Siad Barre and the Somali State: the Actor and the Action 65 4 the Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 93

The Suicidal State in Somalia

The Rise and Fall of the Siad Barre Regime, 1969–1991

Mohamed Haji Ingiriis

University Press of America,® Inc. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Copyright © 2016 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959067 ISBN: 978-0-7618-6719-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN: 978-0-7618-6720-3 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. I dedicate this book to all Somali people who suffered (wittingly or unwittingly) one way or another under the military regime of Siad Barre

‘Hadal nin badiyeyna ma wada oran, nin yareeyeyna kama wada tegin’ A Somali saying

Contents

List of Tables ix List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xiii Note on Somali Orthography and Transliteration xvii Introduction 1

I: The Colonial State and Schooling: Tribulation 15 1 The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 17 2 A Critical Appraisal: The State and Society in Perspective 37

II: The Capture of the State: Totalitarianism 63 3 Siad Barre and the Somali State: The Actor and the Action 65 4 The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 93

III: From Clanised to Criminalised State: Tyranny 117 5 Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 119 6 The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 137

IV: The Calamity of the State: The Terror 165 7 The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 167 8 The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 189 9 The Turning Points and the Ending Point 203

vii viii Contents

V: The Cacophony of Control: The Torment 219 10 The Outbreak of the Uprising: The Downfall 221 11 The Reality and Realignment of 1991 241

Conclusion 267 Notes 275 Subject Index 353 Name Index 359 List of Tables

Table 3.1 The Clan Composition of the Military Junta 75 Table 3.2 The Clan Composition of the First Cabinet 76 Table 7.1 The Clan Distribution of the Regions 173

List of Abbreviations

AFIS–Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della Somalia CIA–The Central Intelligence Agency CID–The Central Investigations Department DFLS–The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Somalia ELF–The Eritrean Liberation Front EPRDF–Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front FRUD–The Front pour La Restauration de la Dé mocratie (FRUD) GSK–Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka KGB–Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti MP–Member of the Parliament NATO–The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NFD–The Northern Frontier District ONLF–The Ogaden National Liberation Front RPF–The Rwandan Patriotic Front SDA–Somali Democratic Association SDM–The Somali Democratic Movement SNA–The Somali National Alliance SPM–The Somali Patriotic Movement SNM–The Somali National Movement SODAF–The Somali Democratic Front SPM–The Somali Patriotic Front SSA–The Somali Salvation Alliance SSF–The Somali Salvation Front SSDF–The Somali Salvation Democratic Front SWP–The Somali Workers Party SYL–The Somali Youth League MB–Maxkamadda Badbaadada (The National Security Court)

xi xii List of Abbreviations

UK–The United Kingdom UN–The United Nations UNHCR–The United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNICEF–The United Nations Children’s Fund US–The United States US Aid–The United States Development Aid USC–The United Somali Congress USSR–The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics WSLF–The Western Somali Liberation Front Acknowledgments

For many years, I intended to write a book about the causes of the State collapse in Somalia. One night in April of 2002, while I was a guest visitor of the humanitarian worker Nur Farah and his Swiss wife Magda in their house at the seaside southern town of Merka, Somalia, I began writing a book in Somali language, entitled Sannadihii Silica iyo Saxariirta Sokeeye (The Years of Suffering and Civil Strife). What inspired me to write that book was the fact that many people who had been family members and friends (and as such, very close to me) died or were killed in both the State and societal violence(s) in Somalia. After moving out from Somalia, I continued writing that book in Nairobi, Kenya. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the unfin- ished manuscript in my Yahoo! Mail in March 2003. Dismayed as I was, I became disappointed to write again until December 2013, when I began writing it with the same theme, but one with much broader perspectives and wider contexts. The manuscript of this book was finally and formally completed a week before I have embarked on my PhD (DPhil) at the University of Oxford in October 2014. While this book is about the causes of the State collapse, another book is on the way about the consequences of the collapse (on the other hand, my doctoral dissertation will scrutinise the history of the State formation in Somalia). Over the past five years since July 2010, I have been actively researching the root causes of what one Arab analyst once described on the Al Jazeera Television Network as the ‘Somali disease’. My study faces on two fronts in Somali Studies: development of the State and the devastation of the State. My emphasis in this book lies in the era from 1969 until 1991, with the some correlation to (pre)colonial period. I lived in Mogadishu since my birth until I left in October 2002 for Kenya and then for Belgium in December 2003, ending up in England in 2008. In my postgraduate studies, I have first been

xiii xiv Acknowledgments trained as a community development practitioner and then as an anthropologist and a historian. Throughout this book, one encounters the interdiscipli- narity of my research trainings, coupled with firsthand observations and reflections as a survivor of the ‘civil’ war. Many people have helped throughout my research on things Somali about which I started writing when I was at a very young age. I remember the euphoria that surrounded my first article published in a Mogadishu newspaper in November 1994. My particular gratitude goes to my beloved parents: my father Dr Abdullahi Mohamed Barre (who suddenly passed away in May 2015) and my mother Nadifo Mohamoud Gurey. I feel nevertheless regret that my father and my grandmother, Madiina Guuleed Farah Jiileey, known as Aseey (the nickname means ‘the light-skinned’), were not alive today to witness this achievement they embarked. I am really grieved that both my father and my grandmother died before they saw my scholarly works. After all, prior to their death they used to read my articles on Mogadi- shu newspapers in the late 1990s as a young man growing up in a post- dictatorship Mogadishu, writing pieces for Qaran (Nation) and Ayaamaha (Daily) newspapers. My grandmother did not live long to see me became an academic. Yet, when I last spoke to her over the phone in early 2001, she was confident and convinced that I would succeed someday in my life. My father was always my finest critic of my writings. Over the years, I have been inspired and influenced by many scholars whom I owe an intellectual debt, to be precise and specific in mentioning: Ali Jimale Ahmed, Heather Marie Akou, Cedric Barnes, Catherine Besteman, Lee Cassanelli, Daniel Compagnon, Mohamed Eno, Charles Geshekter, Abdi Mohamed Kusow, Roland Marchal, Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, Scott Reese, Ahmed Samatar, Hussein Adam ‘Tanzania’ and many others. I drew insights from the exchanges I have had with many of these scholars. Professor Ali Jimale has always been a true inspirational scholar to me. In African Studies, I have been influenced by numerous scholars. In Somali Studies, it is not less vast. Without reading Ali Jimale’s volume, The Invention of Somalia, I would not have opted and aspired to academia as a career. An eye-opener, the book was first sent to me as a gift in October 2000 while in Mogadishu by Professor Afyare Abdi Elmi. I must admit I then possessed no tertiary knowledge to understand the gist of the volume. When I read it a decade later in September 2010, it completely left me transformed and turned into a new vigour of academic passion. Dr Afyare Abdi Elmi and Dr Martin Hill have followed my progress throughout the years. I benefitted greatly as an amateur writer from working with Afyare at Himilo Newspaper from December 1999 until the late 2000. I sobbed and was saddened by the sudden death of Martin in January 2015. I am particularly indebted to Professor Charles Geshekter, who has inces- santly provided intellectual and academic support. As always, Geshekter has Acknowledgments xv extremely generous in sending me colossal boxes of rare books and documents on Somalia, sent through postal mail from California to London by post with a heavy price and cost on his part throughout 2013 and even to this day. Apart from letting me read copies of his unpublished papers, Geshekter also read and commented (with mentorship and guidance) a number of my previous studies while I was at Goldsmiths, University of London and I cannot find words to thank him. I am always grateful to him. A congenial conversation with Markus Virgil Hoehne on one raining late October evening in 2013 after a conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) had stimulated intellectual investigation on reconceptualising the Somali clan system, a study on which I am currently working. Roland Mar- chal and Marja Tiilikainen sent me two useful studies by postal mail from France and Finland respectively. I also thank Professor Lee Cassanelli, who encouraged the publication of my first scholarly article on Northeast African Studies. Dr Mohamed Abdulkadir Eno has shored up my entry into academia and encouraged my post-graduate studies. My sister Hani and her husband Abdulkadir hosted me a week in their apartment in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in the last week of June 2012. My brother Mahad in the U.S. and my brother Abdisamad in South Africa have provided me support. Abdullahi Ahmed Ali ‘Fat’ and his wonderful wife Haliima Sheikh Hassan Asmara ‘Haliima Kaaha’ and Mire Sheikh Omar Yarow and his wife Sagal have been so close and family friends to me. Special thanks to my brother Liban Hassan Diiriye Afrah, whose continual moral support and unwavering encouragement I will always be held untouched. I cannot forget Mohamed Ali-Nur Aden Yare in Copenhagen (Den- mark) for his assistance and encouragement. Mohamed Ali Siad ‘John’ has kept encouraging me at all times. I also like to thank my childhood friend Mohamed Ahmed Mohamoud ‘Mohamed Yariisow’ in South Africa, with whom I went to school, as well as Dr Abdullahi Warsame Abtidoon ‘Abdul- lahi Yare’ in Mogadishu who believed in me very early by pointing out my potentiality. I also acknowledge Abdi Farah Jama Diini ‘Abdi Dheere’, Kha- dar Abdi Mohamed, and Ahmed Haashi who have conferred me constant moral support. So was the late Ahmed Jama who passed away in London in late 2013. My thanks goes to Mohamed Salaad in Gothenburg (Sweden) and his courteous and considerate wife who hosted me a week in the summer (mid- June) of 2012. My friends in Belgium deserve special mention: Abdullahi Abdi, Ali Baashi, Asad Nuur Aliyow ‘Duurow’, Engineer Khaliif Sheikh Osman and Adar Osman. I cannot forget the helping-hand I had received during my undergraduate studies from 2004 until 2008 from the late Omar Vervie who died in a car accident in Belgium in 2009. Thanks also to the late Nuurta Haji Hassan Alasow Jineey, who provided information and insight, but passed away shortly afterwards in Toronto, Canada. I also feel grateful to xvi Acknowledgments many more people to whom I cannot mention here due to space limitation, the people who were helpful to me to reframe my earlier postulations and perspectives. Finally, working Holly Buchanan and the other team at the University Press of America was encouraging and enthusiastic. I am immensely grateful to the late Professor Hassan Ookiyo for sharing with me many insights and information pertaining to the Siad Barre regime under whom he worked as a law lecturer at the Somali National University. It was a saddening night for me when he suddenly died at his home on the outskirts of Gothenburg (Sweden) in May 2014 at the midst of researching and writing this book. I note the fruitful numerous email discussions I had with Daniel Compagnon from January up to June 2014, during the early stage of writing this book. Thanks also due to David Brooks, the Editor of the Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society, who sent me documents with short notice. I thank Hodan Ismail Ali Obokor, Abdirahman Luunge, Kamaal Abdi Omar, Hussein Warsame Ali and many others who provided me useful connections and contacts. I thank Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed Ga’madheere, Harbi Elmi Farah, Abdulkadir Ahmed Nuur (and all Ahmed- nur Ali Guuleed family), Ahmed Abdi Dheere, Liban Mohamed Sheikh Hussein ‘Khasaaro’ and Khadar Abdi Mohamed for one way or another of their encouragement and support. I am also indebted to Sarah Craze for drawing the maps. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the friendly team of the University Press of America, especially Holly Buchanan and Beverly Shellem, for making this book project a reality. Lastly, but not least, I like to thank my family who endured my unending work. Note on Somali Orthography and Transliteration

In this book, transcribing Somali terms and phrases have followed Somali orthography. Therefore, ‘c’ stands for the Arabic consonant ‘ayn for the aspirated ‘h’. Put it differently, c is meant ‘a; dh = d and x = h. The ‘ refers to the Arabic word of ‘ayn and thus applies to Arabic loan words of Somali usage – e.g., ‘ulema. Somali orthography is used when directly quoting from poems and proverbs. Anglicised form of the Somali names are used throughout this book. All Somali names used will be anglicised except in the case of authors using their names in line with the standard Somali(s) orthography. In other words, the names of the Somali authors will be adapted as they used in their books. For instance, Faarax will be retained as it is, not Farah. However, all the Somali terms and proverbs will be used in their original Somali followed by English translation. All other individual Somali names will be rendered in their anglicised versions. Lastly, but not least, the names in quotation marks specify nicknames as they are mostly better known than a person’s formal name.

xvii

Introduction

‘O Somalis’, prophesied the Somali bard Farah Mohamed Ali ‘Farah Golo- leey’ on the eve of independence for The Somali Republic in July 1960, ‘you will sooner or later be ruled by bandits’.1 Gololeey, a well-known outspoken bard, who served the Somali National Assembly for four years (1964–1969), was particularly well-placed in predicting the future and fate of the post- colonial State façade. What Gololeey had cautioned was not so quite dissimilar from what Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou would call ‘the Criminalisation of the State’ to paint the post-colonial authoritarian African States.2 Upon independence, Somalia briefly witnessed a democratic system of governance and a dictatorial regime within a short period of a decade. As the Somalia in the 1960s was a period of politics based on democratic structure, civil politics became uncivil in 1969 after which the shift leaped from authoritarianism to autocracy. With the adoption of democratic institutions–a separation of power, free judiciary and free press–from July 1960 up to October 1969, Somalia was regarded one of the few examples of real democracies in Africa. With its defects and deficiencies, it enjoyed representative Italian-type of parliamentary democracy for nine years prior to paving the way to a breakdown. It was upon assessing the political patterns and processes of power in post-colonial Somalia that led Gololeey to perfectly predicting the rise of the military regime of Major General Mo- hamed Siad Barre, c. 1969–1991. For a brief period, the post-colonial Somali gouvernementalité (governmentality)–to use Michel Foucault’s pithy phrase–ruled through the framework of European democracy handed down from European colonialism, but it soon paved the way first for clanised and (then) for criminalised State under the cloak of a military rule.3 Although this State system of bureaucratic propensity, with its parliamentary functionality and independent judiciary,

1 2 Introduction operated through vigorous and vital manner, it was alien in the minds of the public.4 Aside from the democratic institutions at work, the very basis of democratic rule–the free and fair election–was so corrupted that the very democracy itself was turned out to be a debacle. 5 Even though democracy was an infant in the 1960s, it was years heavily discredited by virtue of acute embezzlement and vote fraud. Thus, the years between 1960 up to 1969 were condemned as the ‘neo-colonial period’ led by the ‘neo-colonial power’.6 However, no one envisaged that post-colonial Somalia would end up a dictatorship that led to fall down a complete collapse. Put this way, no one lived through the 1950s anticipated that the State left behind by colonial authorities would fall into collapse within nine years. Few Somalis–such as Farah Gololeey–had nevertheless recognised that the rush to independence would culminate in catastrophe. Barely a decade passed, when the Somali State was replaced forcefully and violently by the autocratic clano-military regime of Siad Barre. Somalia after the 1969 coup went through a complete metamor- phosis. From African experience, coups tend to lead to collapse. The coup phenomenon was a conundrum that spread Africa like a wildfire at the time. 7 Throughout his 21-year dictatorial rule (1969–1991), even though he maintained to having been enthused by an altruistic desire to salvage the society from corrupt post-colonial plunderers, Siad Barre remained what Samuel Finer described ‘the man on horseback’.8 Everywhere in Africa, except few exceptional cases, the probability for a coup maker to hand over power to civilian rule has remained nil. This book documents and delves into the reign and rule of the Siad Barre regime that ruled from 1969 up to 1991. It is indeed important to bring the State ‘back in’ in the analysis of what went wrong in Somalia at the post- independence period.9 The place to begin understanding any political problem on the Africa continent is always with the State in power. 10 A Russian proverb has it that the problem of the system starts from the top. Indeed, the political problem that shattered the grand Somali aims of independence had started from the top–that is, the State system. No doubt that ‘to understand politics’ in Africa is ‘to understand relations of power in their historical settings’.11 On 21 October 1969, Somalia saw a coup that brought Siad Barre, the Commandant of the Army, to power upon the successful stage of a (bloodless?) coup d’état that overthrew the democratically-elected civilian government. The month the coup occurred was known as ‘Oktoobartii Ma- doobeyd’–which is to say, the Black October. 12 Not because the coup served as subterranean as well as subterfuge, but Siad Barre’s seizure of power–followed by an ‘absolutist authoritarian rule’–led the unified Somali State–as we knew it–to a state of statelessness. 13 Since the violent takeover of the State power dragged Somalia to the path of bloody clan conflicts, Somalia became a prominent case in the point of the politics of busaarad (bankruptcy). Into the political crisis following the coup came the Somali Introduction 3 syndrome. With the absence of a State acting as neutral to Somali clans and communities, the regime was a clan State out of a communal State. By communal is referred to a State where every clan and community had their voice, even when some persisted greater voice and attempted to appropriate the whole national State for themselves. This book is a critical repositioning of the study of the military regimes in Africa by tracing what went wrong with the post-colonial Somali State once colonial rule passed to the Somali hands. It critically engages with the wider theoretical and conceptual frameworks in African Studies which attributes the post-colonial African State raptures to colonialism. Focusing on the Siad Barre regime, the book argues that the military leaders trained and taught by colonial authorities were harsher than their tutors and teachers, as plunder, pillage and patronage were institutionalised. The main argument is that colonialism left Africa on its own. The book puts emphasis on African agencies (shaped by external patrons) over what went wrong with Africa after the post-colonial period. The book traces how such a totalitarian rule became a becoming by looking at both internal and external interactions. However, how President Siad Barre came to power and ended is a matter of dispute, even among those who assisted him in undertaking such a perilous task. In an interview with four fellow collaborators of the coup, there was a lack of unanimity for who had the idea and who made it a reality. 14 Seeking to secularise socio-economic life of Somali society, an attempt hardly made by colonialists, even though they left Somali politics secularised, Siad Barre sought what other African dictators had hardly dared. Unlike his contempo- raries in the wider region, i.e. Idi Amin, Jean- Bédel Bokassa, Muammar Ghaddafi, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Daniel arap Moi, Robert Mugabe, Ja’far Muhammad Numeiry, Sese Seko and others, Siad Barre infiltrated in every facet of Somali society–from cultural continuum to the concept of clanship. The 1975 proclamation of the Family Law as well as the 1971 mock banning of the clan system constituted direct interventions of societal traditions and customs. While it was aimed in the eyes of the communist community at promoting the image of the regime as progressive a regime as contrasted to others, proscribing clan was deemed as an attempt to prevent major clans from demeaning Siad Barre’s clan. From early on, many Somalis began to resist the imposition of the totalitarian structure of the State.

