The So­mali pub­lic, at large, holds the opin­ion that the Lega dei Gio­vani So­mali had favoured the re­turn of Italy to its for­mer colony as a Trustee dur­ing the de­bate of the fu­ture of So­ma­lia at the United Na­tions in 1949. This er­ro­neous con­cep­tion stems ob­vi­ously from poor knowl­edge of what this party stood for in the 1940s.

A wealth of sources, in­clud­ing diplo­matic and in­tel­li­gence re­ports, ca­bles, mem­o­randa and let­ters are avail­able for con­sul­ta­tion for who­ever in­ter­ested to be fa­mil­iar with the strug­gle the party was en­gaged in both within So­ma­lia and at the UN aimed to un­der­mine the Ital­ian claim over trustee­ship of So­ma­lia.

This ar­ti­cle tries to re­move this mis­con­cep­tion about how Italy came back to South­ern So­ma­lia as Trustee in 1950. It also sheds light on the fail­ure of the Al­lied Four Pow­ers over the fi­nal dis­posal of the for­mer Ital­ian colonies in Africa.

1. The Peace Treaty with Italy

Fol­low­ing the cre­ation of the United Na­tions, the lead­ers of Amer­ica, Britain and the So­viet Union met at Pots­dam, (city in Ger­many) July 17–Au­gust 2, 1945 and con­cluded the Pots­dam Agree­ment, in which the three Al­lied coun­tries de­cided to form a Coun­cil of Min­is­ters. The first clause of the agree­ment was the es­tab­lish­ment of a Coun­cil of For­eign Min­is­ters (CFM). The role of this Coun­cil was to pre­pare peace treaties with the Axis pow­ers, de­fined in the agree­ment as the ‹en­emy states› (Italy, Ro­ma­nia, Bul­garia, Hun­gary, Fin­land and Ger­many), and set­tle out­stand­ing ter­ri­to­r­ial ques­tions.

The Ital­ian Peace Treaty, which had bear­ing on the fu­ture of So­ma­lia, was signed in Paris on 10 Feb­ru­ary 1947. Twenty-one coun­tries took part in the fi­nal draft­ing of the treaty. The rel­e­vant ar­ti­cle of the treaty deal­ing with Italy’s colonies was Ar­ti­cle 23. Italy re­nounced all rights and ti­tles to its for­mer African pos­ses­sions, i.e. Er­itrea, Libya and So­ma­lia leav­ing the re­spec­tive British Ad­min­is­tra­tion tem­porar­ily in power. The fi­nal dis­posal of these pos­ses­sions was to be de­ter­mined jointly by the gov­ern­ments of the So­viet Union, of the United King­dom, of the United States of Amer­ica, and of France within one year from the com­ing into force of the Treaty. If no agree­ment was reached the mat­ter would be re­ferred to the UN Gen­eral As­sem­bly for a rec­om­men­da­tion. The Four Pow­ers ac­cepted and pledged to ex­e­cute the rec­om­men­da­tions.

2. The Four Power Commission of Investigation

The fail­ure of the Four Pow­ers to reach an agree­ment

Before deferring the matter to the General Assembly of the United Nations, however, a Commission of Investigation was sent to all of the three former Italian colonies. The terms of office of the Commission were to report to the deputy Foreign Ministers of the Allies on the economic, social and political conditions of the colonies and to ascertain the views of the local population over the future of their respective countries. It was not required to submit any recommendation on the final disposal of the colonies.

The Com­mis­sion ar­rived in Mo­gadis­cio on 6 Jan­u­ary 1948; the five mem­bers’ del­e­ga­tion rep­re­sent­ing the Lega met the Com­mis­sion on Jan­u­ary 20, 1948. The party ad­vo­cated a ten years pe­riod of trustee­ship for So­ma­lia un­der Four Power ad­min­is­tra­tion. Asked why do not ask for one power as a trustee, the chair­man of the party gave the fol­low­ing peremp­tory re­sponse: “We have al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced the ad­min­is­tra­tion of one gov­ern­ment over fifty years and So­ma­lis have no progress and have noth­ing to show for it”. (Re­port of the Four Pow­ers Com­mis­sion of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, sec­tion II, chap­ter 4) They cat­e­gor­i­cally re­jected any Ital­ian or Ethiopian role in the pro­posed joint ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing the course of its in­ves­ti­ga­tions, it held 13 meet­ings at which 756 peo­ple were heard col­lec­tively or sep­a­rately and vis­ited 26 vil­lages and lo­cal­i­ties, in­clud­ing: Belet Uen, Bulo Burti, Merca, Je­nale, Vil­l­abruzzi, Gal­caio, Af­goi, Wan­leweyn, Balad, Jelib, Margherita (Ja­mama), Kisi­mayo, Afmedu, Isha Baidoa, Hod­dur, Wa­jit, Lugh Fer­randi, Bur Hak­aba, Din­sor, Ma­hadai, Brava, Ben­der Cas­sim and Gardo (Re­port of the four Pow­ers Com­mis­sion. Sec­tion V, p. 110).

