Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Somalia
    Unavailable
    Somalia
    Unavailable
    Somalia
    Ebook191 pages2 hours

    Somalia

    By Al J. Venter

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    When the world held its breath …

    It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944—long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe—with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was, and is, the Horn of Africa …

    Few countries in Africa have had such powerful links with both the Soviet Union and United States – each for several years at a stretch – as Somalia. From a quiet Indian Ocean backwater that had once been an Italian colony, it remained aloof from the kind of power struggles that beset countries like Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, Algeria and others in the 1970s. Overnight, that all changed in 1969 when the army, led by Major General Siad Barre, grabbed power. His first move was to abrogate all security links he might have had with the West and to invite Moscow into his country as an ally. The Soviets moved quickly, establishing several air bases in the interior and stationing their ships in Somali ports. Baledogle, a small airport north of Mogadishu, became a major air base from where Soviet military aircraft operated through much of the Indian Ocean. An impetuous man, Siad Barre believed his links with Moscow were secure enough to annex several neighboring regions. But when he invaded Ethiopia’s Ogaden Province – Addis Ababa was then Washington’s staunchest friend in Africa’s Horn – the Soviets had had enough. To the consternation of the West they abandoned Somalia and embraced Ethiopia, which resulted in the Russians giving full support in the Ogaden War to Addis Ababa and establishing the largest airlift of arms to an African country since the Six-Day War.

    For more than a decade thereafter conditions within Somalia deteriorated. Various tribal leaders established themselves as ‘war lords’, some with Soviet support, others getting succor from Western sources. It got so bad that in 1992 the United Nations eventually stepped in with Operation Restore Hope, a multinational force created for conducting humanitarian operations in Somalia. The move was always controversial with many tribal leaders retaining either clandestine Soviet links or receiving aid from radical Arab forces that included al-Qaeda. Though the United Nations and the African Union (AU) both maintain a strong presence in the country, hostilities – and killings – go on.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPen and Sword
    Release dateAug 30, 2017
    ISBN9781526707963
    Unavailable
    Somalia
    Author

    Al J. Venter

    Al J. Venter is a specialist military writer and has had 50 books published. He started his career with Geneva’s Interavia Group, then owners of International Defence Review, to cover military developments in the Middle East and Africa. Venter has been writing on these and related issues such as guerrilla warfare, insurgency, the Middle East and conflict in general for half a century. He was involved with Jane’s Information Group for more than 30 years and was a stringer for the BBC, NBC News (New York) as well as London’s Daily Express and Sunday Express. He branched into television work in the early 1980s and produced more than 100 documentaries, many of which were internationally flighted. His one-hour film, 'Africa’s Killing Fields' (on the Ugandan civil war), was shown nationwide in the United States on the PBS network. Other films include an hour-long program on the fifth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as 'AIDS: The African Connection', nominated for China’s Pink Magnolia Award. His last major book was 'Portugal’s Guerrilla Wars in Africa', nominated in 2013 for New York’s Arthur Goodzeit military history book award. It has gone into three editions, including translation into Portuguese.

    Read more from Al J. Venter

    Related to Somalia

    Related ebooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Behind The Headlines

      Jul 28, 2020

      Behind The Headlines
      3 min read

    • Article

      Strike At Africa

      Jul 6, 2023

      Strike At Africa
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Wages Of War

      Apr 30, 2019

      The Wages Of War
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Irish Republican Army

      Jan 21, 2021

      The Irish Republican Army
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Monmouth Rebellion

      May 12, 2022

      The Monmouth Rebellion
      6 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      Nov 24, 2022

      Encounters
      3 min read

    • Article

      Biafra and Russia

      Jun 11, 2021

      Biafra and Russia
      7 min read

    • Article

      Country Profile

      Jun 6, 2023

      Country Profile
      3 min read

    • Article

      Empire On The Brink

      Sep 28, 2023

      Empire On The Brink
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Evil May Day Riots

      Apr 14, 2022

      The Evil May Day Riots
      5 min read

    • Article

      Winston before The War

      Jun 9, 2022

      Winston before The War
      10 min read

    • Article

      History Of Micronations

      Mar 23, 2023

      History Of Micronations
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sherlock Holmes Plays The White Man

      Nov 25, 2021

      I saw the smoke banks on that October evening swirl slowly up over the Atlantic swell, and rise, and rise, until they had shredded into thinnest air, and lost themselves in the infinite blue of heaven. And with them rose the cloud which had hung over

      11 min read

    • Article

      Timeline Of Timor-leste

      Jul 3, 2019

      • 43,000 years ago: First evidence of human occupation • 1600s: Timor invaded by the Portuguese who set the island up as a trading post and a source of sandalwood. • 1849: Timor splits following battle between Portuguese and Dutch. Portuguese take th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Spain’s Legión

      Aug 8, 2019

      Spain’s debacle in its 1898 war with the US came as the final nail in the coffin for the country’s armed forces. For three centuries, the Spanish army had held sway over Europe as the continent’s dominant military force. The steady loss of Spain’s ov

      7 min read

    • Article

      Breaking Waves

      Oct 23, 2019

      Breaking Waves
      3 min read

    • Article

      Treasure Islands

      Feb 16, 2024

      Treasure Islands
      3 min read

    • Article

      CELEBRATED SETS Ethiopia’s Defiant Definitives, 1919

      Jan 14, 2022

      Late 19th-century Ethiopia was still very much a feudal society: a redoubt of Christianity in a Moslem region, socially conservative and only recently re-unified after a period of battling warlords. Change came with Menelik II, who introduced electri

      4 min read

    • Article

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers

      Oct 1, 2020

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers
      14 min read

    • Article

      Greece, Romania, Bulgaria

      May 12, 2023

      This was the first European state to break away. Greece had been under Ottoman rule for nearly 400 years before declaring independence in 1821. The struggle took six years before the establishment of a Greek State and then until 1947 before unificati

      8 min read

    • Article

      European Imperialism Refusal To Apologise Suggests Colonialism Was Justified

      Nov 12, 2023

      European royalty has been finding its way to Africa in recent weeks. This follows the state visits of the Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands to South Africa and King Charles III and Queen Camilla of Britain to Kenya. The

      3 min read

    Reviews for Somalia

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words