BETWEEN SILENCE AND SIAD BARRE

A Critical Synthesis/Anthology Conducting a fieldwork research in Somalia during and after the Siad Barre regime was difficult, especially for a scholar with a critical eye. Somalists were under constant control by the regime in power through censorship and 4 Introduction intervention of their research themes as well as restriction of their activities to freely reach informants and interviewees. The field was, after all, under the sway of the regime. Customariness was obeyed that outside observers travelling to Somalia for research-related trip had to rely on what Paul Ri- coeur calls ‘the master narrative’–that is, when those who held power dominate the knowledge being produced.15 The British social anthropologist and recently deceased doyen of the English-speaking Somalists, Ioan Myrddin Lewis was perhaps the most candid among Somalists in admitting that his writings on Somalia were directed by some post-independence politicians. To call on his reflections: ‘I have certainly been more subject to pressures, often elusively subtle ones, in post- than in pre-independence Somalia. Re- flecting on this, I now think that I have sometimes tended to be less critical and objective [...] about the policies and actions of successive independent Somali governments’.16 Even though those politicians who pressurised Lew- is are covered and concealed, one could infer their shadows from the ac- knowledgements of his monographs. Like it or not, as Charles Geshekter, almost all previous outside observers of Somali State and society became Lewisite.17 There is a lack of critically and comprehensively detailed discussion of the Siad Barre regime. Existing scholarship on Somali politics and history passed over and pursued a theme not exclusively–but in parallel–with the Siad Barre regime. These studies consist of two similarly yet different types of scholarship: those written during the last legs of the regime and those written after its fall. During the Siad Barre regime, authors who attempted to trace the regime had skipped over the political aspect of the militarised reign. Few authors who studied post-colonial politics in order to investigate what went wrong with Somalia had included a chapter or two on the period of the regime in their studies, albeit with passing statements. 18 Some books published during this time (and several of them commissioned by the regime itself) regarded the stiff resistance to topple the Siadist State as a war between a modernising State and primordial clan guerrilla insurrections. Seem- ingly due to political affiliation with the regime, those writing these years failed to portend the real root causes of the State failure. In Socialist Somalia, Ahmed Samatar aims to assess whether the Siad Barre regime fell short of socialist ideals and ideology. Gauged through political economy and scientific socialism, Samatar pays no attention to the extent of brutality unleashed by the regime.19 Produced barely two years before Siad Barre’s fall, Samatar’s study granted the authoritarian regime with quite a propitious judgement. The only thorough survey analysing the Siad Barre regime in some detail was the unpublished French-written study titled ‘Ressources Politiques, Rég- ulation Autoritaire et Domination Personnelle en Somalie: Le Régime Siyyad Barre (1969–1991)’.20 With Introduction, preliminary chapter, three parts (all together seven chapters) and Conclusion, this crucial work comprises Introduction 5 two extensive volumes, a fruit of doctoral dissertation, which the French political scientist Daniel Campagnon defended on 17 February 1995 at Uni- versité Pau and Pays de l’Adour (joint) in France. The dissertation deals with how the Somali State was used as a resource to accumulate wealth by creating a system of clan clientelism. The first volume forms the body of the research study and the second volume (much smaller) constitutes the extensive bibliography and appendices. In the first, Compagnon offers an analysis of Somali social structure, downplaying the salience of clanism in the Siad Barre regime and seems to suggest that there was a regulation in the authoritarian rule. Compagnon treats quite less critical to the regime than to armed opposition movements, minimising the State terror unleashed upon civilians and pointing out instead panegyric personalities from other clans to stress that Siad Barre’s rule was not as clannish as it seemed. As he interned for the French Embassy in Mogadishu from 1983–1985, Compagnon was apparently in a better position to record a leaked confidential information within the circle of the regime. Some minor flaws and inaccurate assertions notwithstanding, his dissertation merits publication. Another crucial work about the Siad Barre regime was produced by the young Italian scholar Anna Bruzzone. 21 However, the main concern appears to be the economic and sociological aspects of the regime. Since Siad Barre was to be unseated, scholars have maintained to explain what has become of the Somali State, even if no inclusive study has yet been able to account in scrutinising in-depth into the rise and fall of his regime. Works emerged during Siad Barre’s departure put greater emphases on the anarchy and chaos that followed his flight and more often than not lament a new imagination of the State restoration. Because the time was so close, debates, disputes and discussions have revolved around the shock of the State disappearance. In his essay, ‘The Curse of Allah: Civil Disembowelment and the Collapse of the State in Somalia’, Ahmed Samatar went as far as to suggest that Islamic values and secular political principles could go hand-in-hand in reinstating the State structures.22 Only after Siad Barre went to exile in Nigeria did scholars begin to re-examine his rule quite critically. As such, there exists a small number of fine scholarship that took a different approach by assessing the regime through the themes of hegemony, State failure and international intervention which vigorously challenged the previous studies about the So- mali State and society. 23 Another significant work is the fine and valuable slim work titled, The Fallen State: Dissonance, Dictatorship and Death in Somalia, by Alice Bettice Hashim. Reviewing the rule of Siad Barre in the wider context of post-colonial State, Hashim sheds light on the predatory power of the regime in two chapters, within the analytical framework of a State ‘bereft of institutional structures’.24 To make her point, she expands on Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg’s typologies from prophet and prince to autocrat and tyrant, lastly concluding that the Siad Barre regime was a fascis- 6 Introduction tic rule.25 The prophet was referred to a ruler who ruled by manipulation; the prince by charisma; the autocrat by absolutism; and the tyrant by fear. How- ever, Siad Barre neither typify for the typology of the prince nor of the prophet. Even though he was initially perceived as a Messiah, in part because of corrupt previous civilian rulers, he soon proved as an autocrat transformed into a tyrant. After the Siad Barre regime was toppled, those authors who assessed it only made some hints and overlooked to provide detailed examination on how the regime came and ended. In her survey of the State evaporation, Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone, Anna Simons puts forth a pains- taking anthropological analysis that concentrated on the last two years of the Siad Barre regime and how urbanised people in Mogadishu negotiated and mediated themselves with a regime that had gone mad. 26 Simons found that one reason (among many) of the State ‘dissolution’ was an unaccounted foreign aid to the brutal dictatorship. This proposition seems in line with the view expressed in somewhat less scholarly, but historically significant, by Cabdulqaadir Aroma’s Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya (The Reasons for Somali Destruction). Written in Somali, much crucial part of this study deals with the Siad Barre regime.27 In his volume of collected essays, From Tyran- ny to Anarchy: The Somali Experience, Hussein Mohamed Adam ‘Tanzania’ also incorporates specific periods of the Siad Barre’s rule, but mentions much about anarchy (the consequence) than about tyranny (the causality). 28 Adam, Aroma, Compagnon, Hashim and Simons, nonetheless, came to the same conclusion that a State authority–begun as a clan corporation–was later ended in personal/family rule. In light of the above literature review, studies on the Siad Barre regime are very few and far between. Most of these studies were researched and written well before Siad Barre was ultimately driven out from Somalia. So they write small contemporary details, but not the whole story. In other words, no one did tell the entire story of the Siad Barre regime. So far, no other scholar had attempted to look at this regime. And no one has too yet sought to systematically study the post-colonial and post- post-colonial State for that matter.

THE RATIONALE OF THE BOOK

The Methodologies The coming and ending of the Siad Barre regime has been misunderstood, partly because there is no published comprehensive study on it. The lack of holistic examination and explanation of the Siad Barre regime remains more relevant. Even though Maria Brons analyses the society as the main protagonist of the State, no systematic sociological and cultural investigation of the State and society was conducted. 29 A multidisciplinary empirical study of the Introduction 7 collapse is necessary to understand how Somalia slid into suicidal State. The impact and the authority of the nation-State on Somali society have yet critically and comprehensively been traced through genealogical construction. This book attempts to fill in this gap by tracing the politics and processes of reign and ruling from 1969 up to 1991. Seeking to make a comprehensive and comparative partnering with other Africanist scholarship, the book follows a new way of reconceptualising and reconsidering the past. A new framework and useful analytical tools have to be used if one were to separate State terror from societal violence. As the first published book-length study to explore the Siad Barre regime, this is the first study in Somali Studies that confers most of its referring spaces with Somali sources. Since no extensive study on the dictatorial military regime had been published, the task of this book is to extensively undertake a reappraisal of the Somali State and it does so by explaining and analysing not only the rise but also the fall of the Siad Barre regime. The book sets out the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Somalia to explore and examine how the Siad Barre regime came into being and ruled. It brings to light for the first time never-used documentary evidence on how power was seized in October 1969 and how Siad Barre implicated himself in the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, five days before the coup. Framing new ways of analysing military regimes in Africa begins with (re)assessment of how the Siad Barre regime was approached before. By putting different perspectives into historical context in a holistic approach, this book circumnavigates through comparative and comprehensive on the regime to reveal how colonialism did not produce less than what criminalisation of the State resulted in Somalia. This empirical argument was crucial to understanding the conundrum that faced the new Somali Republic in the late 1960s. By employing nuanced analytic concepts and categories, the aim is to refine the past to recapture the present and envision the future. The historicity of exploring Somali State trajectory entails employing a Braudelian longue durée approach. The main thesis of the book is that the contemporary conflicts are not only attributable to but also because of the past plunders of the Somali military leaders, with Siad Barre being the main culprit. Three inter- related sets of contexts/questions inform the study: how Siad Barre came into power, how he ruled and maintained his authoritarian reign over the Somalis and who had assisted him from inside and outside. To what extent his legacies contributed to the clanised wars in the aftermath of his demise? The micro-physical dynamics of the despotic regimes spiced with clan cover can best be explored if used the main theoretical and conceptual framework of Jean-François Bayart’s la politique du ventre (the politics of the belly) in his L’État en Afrique (The State in Africa).30 Bayart argues that ‘Africa’s contemporary political struggles and wars are not the consequences of a radical rupture–colonization–but are symptomatic of a historical line of 8 Introduction continuity, namely a practice of extraversion’.31 He also shows that, ‘[s]ome post-colonial regimes have even turned the colonial legacy in matters of coercion into official policy, such as in Mozambique, where a law of 31 March 1983 reintroduced public floggings which had earlier been banned in 1975’.32 Bayart’s model could be of use as a point of departure in this book to provide with heuristic and holistic approach in tracing Somali political realities. The politics of the belly and the predatory performance brought power to the centre of the analysis by offering both empirical and theoretical discussion. The examination shows how, when and why the role of the State–from protector to predator–in post-colonial Africa came to rot. As Bayart pointed out, Somalia would have merited deeper examination, even though it is–in his own eyes - ‘a woebegone African country’.33 By deeper meant empirical work, one that identifies the root causes and takes a critical look at the State and society. The way the State is conceived in the Global North has been categorically and contrastingly different from the way it is seen in the Global South. Foucault formulated two types of analytical concepts to interrogate power both its dialectics and discourse: (1) The archaeology and archives, and (2) the genealogy, which is to say the imposition of power on the public and their bodies through subjection and subservience.34 Despite its recognition of power as paramount and principal actor of human agencies, not to mention the emphasis on discipline and regulation, Foucault’s proposition is important to capture the regime of Siad Barre. The power and pathos of politics as well as the politics of particularity forms significant part in this book. To explore the nature of this regime, its dialectics and dynamics of power and State terror are necessary spaces to locate within the wider scope of Somali politics, culture and history. It is to the dynamics of dictatorship, the culture of violence and predatory political power in Siad Barre’s regime that serious thought and attention are given. The process of clanisation, criminalisation and, finally, cannibalisation of the State through the evocation of ‘it’s our turn to eat’ or put it otherwise, ‘it’s our time for our tribe to solely eat the spoils of the State’ is convenient analytical concepts to gauge the dictatorial rule.35 The Foucauldian gouvernementalité –as an ‘art of government’–also adds a new flavour in understanding and analysing power from below. With their own gouvernementalité, the Siad Barre authorities created their own knowledge. However, once replaced or ousted, the knowledge produced throughout the ruling period lost credibility and confidence to sustain it.

