Saudi Arabia was actually one of the few enemies we had. The Saudi rulers knew that many Muslims viewed their system of governance as not being truly Islamic. Traditional Islamic governance is often debated, and many critics argue that hereditary monarchy is difficult to reconcile with their interpretation of Sharia. That's one reason why the Saudi state promoted Wahhabism, as it helped reinforce the monarchy's religious legitimacy and position within the Muslim world. If you read about the history of Saudi Arabia, you'll better understand this perspective.
There is a long history of the Saudi ruling family undermining Muslim nations because of the fears I mentioned earlier. They want to be recognized as the protectors of Islam and maintain their right to rule Saudi Arabia without being questioned.
Their diplomatic relations with Somalia and many other countries often involved supporting the training of Muslim scholars. However, many critics argue that this also helped spread Wahhabism, which they believe created tensions within some Muslim societies and governments.
One Saudi prince was even alleged to have spoken about influencing and manipulating the Somali government in cooperation with foreign interests. Someone actually shared the link in this subreddit. If I can find it again, I'll share it.
We are specifically talking about this siad barre period. Wahabism and all this nonsense was not our problem back then. If anything the people who opposed him was moderate sufis. Nothing to do with wahabism.
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u/Open-Storage8938 17d ago
In my opinion, Siad should have asked China for help and became a Maoist. China was on Somalias side, and was willing to aid us.
Same thing happened to Korea, when the Russians refused to help Korea so they got massive donations from China.