Grigori Rasputin
Former Somali Minister of Mismanagement & Misinfo.
Staff Member
Wariyaha SomaliSpot
MICHAEL E. C. ELY Economic/Commercial Officer Mogadishu (1968-1969)
Michael E.C. Ely was born into a career military family and was raised in a number of military posts. He received a bachelor's degree in international affairs from Princeton University. He served in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant of artillery during the Korean War. Mr. Ely entered the Foreign Service in 1955, serving in Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Algiers, Mogadishu, Tokyo, and Brussels. This interview was conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy on March 9, 1992.
Q: What was the situation in Somalia? You were there from '67 to '69. ELY: Yes, early '68 to mid-'69. Somalia was still a nominal democracy; there was a parliament and a president. The Russians were arming the army, and we and the Germans were working with the police, giving them light arms, light planes, and communications, and resisting calls that they be turned into an opposition force. Ray Thurston was the ambassador. Thurston was an old European pro. He'd been ambassador in Haiti although he missed out on something in Eastern Europe by going there. Thurston, with, I would say, amused sympathy and irony, saw the deterioration of the Somali political process. I left there at the end of summer in '69, and the military coup d'etat took place a couple of months later. The quality of the embassy wasn't very much. I didn't get on well with the DCM, who was heavy and unimaginative. The Political Section was weak. I considered myself a high-powered macroeconomist with a lot of financial background. This was kindergarten. Q: I have to add that, during this time, for just about a year, I was INR desk officer for the Horn of Africa, in '67-68. And my feeling, although I really didn't know the area, just the job, was that here's a country that you could buy. If you really wanted it, you could buy it, the only fly in the ointment being the fact that the Ethiopians would get mad at us if we did. ELY: Yes, I often used to come up with the idea that we ought to get a consortium of eight bidders together and buy the country, instead of renting it, and then go on the gold standard and do away with central banks and all this sort of thing. Just set up a legal system and let people come and go as they wanted, and not fool around with institution-building and all this other stuff. The Somalis are very intelligent people. Q: Beautiful people, too. ELY: Well, they're intelligent, they're handsome, they're also very difficult to deal with, very self-reliant, speak all languages, adapt to anything. But the country had almost no institutions, and the police, the army, and the central bank were the only institutions that functioned. And it was always very hard to get American diplomats to go there; Foreign Service Officers resisted. When I got there, it really was the end of the world. There was one flight a week in from Italy, and that was it. They had broken off relations with Kenya, so there were no flights there. And you didn't get any visitors. But it wasn't all that bad. You were left alone. If your health was okay, you could enjoy it there. I shot a lot of birds and enjoyed that. Did a lot of swimming. Served out my time. Didn't have a lot to do. Q: What do you do? Here you've had all this training and you've been dealing in the rather complex world of economics and all this, and all of a sudden you're sort of put almost into, I won't say the bush, it's probably better saying into the sands and all. ELY: Well, I felt I'd been kind of shanghaied. I had; they owed the ambassador something, so they offered me up to please him. I served out my time there and did the best I could. As I say, I didn't get along very well with the DCM, who was heavy and unsympathetic, and I didn't think much of the work. But, you know, you've got to soldier on. You're sent there, so you do your best. You don't decide that the work is beneath you. You do what you can. So I did. Q: Did you find that everything we were doing in Somalia (I'm talking about the embassy as a whole, but obviously it's a small one, so you were picking up what was happening) was predicated on not upsetting the Ethiopians, which again was predicated on keeping Kagnew Station and Asmara open? ELY: Well, yes. Our policies in Somalia were conditioned by our closer relationship with Ethiopia. And this put us in a delicate position, because there has been a longstanding boundary dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden that goes back to the end of the last century, when the first boundaries were laid out by the British. The Addis Ababa regime was fairly unsavory. They would send tax-collecting expeditions, which were essentially punitive expeditions where they'd go out and grab all the livestock they could, and maybe some of the women. Resistance would lead to villages being burned and people being shot, which led to the Somalis arming guerrillas and low-level conflict continually on the border, going up and down. There was no end to that one, and there still is no end. Somalia, of course, has collapsed into civil war and chaos. The two cities of Hargeysa and Mogadishu have been destroyed. The central government has been wiped out, and it is now being disputed over by rival clans, armed to the teeth, who fight private wars against each other. Q: What was our feeling towards the Soviet presence in Somalia in those days? ELY: In those days, the Soviets were backing the Somalis against the Ethiopians, and we were backing the Ethiopians against the Somalis. But we had a sea anchor in Mogadishu to keep the Somalis calmed down, and the Russians had a mission