The Source Base Material for the historical reconstruction on the Siad Barre regime emanated from a variety of sources. Based on a range of never-before-used sources, such as in-depth and extensive oral interviews with and information from Introduction 9 many of the Siad Barre regime authorities and principal participants of the ruling strata, as well as relying on never-used-before official State documents and reports; (1) primary data not accessible to non-Somali speaking students and scholars, (2) hard to find documents (especially those from armed opposition movements that fought against the regime, (3) oral literature (Somali oral poetry recorded in cassettes and videos), (3) films, (4) photographs and (5) previously underused sources: nationalistic and war songs, speeches, intelligence reports, confidential regime documents, media bulletins, newspapers and declassified American, British and Russian documents. Also using are neglected sources, such as videotapes retrieved from YouTube, local oral tradition and research bulletins. Combining all these sources is aimed to avoid sticking to one single source and adopt triangulation in referring to sources. To further alternate sources, archival research was done in the UK National Archives, British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Regrettably, almost all (or majority) of the regime’s secret files in the Ministry of Defence and Villa Somalia–the presidential compound–were destroyed both before and after Siad Barre’s flight and fall. The destruction of evidential sources that might have provided insights into how Somalia dragged into the current chasm is substituted by an open-ended oral interviews. Interviewees and informants included elites and ordinary, luminaries to laymen, participants and bystanders, both men and women, such as former ministers, ambassadors, consuls, generals, colonels, other army and police officers, politicians (both loyalists and rivals), civil servants, religious scholars, students, medical doctors, academics, engineers and as well as the senior regime official’s drivers, bodyguards, agents and informers. Most of the interviewees were people who had been players of the events they were interviewed. Scattered around the world; in Africa, Canada, USA, Europe, with many of them living from Mogadishu to Minneapolis, they consisted of cross clan individuals selected for their knowledge of the event under examination. All interviews were conducted in Somali language in order to allow the interviewees to better express themselves. Some other oral confidential information was also gathered in Somali and translations from Somali into English are mine. If some provided more information and insight than others, it was merely because they were more well-informed than the rest. Some provided dense, very detailed unpublished information which was forced to keep secret by the Siad Barre regime. However, this information itself was corroborated and counterchecked with other knowledgeable informants and interviewees. One caveat, however. Similar to David Keen’s case in Sierra Leone, though not every interviewee or informant ‘was telling the truth or even remembering events accurately, but my intention has been to listen carefully to them, to try to understand events from their point of view, to 10 Introduction contextualise what people have said, and to give as accurate a picture as I can through the accumulation of stories and detail’.36 If full names are used repeatedly, it was because Somali names may seem unrecognisable to the non-Somalis. The names of some interviewees are withheld for security (and other) reasons. Some interviewees and informants who provided sensitive and crucial information have chosen to remain anonymous. Where the interviewee had requested for anonymity and where necessary for sensitivity, names will be shortened. Personal contact with the interviewees and informants are maintained during the course of the research and of writing the book in order to connect for a need of further details. A new method of conducting ethnography through the phone lines in what I would call telephonic ethnography in contrast with visual was tried. The aim was to amass empirical data and gain observations over the phone by listening long hours to unseen informants and interviewees. Since respondents are scattered around the world, the method used to find information was to conduct cross-ethnographic examination. This is most useful when one could not carry out fieldwork research but had the (cap)ability to obtain crucial contacts for research. The ethnographic approach contributes to cultural nuances of power, politics and personalities in the post- and post-colony through appraising State and micro- and macro-politics without overlooking geopolitics. However, some potential interviewees and informants who worked for the regime feared to talk about their experiences. Why some are still fearful for exposing their real experience long after the regime was ousted is still incomprehensible to me. Many potential interviewees were particularly apprehensive that the information with which they shared would lead them to persecution, so they opted not to talk, others remained unanimous, specifically in cases they provided their witness accounts on sensitive matters in which they were at stake. Some interviewees talked to me through each other. One old former senior officer (brigadier general) has provided me with some worthwhile documents, while relating to me at the same time some interesting stories. He would often admonish me ‘please don’t mention my name on it’. Asked why, he stated that he would be apprehensive to be accused of dividing Somali society, but the reality was that he was anxious about the ousted regime, as though Siad Barre was still ruling in Somalia. He felt tempted when I said to him that I am willing to expose myself to be accused of ‘dividing the Somalis’, an accusation which seems to be an easy caption to silence any meaningful debate and to distort studies on the Somali syndrome. It astounds me to deal with such a people who seemed to have suffered from what can be called a mental massacre. But the importance of oral history for purposes of culling information from participants can hardly be underesti- mated. One has to bear in mind that oral history is a new technique rather than a new branch of history. John and Jean Comaroff suggested that any Introduction 11 historical ethnography ‘must begin by constructing its own archive. It cannot content itself with established canons of documentary evidence, because there are themselves part of the culture of global modernism–as much the subject as the means of inquiry’.37 The method used here was ‘insider-insider’ interview approach instead of ‘outside-outside’ technique. This is not so indifferent from what Jacques Le Goff calls ‘lived history’ (histoire vé- cue)–that is, a history remaining one’s stored memory as an event that has happened a minute ago. This is also to employ what can be characterised as a mobile history (Le Goff uses the term ‘an almost immobile history’ to denote the long duration historical method known as longue durée).38 Another important source is memoirs provided by participants of the regime, but critical use of the information contained in the memoirs should be employed. Many former senior officers of the Siad Barre produced memoirs describing their observations during the turbulent years of totalitarianism. Crucially, authors of some memoirs provided witness accounts and insider information. Cabdulqaadir Aroma and Cabdulqaadir Shire Faarax, who worked for the regime and witnessed the brutalities firsthand, offer a distinct insights and perspectives.39 Aroma, a regime employee until the last minute, has a lot of documents at his disposal, but rarely disclosed them. Faarax published his memoir nine months before the downfall of the regime. A former editor of the regime-controlled newspaper, Faarax fell out with Siad Barre, when the newspaper he was editing was dismantled upon publishing a critical commentary reviewing the pitfalls of the regime. According to him, the newspaper headquarters was attacked, equipment confiscated. His real grievance apparently stemmed from the fact that Siad Barre began to groom his son, General Maslah Mohamed Siad, as his heir apparent. Faarax then lobbied for a regime change, but somehow seemed more critical in his memoir to the armed opposition movements than the regime. However, in some other ways, Faarax was prophetic in predicting that what would follow Siad Barre should be clan revenges. This he noted at a time when notable Somalist scholars were reiterating and reassuring that Siad Barre would leave the State intact.40 Both analytical and somewhat theoretical, Faarax’s account provides suggestions and recommendations. Since other authors were critical to the regime in specific timeframe on one hand, some were supportive on the other, with some falling out as late as January 1991. Therefore, some memoirs offer frank assessment than others, especially those who worked for the regime in mid-level capacity, with dramatic revelations and reflections.41 Western diplomats who worked in Somalia also published their own memoirs.42 Aggregation of ethnographical study and oral historical information are invaluable to analyse the Somali dilemma and construct detailed study. All three ways of participant observation–experiencing, inquiring and examining–are employed to present archival, ethnographic, empirical, observatory 12 Introduction study. Reading primary historical sources itself is ethnography if the social scientist or the historian employs the necessary tools to glean information out of complex documents. In The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz drily demonstrated that ‘doing ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on’.43 Geertz, nevertheless, doubts on how sheer observation could contribute to systematic knowledge. Comaroff and Comaroff also stressed that ‘a historical ethnography must always go beyond literary traces, beyond explicit narrative, exegesis, even argument’.44 Ethnography entails a careful double check of events and dates; many informants and interviewees tend to confuse both, though. This meant the scholar himself or herself had to go beyond the memory of the interviewees and official documentations to check the information. Here, there is some caution on the data from intelligence research bulletins used in this book. Both Africa Confidential and The Indian Ocean Newsletter carry inaccuracies and errors, names, places, dates that warrant caution. The information they provide is at times misleading and contradictory and one has to cite with caution, look at a critical eye and combine other sources with a double check. Crucially, their documentation is of importance of exploring the Siad Barre regime. Horn of Africa periodical is also a good source for examining the regime as it had published a series of articles, news reports and critical commentaries assessing the regime throughout the 1980s. It is worth highlighting that the official bulletins upon which this book draws heavily and other State publications were carefully censored by the regime. The written documents produced by the regime authorities did not accommodate the voices of those opposing them. Despite these omissions, they provide unique evidence on the regime activities and what the dictator was involved in more than two decades. Using Italian or Somali versions where English version is not available, the Official Bulletin of the Somali Democratic Republic–Faafinta Rasmiga Ah or Faafin Rasmi Ah in Somali and Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala in Ital- ian–began Somali version on 1 April 1973. The bulletin had been published with different forms and shapes from 1950 until 1989. However, in 1990, the Siad Barre regime was unable to publish one due to the collapsing condition of the country. Similarly, from 1980 onwards, most of the bulletin announce- ments were legislations and land leases. Alongside the regime publications, other primary sources are also drawn in this study. Most of the materials, especially official bulletins and visual clips, have not yet attained attention in the scholarship on Somalia. In line with primary sources, colonial documents and data collected by colonial authorities were used for purposes of comparison. However it may seem scathing and scornful, the Saidian critique of colonialism and colonial writers did not repudiate and rebut the historical contribution of the nineteenth-century ethnography and traveller’s account. Introduction 13

Had it not been useful as a historical data, Edward Said himself would not have been so eloquent and articulate in arguing against Orientalism, even though he was raised under colonial rule and he thus experienced firsthand the colonial oppression.45

The Structure of the Book The book organised chronologically comprises five parts (eleven chapters, overall), consisting of decentralised sections. The Part I traces the colonial impacts and influences of the new post-colonial breed of African military leaders. By engaging with wider debates on the State and society in post- colonial Africa, chapter 1 sets the stage for scrutinising the rise of the military regimes in Africa and the place of Siad Barre in particular of coming out from colonial edifice. Chapter 2 discusses the internal and external politics of the post-colonial State and how the dissolution of the late 1960s democracy and how the subsequent coup was planned and performed. Part II investi- gates how power was seized and totalitarianism imposed. Chapter 3 explores how the coup was conducted and power consolidated in a cunning but a careful way. Chapter 4 examines the institutionalisation of the dictatorial system of State. Part III studies how clanisation of the State was transformed into criminalisation. Chapter 5 reveals how State plunder, predatory power and political economy were infused to protect the regime on the one hand and to enrich close clan cronies on the other. Chapter 6 delves into detail on how and why the 1977 war was waged, presenting the many perspectives of those who were involved. Part IV assesses the excessive clanism of the regime and how the State strategies behind that policies had contributed to its downfall. Chapter 7 demonstrates how clan and clanship system were used and exploited. Chapter 8 uncovers the manoeuvres of the Presidential Palace at a time of enormous political crisis. Chapter 9 tracks the dying days of the regime. Part V evaluates the political calculation of who should have taken the State. Chapter 10 locates the capital city uprising that led to the demise of the regime. Chapter 11 reflects on the realities of the post-Siad Barre State grabbing, exploring the politics of the main post-Siad Barre political players and highlighting why and who should rule and why. The conclusion summar- ises the arguments and observations of the book.

The Colonial State and Schooling: Tribulation

Philosophers, when confronted with outside and inside, think in terms of being and non-being. Thus profound metaphysics is rooted in an implicit geometry which—whether we will or no—confers spatiality upon thought; if a metaphy- sician could not draw, what would he think? —Gaston Bachelard1

Chapter One

The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s)

SOMALIA IN A WIDER AFRICAN ASSESSMENT

From Colonial to Cannibalised State There is nothing particularly unique about Africa. From Algeria to Angola, Egypt to Ethiopia, Libya to Liberia, Morocco to Mauritius, Somalia to Sene- gal, Sudan to South Africa, Africa has similarities and dissimilarities with regards to the conjuncture between the State and society. Somalia is part of Africa considered to be ‘a continent of clans, of segmentary tribes’.1 Howev- er, Somalia rarely appears comparative thematic scholarship on Africa. Simi- larly, a scholarship providing a comparison of Somalia to other African experiences is almost non-existent in Somali Studies. Commonalities, contrasts and comparisons of the litany of wars precipitated by African authoritarian regimes in relation to the Somali case after post-colony warrants careful and critical examination. The Africanist scholarship hardly mentions the Somali State in continuities and discontinuities compared with other post- colonial African states.2 The only occasion one encounters a word on Somal- ia is when discussions on Africa reaches the penetration of Islam into the Eastern part of the continent upon which Mogadishu, the Somali capital, was centred. This led some scholars to contend that theories about Africa proved inapplicable and incompatible to Somali syndrome. From Foucault to Fanon, Somalia baffled any type of theory relevant to other African contexts. The gist of this argument suggests that there is no set of fixed theoretical frameworks applicable to Somali case. Even though such contention may develop the Malthusian argument of the New Barbarism, it has become hard to refute it.3 Serious Somalists, such as Catherine Besteman, aptly conclude that:

17 18 Chapter 1

. . . Somalia in the 1990s has been a bewildering place which stretches our ethnographic and theoretical abilities of understanding. How do we begin to understand a place where Foucault’s disciplinary technologies of control (the army, national security service, schools, prisons, ritualized public displays of state support, state laws governing bodies) gave way to criminal terror, where Raymond Williams’s hegemony (with all its inherent contradictions) was completely replaced by contradictory and alternative hegemonies, where Benedict Anderson’s imagined nation gave way to antagonistic localized identities, where Marx’s classes (still unconsolidated at the time of collapse) disintegrat- ed into patronage through military might, where Weber’s territorial sovereignty was replaced by millions of transnationally mobile refugees and expatriates spread throughout the globe?4

Compared with other African experiences, the Somalia is not that unique. After colonialism departed, the agency passed to the Somalis in the form of indigenous self-determination. The dialectics and dialogic(s) of the dictatorial clano-military rule in Somalia never in any respects distinct from the other experiences of dictatorial regimes in Africa. The two predominant paradigms in African Studies are colonial and post-colonial theories. Both share two common yet distinct characteristics: the emphasis of colonial legacy and liability of the postcolonial (the so-called neo-colonial) African States. Africanist scholars have tended to devote much time debating over the dichotomy between colonial and post-colonial statecraft(s). It is here where the African political scientist Mahmood Mamdani and the African philosopher Achille Mbembe represent two less known schools of thoughts within the African Studies.5 Out of coloniality and of post-coloniality, Mamdani puts emphasis on colonial politics and policies, while Membe problematises the rules and rulings of the postcolonial African leaders. Post-colonial order in Africa is for Mbembe a preposterous power repulsively displayed both public and private, disrupting everyday forms of existence. The picture painted in Mamdani’s portrayal of Africa is that of passivity on the part of Africans in determining and defining the cacophony and capability to live without delegating innate responsibility to external outsiders. Both Mamdani and Mbembe have a point. The central argument of Mbembe follows the fact that colonialism was over and, at the wake of the post-colonial creation, Africans assumed the power of colonialists as the masters of their own destiny. In On the Postcolo- ny, he calls for a new mode of probing power and subjectivity in Africa. In employing a variety of methods–one of which was the use of captions and cartoons–he demonstrates how postcolonial rule in Cameroon was characterised by ‘the violence of fantasy’.6 With his concept of colonial commandement, he further shows that such a colonially-inspired order was in place in many post-colonial African settings and points out to the absence of what he calls the exercise of ‘existence’ in post-colonial Africa.7 To exist meant to The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 19 live and a much-sought sparkler: life without domination and denial, adding voice and visibility in matters affecting personal and communal African existence. Mbembe is in search of ‘complete’ men and women in post- colonial Africa, itself a never attained venture. 8 His revelations are revealing: ‘While we now feel we know nearly everything that African states, societies, and economies are not, we still know absolutely nothing about what they actually are’.9 Mamdani sees post-colonial African states as nothing more than an exten- sion of colonial control. In a superb study on contemporary Rwanda, he goes as far as to refer the Rwandan genocide to a handiwork of colonialism, especially the Belgian colonial policies of 1927 all the way up to 1936 by fomenting ‘racial superiority’, when the infamous ethnically-classified identity cards spawned contestation that pitted the Hutu against the Tutsi. From his perspective, the Rwandan genocide can best be understood in placing within the wider ‘colonial logic’. Towards the end, Mamdani concludes that Rwandan genocide was a natives’ genocide. ‘The fact is’, the respected scholar concedes, ‘that the Belgian power did not arbitrarily cook up the Hutu/Tutsi distinction. What it did do was to take an existing sociopolitical distinction and racialize it’.10 In more than one way, Mamdani is right to emphasise the corollary of colonialism. However, much of his arguments tend to leave African agency out of the analysis. The Mamdanian-manner of colonial scapegoat has become a reputed conjecture in African Studies. 11 Indeed, Mamdani has created an academic space wherein African peoples are often treated as passive objects in the Africanist scholarship.

Colonialism on Conviction African authors had searched scapegoats for their societal syndromes well before colonial departure. For them, colonialism was the ethnographer and author of African contemporary political crisis. In 1958, when Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe published his debut novel, Things Fall Apart, his aim was to put a familiar African scapegoat of European colonialism into poetic prose.12 This permeated that Africa was a place of peace prior to European encroachment and whatever became wrong with it was because of colonialism. Such thesis was popularised in academia by countless African academics, with the most famous voice is the one springing from Mamdani. In the Somali case, this never was. Somalis are actors and agents of their own destiny. Colonialism came to the Somali territories in a time at late nineteenth-century, when Somalis resisted the rule led by the Ottoman Islamic State in the North (later British Somaliland) and the other led by Omani Sultanate based in Zanzibar in the South (later Somalia Italiana). Soon after they adopted what they termed ‘indirect rule’, European colonialists encountered Somali clans killing women and children for clan revenge, a sub- 20 Chapter 1 subclan versus a sub-subclan, a brother-in-law versus a brother-in-law, a maternal uncle versus nephew. A tale recorded by one orientalist colonial official in the summer of 1884 is tantalising enough to offer a clue on the genealogy of clan wars. Many Somalists (as well as Africanists) may not have a stomach. This European Brit was traversing in the Somali interior for a policing mission, when he suddenly encountered a Somali woman making dirge and howling for help ‘waa wareeey, waa wareey’. He and his Somali auxiliaries immediately answered her call and stood her helmet within minutes. Upon entering her helmet, they found a man running from the scene and the woman inside distressfully crying. With his interpreter, the colonialist as usual asked the woman what had occurred. He recorded thus:

The woman was standing at the door of her goorgi (hut), with a man brandish- ing a sword alongside her, and I at once went to her assistance. I found that the miscreant had chopped her infant male child into four separate pieces, which were lying on the ground. On seeing me the murderer made off, and it took me some moments to realize what he had done [ . . . ] It transpired that it was the woman’s brother who had hacked the babe to pieces, and the motive for the crime was that the infant belonged to a man with whose tribe the murderer was at war. It was therefore the latter’s duty to deprive an enemy tribe of an infant who one day would have been a potential warrior. I endeavoured to get the akils [clan chiefs] of the murderer’s tribe to catch and hand this cruel devil over to me. But they would not move in the matter, on the grounds that he had acted in accordance with tribal law and custom, which regarded the stamping out of a possible viper as a meritorious and proper act. 13

