Editing African Socialism (section)

====[[File:Dengf.png]]Foreign relations[[File:Necon.png]]====

Control of Somalia was of great interest to both the Soviet Union and the United States due to the country's strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea. After the Soviets broke with Somalia in the late 1970s, Barre subsequently expelled all [[File:Brezhnev.png]] Soviet advisors, tore up his friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, and switched allegiance to the West, announcing this in a televised speech in English. Somalia also broke all ties with the Eastern Bloc and the Second World (except [[File:Dengf.png]]China and Romania). The [[File:Necon.png]]United States stepped in and, until 1989, was a strong supporter of the Barre government, for whom it provided approximately US$100 million per year in economic and military aid.

In September 1972, Tanzanian-sponsored rebels attacked Uganda. Ugandan president Idi Amin requested Barre's assistance, and he subsequently mediated a non-aggression pact between Tanzania and Uganda. For his actions, a road in Kampala was named after Barre.

On 17 and 18 October 1977, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 to Mogadishu, holding 86 hostages. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Barre negotiated a deal to allow a GSG 9 anti-terrorist unit into Mogadishu to free the hostages.

In January 1986, Barre and the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam met in Djibouti to normalise relations between their respective countries. The Ethiopian-Somali agreement was signed in 1988, and Barre disbanded his clandestine anti-Ethiopian organisation, the Western Somali Liberation Front. In return, Barre hoped that Mengistu would disarm Somali National Movement rebels active on the Ethiopian side of the border; however, this did not materialise since the SNM relocated to Northern Somalia in response to this agreement.