I - The Physical and Social Setting

Summary

The Land

WITH A POPULATION numbering perhaps four and a half million, the Somali-speaking people can scarcely be regarded as a large nation. Yet they form one of the largest single ethnic blocks in Africa, and though sparsely distributed on the ground, live in continuous occupation of a great expanse of territory covering almost 400,000 square miles in the north-east corner, or ‘Horn', of the continent facing Arabia. From the region of the Awash Valley in the north-west, this often arid territory occupied by the Somali stretches round the periphery of the Ethiopian highlands and along the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean coasts down to the Tana River in northern Kenya. This region forms a well-defined geographical and ethnic unit which Somalis see as a natural base for a sovereign state, although today it is split up into four separate parts. In the ex-French Republic of Jibuti, which became independent in 1977, Somalis make up about half the local population (c. 200,000 in 350,000); in the adjoining country of Ethiopia (mainly in Harar and Bale Provinces) they number probably almost one million; in the Somali Republic itself their strength is approximately 3,250,000; and finally, in the North-Eastern Region of Kenya, they number about 250,000. Outside this region, other Somali are settled as traders and merchants in many of the towns and ports of East Africa (e.g. in Nairobi); in Aden, in whose history they played an important role; and throughout Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Farther afield, the roving existence which life at sea affords has led to the establishment of small and fluctuating immigrant Somali communities in such diverse European ports as Marseilles, Naples, London, and Cardiff.

In their dry savanna homeland, the Somali are essentially a nation of pastoral nomads, forced by the exigencies of their demanding climate and environment to move with their flocks of sheep and goats and herds of camels and catde in an endless quest for water and pasturage. The northern coastal plains (Guban, from gub to burn) which extend from the lava-strewn deserts of the Republic of Jibuti along the Gulf of Aden shore to Cape Guardafui are especially arid. Here the annual rainfall rarely exceeds three inches and is concentrated in the comparatively cool months from October to January.