Given that the colonial officer, Langton Prendergast Walsh, appeared uncared whether the perpetrator escaped or not, he seemingly failed to pres- surise the murderer’s kinsmen to get him on trial. This was how the colonial regimes in tribal societies fulfilled justice. However, the incident is not a matter–not even primitive way of war–limited to the Somalis. During the post-1945 Germany, there were incidents–no one knows how many–where post-war post-traumatic women killing their own new-born children because of the humiliating manner in which they had been conceived. 14 Johannes Fabian resonates with how colonial explorers were far from rational and how their data could at times not be an unswerving source of information. 15 However, their witness accounts could be a useful historical document in cases like Somalia where there was no massive tradition of writing and recording events at the time. Entry into critical dialogue and debate with colonialism reveals conjectures, conjunctions and contradictions, similar in some ways, but dissimilar in other, of the shaping of Somali society. 16 With the advent of colonialism, the Somalis underwent a massive socio-economic (trans)formations. It is not a matter of dispute that colonialism weakened African societies, obstructed their human and intellectual development and The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 21 changed the way they perceived themselves to the worse. Indeed, past colonial policies and subsequent legacies in Somalia warrant a second look. Both the British and the Italian colonial state(s) that ruled the North and the South Somali territories (later to be merged as the Somali Republic) shared several continuities and discontinuities. The British Empire, which many consider less harsh than the French, the Italians, the Portuguese and other European colonisers, was not less destructive in the Somali case, except the Fascist Italian rule in Somalia Italiana (1922–1941).17 By contrast, the British colonial rule under which Somalis in the North was administered was profoundly different from the Italian colonial rule in the South. For one concrete example, there was no exercise of what the French colonialists called le travail forcé (the forced labour) in British Somaliland, which existed in Somalia Italiana. Compelled them to feel personal humiliation, many Somalis were forced to lose their self-pride as humans under both colonial rules. Of colonial commandement, the eminent Somali singer Mohamed Sa- leebaan Tubee’, drawing from family recollection, recounted to BBC Somali Service how his poet father was personally subjected to British colonial oppression after being chained. After the father failed to find someone who could act as a bailer at a colonial court under colonial code of law in Berbera, he expressed himself in a poem by chanting ‘adimada bir baa igaga jaban agab la’aaneed dheh / eged baa la ii oodayoo, la iigu eegaa dheh’ (say, both my hands are chained without help / say, I was put in a corral, only to be watched).18 In her through analysis on colonialism, Heather Sharkey has shown that the British Empire remains a recurrent reality in Sudan too that forces the masses about facing ways to live with it, just to stabilise with its effects.19 The colonial brutality of the British partnered itself with beasts. At the end pages of a memoir published in 1900 by a British traveller who toured Northern and Central Somali territories in late nineteenth-century, one finds the traveller being displayed himself with dozens of skins from lions and leopolds he had killed on the way. The lions and leopolds were symbols of powerful brutality, a pertinent portrayal of what Henrika Kuklick classified as ‘the savage within’.20 What Leopold did in Congo, like cutting hands, was also unique to Africans who knew either life or death warfare. The use of coercion to tackle what the British found as a cultural shock from African modes of life and the unrestrained and unchecked use of power using superi- or technology had heavily impacted on Africans in mimicking the same methods of suppression to each other. Expanded through armoury and excessive power, colonial violence had its own unique vowels and voices. A report of the Mahdist anti-colonial war in Sudan cabled to London by Winston Churchill, then a young war correspondent, confirmed the articulation of armoury in suppressing the Africans. After reporting how the British crashed the Mahdist forces with much superior technological power, Churchill con- 22 Chapter 1 cluded that this was ‘the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians’.21 In 1920, for the first time the British Empire deployed war aircrafts to the Somali territory it had occupied, the British colonial officers thought this technological power would puzzle the Somalis. Air-Vice Marshal John As- tley recalled that, when they asked one young Somali how he would think, his reply was: ‘Oh, if you showed us how to do it, we too could stay in the air like that’.22 Even though the African–the Somali obviously included–was regarded by colonialism as ‘backward’, ‘barbarian’, ‘bushman’, ‘primitive’ and ‘primordial’, the African was cognisant and conscious of the imperial power protected by force and violence. Edward Evans-Pritchard was reminded more than once by his Nuer subjects of the crucial fact that they would have overcome the Empire had they possessed firearms. In his own words: The ‘Nuer have often remarked to me, “You raid us, yet you say we cannot raid the Dinka”; “You overcame us with firearms and we had only spears. If we had had firearms we would have rooted you”; and so forth. When I entered a cattle camp it was not only as a stranger but as an enemy, and they seldom tried to conceal their disgust at my presence, refusing to answer my greetings and even turning away when I addressed them’.23 The Nuer was not lost that Pritchard’s presence was related to the British power and it was financed by the very colonial order they held the stiff resentment and resistance.

Power and Personality The colonial structure left a political field of post-colonial Africa between a devil and a deep blue sea where the power of the State had to be gauged against the significant level of force it would use. Colonial power–with big ‘P’–had two distinct set of institutionalised strands in the eyes of Africans: (1) the killing and controlling with force and violence, and (2) the accumulation of monopolising economic resources. The great Somali nationalist and popular poet Abdullahi Sultaan Tima’adde regarded the British colonialism as Saaxir ‘the Sorcerer’. The Saaxir–as a local composition to search for an epithet for colonial cruelties–meant the one with visible and invisible powers. On the night of independence in British Somaliland on 26 June 1960, at the wake of taking down the Union Jack in Hargeysa, Tima’adde chanted his powerful yet beautiful popular poem: ‘Saaxirkii kala guurnaye / sarreeyoow, ma nusqaamoow / aan siduu yahay eegna’e, kanna siib, kana saar’ (as we detached from the Sorcerer / O the superior [the flag], the never deformed one / let’s see how it looks like / bring down this one [the British flag] and hoist this one [the Somali flag]).24 Tima’adde’s grand expectation was that the independence would lead to power and prosperity shared by the whole Somalis. This was demonstrated by his chant: ‘Soomaaloo calan taagta, The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 23 saakey noogu horreysoo / saddex wiig iyo maalmo haddaan soor cuni waayo’ (for the Somali to hoist a flag, this morning is the first epoch / it could be possible for me not to eat three weeks and more days). 25 The colonial period and the past should be assessed to grasp the conjunctions and conjunctures of the catastrophes plaguing contemporary Somalia. In a similar vein, the activities of genocidal African and European colonial and neo-colonial States in Africa warrant reassessments to capture the nuances of the enduring legacies left behind, which obliged the war-torn Soma- lis to quarrel over what had actually occurred, not just in the post-colonial period, but in the colonial era. Colonial territoriality and spatial occupation, coupled with projects of map-making, were brutal and painful bequeaths of colonialism, as the unfeigned appropriation of the colonial structured system was pursued. Without polishing and policing, most African States adopted colonial State structure wholeheartedly–i.e., police, army, boundary, economy, politics, so on and so forth. Maintaining the same methods and make up was not only an actual continuation of the colonial system with African face, but also of giving the former colonialists the chance to dominate the post- colonial States. According to William Tordoff, the ‘tendency to imitative- ness’ was a trend left behind by colonialism.26 However, on the political aspect, not all African States had inherited and adopted policies and politics of State structures dawn and drawn from European colonialism. Tanzania, for instance, espoused an indigenous policy known as Ujamaa, revised by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Others that came up with a new political and economic formulations include Congo and to some extent, Ghana. Some other States–for instance, The Somali Republic, ersatz colonial invention–were perceived as a replica of colonial State without ‘white’ colonialists. However, what set Somalia apart from many other African States was how it quickly adjusted to a localised democratic Statecraft. No doubt that colonial Statecraft left unprecedented problems–the least of which being the unilateral border drawing–in Africa. Oftentimes, the colonised and the colonisers–as Edward Said identified it–communicated with each other ‘by a logic of violence and counterviolence’.27 This logic was maintained and rearticulated in many other African settings. The Somali poet Abdi Muhumad Amiin Ige reminded the Somalis that ‘markii saf loo dha- qaaquu, dhintuu gumeysi dhuuntee (once stood for unity, did colonialism die and disappear).28 However, after almost 80 years of ruling, colonialism did not and could not disappear completely. Some Somalists went so far as to accuse colonialism of the Somali State failure as if though the State in So- malia was still being run by the departed colonial authorities. 29 To use colonialism as a scapegoat for anything wrong with Africa–for example, the irresponsible and immoral leadership of the military regimes–is putting the cart before the horse.30 In Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Nicholas Thomas reminds that ‘colonialism’s culture should 24 Chapter 1 not be seen as a singular enduring discourse, but rather as a series of projects that incorporate representations, narratives and practical efforts’.31 The new empirical evidence advanced in this study on the Siad Barre regime shows that this was not the case. It is too unconvincing to blame Africa’s current conundrums on colonialism. Such defeatist argument but- tresses and bolsters the long revelation of colonial authorities which propagated Africans would be incapable of ruling themselves; that Africans would prove to be like small children who needed help from their parents and that Africans would soon return to ‘tribal wars’ once colonialists left to themselves. Once colonial rule was put to an end, many European authors agreed with colonialists and enunciated that Africans reverted to barbarism. Many others predicted to an Africa suffering from the worst case scenario. History proved some of these ‘Orientalist’ forewarn of Africa. Somalia was the extreme example of African cruelty following several years of democratic system of governance. The historicity of post-colonial Somali State offers a nuanced understanding to comprehend Africa itself, transecting both internal and external dimensions. Since post-colony, geographical expressions of Af- rica have also changed, not with the changing of reality, but of literature on Africa: if it was called Tropical Africa in the post-colonial period, it was now called Sub-Saharan Africa, part of the third world countries and, most recently, of the Global South.

Fresh Oral Perspectives Since Mamdani’s and Mbembe’s surveys have yet reached the Horn of Afri- ca (let alone Somalia), as they were restricting to the West and Central African region in general and Cameroon and Rwanda in particular, the So- mali case under Siad Barre warrants through investigation. The very term ‘post-colonial’ implied that the colonial legacy was over. The vivid voices and videos of Somali organic intellectuals offer unique appraisal into what went wrong with Africa. Soon upon independence, Abdullahi Suldaan Tima- Adde minced no words to point out on how the post-colonial Somali leadership failed their society, a failure that led to dictatorship. 32 Commencing his composition with the powerful poetic prefix ‘aan macneeyo caawey muhatay laabteydu’ (let me elucidate over what my heart is grieved tonight), Tima- Adde laments that, had these élites not milked the post-colonial State for their selfish interests, the hopeful aspirations and expectations of Somali society toward independence would never have become dashed to the ground. With his own words: ‘Haddey maalintii na horkacaan, miro ma weyneyne’ (if they had led us [with honest and decent], we would never have lost or lacked fruits).33 His conclusion was that the main objectives of these élites were to ride a ‘motor’ and to live in the ‘building’. Here, both the motor and the building were referred to colonial machines and houses. In his The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 25 poem titled ‘Mandela’, the (blind) Somali poet Mohamed Ga’al Haayoow aptly identified that what Somali conundrum yearned for was a leader who would provide the leadership of Nelson Mandela.34 As noted, Somalia proved exceptional in the first few years of independence (1960–1967), but soon lapsed into a perfect example of a Eurocentric view of Africa, as the military coup turned Somali society upside down. The legacy of this rule was aptly summarised in a heart-rending song sung by the Somali-Djiboutian group singers:

O look Africa look O look Africa look Look at the destruction of Somalia Look at the suffering of women and children Look at the enormous demolition of houses Look at the refugees walking around the world How many people were displaced? How many were disappeared and never seen again? How many are living and eating with the beast? How many were swallowed by storms and oceans? How many died of thirsty and hunger?35

By evoking this vivid realities of Africa should not imply a colonial apologia. Use of force and violence in controlling–and creating new–African societies was itself a policy inherited from colonialism. The problem Africa faced straight after independence was not, however, due to colonialism per se. On the contrary, it was a lack of indigenous, modern, civic culture to reframe itself, to reshape, redevelop and to recreate governance guided by transparency and social services and security based on sacrifice for African societies. Upon a brief post-colonial conviviality, Africa has turned itself into dark, disaster and dictatorship, while colonialism served both sculpt and scapegoat to rationalise violence and viciousness. Armed violent confrontations and contestations over the State in the form of military coups and countercoups moved up and down on the African continent. 36 This was what led Ali Mazrui to declare that the African State became ‘a political refugee’.37 This also led others to charge that Africa is ‘a continent where incom- petence, greed and the lust for power have unleashed untold violence on ordinary men and women’.38 For Belgian political scientist Pierre Englebert, African sovereignties resulted in sorrowful outcomes. 39 This does not mean that colonialism has no share of what became of Africa after its departure. Abound are many facts and factors of which colonialism can be accused. In the anthropology of law and legality, various scholars have shown how the post-colonial world was heavily haunted by the colonial order which entrapped Africa more violent predicament than any other nation-States in the Global South.40 In the words of James Africanus Horton, when ‘the base 26 Chapter 1 being rotten, the whole fabric will, within a very short time, tumble to the ground. Confusion, massacre, and bloodshed would be the inevitable result’.41 The State pieced together through colonial coincidence was pulled apart by the very soldiers trained by colonial authorities. What African dictators had done to Africa was, by and large, parallel or, in some cases, worse off than the colonialism itself. African dictators, produced and trained by colonialism, proved to be more colonial than colonialism itself. Military leaders who seized power were trained to oppress their public by none other than colonial authorities under which they served. The role of African military in making many African States failure has been understudied. Much concentration had been given on colonialism and colonial legacy. If African- ist scholarship in French seems more nuanced in this sense than its English counterpart, it is not that France has an enduring relationship with Africa than the British, but the particular type of interaction was so different from the two former colonial comets.42 This book adds African agency into the debates over why many African States succumbed to savagery after post-colony. Contra to evoking colonialism as a scapegoat, the central argument of this book is that African military leaders did more harm than good in comparison with the very colonial rulers that trained them. If colonialism left a legacy to Africa, it was those leaders shaped by colonial authorities under colonial States who established what Mamdani calls, in a different context, a ‘decentralized despotism’.43 Colonial authorities left not with their eggs but also with their chickens to continue bearing. In the majority of African States, colonial authorities were either replaced by their administrative clerks or army colonial servants. Almost all totalitarian potentate and powerful leaders of the cases of failed African States from the 1960s up to 1990s were from the military establishment, i.e. Angola, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Le- one, Somalia and the Sudan. A new form and face of governability or gou- vernementalité (in the Foucauldian sense of the word) came to call on the colonial structure of order and authority–that is, a total totalitarianism secured and sustained through unrestrained violence, when the need had arisen.

THE SIAD BARRE PERSONALITY IN PERSPECTIVE

The Career and Character of a Dictator African dictatorships and dictators have been subjected to comprehensive studies apart from Somalia and Siad Barre. It is thus salient to contribute to this scholarship by beginning from the ruler. Siad Barre was a phenomenon and misfortune sent to Somalia; he was a master of many, inherently many things were under his grip. Understanding him is vital to make sense of his persona. Like many of his peers, Siad Barre was a product of colonialism. The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 27

Born around 1910, as his date of birth was a secret.44 When he enrolled Italian Carabinieri in Beledweyne in 1936, he claimed to have been born in Janaale in 1916, as some of his earlier statements indicate. Colonial documents show that he was later registered to have been born in Buurdhuubo in 1919. In 1980, at the height of his rule, he established the small town of Garbahaarey near Jubba River as his birthplace and 1920 as his birth date. But his true birthplace was Shiilaabo in Ethiopia, with the birth year being 1912. His father and grandfather (as well as most of his paternal uncles) were killed in clan conflicts. That his mother was from the Ogaadeen/Makaahiil/ Guma’adle is a clear indication that he was born somewhere around Shiilaa- bo, Wardheer and Walwaal, as this was where his mother’s sub-clan concentrated in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. Siad Barre came of age while Somalia was under the throngs of one of the most brutal colonial rule in Africa–that is the fascist Italy, a rule that lasted from 1922 until 1941. As a soldier trained in an authoritarian colonial setting, first the Italians and then the British, he was a man with multiple faces and manifold formulations. In 1934, at Wardheer, he enlisted into locally recruited police auxiliaries, Corpo Zaptie Coloniale, known to Somalis as duubcad (the white turbans), in the service of the Italian colonial state, as part of Polizia dell’Africa Italiana (the Police of Italian Africa). When the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1935, he was part of the Somali levies on the side of colonialism–the so-called duubcad (the white turban) auxiliaries–that fought fiercely against the Amhara-dominated imperial regime of Ethiopia. 45 With the deployment of modern military hardware, Italian troops and their auxiliaries were able to inflict huge defeats on the imperial troops of Ethiopia during which General Rodolfo Graziani imposed extreme repressive measures based on mass executions and military raids to repel Ethiopian rebellion against the imposition of Italian colonial rule. 46 When Corpo Zaptie Coloniale was disbanded in 1941, Siad Barre joined the newly-established British colonial auxiliaries called Somalia Gendarme- rie. Since the Italians were defeated by the British in 1941, capturing all their colonial territories in the Horn, he was a very trusted and loyal soldier who rose through the ranks by becoming a police inspector–this being the highest title a Somali could have ever expected from the colonial rule–during the British Military Administration in Somalia (1941–1950). Colonial documents show that he was considered one of the brave and obedient Somali servants under the command of the British colonial commander Gerald Han- ley and his occupation was a personal servant of the latter. 47 Along with several Somalis of his age-group, Siad Barre was taken to colonial Kenya for police training in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the British repression against the Mau Mau insurrection. The training, occurred on Kabetti, an area wherein most of the anti-Mau Mau campaign was concentrated, had a great impact on his life. The anti-Maw Mau campaign revealed to him the extent a 28 Chapter 1 colonial power was prepared to carry out free-rein violence in suppressing revolts.48 From the unintended encounter, he experienced (and exposed to himself) how to unleash and enforce hands-off oppression in defeating a rebellion, later allowing him to create his fascistic-type of an autocratic regime. Comparatively, the Italian fascist colonial troops under which Siad Barre served were more vicious in terms of what they regarded ‘pacification’–that is, dealing rebellion with free-rein violence–than the British in Kenya. The Italian colonial motto was ‘never show compassion to the enemy–destroy it’.49 In 1952, during the Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della Somalia (the Trusteeship Italian Administration of Somalia), Siad Barre was among eight police inspectors taken to Italy for police officer training. 50 Throughout his 25 years of serving colonial states, serving the British (194 1–50) and the Italian (first from 1935–1941 and later 1950–60), Siad Barre was a cunning and crafty at accumulating methods and means of ruling by force to following the end justified the means. With the direct firsthand experiences of colonial retributions and reprisals gained an inimitable familiarity and formulation of what Mbembe refers to ‘colonial rationality’.51 It is such rationality that rationalised to let loose violence on any insurgency that would come to his way. This impersonation of violence ‘was of a very particular sort, immediately tangible’,52 which was evidently the detriment of powerless masses. And this is what Somalis would paint in their saying ‘waxaad na baday, waxaad na bartay ayaa ka xun’ (what you have learnt us is worse off than what you have left us or in other words, the suffering you have made us undergo is less devastating than what I have learnt from you). Upon the coup, Siad Barre–as many other African dictators–‘wanted to be seen occupying the colonial master’s chair at his office’.53 In the testimony of a Somali scholar who had an insider relationship, Siad Barre’s dictatorship was ‘worse than the colonial administrations’.54 At independence on 1 July 1960, Siad Barre was a police officer when The Somali Republic came into being, switching to the army the same year and becoming the second man.55 Three months before, in April 1960, he joined the newly formed Somali army that grew out from Force di Polizia della Somalia (the Police Force of Somalia). Earlier, he had served as the head of the special branch, which was the intelligence department of the police. As head of this department, he was known for misusing the intelligence reports, according to his successor.56 The untimely death of General Da’ud Abdulle Hersi, the beloved Commandant of the Army, in Moscow, in April 1965, was a precious opportunity Siad Barre sought as a jewel. The funeral of Da’ud was one of the most highly-attended ceremonies that Moga- dishu had ever experienced. When his body was flown into Mogadishu, the inhabitants of the capital flooded to the airport runway to receive and pray for the beloved son. The death of Da’ud allowed Siad Barre to argue the The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 29 rightful heir of the post, as he was the first-vice Commandant. Following two months of deliberation, he was appointed to become the Commandant of the Army in June 1965. As V. Y. Mudimbe has acknowledged, the political realities of Africa after 1965 was indeed worrisome. 57 This was because many post-colonial civilian regimes that ruled consultative State structures were disregarded and replaced by authoritarian military regimes. In addition to Siad Barre, 1965 was also the year (on 24 November) that Mobutu Sese Seko came to power.

