Somali Civil War

The Somali Civil War started around 1988. The government of Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991 and the country became lawless. The United Nations sent peacekeeping forces in 1992 but they left in 1995 and the police force they set up collapsed. Somali was called a failed state. Many people left the country as refugees.

Transitional governments were set up in 2000 and fighting was reduced until 2007. In 2006, Ethiopian troops invaded the south of the country and destroyed the newly formed Islamic Courts Union. Al-Shabaab continued the fighting with a new Somali Civil War.

Somali Civil War Media

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  Major General Siad Barre, Chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Council and President of Somalia.

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  A destroyed M47 Patton in Somaliland, left behind wrecked from the Somaliland War of Independence.

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  Three knocked-out Somali National Army (SNA) M47 Patton medium tanks left abandoned near a warehouse, photographed by U.S. forces in December 1993.

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  An American soldier at the main entrance to the Port of Mogadishu points to identify a sniper's possible firing position (January 1994).

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  Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud, leader of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army

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  Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, one of the founders of the Transitional Federal Government, established in 2004

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  Political situation in Somalia following the Ethiopian military withdrawal, February 3, 2009

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  The battle flag of Al-Shabaab, an Islamist group waging war against the federal government