killed and even more wounded, while Italian officer Presenti was wounded in action. Sheikh Abdi Abiker retreated across the Shabelle into Intera territory. He later sent the Dervish leader 100 men and 40 camels in exchange for more weapons.

  Fighting resumed in 1908. Captain Vitali's forces won battles at Dongab on the 2nd of March, at Gilib, where 400 Bimaal casualties were recorded, and at Mellet on the 7th of March. Italian warships bombarded coastal towns at the same time. Even so, hundreds of Bimaal fighters blockaded Merca again.

  Major Di Giorgio broke that blockade. He defeated a combined Dervish-Bimaal force in two battles at Mellet, on the 11th and the 12th of July, producing more than a thousand casualties. He also beat the Wa'daan at Merere on the 30th of August, sinking rebel ships in the process. Afgoy fell to the Italians on the 3rd of September.

  Bimaal fighters struck back by destroying the villages of Res and Curare and threatening Afgoy again. Di Giorgio's troops crossed the river and formed a defensive square. They beat back a Bimaal assault in a forest at Hararei on the 25th of September, a battle that killed 80 Bimaal and 4 Askaris. The rebel center at Balàd was then destroyed.

  Major Rossi closed out the campaign, again fighting in square formation. He defeated around a thousand Dervishes in the battles of Bulàlo, on the 22nd of November, and Sengagle, on the 27th. Italian Somaliland expanded as a result to include Afgoy, Maregh, Barire, Mellèt, Danane and Balàd. For the first time, the entire low Shabelle region came under Italian control. That victory secured the Shabelle basin, but it did nothing to touch the Dervish stronghold building further north, around Hiraan.

• 5. The Dervish Frontier

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  In 1912, Dervish intelligence learned that the Italians were expanding through southern Somalia and closing in on Hiraan, a region still free of colonial presence. Italy's most forward position sat at Mahaday, just above Jowhar.

  On the 3rd of March 1913, roughly 900 Dervish fighters met the Italian colonial army at the Battle of Hiraan, near Beledweyne. They were led by Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, together with commanders Isman Boos and Ismail Mire. The Dervishes forced an Italian retreat. That withdrawal handed them control of the Hiraan region, which they fortified with two new forts, Aammiin and Laba Mataanood. By the end of 1913, Hiraan stood fully under the Dervish banner.

  During the First World War, the Dervishes raided Italian-held territory with limited Ottoman support. Garrisons at Bulo Burti and Tiyeglow held most of the raids off. On the 27th of March 1916, Somali irregulars serving Italy switched sides. They helped the Dervishes sack the fort at Bulo Burti, killing Italian officer Battistella in the process.

  Italy recaptured Bulo Burti soon after. On the 16th of January 1917, a column under captain Silvestri defeated and scattered the Dervishes at Beledweyne. It was their main base of operations against Italian Somaliland. The Italians lost 6 dead and 4 wounded. The Dervishes lost roughly 50 dead and many more wounded.

  As a reward for joining the Allied side in the First World War, Britain agreed to cede the Jubaland region to Italian Somaliland. The transfer was completed in 1925. Britain kept the southern half of the old Jubaland territory, later renamed the Northern Frontier District. That same year, Rome turned its attention north, toward the two Somali sultanates that had kept their thrones since the original protectorate treaties.

• 6. Building The Colony

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  Sultan Kenadid's relationship with Italy collapsed when he refused to let a British contingent pass through his sultanate to fight Dervish leader Muhammad Abdullah Hassan. Rome judged him too dangerous to leave in place and exiled him first to Aden in Yemen, then to Eritrea. His son and successor, Ali Yusuf Kenadid, was later exiled in turn, after De Vecchi imposed a disarmament policy on the northern sultanates in 1924.

  Cesare Maria De Vecchi arrived to take charge of the colonial administration on the 15th of December 1923. Mussolini's fascist government was now in power in Rome. It ordered the Royal Corps of Colonial Troops to bring all of Somalia under full military occupation, using Dubats colonial troops and the Zaptié gendarmerie. Mussolini gave De Vecchi the green light in 1925 to abrogate the old protectorate treaties and take the sultanates by force. By the end of 1927, after a two-year campaign, both the Hobyo and Majeerteen Sultanates had been annexed. Even so, the north kept a measure of indirect rule the south never had.

  Three years before De Vecchi's arrival, in 1920, the Duca degli Abruzzi founded the Società Agricola Italo-Somala to test the territory's farming potential. He was a member of the Italian royal family and a noted explorer. That same year he established Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi, later called Villabruzzi and now known as Jowhar, where colonists grew sugar, bananas and cotton. That November, Mogadishu also gained the colony's first modern bank, a branch of the Banca d'Italia.

  De Vecchi was formally named governor of the new colonial administration on the 5th of December 1923. Under him, the Italians surveyed the land and began new infrastructure projects, building hospitals, farms and schools. By 1926, Villabruzzi had grown to 16 villages holding roughly 3,000 Somali and 200 Italian residents. It was linked to Mogadishu by a new 114-kilometre railway. Colonial policy in this period rested on preserving the existing clan order and on respecting Islam as the territory's religion.

  In 1928, Italian authorities built the Mogadishu Cathedral in a Norman Gothic style, modeled on the Cefalù Cathedral in Sicily. That year Umberto, Prince of Piedmont and heir to the Italian throne, made his first publicized visit to the city. The Arch of Umberto, raised at the centre of Mogadishu Garden, commemorated the trip. The newly built Mogadishu International Airport, also completed that year, was rated one of the finest facilities in the region.