The Army as Colonial Offspring On the eve of Siad Barre’s coup on 21 October 1969, Abdullahi Suldaan Tima-Adde admonished the Somali army thus: ‘sowjadaa hubka qaadaye, intuu soorka ku taagay, u diyaara salaantiyo, saraakiisha amreysaay, sifadii isticmaarka ka siyaadiya maanta’ (those who took up the arms, dressed with coats, prepared for salute as well as the soldiers giving orders are expected today to increasingly change the State from the mode of colonialism to a more developed nature).58 Tima-Adde’s appeal was not heeded. Under Siad Barre’s watchful eyes, the most brutal form of violence–never witnessed in modern Somali history–was unleashed upon clans and personalities perceived to be a challenge to his regime. With an authoritarian authority in place, power was conceptualised in ways concomitant with the departed colonial powers. This culture of unprecedented, unchecked and unrestrained violence–recorded by and referenced from the colonial comet–was re-created and, more often than not, exploited by other African dictators trained by colonialism. It is important to note, nonetheless, that the concept of one overarching, all-encompassing predominant and principle figure of State emanated not from colonialism but from African concept and culture of power. In his powerfully balanced poem ‘Afrikaay is doono’ (O ye Africa, Unite), the late poet Mohamed Ga’al Haayoow accepted in principle the thesis that Africa was ‘paralyzed’ by colonialism and that, in addition, what it was ‘tailored for itself was re-tailored from the outside’.59 But he also pointed out that the ‘self-interested, greedy men’ imposed upon Africa to serve for the colonial masters was a problem ravaging the continent. These were those who worked not for their people but for the departed colonialism. ‘Africa’, as the poet permanently puts it, was ‘like a boat where a bad captain has been (mis)leading’. Haayow explained that this type of leadership presented an image of Africa that kills ‘its own heroes’. Though the poet did not basically refer, it is apparent that he had Patrice Lumumba and Steve Biko in mind. The poet amply emphasised that the violation of human rights and of the rule of law was what made Africa thorny to extricate itself from predicament after predicament. Hopeful that Africans could overcome those dilemmas and difficulties that contributed to the political and economic setback, 30 Chapter 1 the poet admonished that Africans would not achieve sustainable development and good governance by undertaking ‘dadaal gaaban’ (a short effort). In re-reading Haayow’s poem, the effort itself warrants efforts. Haayow’s remedy calls for collectivism and concord, which are compulsory ingredients to achieve harmonious milestones. His instruction ‘wax dhan baan is doona Afrikeey daasada u tumay’ (many were my efforts to convince Africa to engage each other) remains a requirement. Until and unless Africa resolves all these intractable problems, they will never enjoy–the poet seemed to stress–the fruits of independence and there would never be Africa free of poverty and diseases. Said Mohamed Harawo’s song ‘Afrikaay daya’ (O Africa, watch out) also echoed Haayow’s as well as other Somali songs, such as ‘hoheey Afrikaay hurudooy’ (O the sleepy and slum- bering Africa), sung by Halima Khaliif Omar (Magool); ‘midab gumeysi diida’ (reject any colour of colonialism) sung by Abdi Ali Gaas ‘Ba’alwaan’; and Khadija Abdullahi Ali (Dalays), with the chorus offering exhortations on ways to salvage Africa from colonialism.60 In their song, the latter two singers take Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) under Ian Smith as a reference to exhort post-colonial African leaders thus ‘hadal iyo murtiba, Afrikaay is maqal’ (with voice and wisdom, Africa listen to each other). Hence, the Somali pan-Africanist singer, Mohamed Ahmed Qoomaal, sings:

O Africa, Africa, Africa The cacophonous and clangourous Africa You stated bluntly I lagged behind my counterparts [other continents] They utilised knowledge and wisdom Conferring some of them in reaching the moon I am with my own fortune Since my people are graveyards In this twenty-first century, they are yearning for chairs [power] And killing each other on the basis of clan While their people fleeing O Africa, O Africa You scavenge the world And you’re fed up [by others] And become hopeless While your soil is very rich And blessed with natural resources It only needs fair distribution At the same time, you await food from your counterparts Can’t you feel ashamed? Can’t you make a serious judgement? If one of you takes a deadly path Can his brother say something and stop him? O Africa, Africa, Africa You’re one single family The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 31

Africa, unite your voices and deeds To make your enemy disappointed Hold your right hands together.61

POLITICAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL POLITICS

Democracy and Dictatorship The modernisation of societies into political stability does not emerge out of politics, but it begins with the socio-cultural shift of its economics. The economic underdevelopment and continual challenge to democracy in Africa lag behind other continents. This springs from the cultural problem, a culture (or cultures) waiting for Renaissance that admires personalities more than institutions.62 The constant conundrum of Africa to (western-type of) democracy has so perplexed Africanist authors that the slightest hint of progress in socio-political local development is deftly popularised as a model, or more superficially, a ‘miracle’. Beneath the surface of that imaginative miracle are characteristics of the spread of HIV/AIDS, uncontrolled curable chronic diseases, extreme poverty, economic breakdown and endemic corruption, particularly the latter has become a norm to the culture of rapaciousness: ‘what is in it for me’. Part of the reason in Somalia and elsewhere in Africa is many, but the most pressing one lay in despotic regimes rebuffing to make the military apolitical and professional. One of the most complicated problems in Africa is the continuance and maintenance of democratic State structures. There is a thin line between democracy and dictatorship in Africa as a result. A State framework built through colonial emulation was expected to easily push the post-colonial civilian governments to the edge and finally give rise to military dictatorship. One vivid example is the uneasy truce between civil-military relations. In the dichotomy between democracy and dictatorship, there is always a very thin line, not a second road, but both have been lumped together. Scholars of post-colonial African politics have not dis- sected the distinction between civilian democratic governments and the despotic regimes in Africa. This point was vividly confirmed by Crawford Young’s 2004 significant article ‘The End of the Post-Colonial State in Afri- ca’ as well as his most recent work in 2012.63 For Crawford, both democratic and dictatorial rules in post-independence Africa constitute an open-ended saga, the same postcolonial polities. This is a tendency shared by almost all other post-colonial authors. One has to dichotomise and draw a distinction between the democratic civilian government and dictatorial military regime. This book makes explicit differentiation by considering the post-independence military regimes as post-post-colonial, for they came to power through coercive power distinct from the post-colonial arrangement of peaceful pow- 32 Chapter 1 er handover.64 In other words, the post-colonial Africa to which many scholars had referred was indeed post-post-colonial Africa that totalitarianism–or ‘tutelary government’, in Mbembe’s term–became a norm. The military regime in Somalia that came to power in 1969 should be conceptualised as a post in the post-colonial regime. There was no much difference between colonial and post-post-colonial Africa. Herein lay the demarcation of colonised and coloniser, maintained through the dichotomy of oppressed and oppressor in the most post-post-colonial regimes in Africa. Here, the State string that enveloped the relations the ruler(s) had with the ruled befitted what Mbembe calls the ‘intimate tyranny’.65 Five stages of a despotic rule can be identified in post-post-colonial Somalia: (1) between 1969 and 1974 was a tyrannical rule; (2) between 1974 and 1981 a totalitarian reign; (3) between 1981 and 1990 a terroristic regime. The fourth and fifth stages were the legacy of the regime which culminated in the clanised wars of 1991/1992. Michael Rush, citing Carl J. Friedrich, provides the phenomenological definition, according to which a totalitarian State comes with the following six characteristics: (1) A totalist or all-embracing ideology; (2) A single party committed to that ideology, usually led by one man; (3) Police power based on terror; (4) A monopoly of communication; (5) A monopoly of weaponry; and (6) A centralised economy and control of all organisations.’66 Rush’s categorisation is important for gauging the Siad Barre, as the totalitarian nature of the State in Somalia during the regime demands contextual and critical reappraisal. State terror was the trademark for the Siadist rule from 1972 up to its demise in 1991. The 1970 detention of General Jama Ali Qoorsheel, the imprisonment in 1971 as well as the execution a year later in 1972 of General Mohamed Aynaanshe Guuleed, General Salaad Gabeyre Kediye and Lt Colonel Abdikadir Dheel Abdulle, were warning signs of what would be stored for Somalia and the beginning of brutality. This incident was the first political violence occurred in post-independence Somalia. More devastating- ly milestone events were the merciless execution in 1975 of ten Sheikhs; those sheikhs who were executed in firing squad after having defied Siad Barre’s declaration of a controversial family law (the so-called Xeerka Qoys- ka), a law contravening to the Islamic law, the most important feature of Somali customary laws and social lives. Given the political and moral decay, not to mention the consolidation of the dictatorial reign, all these incidents were early indications that the worst was still to come. The very articulation and usage of violence in suppressing the sheikhs and the threat to use further violence constituted internal political crisis. Evidence of first resistance attempts can be seen during this time. The first effective resistance to the regime was 1975 and it followed in the form of religious discourse and demonstrations waged inside and outside mosques in Mogadishu. The 1975, 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1989 were the years that major resistance activities The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 33 were undertaken in which the regime ruthlessly suppressed all but the latter two. After all, Siad Barre survived with three coups, the first in 1971, the second in 1978 and the third in 1987. These were high-water marks of the Siadist State which used violence not only as an instrument of control and coercion, but also as a resource to ensure the survival of reign.

The Contra Dictatorial Culture Any exploration and examination of the Siad Barre regime should begin with an explanation of the rise of the post-colonial civilian gouvernementalité –in Foucault’s sense of the term–and has to consider the larger picture of both internal and external facts and factors. Only by interrogating the political health of the 1960s post-colonial State (especially in the last civilian government that ruled from 1967–1969) do we understand what legitimised the dictatorship. Indeed, the agencies of these civilian leaders preceding the coup is important to trace the historical context over which the coup was realised. To put this into a perspective, capturing the politics of post-post-colonial period in Somalia demands deep nuanced grasping of cultural and colonial experiences of the State and society out of the colonial yoke. According to Laitin and Samatar, the Somali political culture either favours democracy, equality or anarchy.67 Laitin offers interesting firsthand observations of egalitarianism. Teaching at the Somali National Teacher Education Centre in 1969, he once attended a departmental meeting to address issues of the school curriculum. He found out that two unfamiliar faces who constantly offered their opinion on those matters were the school’s cooking chef and its bus driver. Glancing at his Somali colleagues to see whether they seemed strange, he realised that they appeared indifferent when the bus driver ques- tioningly added his opinion on an educational matter. A trip to Somalia was also observed that Somali flight attendants were intolerable to the differentiation between the business class and economy class toilets. Closer occurrence was when, while at the car of a Somali minister, Laitin found it startling that the driver was calling the minister his nickname. 68 Laitin is perhaps incognisant that uttering the word ‘Sir’ evokes colonialism to the nomad Somali who tends to hate anything superior to him. The Somali poet Abdulkadir Hersi Siad ‘Yamyam’ defined the Somali one who no one else can be superior to him. On behalf of his countrymen, Yamyam claimed that the Somali is the image of equality: ‘Sinnaantaan la magac ahay, sankuneefle ma oggoli inuu iga sarreyn karo’ (I stand for fairness and do accept that no other breathing beings could be higher than me).69 Historically, totalitarianism was unknown in Somali socio-political systems. Consultation and consensus were the basis of traditional power configurations. The phantom and pantheon of power was traditionally drawn and derived from two institutions: the Shir (clan consultation) and the Sheikh 34 Chapter 1

(Islamic leader). Main players of power were religious sheikhs and traditional clan leaders, albeit somewhat minimally. The real élites and intellectuals were culumaa’uddiin (religious scholars), such as Sheikh Aweys Mohamed Al-Muhyiddiin Al-Barawi (d. 1909), Sheikh Abdullahi Yusuf Al-Qutbi (d. 1820), Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Abdullahi Al-Shaanshi ‘Sheikh Ali Suufi’ (d. 1904), Sheikh Abdirahman Amed al-Zeyli’i (d. 1883) and notable luminaries.70 The Somalis have oral stories about how, once upon a time, they were abused by dictators who turned out to be cannibals–i.e., Geedi Baabo- ow, Bu’ur Ba’eyr and Dhegdheer. Many have also bitter and traumatic recol- lections and remembrances of the callous campaigns of Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan (d. 1921). So was the clano-military regime (1969–1991). This was not necessarily that Siad Barre unleashed unprecedented violence on the civilians, but he also tarnished religious values and socio-cultural norms. These values were the embodiment of the egalitarian cultural inheritance rooted in the Somalis’ ways of life. Nowhere was the Somali egalitarianism more observatory than clan con- gregations. When a Somali intellectual was recently invited to attend his (sub)clan conglomeration in London, he found himself flanked by three interesting characters: (1) The bodyguard of a Somali member of the parliament, (2) A small-scale broker, (3) A truck driver and other members of the low strata of the society. It was to his bewilderment, when the chairman of the clan conference, himself a waiter for a restaurant, silenced a trained lawyer and passed his turn to a bus driver. To add insult to an injury, the waiter chairman refused the intellectual to speak to the audience, because he allegedly pointed out that the intellectual is a man of critique who would not offer spirited clan cohesion needed for the conference. 71 A bit humiliating from a western point of view in the midst of the Anglo-Saxon civilisation, not far away from the neighbourhood of many luminaries, where people possessed accents (from posh to poverty), albeit normal modus operandi when taken the Somali (in)sanity into account. Where in the world that such egalitarianism do exist other than in the Somali world? If such democratic egalitarianism was destroyed with the coming of the 1969 coup, the only available options were anarchic egalitarianism. It should be noted that this egalitarianism leaves out the minority communities and women in general under the sun. Overall, Somali egalitarianism has no place outside pastoral nomads’ dealings with others distant from his kin and kith. Restricted to major clan-groups and excluded most of the southern Somali communities–it was nonetheless the main reason why politicians from pastoral nomadic background had immensely dominated the Somali political life since decolonisation, instead of urban-educated from inter-riverine areas around Banaadir (Mogadishu) and Bay regions. In his memoir, From Barre to Aideed, Ambassador Hussein Ali Dualeh, a former senior Somali diplomat, compares himself with a porter he met at the Mogadishu The Genealogies of African Dictatorship(s) 35 airport, when the ‘Siad Barre war’ began in the capital city on 30 December 1990. The porter asked the diplomat with a straightforward question: ‘What is that?’ wherein the ambassador replied ‘I don’t know’.72 In this context, the porter and the ambassador were two frightened fathers yet the latter was luckier than the former, for he was able in sending his wife and children to escape the war and flee to Kenya by the latest Kenya Airways flight. Aside from the class differentiation, what is relevant in this account is the expression of egalitarianism in the ambassador’s assessment of himself with a porter, a less so fortunate ordinary man.

