Ministry of Defence (Somalia)


The Ministry of Defence is charged with co-ordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the Somali Armed Forces. The President of Somalia is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the country. The Ministry of Defence provides policy framework and resources to the Armed Forces to discharge their responsibility in the context of the defence of the country. The Armed Forces under the Defence Ministry are primarily responsible for ensuring the territorial integrity of the nation. The current Minister of Defence of Somalia is Hassan Mohomed Amardanbe.

History

Historically, Somali society conferred distinction upon warriors and rewarded military acumen. All Somali males were regarded as potential soldiers, except for the occasional religious cleric.
Somalia's many Sultanates each maintained regular troops. In the early Middle Ages, the conquest of Shewa by the Ifat Sultanate ignited a rivalry for supremacy with the Solomonic dynasty.
In 1914, the Somaliland Camel Corps was formed in British Somaliland and saw service before, during, and after the Italian invasion of the territory during World War II.
After independence, the Darawishta merged with the former British Somaliland Scouts and new recruits to form a 5,000 strong Somali National Army. The new military's first commander was Colonel Daud Abdulle Hirsi, a former officer in the British military administration's police force, the Somalia Gendarmerie. Officers were trained in the United Kingdom, Egypt and Italy. Despite the social and economic benefits that military service brought, the Somali Armed Forces began to suffer chronic manpower shortages only a few years after independence. After the 1969 Somali coup d'état, most Ministers of Defence were drawn from the Supreme Revolutionary Council until 1990-91. The subsequent outbreak of the Somali Civil War from the late 1980s led to the armed forces disintegrating totally.
Somalia's armed forces were gradually reconstituted after the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government in 2004. After the creation of the Transitional Federal Government in 2010, several ministers succeeded each other. Abdihakim Mohamed Fiqi, a former Somali diplomatic with service in Washington, became Minister of Defence in mid-November 2010. While he had known that Al-Shabaab occupied the Ministry of Defence building at the time, he had not realised the weaknesses of the interim MOD premises in the privately owned Jidda Hussein building. There, the ministry had only two rooms, without internet or electricity. Thus the handshake transfer of responsibility - there was nothing more to hand over - took place in the palace, in the living room of the Somali Armed Forces commander.

Organization

Major General Muhammad Ainanshe, a member of the SRC, lost his portfolio of Minister of Defence on 10 April 1971 before his arrest on 4 May 1971.