  In the early 1930s, new governors Guido Corni and Maurizio Rava pursued a policy of assimilating Somalis. Many were enrolled into the colonial army, while thousands of Italian settlers moved into Mogadishu. The capital grew, small manufacturers opened, and colonists also settled farming areas around Jowhar and Janale. By 1930, about 22,000 Italians lived in the territory, roughly 2 percent of the population. Most were in Mogadishu, with smaller communities in Jowhar, Adale, Janale, Jamame and Kismayo. Already by 1922, more than a thousand Zaptié gendarmes were serving the colonial administration. That force would grow many times larger once Italy went to war next door.

• 7. Empire And War

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  By 1935, Mogadishu had grown into a major naval base and port for the Italian fleet. Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded a Greater Somalia, La Grande Somalia, as the crown jewel of Italy's African empire. He framed himself less as an invader than as a liberator of Somali territory still claimed by the Ethiopian Empire, including the Ogaden region.

  In October 1935, Italy launched the southern front of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War into Ethiopia from Italian Somaliland. General Rodolfo Graziani commanded the invasion forces in the south. More than 40,000 Somali troops served in the campaign, mostly in combat roles, backing over 80,000 Italians at the start of the offensive. Many of the Somali soldiers were veterans of earlier service in Italian Libya. Mogadishu itself served as the chief supply base.

  When the war ended in June 1936, Italian Somaliland was folded into Italian East Africa as the Somalia Governorate. The new colony also included newly conquered Ethiopia and the older territory of Eritrea. An Arch of Triumph was raised in Mogadishu to mark the victory. Between 1936 and 1940, the Italians built new roads, including the Imperial Road running from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa. They also added further schools, hospitals, ports and bridges.

  Somali troops had fought in Italy's Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali since the colony's founding, enrolled as Dubats, Zaptié and Bande irregolari. During the Second World War they were treated as a wing of the Italian Army's infantry divisions, just as in Libya and Eritrea. By 1941, 2,186 Zaptié plus 500 recruits in training made up part of the Carabinieri across Somaliland and Ethiopia. They were organized into a battalion under Major Alfredo Serranti that defended Culqualber, in Ethiopia, for three months before Allied forces destroyed the unit. Survivors, Somali troops included, received full military honors from the British afterward.

  By 1935, more than 50,000 Italian settlers lived in Italian Somaliland, about 5 percent of the population. Some 20,000 of them were in Mogadishu, roughly 40 percent of the capital's 50,000 residents. Mogadishu, now the administrative capital of Italian East Africa, filled with buildings in the Italian architectural style. More than 220,000 Italian soldiers were also stationed across the territory during the war with Ethiopia. By 1940, Villabruzzi held about 12,000 residents, of whom nearly 3,000 were Italian Somalis, supporting a small manufacturing sector built around sugar mills.

  In the second half of 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somaliland and pushed the British out. They also seized Kenyan territory near Moyale and Buna, and parts of French Somalia's southern border. For the first and only time in its history, all Somali-speaking territory came under a single ruler. That September, Mussolini told a gathering of Somali clan leaders that Italy had realized their dream of a Greater Somalia. The leaders reportedly answered him with warm acclaim.

  The Allies made their first attempt to retake Italian Somaliland that December, with Operation Appearance. By spring 1941, Britain had recovered British Somaliland and conquered all of Italian Somaliland, along with the Ogaden. Italian guerrilla fighting nonetheless continued across the former Italian East Africa until the end of summer 1943.

• 8. Trusteeship And Independence

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  The first modern Somali political party, the Somali Youth Club, formed in Mogadishu in 1943 and was soon renamed the Somali Youth League. The Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali party emerged as its main opposition, though its platform largely agreed with the League's own.

  In November 1949, the United Nations granted Italy trusteeship over the territory, but only under close supervision. The condition, first proposed by the Somali Youth League and other Somali political groups such as Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali and the Somali National League, was that Somalia reach independence within ten years.

  On the 1st of April 1950, the Amministrazione fiduciaria italiana della Somalia, known as AFIS, began its rule. A deployment of 6,500 troops landed under Giovanni Fornari, whose three-year tenure would prove the trusteeship's hardest period. Italian officials demoted, removed or imprisoned numerous Somali Youth League figures who had risen to prominence under British administration. Demonstrations against this treatment were forcefully repressed.

  In the 1956 parliamentary election, the Somali Youth League won 54.29 percent of the vote. Its nearest rival, Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali, took 26.01 percent. Italian officials moved toward a more conciliatory stance afterward. The League went on to take 416 of 663 seats in the 1958 municipal election, against 175 for the HDMS. By the 1959 parliamentary election, it captured 75.58 percent of the total vote. Italian remained an official language throughout the trusteeship, and by 1952 most Somalis had some understanding of it.

  On the 1st of July 1960, the Trust Territory united with the former British Somaliland to form the Somali Republic, with Mogadishu as its capital. The date is still marked as Somalia's Independence Day. Abdullahi Issa and Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal helped form the new government. Abdulcadir Muhammed Aden became President of the Somali National Assembly. Aden Abdullah Osman Daar became President of the Somali Republic, and Abdirashid Ali Shermarke became Prime Minister.

  On the 20th of July 1961, a popular referendum ratified the constitution. It had first been drafted the year before, a year after the two former territories had already become one republic.