The Clan Concept in Politics The Somali politics always begins with a story framed under the tangibility of clan structure and system. Clanism is to the Somalis what tribalism is to other African countries.73 No study on Somalia can leave out and ignore the importance of clan in their examination and analysis. This book is no exception. The clan tags used in this book are only invoked to help the reader to understand the clan politics more easily, particularly who played what, when, why and where, not to mention who took what, when, why and where. Clan has both private and public discourse: which one to invoke depends on the level of need in a situation and in context. Anthropologist I. M. Lewis was the author most credited for clan paradigm and the socio-political structure of Somali society, especially a variety of clans, during pre-colonial and post- colonial Somali politics had been highlighted and re-highlighted with somewhat keenly by him and his followers.74 Indeed, many younger generation scholars were inspired by Lewis and early Lewis at that. Pointing out to Lewis as an example, there are many Somalis who contend that configuring the dynamics of clan could never be an academic exercise but something else and, moreover, that writing about clan and clanism tend to lead to more division among hitherto conflict-ridden clans.75 Lewis emphasises–and many others openly agree–that the clan system is a determining factor in the Somali society and that the Somali clans entail no State whatsoever is a powerful proof of this. Inspired by Edward Evans- Pritchard, Lewis’s categorisation in Pastoral Democracy of Somali system as segmentary lineage system–in line with the Nuer identified by Pritchard, even though Lewis failed to make the correlation–remains a dominant paradigm for understanding both classic and contemporary socio-political structure of the Somali society. It is no doubt that clan occupies a special place in Somali society. Clan is a determining issue constantly evoked by politicians. Reconceptualising the clan concept and conferring a new meaning is vital to capture the political realities from 1969 onwards. Clanity was maintained in post-post-colonial clanocentric political approaches. Inasmuch as the post- colonial leaders employed the clan, Siad Barre exploited it and his successors 36 Chapter 1 retained it. Clanocracy–the domination of state power by certain clans–was a core Siad Barre strategy, which was never concealed to the Somalis. 76 This produced a clanocratic State based on clanity. One could only expect a readymade political power if s/he belonged to the clans holding the power. Clan- ity was used as both an instrument and ammunition to destroy rival clans. Chapter Two

A Critical Appraisal

The State and Society in Perspective

THE POST-COLONIAL PREDICAMENT

The Setback of the Somali Republic In the run up to the notorious Berlin conference over the occupation of the African continent in the late nineteenth-century, the European colonial powers, notably the British, French and Italians, each annexed its own portion of the Somali territories in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, the neighbouring bête noire of the Somalis, subsequently joined the fry by occupying a large area of the Somali territories. The Emperor of Abyssinia Menelik II demanded his share through opportunistic justification that, since Somalia was subjected to partition, no one would have deserved more rightful appropriation than him. In a letter he sent to the European powers on 10 April 1891, Menelik claimed: ‘Ethiopia has been for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans. If Powers at a distance come forward to partition Africa between them, I do not intend to be an indifferent spectator’.1 The Emperor did not raise the fact that the Somalis and the Ethiopians had a long historical enmity and each group held the other inferior. With the completion of Ethiopian and European occupation, the Somalis were aptly fit Franz Fanon’s famous description, Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth).2 Not only the Somalis, but other ethnic communities of the Horn—i.e. the Afar, the Beja, the Oromo and the Saho, only to mention a few—were also subjected to this trend of partition that subsumed them under either European or Ethiopian empires.

37 38 Chapter 2

After seventy-sixty years of European colonial rule, independence was granted to Somalia in 1960. On the night of 1 July 1960, two Somali en- tities—Somalia Italiana (the UN Trust Territory of Somalia) in the South administered by Italy and British Somaliland in the North by the British— merged to form what would become the Somali Republic. 3 The Somali national flag adopted by a presidential decree signed by the Italian President had consisted of five-point white star on a light blue background resembling the sky and each five point of the star represented the five separate territories of the colonial boundary formation, carved up by European colonialism and Ethiopia, representing Somalia Italiana in the South, British Somaliland in the North, Djibouti in the northwest, Somali Ethiopians in the west and Somali Kenyans in the southwest. The blue flag meant to eternally demonstrate that other Somali territories—the one in Kenya ruled by the British, the other in Djibouti by the French and the third by Ethiopia—were still under occupation. The amalgamation of those territories was not an easy task and had to remain and result in ‘an open wound’ bequeathed from the colonial set-up.4 The implantation and the imposition of colonial boundaries came to constitute a catastrophe that hunted the newly-born Somali Republic, forcing to pursue a militant policy –Soomaaliweyn (the Greater Somalia)—that pushed it to confront with its neighbours. The pursuit of the Greater Somalia policy rendered Somalia to be called the most irredentist State on the African continent. While the new African States emerged out after colonial departure were concerned with those African peoples still under the colonial yoke, Somalia unintentionally opened up a new front of war between Africans themselves. The European concept of the nation-State was achieved on the principle that each ethnic community of language had to possess its own State. This was the type of the State the Somalis fought and failed. The sine qua non of the nation-State was a specifically defined territory and The Somali Republic partially lacked such a legal framework: its border with Ethiopia was undefined and thus provincial. Roughly four days later, when The Somali Republic came into being, The New York Times put a bleak and painful title in its front page: ‘Somalia Facing Grave Problems’.5 The Italian historian, Angelo Del Boca, echoed similar pessimistic predictions, writing that 1960—the year of Somali independence—was a zero year for Somalia—that is to say, ‘the year everything has to start again’, which means everything has to be done and redone from scratch.6 The revelations given by foreign observers were indeed different from the joyful feelings of Somali masses. The 1960 was a year of a prospect for peace and prosperity. As a police officer in this period, General Elmi Sahal Ali witnessed that the Somalis had high hopes so high that they envisaged prosperity being dropped from the sky.7 A Critical Appraisal 39 The Internal Pressures On the night of The Somali Republic proclamation, Aden Abdulle Osman Da’ar, known as ‘Aden Adde’, from the Mudulood/Udeejeen clan of the Hawiye, who had chaired the National Assembly of Somalia Italiana, was elected as President. A man of high esteem and experience, but possessing a weak leadership, he in turn appointed Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, from the Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan clan of the Daarood, Prime Minister. The Italian scholar of international relations, Paulo Tripodi, stressed that The Somali Republic was born out with ‘difficult foreign policy problems’.8 This foreign difficult stemmed from the first priority policy of the Greater Somal- ia. Even prior to independence, the new post-colonial leaders pursued a policy of building up one of the best armies in Africa south of the Sahara. Under a government decree on 6 April 1960, nearly two months before independence, the Somali National Army was formed by Abdullahi Iise Mohamoud, the Prime Minister of Governo Somalo, the decolonisation government (1956–1960), with a provision barring military men from partaking in politics.9 Though it would later backfire, the successive leaders put almost all their weight to persevere building up a strong military force. The policy behind building up a strong army was because the new leaders perceived the political State institution from which they inherited as an ‘incomplete’ nation-State. In October 1963, when President Aden Adde visited Rome and asked for substantial military assistance to no avail, it was expected that Somalia would head to the East. Aden Adde and his Premier Abdirashid appeared to have pursued two different routes for the Greater Somalia Policy. While the President desired to have the issue settled on the basis of a peaceful settlement, the Prime Minister favoured more militaristic path. In an (undated) interview in the early 1960s, Aden Adde pointed out that the Somali Consti- tution approved in a referendum in June 1961 had clearly authorised a ‘peaceful pursuance of the missing lands’.10 Abdirashid, a somewhat calm but inept administrator, was determined to put the recovering of those missing lands on the top of the government agenda and even by force and thereby diverted most of the State developmental efforts on achieving it. 11 Preoccu- pied with cold war rivalry, the two main donors of Somalia were the United States of America and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR). From 1963–1969, the Soviets stood high among other donors as the largest contributor of Somali development projects. 12 The problem facing the new State was not just political. On the economic aspect, the living standard of the ordinary Somali was lower at post-colonial than under colonial rule. The citizens of the Republic were left to live on their own devices and economic subsistence mechanisms as they did throughout (pre)colonial period. Economic integration—the most necessary 40 Chapter 2 element—between the Republic and other missing territories was not promoted to advance forward. Rather, political integration and widening the Republic were taken as a first priority. Rather than conducting a nation- building project, the Abdirashid administration devoted unnecessary energy, economic resources and manpower to territory-building—that is, achieving Somalia extended territoriality from Tadjoura in Djibouti to as far as all the way to Tana River in Kenya. Those who had the greatest stake at the territorial attainment were nomadic camelmen habitually wandering in seeking water and pasture for their beasts on the other side of the provincial border with imperial Ethiopia, which retaliated to increase much pressure on the Somalis pastoral nomads. This was further complicated by the fact that some influential post-colonial politicians drew from direct firsthand past experiences of living under Ethiopian hegemony.

The Implications of the Arms As far back as September 1961, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) authorities were warning that Somalia would soon seek military aid to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, citing a remark made by General Da’ud Abdulle Hersi, the Commandant of the Somali Army (from 1960–1965), who appealed to senior Somali authorities to allure arms ‘regardless of sources’.13 From the outset, the Somali army was outnumbered by the police from whose most of its rank-and-file originated. When Premier Abdirashid— speaking to an American reporter—publicly threatened later that year to turn to the Soviet Union for arms assistance, the United States saw Somalia a peril on the horizon from the Horn. Abdirashid was immediately invited to the U.S. to be dissuaded taking such a perilous adventure. In November 1962, he flew to Washington where the White House announced honouring and welcoming ‘a friend from Africa’. The reception offered was so rare for an African leader that he was greeted with 19-gun salute artillery firing, with a parade in the company of President John F. Kennedy at the front garden of the White House.14 Abdirashid’s entourage was taken to the Oval Office to sit with the U.S. President and discuss broader issues pertaining to the greater Horn. Probably in line with a diplomatic inducement and enticement, Presi- dent Kennedy erroneously described Premier Abdirashid as ‘the Somali Head of State’, a title that must have been credited to President Aden Adde. At the Oval Office meeting, Abdirashid echoed the historical and moral urging surrounding the Greater Somalia topic and complained about the U.S. military support to Ethiopia. He reiterated the Somali position that the Soma- li-Ethiopian border was an ‘artificial’ and ‘unjust’.15 As the question of Ethi- opia overshadowed the talks, President Kennedy showed a personal sympathy for the Somalis as a people deeply divided in the colonial partition of Africa. Nonetheless, his empathy had to fundamentally clash with the U.S. A Critical Appraisal 41 foreign policy interest toward Ethiopia, overseen by the African Bureau of the State Department, which essentially viewed Addis Ababa a key in the Horn. Given the huge security interest in the region, the US had a quid-pro- quo (arms-for-bases) agreement with Ethiopia, considering the vital security significance of the Kagnew Communications Station outside Asmara (Eri- trea), used by the American intelligence services fixed on the Middle East. One of the fundamental reasons why the U.S. had lobbied for Ethiopian absorption of Eritrea in 1950 at the United Nations was to gain a free-hand use of this important station. As a result, Jeffrey Lefebvre found that ‘Ethi- opia received approximately 70 per cent of the total US military aid provided to sub-Saharan African countries’.16 Astounded by the U.S. reluctance, the Somali authorities appeared oblivious of why the U.S. authorities were insistent on their consistent Ethiopian support. However, the Kennedy White House sought to saddle two horses at the same time. To keep the Somali authorities into the Western camp and deter them from falling into the Soviet fold, Kennedy practiced verbal praises, reiterating and reassuring that the Somalis were and will be ‘the Irishmen of Africa’. For his part, Abdirashid vowed that they would not seek arms to the Soviets, provided that their needs were met by the West. With somewhat brazen and barefaced inclination, he uttered ‘if I knew the devil personally, I would turn to the devil to satisfy what were the needs of my country, the essential needs, the vital needs, because the question of military assistance was and still is for us a vital need’.17 The devil to which alluded here could either be the U.S. or the Soviet Union. Kennedy candidly cautioned Abdirashid about ‘the dangers of walking both sides of the street’. The U.S. embassy in Nairobi raised their worry over the travelling Somali Minis- ter for Foreign Affairs, Abdullahi Iise, about the implications for the Soviet involvement in the arms race of the Horn.18 Abdirashid asked Kennedy administration to help build up a 20,000-man army. The U.S. accepted principally the essence of the demand but with one fourth of the requirement, proposing to build a 5,000-strong army for defen- sive purposes. With additional $10.7 million U.S. aid allocated for Somalia, the Kennedy administration offered $3 million military aid over a five- to six-year period, a very small amount in contrast with the U.S. arms supply to Ethiopia.19 However, pledges made by the Kennedy administration were not to be fulfilled on time. To add insult to the injury, Kennedy outraged the Somali delegation, when he stated at the end of the meeting that, in case a war broke out between Somalia and Ethiopia, the Americans would be compelled to take Addis Ababa’s side unwaveringly. This changed the mood of Abdirashid and his entourage, rendering a mounting suspicion toward the U.S. interests of the Horn. Notes from the private meeting with Kennedy and Abdirashid were instructive to shed more light on the Somali preoccupation of arms and U.S. reluctance to meet the Somali demands. The notes show 42 Chapter 2 how the Somali leaders hardly understood the nuances of the political bargaining and how the importance of interests shape foreign policies, as the U.S. authorities were hesitant to choose between the embryonic Somali Re- public and imperial Ethiopia. Worse still, the Somali delegation could not articulate their needs and understand the diplomatic trick. As one cable revealed:

Prime Minister Abdirascid [sic] remarked that he understood U.S. difficulties over good offices. Somalia was anxiously awaiting arms, but was not asking for arms just because Ethiopia was getting arms. The President responded he would like to talk to the Prime Minister about how we might assist Somalia in this area. (Abdirascid did not take the President up on this point.) The Presi- dent then went on to cite the use by the Portuguese in Angola and the French in Algeria of NATO arms, and said he understood Somali irritation, but assured the Prime Minister we would attempt to prevent the wrong use of the arms we were giving Ethiopia. He reiterated that we would be glad to talk to see if we could be of any assistance to Somalia. (Again Abdirascid seemed not to grasp the meaning of the President's remark.) The President added that the Ethi- opians alleged Somalia was getting arms from the UAR and the Soviets. The Prime Minister vigorously asserted that Somalia was getting absolutely no arms from the Soviets. President Kennedy summarized this part of the discussion as follows: (a. We would be glad to talk about any assistance we might give, and (b. We would look again at the use of American equipment against the Somali people. An Italian interpreter was used. 20

In February 1963, after Abdirashid returned to Mogadishu, an anti-Ethi- opian demonstration shook Mogadishu as demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. embassy premises to assert their frustration of the sustained U.S. military support to Ethiopia. Somalia had relied on Italy for arms, Ethiopia on the U.S. and Kenya on the British. Bearing in mind the next parliamentary election (scheduled in March 1964), Abdirashid headed to Moscow where he presented the same arms request submitted to the White House in the previous November. Negotiating a compact to deliver arms for Somalia, the So- viet Union agreed in spending $35 million arms aid to Somalia. West Germa- ny and Italy tried to intervene, with offerings of $10 million military aid package. When Somali authorities turned down, one last minute attempt was made during the Bonn Conference on 17–18 October in 1963 to increase the offer and reach at $18 million military aid package, provided Somalia rejected the Soviet offer. Abdirashid spurned Western offerings and began leaning on the Soviets.21 Seen as ‘an important strategic breakthrough’, the Somali-Soviet arms compact altered the imaginations of African States, when it had come to choosing between the East and the West. The deal also increased the U.S. arms delivery to Ethiopia and categorically changed the American position on the Somali-Ethiopian dispute. A Critical Appraisal 43

The Soviet military deal with Somalia was surprising if taken into consid- eration the foundation of The Somali Republic. The Soviets was among the powers that objected to the unification of the whole Somali territories in November 1949 at the UN General Assembly. However, 1963 opened a new door for the relations between Somalia and the Soviet Union. Within the same year, the Soviets began training the Somali army, sending 300 Soviet military advisers to Somalia. Where previous groups (1960, 1961 and 1963) had to be sent to Egypt and Italy, the first group of Somali army officers flew to the Soviet Union in 1963 for an advanced military training. From 1963 onwards, about 2,000 Somali officers went for advanced military training in such prestigious military academies as Frunze, Kuznetsov and St Petersburg. The much Somali fanfare with the new military attachment with the Soviets was better increased through a series of visits by senior government ministers from both sides. To show a sense of solidarity with the Soviets, General Da’ud himself visited Moscow in 1963. In his memoir, General Mohamed Farah Aideed, one of the most senior military officers at the time, who travelled with the Commandant of the Army to Moscow, recalled:

Now we were flying to Russia (USSR). I am very curious to visit that great country which westerners were then cursing a thousand times. We were received at the Airport by the Minister of Defence with more than 100 officers, including Marshals, Generals, and other high ranking officials. Our reception was very warm. Besides the four Battalions of Guards of Honour, there were thousands of civilians with flowers in their hands welcoming us and waving their hands. After General Da’ud passed the Guard of Honour, we were transferred to ‘Sovietsky Hotel’ where only Parliamentarians and other high ranking dignitaries could be hosted.22

In the following year, the Soviets delivered automatic weapons, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), heavy artilleries, T-34 Tanks, MiG15 and MiG17 aircrafts. This was the first important arsenal the Somali army obtained since independence, as remembered by a former Somali military officer. 23 The officer also recalled that these imported modern weaponry were most helpful to create fear not only to Ethiopians and Kenyans, but also to the French in Djibouti.24 It was estimated in this specific era that Somalia possessed virtually double the average military expenditure as a percentage of GNP when compared to the other African States. In view of the fact of a new-born baby State with a per capita of roughly $150, such a heavy military expenditures and extravagance were exceedingly hard to bear. The result was the creation of ‘a substantial armed force that could stand up to any army in black Afri- ca’.25 Startlingly, this was also an army that would seize the State that bore it. When Abdirashid signed the compact with the Soviets to train and equip the army, he seemed oblivious that such unilateral act would lead his demise in two different yet similar ways. First, the Soviet compact created never re- 44 Chapter 2 solved dispute with President Aden Adde, who would object to reappoint him upon the March 1964 parliamentary elections. Second, as later President, albeit with a brief period (1967–1969), Abdirashid’s position had to be inherited by none other than the very soldiers he had contributed to their empow- erment.