3. The Italian colonies before the United Nations

One year af­ter the com­ing into force of the Peace Treaty with Italy and af­ter three years of dis­cus­sions among the Big Four, the fu­ture of Ital­ian colonies in Africa re­mained un­de­ter­mined. On Sep­tem­ber 24, 1948 the Four Pow­ers jointly ad­dressed a com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the United Na­tions in­form­ing him that, in con­for­mity with Ar­ti­cle 23, para­graph XI of the Treaty with Italy, the ques­tion of the dis­posal of the for­mer Ital­ian colonies was be­ing re­ferred to the Gen­eral As­sem­bly. The As­sem­bly was thus given the role of ar­biter in a dis­pute that had de­fied so­lu­tion de­spite pro­tracted and in­tri­cate ne­go­ti­a­tions among the lead­ing pow­ers of the world.

The Lega party dis­patched an en­voy to the United Na­tions in 1949 to lobby the United Na­tions del­e­gates. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Lega dei Gio­vani So­mali and Hamar Youth, ap­pear­ing be­fore the Trustee­ship Coun­cil of the United Na­tion, missed no oc­ca­sion to ex­press the cat­e­gor­i­cal op­po­si­tion of his party to the restora­tion of Ital­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion in any form or guise what­so­ever.

Ac­tu­ally, the is­sue de­bated at the United Na­tions was not the in­de­pen­dence of the So­ma­lia, which was taken for granted; the de­bate was on the dif­fi­cult search for a trustee to whom as­sign the UN Trustee­ship man­date on Ital­ian So­ma­liland.

At the United Na­tions, the Lega was chal­lenged by a pow­er­ful ri­val po­lit­i­cal group, known as the Con­frenza So­mala which favoured a trustee­ship pe­riod of thirty years for So­ma­lia, un­der Ital­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion, but sub­ject to the rad­i­cal re­form and its de­vel­op­ment in all spheres.

Many are on the opin­ion that the Lega made a “big mis­take” for not choos­ing Britain as ad­min­is­ter­ing power on ac­count of the fact that, in 1949, al­most all So­mali-in­hab­ited ter­ri­to­ries in the Horn were un­der British con­trol. Ac­cord­ing to the crit­ics, a British ad­min­is­tra­tion would have in­creased the prospect of union of all these ter­ri­to­ries in one coun­try.

His­tor­i­cally, among the Four Pow­ers, only Britain ex­pressed in­ter­est in ad­min­is­ter­ing So­ma­lia but, as a re­sult of its ill-de­fined Greater So­ma­lia scheme, known as “Bevin Plan”, dis­missed in 1946 by Ethiopia and the Al­lies as im­pe­ri­al­is­tic and land-grab­bing, she def­i­nitely dropped the Plan. Any one, who is fa­mil­iar with the con­tents of the Plan, would know that it was not a de­ci­sive pro­posal as its ap­pli­ca­tion was con­tin­gent on the Ethiopian as­sent. Fur­ther­more, by that time, be­tween Britain and Italy an ef­fec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion was forged and Britain, in line with other ma­jor Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, to­gether with all the coun­tries of Latin Amer­ica, be­came more sup­port­ive to the Ital­ian claim over trustee­ship of So­ma­lia.

Italy re­garded the reac­qui­si­tion of its for­mer colonies as a cru­cial step, for the pur­poses not only of in­ter­na­tional re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, but also of rein­te­gra­tion into the West­ern al­liance sys­tem as a cred­i­ble part­ner. Af­ter all, the Ital­ians con­tin­ued to con­sider the African Horn as their tra­di­tional sphere of in­flu­ence. Con­se­quently, in the ab­sence of a ma­jor power will­ing and able to as­sume in­ter­na­tional trustee­ship re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in So­ma­lia, the con­clu­sion that a non-fas­cist Italy wish­ing to re­turn to Africa should as­sume these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties seemed in­evitable.

Fi­nally, af­ter all-night dis­cus­sions on No­vem­ber 21, 1949, the Gen­eral As­sem­bly of the United Na­tions, over­whelm­ingly ac­cepted, by a vote of 48 to 1 and 9 ab­sten­tions, the res­o­lu­tion plac­ing So­ma­lia un­der Ital­ian Trustee­ship for 10 years time fol­lowed by full in­de­pen­dence. With ef­fect from April 1, 1950, South­ern So­ma­lia be­came of­fi­cially a UN Trust ter­ri­tory ad­min­is­tered by Italy.

Pre­dictably, the ini­tial years of the Trustee­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion were char­ac­ter­ized by un­easy re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Ad­min­is­ter­ing power and the Lega party, and there were many mo­ments of ten­sion. At times, the stand off be­tween the two par­ties had brought re­la­tions to reach a point close to a break­ing point caus­ing thus a valu­able time to be lost in the first crit­i­cal years of the new Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

By the end of 1955, the Ital­ian Trustee­ship Ad­min­is­tra­tion had suc­ceeded in con­vinc­ing the Lega that it was only a tem­po­rary agency com­mit­ted to ful­fill its in­ter­na­tional oblig­a­tions con­tem­plated in the Trustee­ship Agree­ment. In that year the Lega dei Gio­vani So­mali em­barked on a pol­icy of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trustee­ship Ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was a slow and dif­fi­cult process: it took nearly four years for the Lega to re­al­ize that the rapidly ap­proach­ing tar­get date for in­de­pen­dence did not per­mit the lux­ury of ster­ile con­fronta­tions. The ‘arranged mar­riage’ in 1949 pro­moted by the UN be­tween the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Power and the largest So­mali po­lit­i­cal party, be­came thus, a co-co­hab­i­ta­tion based on mu­tual un­der­stand­ing which cul­mi­nated smoothly in the to­tal in­de­pen­dence of So­ma­lia in 1960.

M. Trunji

E-mail trunji@ya­hoo.com