in Addis Ababa to follow what was going on there and keep in touch with the Ethiopians. After the military coup, then there was a good deal of switching of sides back and forth. Q: The damnedest thing. ELY: And the end result has been disastrous for both Ethiopia and Somalia. Although outside powers should not be expected to be altruistic and philosophical in their approach to these backward countries, we can take no pride in what we did. We were driven by what the Russians did. And the Russians were being very aggressive. They put in some sort of naval installation in Berbera. They wanted to turn Somalia into a Marxist state. Q: Okay, the Soviets were doing this, and our policy was, if they're doing this, we've got to back the other side. But did you ever sit down and figure out what good this was going to do the Soviets, and think maybe we should just let this thing go? Or were we reactive? ELY: Well, I often thought about, you know, did it really make any difference what happened there. You have a general humanitarian reaction: Well, okay, this is a very poor, backward country, they want to modernize (at least some do), and we really should help them do it. We can bring them the things that they need, in terms of financial institutions and skills, doctors and legal assistants et cetera. And, yes, we're under some moral obligation to assist people who wish to modernize. On the other hand, assisting Somalia has always been very difficult. The Peace Corps had a terrible time there. They managed to stay there for a while, but it was the most difficult Peace Corps assignment that they had. Q: Why was it? ELY: The Somalis are very independent-minded people, and you can't tell them anything. The Peace Corps never would go into secondary-school teaching, because once a Somali has a secondary-school education, he considers that he ought to be instructing you. So the Peace Corps stayed with housing and teaching English. They had a fairly significant failure rate, but they also did quite a good job. Reacting to the Soviet Union...yes, we did it, and there was recognition that we did have a reactive policy. And we were searching for other instruments, other ways of doing business. After the emperor fell, we tried very hard to provide incentives to the successor regime to continue its contacts with the United States and to modernize and to build institutions. In a country that was composed of a mosaic of tribal affiliations, where Eritrea had been in revolt for many years, the danger appeared to be that Ethiopia would split into different countries, different mini-states. Washington was and still is deeply concerned about the split-up of countries in Africa because of the prospect of endless strife, both border disputes and rivalries. Africa is a difficult place to live and work, and after I'd done Algeria and Somalia, I was glad to be quit of it.
(Every other day I will release the recollection of US ambassadors to Somalia from 1957-1991)
Michael E.C. Ely was born into a career military family and was raised in a number of military posts. He received a bachelor's degree in international affairs from Princeton University. He served in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant of artillery during the Korean War. Mr. Ely entered the Foreign Service in 1955, serving in Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Algiers, Mogadishu, Tokyo, and Brussels. This interview was conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy on March 9, 1992.
Q: What was the situation in Somalia? You were there from '67 to '69. ELY: Yes, early '68 to mid-'69. Somalia was still a nominal democracy; there was a parliament and a president. The Russians were arming the army, and we and the Germans were working with the police, giving them light arms, light planes, and communications, and resisting calls that they be turned into an opposition force. Ray Thurston was the ambassador. Thurston was an old European pro. He'd been ambassador in Haiti although he missed out on something in Eastern Europe by going there. Thurston, with, I would say, amused sympathy and irony, saw the deterioration of the Somali political process. I left there at the end of summer in '69, and the military coup d'etat took place a couple of months later. The quality of the embassy wasn't very much. I didn't get on well with the DCM, who was heavy and unimaginative. The Political Section was weak. I considered myself a high-powered macroeconomist with a lot of financial background. This was kindergarten. Q: I have to add that, during this time, for just about a year, I was INR desk officer for the Horn of Africa, in '67-68. And my feeling, although I really didn't know the area, just the job, was that here's a country that you could buy. If you really wanted it, you could buy it, the only fly in the ointment being the fact that the Ethiopians would get mad at us if we did. ELY: Yes, I often used to come up with the idea that we ought to get a consortium of eight bidders together and buy the country, instead of renting it, and then go on the gold standard and do away with central banks and all this sort of thing. Just set up a legal system and let people come and go as they wanted, and not fool around with institution-building and all this other stuff. The Somalis are very intelligent people. Q: Beautiful people, too. ELY: Well, they're intelligent, they're handsome, they're also very difficult to deal with, very self-reliant, speak all languages, adapt to anything. But the country had almost no institutions, and the police, the army, and the central bank were the only institutions that functioned. And it was always very hard to get American diplomats to go there; Foreign Service Officers resisted. When I got there, it really