Polygamous Foreign Approach Whereas the Prime Minister and his cohorts were leaning on the West, the army as an institution was reliant on the East. Abdirashid was incognisant that, once trained through communist ideals, the Soviet-trained Somali soldiers would return with the ambition of overthrowing what they were indoc- trinated to be petit bourgeoisie—that is to say, the élite class that succeeded to the post-colony. Such was the inconsistency of Abdirashid’s foreign policy that he flirted with the U.S. during the whole day and slept with the Soviets at night. The political indifference of the cold war was common to milk both sides, from the East and the West. Polygamous in its approach of taping foreign aid, such was the case of the Somali State straddling two horses at the same time. As anticipated, Somalia and Ethiopia clashed a full- scale border war in February 1964, which continued until March. With the mediation of Sudan, the two countries reached a written agreement to ceasing all hostile propaganda, withdrawing troops from the border areas and seeking a peaceful settlement. However, most of the clauses in the agreement were not implemented, as big powers were at stake in the armed conflict. The U.S. and the Soviet Union fanned war in the entire region in pouring arms to the Horn. During the war, the U.S. supplied emergence military equipment in addition to special combat training team to Ethiopia, a support that allowed the latter to win the war.26 The Soviets increased its military training to Somalia and equipping the army. After the war, the Somali government itself allocated a high proportion of the annual budget to military expenses to the detriment of social and economic development. 27 A change of government shortly upon the 1964 elections where Abdirizak Haji Hussein, another Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan politician, replaced Abdirashid hardly put the ever-increasing influence of the Soviets in the Somali army on temporary hold. Because of his failed internal policies resulted in the sarcastic nickname of Abdi Abaar (Abdi the Drought). One Somali communist forewarned that Abdirizak’s government was ‘to plunge Somalia into a sea of uncertainty’.28 The élites trained by the British and the Italians were massively more numerous than the few returned from Lumum- ba University or other communist Eastern universities. But the former were not imbued with communist leanings and, most importantly, they held the top State positions that the Somalis called wadnaha dowladda (the heart of the government). While clan nepotism occasionally overshadowed Abdiri- A Critical Appraisal 45 zak’s administration, the particular favouritism and the promotion of Siad Barre into the position of the Commandant of the Army affirmed the Somali communist’s prediction. As soon as Siad Barre assumed the leadership of the army, Dalka, the most critical independent newspaper, began to speak of ‘the armed anarchy’—that is, a malpractice in the corridors of the armed forces. 29 There was also another element of nepotism in his appointment. Abdirizak had a special relationship with Siad Barre. Dalka continued to publish a series of articles criticising maladministration and pointing out the favouritism in such appointments.30 Abdirizak adopted a policy of pro-western leaning with the disguise of non-alignment rhetoric. By comparing with his predecessor Abdirashid, Ab- dirizak was more efficient and less corrupt, however. Though pursuing radical internal plans of reforming State institutions, his foreign policy was not much different from his predecessor in following a combination of pro- Western and pro-Eastern stances. So the Soviets accelerated their infiltration with the Somali army through clandestine connection with several senior members.31 This link also facilitated the Somali masses’ sympathetic attitude to the East. The infiltration of Somali army came to a turning point in late 1964, when the Soviets sent 400 people as tourists, many—if not most— being agents of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). It is reasonable to conclude, given the height of the cold war and competition for African States, that this ‘visit’ completed the process of Sovietisation of Somali army.32 Even if successive civilian governments practised flip-flop politics in the international scene, the Soviets were determined to get hold onto Somalia.33 In 1966, President Aden Adde announced his intention to visit West Germany. When the news spread to the capital, some left-leaning groups—with the help of the Soviet Embassy—organised a strong anti-West- ern demonstration that rocked Mogadishu, exclaiming ‘no Born’, a slogan to prevent the President from visiting the West, as growing anti-Western prevailed the capital. 34

FROM FULL TO FLAWED DEMOCRACY

The Demise of Democracy In the June 1967 presidential election, President Adde lost to his embittered erstwhile Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. He in turn appointed Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egaal, an Isaaq/Habar Awal/Iise Muuse, a Prime Minister, in order to please the Northern grievances. This was a smooth transition of power unknown in post-colonial Africa and Somalis took pride in the outcome. President Adden Adde emerged the first African President to have handed power to a successor. Instead of consolidating such a model democracy further, Abdirashid and Egaal would eat the fruits gained after 46 Chapter 2 post-colony. The most defining period of their rule was the 26 March 1969 general election. The first to hold under their aegis and seen as a litmus test for the administration, the election saw the evanescence of the democratic State structures inherited from the years of decolonisation. With unprecedented rigging and fraud results sanctioned by the administration, the election outcome provided justification and subsequently legitimacy for the military leaders who staged coup d’état in October of that year. Vote rigging and violence were relatively unknown in comparison with other previous elections. In March 1969, fraud levels rose to an extreme degree that the police forces, entrusted to protect the rule of law, were bribed in forcing the rural population, who had no sufficient knowledge of electoral processes and procedures, in electing certain hand-picked members from the administration. 35 The relationship between the politician and the society proved than the one between the party and the society, guided by clanship affiliation and, as such, no distinction existed between the government and the party. Competi- tive—though not coercive—rigging became a reality. Nowhere was this more evident than the Somali National Parliament. Fiat luxury cars bearing the Italian letters A.N. standing Assemblea Nazionale (National Assembly), this the public translated into it ‘annaga keliyaa nool’ (we alone live in this world or I’m all right Jack), became the characteristics of the new Parlia- ment.36 Before enjoying the fraud election results, the outcome alienated the administration, tarnished the public trust and paved the way for their downfall. The administration transformed what once was a popular political party into a private company that provided them with a ready-made space to advance their personal and clan interests. It was to the type of treacherous politics—à la form and formulation of the interior minister Yasin Nur Hus- san—that ushered in their fall. The political problems that they instigated and cooked influenced the people and generated a public outcry. The rampant vote rigging characterised the electoral process exacerbated the existing grievances against the administration felt by many Somalis. Given the flawed and fraud nature of the election, democracy was morphed into clanocracy. The election results turned out to be a political nightmare not just for losers but also for victors. More disturbing to the independence of judiciary was the fact that the court passed rulings through the Interior Ministry.37 The partial judgements of the court had to create a widespread uproar not just among the politicians, but also among the public. Many aggrieved politicians began entertaining the extremist idea of arming their supporters in resisting the results of the election. Fissures and fractures that would lead to more violence were on the offing. Clan politics had given rise to revenge and vengeance and the political manoeuvring could not deliver sufficient space to realise a representative government. There was an intense power struggle within the Mohamoud Saleebaan sub-clans of the Majeerteen, especially the Osman Mohamoud and the Omar Mohamoud, A Critical Appraisal 47 represented by Abdirashid and Abdirizak. Abdirizak, apparently more outspoken and militant, described himself ‘Anaa Waaxid, wa Allaa Waaxid’ (Allah is alone and I am alone). Abdirizak went as far as to pronounce in the premises of his Dabka party that Abdirashid’s car should be blown up. How- ever, Abdirashid’s and Abdirizak’s hostility preceded the election and came to the surface in November 1962, when the latter lost in a reshuffle his power as an Interior Minister to a Public Works Minister.38 After the election, Somalia practically became a one-party State. The election was characterised by vote rigging, fraud and violence. The political blunderers and irresponsible actions of Abdirashid and Egaal, in addition to their Interior Minister, Yasin Nur Hassan Bidde, allowed Siad Barre to easily utilise and fulfil his pre-planned coup. To build a power base for himself, the Interior Minister made a move that forced him to depend upon Siad Barre on critical matters pertaining the military activities, a move that strengthened the army commander. Enjoying the ear of the Interior Minister and later of the Defence Minister as well as the Justice Minister, Siad Barre projected himself useful for the incumbent administration and succeeded to outmanoeuvre subordinate military officers who started to see him as indispensable for their future career successes in the strict hierarchical army promotion. Promoted swiftly and suddenly, Siad Barre was instructed to take orders from the Interior Minister to ensure an election won by the Abdirashiid-Egaal protég- ées. In other words, Siad Barre had to help Yasin rig the election. As a result of intense political moves and manoeuvres, Brigadier-General Mohamed Abshir Muse, the powerful Commissioner of the Police (from 1958–1969), resigned his post in protest, because Yasin could not offer a bigger bargain than what his counterpart, Siad Barre, was convinced. Only when the task of the police was later so politicised that it was decreed to also take orders directly from the Yasin did Abshir choose to resign. The kind of police lobbied by the Interior Minister was akin to what Michel Foucault described as ‘a police that would manage to penetrate, to stimulate, to regulate, and to render almost automatic all the mechanisms of society’.39 The other underlying cause of Abshir’s resignation was that he was disinclined to the incumbent administration, since he had a martial affiliation with Presi- dent Aden Adde; Abshir was the nephew of Asha Elmi Mataan, Aden Adde’s formidable wife. Furthermore, Abshir was averse to acquiesce to Abdirashid- Egaal-Yasin consolidating their power from his police force. After his resignation, Abshir was offered to become an Ambassador to France, but he turned down the offer, as his colleague recalled. 40 The contestation over who could be trusted Abshir and Siad Barre was further complicated by the fact that, while the Soviets were the main source of arms for the army, the police was drawing on economic aid and training from the U.S. and West Germany. Both the army and the police represented the West and the East, a euphemism for the Central Intelligence Agency 48 Chapter 2

(CIA) and the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). 41 Abshir and Siad Barre had two contrasting characters however they had an identical reputation; the latter was more accommodating than the former. 42 Having involved in clan politics since (de)colonisation, both were more politicians than professional police and army men. Nevertheless, Abshir’s quit allowed Siad Barre to accelerate his plans to overthrow and seize the State. For many years, the latter had been apprehensive of the former, who had been empowered by his clan politicians to thwart any challenge from the army. As long as Abshir, his main rival, remained his post and played the political intrigues and intricacies, Siad Barre had no chance of staging a coup. In place of Abshir came Brigadier-General Jama Ali Qoorsheel, an inef- fectually obedient man, who obtained his position through clan favouritism. He was, nonetheless, the man the administration desperately wanted; if we had had Qoorsheel, they would not have needed Abshir. As one senior police officer who worked with him tellingly pointed out, Qoorsheel proved himself to be ‘the man of the government’.43 So much of the Interior Minister was in the police headquarters. Taking police promotions to the worse, Yasin elevated some subordinate policemen to senior ranks in order to win the election. Colonel Abdullahi Farah Ali (Hoolif), a clan confidante to Yasin, was thus promoted to Brigadier-General in par with his peers. 44 Siad Barre cunningly on purpose postponed promotion of the army officers from 1969 until 1970 to provoke long-held grievances being felt by the junior army officers toward the Majeerteen clan politicians. Under Abdirashid, the Mohamoud Saleebaan came to dominate heavily in the bureaucracy and the police to the extent that a monthly Somali newspaper conducted an investigative journalism and found unprecedented sub-clan favouritism in the State. 45 President Abdirash- id as well as the most (or the only) prominent opposition groups were from his clan. The time came for an enraged Abgaal poet to declare, ‘Marna Rashiid, marna Risaaq, inta kale ma Rootiyaa’ (one term for Abdirashiid the other term for Abdirizak, are all other Somalis soft bread?’.46 This was intended to reveal that the Majeerteen was the only clan able to steer the wheel of the State for their favour at the expense of other clans. Ordinary people were outraged and dismayed by the contemporary political tradition and prayed for the downfall of the administration. Many prayed for Allah’s empathy to prevent Somalia from the imminent political chaos and acute anarchy. John Drysdale recalled how the Abdirashid-Egaal-Yasin company became an extremely unpopular trio. 47 One could forestall immense public protest that would make them victims of their own avarice. Siad Barre had partially facilitated the hatred and hostility people had the Abdirashid-Egaal-Yasin administration in view of the fact that he sent special contingents to help the Somali Youth League (SYL) rig the election, particularly areas populated by the clans that might have resisted to his coup plans. Bewildered during the election, these clans had to oppose to the ad- A Critical Appraisal 49 ministration and make ready their support for Siad Barre’s coup.48 Of one particular instance was when Siad Barre permitted a young military officer to help his parliamentarian father from the SYL ticket to rig the election. When people voted for the opposition candidate, the officer counted most of the votes as for his father’s. Enraged by such an outcome, adherents of the opposition candidate stabbed the officer who died instantly. 49 Such was the background of the consequences of the election outcomes.

THE POLITICAL MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT

Cold War and the Clan Dynamics On 15 October 1969, Abdirashid was assassinated in broad daylight in Laas Aanood, a small town in the North, at ‘the hand of one of his own sub-clan’, as Drysdale put it or by ‘one of his bodyguards’, as Mohamed Diriye Abdul- lahi asserted, or similarly ‘by one of his police guards’, as Lewis passed over.50 Premier Egaal, on holiday in the U.S., had to cut his private visit and return to Mogadishu and, as soon as he arrived Mogadishu, he appointed General Mohamed Farah Aideed (then Lieutenant Colonel) to lead the military commission responsible for the funeral proceedings. The assassin, Said Yusuf Ismail, known as ‘Said Orfano’, belonged to the Majeerteen, Presi- dent’s clan, but to the Ali Saleebaan sub-clan, a rival of the Abdirashid’s Osman Mohamoud. The Ali Saleebaan, known for their entrepreneurial skills, had been traditionally marginalised by the Osman Mohamoud and thus carried lifelong enmity. 51 By killing Abdirashid, the assassin was reported to have avenged his sub-clan in getting rid of the most elder statesman of the rival clan. Many have postulated that the murder was a ‘payment’ for the loss of the assassin’s sub-clan during the violence that sprang from the turbulent election of the 26 March 1969. It was a fact that the assassin’s sub-clan Ali Saleebaan complained about the result of the election in which the president’s sub-clan rigged and took the two parliamentary seats supposed to be divided between the President’s and the assassin’s sub-clans. The Ali Salee- baan politicians, enraged at how Abdirashid and his administration had handled the election, were expected to retaliate. The place in which the assassination was carried out served an excuse for those who planned the political murder. The town of Laas Aanood was the most violent voting centre during the election, with the reported deaths of 11 civilians in post-election period. 52 A group of interconnected politicians from the Mohamoud Saleebaan/Ma- jeerteen, ostensibly averse to his policies of appeasing the Isaaq clan-group, who felt marginalised in the previous Aden Adde administration, were also accused of orchestrating the assassination. Most Somalis and non-Somalis still assume to this day that President Abdirashid was ‘killed’ by virtue of intractable clan rivalry over the State power between competitive post-colo- 50 Chapter 2 nial élites. Many an author who deliberated over the assassination and argued that the clan was the reason while concluding that the culprit was none other than the assassin, who was assumed to have been a policeman—even a bodyguard by some accounts—despatched to Abdirashid’s security.53 Crucial and critical questions remain unanswered as to why he was assassinated. If clan predetermines Somali politics, why the President was killed by none other than one of his own clansman? The assassination has been placed either in brackets at best and in a footnote at worst. Embedded within the assassination were the epochal politics of cold war, clan politics and the underground work for the coming coup. Whose plot(s) and how the assassination were carried out lie in the core investigation of this section. The clan has always been the dominant element in explaining the assassination. Was the murder purely on clan vendetta or something else such as old war geopolitics and the military coup? Though showing structural appeals to clan and clanship and shifting meanings of clanocracy, the clan thesis conceals more than it reveals the lack of critical analysis to the other salient aspects of the assassination. Framed as a consequence of a Majeerteen clan power struggle, the traditional clan rivalry was apparently exploited to conceal the conspiracy, especially the identity of the culprit and the crime. 54 Scholars who noted the incident in which the President was assassinated have made transitory comments of how Abdirashid became a victim of clan vendetta between his sub-clan and the sub-clan of his assassin. Laitin and Samatar highlighted that the assassin whom they assumed was ‘soldier’ hailed from a ‘sub-clan that was a rival of the president’s’ so Abdirashid’s assassination was ‘a payment for the suffering of the soldier’s sub-clan’.55 Anthropologist Simons also briefly discussed on the political dimensions of clan dynamics in the assassination with further exploration.56 However, the Somali scholar Amina Haji Adan was perhaps the only one who hinted a suspicion in writing whether or not that the President was assassinated ‘allegedly by a soldier acting alone’.57 However, she could not proceed further than a hint to uncover the conspiracy behind the assassination. The spatial areas of these interesting political dynamics are still no entry zone for scholars who have mandated their works on broad surveys concerning with the consequences while overlooking the causes. Even if the assassination of President Abdirashid was solely clan-motivated, this cannot ex- clude from its relevance of political murder in the larger discourse of cold war politics. It was such a violent confusion that Siad Barre took advantage to seize the State.58 However, a clan motivation was so intrinsic on the plot, it is yet hard to accept that the assassin was alone in the crime and there appear to be other revealing factors. The suspicion was reinforced by the fact that the assassin pointed out that other individuals (whose names he revealed) were involved in assisting him to conduct the assassination. Abdi- rashid was assassinated after having implicated himself in several controver- A Critical Appraisal 51 sies pertaining to both internal and external dynamics and dimensions. The internal were ones (1) how the administration handled the election where the fraud exceeded to an unprecedented scale and (2) the prevalence of clan nepotism and corruption.59 The external were (1) the abandonment of the goal of the Greater Somalia Project by his administration and (2) the aggra- vation of the Soviet Union. For many years, it has been unclear whether the military coup following assassination was ‘by chance’ or it was a ‘conscious plan’.60 Whether it was planned or unplanned, the coup d’état coincided with the assassination of an elected civilian President. Less than a week, Siad Barre was sitting his seat. Of particularly bizarre is that Africa in the 1960s was a site of political eliminations considering the mysterious cases of Alhaji Abubabakar Tafawa Balewa in January 1966, the Sardauna of Sokoto (the Northern Nigerian Prime Minister) in January 1966, the Burundian Prime Minister Pierre Ngen- dandumwe in January 1965, Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in February 1961 and Togolese President Sylvanus Olympio in January 1963. The circumstances surrounding their assassinations remain unresolved to this day. Needless to mention the decisive role the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) played many of these assassinations. Whereas other cases have been relatively investigated, no study has been conducted on Somali President’s assassination with respect to Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General, who was killed in plane crash on 18 September 1961, as Susan Williams had recently exposed in her very informative study. 61 President Abdirashid’s assassination was the third political assassination in East Africa in 1969 that had not fully investigated, in contrast to the previous assassinations of Tom Mboya, a senior Minister in Kenya on 5 July, and of Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane, the leader of Mozambique Liberation Front, on 3 February. Simi- lar to other high-profile assassinations, Abdirashid’s deserves special treatment as a significant national issue rather than being sidelined. 62

