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STATE BUILDING E SICUREZZA NELL’ESPERIENZA
DELL’AMMINISTRAZIONE FIDUCIARIA ITALIANA IN SOMALIA

3. State Building in Somalia: difficulties and needs
The approach of historiography on the issue of the consistency and tasks
of the armed forces in Somalia appears, with the sole exception of E.
Bigongiari , not inclined to ask oneself and, consequently, to grasp, what other
(2)
contributions they could make to the trust administration.
Their role, in fact, supported the entire state-building process but, here,
we will focus in particular on three aspects about which many documentary
sources, even among those made more recently accessible by virtue of the
disappearance of the constraints ranking, allow to better understand the con-
tributions:
➣ the invocation of the monopoly of force from one and only one central
authority, through the creation of a security apparatus detached from the ari-
stocratic divisions of the Somali society, which contributed, in this way, to the
overall overcoming of that specific social reality and its pernicious repercus-
sions on the political level;
➣ borders protection, to clearly define the perimeter of the authority
which, initially attributed by the United Nations to the Trust Administration,
would then be transferred to the new Somali State;
➣ internal security, intended to end centuries of feuds and mutual raids
between clans.
In order to have an idea of the challenge the trust administration had to
tackle, it is important to clarify how Somalia, until the Italian occupation, had
never historically constituted an autonomous national team. In Somali civiliza-
tion, characterized by the exercise of nomadic pastoralism, there was no trace
of institutions of a centralized government and the lack of formal and centra-
lized power structures was reflected in the independent character and extreme
individualism of those populations, foreign to the Western conception of the
State. Despite the absence of administrations endowed with rigid hierarchies
and leadership positions firmly rooted in their social organization, the Somalis
did not lack, however, political institutions in general. According to the kno-
wledge of the time , also confirmed by analyses subsequent to the Trust
(3)
period, the main factor that shaped the Somali political action was, above all the
kinship, based on the tribal lineage, which linked the social formations to each
other as close as the line that connected them to a common ancestor, and the

(2) E. BIGONGIARI, The Italian Trust in Somalia (1950-1960) - The Security Corps for Somalia, the role
of the Armed Forces, in Historical-Military Studies 2003, SME - Historical Office, Rome 2005.
(3) Treccani Encyclopedia, 1936, http://www.treccani.it/encyclopedia/somalia_%28Encyclopedia-
Italiana%29/.

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