was the end of the world. There was one flight a week in from Italy, and that was it. They had broken off relations with Kenya, so there were no flights there. And you didn't get any visitors. But it wasn't all that bad. You were left alone. If your health was okay, you could enjoy it there. I shot a lot of birds and enjoyed that. Did a lot of swimming. Served out my time. Didn't have a lot to do. Q: What do you do? Here you've had all this training and you've been dealing in the rather complex world of economics and all this, and all of a sudden you're sort of put almost into, I won't say the bush, it's probably better saying into the sands and all. ELY: Well, I felt I'd been kind of shanghaied. I had; they owed the ambassador something, so they offered me up to please him. I served out my time there and did the best I could. As I say, I didn't get along very well with the DCM, who was heavy and unsympathetic, and I didn't think much of the work. But, you know, you've got to soldier on. You're sent there, so you do your best. You don't decide that the work is beneath you. You do what you can. So I did. Q: Did you find that everything we were doing in Somalia (I'm talking about the embassy as a whole, but obviously it's a small one, so you were picking up what was happening) was predicated on not upsetting the Ethiopians, which again was predicated on keeping Kagnew Station and Asmara open? ELY: Well, yes. Our policies in Somalia were conditioned by our closer relationship with Ethiopia. And this put us in a delicate position, because there has been a longstanding boundary dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden that goes back to the end of the last century, when the first boundaries were laid out by the British. The Addis Ababa regime was fairly unsavory. They would send tax-collecting expeditions, which were essentially punitive expeditions where they'd go out and grab all the livestock they could, and maybe some of the women. Resistance would lead to villages being burned and people being shot, which led to the Somalis arming guerrillas and low-level conflict continually on the border, going up and down. There was no end to that one, and there still is no end. Somalia, of course, has collapsed into civil war and chaos. The two cities of Hargeysa and Mogadishu have been destroyed. The central government has been wiped out, and it is now being disputed over by rival clans, armed to the teeth, who fight private wars against each other. Q: What was our feeling towards the Soviet presence in Somalia in those days? ELY: In those days, the Soviets were backing the Somalis against the Ethiopians, and we were backing the Ethiopians against the Somalis. But we had a sea anchor in Mogadishu to keep the Somalis calmed down, and the Russians had a mission in Addis Ababa to follow what was going on there and keep in touch with the Ethiopians. After the military coup, then there was a good deal of switching of sides back and forth. Q: The damnedest thing. ELY: And the end result has been disastrous for both Ethiopia and Somalia. Although outside powers should not be expected to be altruistic and philosophical in their approach to these backward countries, we can take no pride in what we did. We were driven by what the Russians did. And the Russians were being very aggressive. They put in some sort of naval installation in Berbera. They wanted to turn Somalia into a Marxist state. Q: Okay, the Soviets were doing this, and our policy was, if they're doing this, we've got to back the other side. But did you ever sit down and figure out what good this was going to do the Soviets, and think maybe we should just let this thing go? Or were we reactive? ELY: Well, I often thought about, you know, did it really make any difference what happened there. You have a general humanitarian reaction: Well, okay, this is a very poor, backward country, they want to modernize (at least some do), and we really should help them do it. We can bring them the things that they need, in terms of financial institutions and skills, doctors and legal assistants et cetera. And, yes, we're under some moral obligation to assist people who wish to modernize. On the other hand, assisting Somalia has always been very difficult. The Peace Corps had a terrible time there. They managed to stay there for a while, but it was the most difficult Peace Corps assignment that they had. Q: Why was it? ELY: The Somalis are very independent-minded people, and you can't tell them anything. The Peace Corps never would go into secondary-school teaching, because once a Somali has a secondary-school education, he considers that he ought to be instructing you. So the Peace Corps stayed with housing and teaching English. They had a fairly significant failure rate, but they also did quite a good job. Reacting to the Soviet Union...yes, we did it, and there was recognition that we did have a reactive policy. And we were searching for other instruments, other ways of doing business. After the emperor fell, we tried very hard to provide incentives to the successor regime to continue its contacts with the United States and to modernize and to build institutions. In a country that was composed of a mosaic of tribal affiliations, where Eritrea had been in revolt for many years, the danger appeared to be that Ethiopia would split into different countries, different mini-states. Washington was and still is deeply concerned about the split-up of countries in Africa because of the prospect of endless strife, both border disputes and rivalries. Africa is a difficult place to live and work, and after I'd done Algeria and Somalia, I was glad to be quit of it.
(Every other day I will release the recollection of US ambassadors to Somalia from 1957-1991)
