PAN-SOMALISM IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND CRISIS OF THE SOMALI STATE: INTEGRATION AND IRREDENTISM

Abstract

This article analyses the role of pan-somalism as an ideal and movement in the construction and crisis of the Somali state. It argues that pan-somalism operated in two simultaneous dimensions: as an internal vector of national integration and as an external project of territorial reunification of the Somali peoples in the Horn of Africa. The central hypothesis maintains that this dual function, initially decisive for the legitimization of the post-colonial state, converted itself into a factor of structural fragilization insofar as the agenda of internal integration was subordinated to Irredentism. Based on a historical-materialist approach, qualitative and hypothetical-deductive, organized in national, regional and systemic levels, this article is divided into three sections. Firstly, it seeks to demonstrate how Somalia possessed, prior to independence, a relatively cohesive identitary base, but divided among five different colonial territories. These factors ended up influencing the nationalist movements to seek, besides independence, the unification of territories. In this context, the unification of the British and Italian Somalilands, in 1960, represented the initial execution of the pan-somali project, but also inaugurated tensions between internal consolidation and external projection. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the prioritization of the irredentist agenda diverted resources and legitimacy away from state development towards territorial expansion. The Ogaden War (1977–1978) condensed these contradictions by exposing the material limits of the Somali state in the face of the regional and systemic constraints of the Cold War.