Who Masterminded the Murder? Since the clan system was attributed to the assassination, it is important to first discuss it as a theory and practice. Classical clan readings often cloak important dynamics. Clan determines but does not define all things Somali. While clan is an overwhelmingly important factor, never has it been the only determinant factor shaping the society from right to left and from left to right. With given and granted, the exigency of strong-held concepts like clan shapes the way people of and between themselves. But where and when does contingency fit here? Indeed, clan both as a noun and verb could not dominate Somali politics if Somali politicians and would-be politicians had not made it predominant. The lexicon of clan agency which attributed the assas- 52 Chapter 2 sination to a particular clan and then sub-clan stemmed first from official State communication via security authorities. Apparently shocked by the assassination, the security authorities in the North resorted to the clan concept to their first conversation with the murder. To inform the assassination to the authorities at the headquarters, the regional Police Commissioner Lieu- tenant Colonel Mohamed Saqadhi Dubbad, an Isaaq, considering the hierarchical structure of the army and the police forces, called first the central police headquarters and second the central army headquarters in Hargeysa which were responsible for the whole security of the Northern part of the country. In the last contact to the army, Dubbad’s telegram call was responded by Lieutenant Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the deputy North- ern army sector. Upon hearing the information that the President was ‘killed’, Abdullahi Yusuf, a Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan, impudently asked to which clan the assassin belonged. Dubbad, an Isaaq, replied ‘oh, a Majeerteen man’.63 The crime was thus condensed as business-as-usual traditional activity (basically clan matter) carried out by one clan member against another fellow. Both Saqadhi and Yusuf—the respondent and the inquirer—propagated that premise, at least initially. Convinced of the report he had received, Yusuf called his senior army officers and passed offer the information. Both colonels left to raise the crucial issue of whether the assassin was a government employee—in this case, a police man—or not. Curiously and contrary to popular claims, the assassin was neither a bodyguard nor a real policeman, even though he was a man given a uniform and enlisted to the police before the assassination. Said Orfano had been enlisted into the Dervish forces, a branch of the police named after the Dervishes of the Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, known as the ‘Mad Mullah’. Having been recruited to the police as Abdulkadir Abdi Mohamed by General Abshir, the Commissioner of the National Police, who helped him as a fellow clansman to secure a government paycheque, Said Orfano was not included in the official policemen assigned for the security of the President. More tellingly, General Abshir was among several fellow clansmen accused of the Presi- dent’s murder.64 In his memoir, even though he mentioned that Abshir was also suspected, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf asserted insistently without offering any evidence that he was certain Siad Barre was the main culprit and conduc- tor of the assassination.65 Describing the political murder as ‘killing’, the colonel failed, however, to consider the bigger picture and link the Presi- dent’s assassination to the contemporary realpolitik of the cold war. Somali psychiatrist Hussein Bulhan also charged Siad Barre for the conspiracy of assassinating the president in his analysis of the politics of murder in post- colonial Somalia.66 The sudden execution of the assassin by the subsequent Siad Barre military regime which would very soon have sentenced and swiftly executed him had to close the door for further investigation of the case. 67 Why was the A Critical Appraisal 53 whole investigation process very rapid? By making his confessions confidential, the regime blocked the possibility of running a risk, in case the case would return to them, as Siad Barre himself played a prominent role in the political murder. One crucial evidence—though by no means the only one— that finds Siad Barre complicit in the assassination was that, upon his coup, he selectively promoted the two policemen –Lieutenant Beddel Hersi Farah and Lieutenant Abdi Raabi Raage—connected by the assassin to the plot of assassinating Abdirashid.68 Beddel Hersi and Abdi Raabi were among five individuals—the other three being the assassin’s brother, Mohamed Yusuf Ismail, Sheikh Nuruddin Ali Olow and Ainab Farah Maraf—with whom the assassin told the court had been part of the hybrid plot. All these were released on the account that the assassin retracted his earlier statements. 69 Rewards by Siad Barre for Beddel Hersi were continuous throughout the regime, as revealed by subsequent presidential decrees. 70 This stands irrefutable evidence of a special relationship with Siad Barre and Beddel Hersi. During the short trial, a witness named Farah Warsame Ali, told the court that one of the accused, Ainab Maraf, had promised the assassin in Septem- ber 1969 ‘a substantial sum of money’ to become involved in the plot.71 Exactly 40,000 Somali shillings were deposited to the assassin’s brother and another 50,000 were promised. Previously planned, the plot was to kill the president in Mogadishu, while the idea of assassination came from Sheikh Nuruddin Ali Olow and other accused men.72 The defendant told the court that he was promised ‘massive money’ if he would assassinate the President. Sheikh Olow avowed Said Orfano that once he killed Abdirashid, he would defend him in court. The court heard that, while Beddel Hersi encouraged Said Orfano in carrying out the crime by assisting him in Bur’o, Raabi was tasked to spread antagonistic propaganda against the President. As the commander of the Bur’o police station, Raabi also transferred the assassin to Laas Aanood from Bur’o on what he recorded in the police book as ‘special mission’.73 Beddel admonished the assassin to end all his cartridges on the President’s body and then make sure to say that all was ‘an accident’.74 The court heard that Beddel directed the whole operation, showing the would-be assassin where to stand and from where to shoot as well as berating him for missing a previous chance to kill the President at the municipal headquarters in Laas Aanood. Wherever the President visited, he was followed by Said Orfano with the help of these local police authorities. Whether or not they acted upon higher order was a question they would have answered if they were called by the court, which had not done so. The transfer of the court hearing to Mogadishu could also be part of the plot by the subsequent military rulers who took power five days after the assassination. Though the town of Bur’o had the legal jurisdiction to judge over the case, the transfer of the court hearing to the capital Mogadishu ‘for 54 Chapter 2 security reasons’ meant that much alteration of the course of justice had occurred behind the scenes. Furthermore, the fact that the Head of the new politico-military court in Mogadishu was Colonel (later General) Mohamed Sheikh Osman, one of the die-hard loyalists of Siad Barre, also suggests how the final verdict was drawn from the inner circle. The prosecutor of the case, Mohamoud Mire Muuse, was also a trusted member of the junta. One of the judges of the court had recently confirmed that there was a political plot in Abdirashid’s assassination and the assassin was not alone in his mission. 75 To make justice more complicated, a small committee consisting exclusively of the Osman Mohamoud sub-clan—represented by Abdi Farah Baashane and Hersi Osman Keenidiid—was assigned by the dying civilian administration days before the coup to investigate the assassination of the President. 76 This made the whole thing clanised and discouraged further testimonies to emerge out. However, in pleading guilty, the assassin mentioned no clan during the deliberation of the court. Nor did he utter clan in euphemistic terms as was customary when clan terms were repressed. When asked by the court for his motivations, Said Orfano articulated a language interwoven with political purposes. He confessed to the court that he shot Abdirashid since the President and his Prime Minister deceived ‘the nation’ by signing a Memo- randum of Understanding with Kenya (a truce that ceased hostilities between the two countries in 1967). Outside the courtyard, the public pointed out Abdirizak Haji Hussein, the Prime Minister of the preceding administration of Abdirashid and Egaal. Abdirizak, who had agitated the public in order to assassinate the President, was also accused of complicity. Contemporary political eyewitnesses, among whom Ahmed Mohamed Siilaanyo, the current Somaliland President, recalled that, months before Abdirashid’s assassination, Abdirizak declared his party Dabka (fire) headquarters in Maka Al-Mukaramah Street in Mogadishu ‘that the no. 1 car could be exploded’.77 The number one meant the Presi- dent’s car. Subsequently after the coup, whereas others were arrested, Abdir- izak was put under house arrest. When most of his fellow politicians and peers were languishing either in detention without trial or given minor posts in the regime, Abdirizak was awarded the most lucrative political position given to a politician of the old civilian political establishment. Siad Barre sent him to New York as his Ambassador to the United Nations, a position he held until early 1980.78 The court documents also reveal the assassin’s lawyer, Abdiaziz Nur Hersi, a Marxist and a close friend of Abdirizak, arguing that his client deserved prize—even historical medal—for the murder he had committed. Given such a powerful political rhetoric rather than a legal contention in defending the assassin, Abdiaziz would subsequently be promoted to a member of the Siad Barre’s first cabinet on the very eve of the coup. By contrast, the President of the Supreme Court resigned for this case and one of the first official regime bulletins show his resignation as well as Siad Barre A Critical Appraisal 55 accepting it immediately. More revealingly, as is evident from the official bulletin of the Siad Barre’s regime, the Osman Mohamoud prosecutor who had been investigating the case was arrested and then suspended from the magistrate service. 79 Abdirizak—the only outspoken adversary to Abdirashid and his administration—freely admitted many years later that he was delighted upon hearing that the military took over power five days after the assassination. In an interview with HornAfrik Radio a decade ago, Abdirizak contemplatively recalled how—after his housemaid passed the news of the coup to him— became pleased that the widowed administration was overthrown. 80 Howev- er, in an interview he gave to Hiiraan Online before his death, Abdirizak maintained that he had not been part of the plot. 81 Interestingly, Abdirizak referred to clan vendetta in the sense that the assassination was clan-motivated and that Said Orfano was acting on his own with regards to his sub- clan grievances. To exonerate himself from complicity, Abdirizak asserted the assassin was pressurised relentlessly to extract full confessions, claiming that, ‘when the man was brought to court, he insisted that no one else [except him] was complicit’.82 Contrary to Abdirizak’s claims, Said Orfano himself first confessed to the court that five individuals, who mentioned to him the name of Abdirizak, helped him for safely carrying out the assassination. He also further revealed that Abdirizak’s name was raised several times by his accomplices but he had never seen or heard of the parliamentarian personally. Without sufficient evidence, the court did not call Abdirizak or charge him for a potential suspect in the first court hearing.

Concrete Conclusions In his first speeches, Siad Barre avoided to mention why the President was assassinated, but his subordinates did their best propagating that Abdirashid was killed because of clan vendetta. The first moves and measures performed by Siad Barre after the successful staging of the coup offer further evidence of who was responsible for the assassination. Within few months upon coming into power, Siad Barre issued a presidential decree ordering a special stipend of the late Captain Saadaq Mohamed Farah’s family.83 The captain was a man who had previously attempted to murder the President. Married to Abdirizak Haji Hussein’s niece, Saadaq sought more than twice to explode Abdirashid’s car (a bomb thrown to his car failed to explode), but later accidentally blew himself up while testing explosive devices in the outskirts of Mogadishu on 30 March 1968. When he died, he was training a group of would-be assassins for the President. Upon being arrested, the trainees confessed that the captain was showing them on how to detonate a bomb to the President’s car.84 No inquiry was appointed to investigate who accompanied the captain for the plot, as recalled by Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, 56 Chapter 2 one of Saadaq’s colleagues in the army.85 The subsequent criminal court proceedings and the violent means in which Abdirashid was murdered reveal that Siad Barre played his part of the plot. 86 The assassin’s last defence lawyer Yusuf Jama Dhuhul reported that the Siad Barre regime ‘used all sorts of legal and illegal means to stop me from defending the assassin; and especially from hearing his story in private’.87 Apart from what the official regime bulletin reveals, there were recent memoirs which clearly link the assassination to the military coup. The testimony given by Shukri Aden Shire, the daughter of Aden Shire Jama, then Minister of Justice in the civilian administration, weights up the evidences. On the night of the coup, the house of Aden Shire was raided by a group of army officers and soldiers led by Siad Barre’s son-in-law Ahmed Suleymaan Dafle, who was the Head of the Army Intelligence. Shukri recounted how her father was arrested and how the file of the initial investigations over the assassination of President Abdirashid taken.88 But why her father kept the file at home rather than in his office is a question of which she does not raise in her memoir. However, it appears that her father felt, due to the sensitive nature of the case, the file would have not been safe in the cupboard of his office. The file taken by Siad Barre’s son-in-law included the cassettes of the interviews conducted by the police with the assassin. No one has seen them since. That the assassin was detained not in a legal prison but under ‘the direct custody of the commander of a militarised unit of the police’ also explains how the case was taken to behind barracks. 89 In light of all these evidences, there is a clear link between the coup and the assassination. Accumulating all these facts presents concrete evidence on Siad Barre’s complicity of the assassination. This also settles a matter that was obscure not only to the public, but to the pundits as well. The assassination was most certainly a covert plot orchestrated within the army headquarters, with the supervision of external surveillance and supervision. The veloc- ity with which the military removed the remnants of the Abdirashid-Egaal administration within a week upon the assassination also seems sufficient to demonstrate that the preparation for the plot of murdering the President and of seizing the State had preceded and planned mission. In particular, the role and responsibility of Siad Barre and his patrons had played and held is evident. This explains why Siad Barre upon ascending to power obviated any investigation on the matter of assassination. 90 In light of this newly discovered evidence, Siad Barre was part of the plot that eliminated an incumbent President, whose tenure would have ended in 1973. As Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf stressed in his memoir, there is no doubt that Siad Barre played ‘a lion’s share’ in the assassination.91 Even though Yusuf’s inflated emphasis can be driven by his clan genealogical affiliation with the President, Abdi- rashid himself was partially responsible for his assassination given his politi- A Critical Appraisal 57 cal plunders of poorly playing in cold war realpolitik, a politics he barely understood properly. Steering the State wheels from the West to the Soviets in 1962 (while also flirting with the West) and then from the Soviets to the West in 1967, Abdi- rashid indeed put himself a real danger as it was most likely that the Soviets, infuriated by his decision, were about to react very soon to avert Somalia from reverting back to the Western fold. Apart from external dynamics, the President internally became a target of public grievances against how his administration handled the March 1969 parliamentary election, an outcome which fraud and fabrication had reached unparalleled level. 92 The untouch- able élites in his inner circle were indeed undeterred by the system of governance in place at the top level which encouraged them to embezzle public funds and compete for moneyed political positions available. The administration thus rendered exploiting the public not only tolerable, but the only means for those affiliated with the President and his Prime Minister to accrue power and prestige.93 The whole government institutions were so abhorred by the public that they became a synonym for corruption and nepotism. As the first female civil servant, Faduma Ahmed Alim observed that, as the integrity of the administration had been tarnished, the ordinary people began to pray ‘for the downfall of the parliamentary government’.94 This was the reason why the military coup d’état was perceived from the outset—as the Somali scholar Ali Jimale put it—a ‘divinely symbolic act’ to the mysterious assassination of Abdirashid.95

The Conduct of the Coup Many Somalis view the assassination as a short way of extricating themselves from a corrupt administration. While Radio Mogadishu maintained calls for prayer for the deceased President, the assassination hardly generated sympathy for Abdirashid. Most Somalis hardly expressed the grief they felt upon the assassination in 1957 of Kamaaluddiin Saalah, the Egyptian Repre- sentative in the Protection Council of four countries that oversaw the Italian administration of the UN Trusteeship on Somalia, ten years prior. While preparations for burial were underway, a long-held traditional clan animosity came to the fore, as a result of the revulsion and repulsion toward Abdirashid and his administration. To the surprise of many, the assassinated President was denied burial in a national cemetery in Mogadishu by members of the Murusade clan of the Hawiye.96 To add insult to the injury, in a very sultanistic style, the political personalities sharing the same sub-clan genealogical affiliation with President argued that they were the legitimate heirs of him and upon suggesting that his successor should be one of theirs proposed Haji Muuse Boqor Osman, their clan leader in Mogadishu, as substitute for Abdi- rashid. Muuse Boqor himself contended that he was the ‘rightful heir to the 58 Chapter 2 presidency’.97 People’s anger was further aggravated when Egaal entertained the proposal by several prominent Daarood elders, such as Omar Mo’allim Mohamed and Haji Yusuf Egaal—who suggested that the Osman Mohamoud clan chief had to replace Abdirashid. Somalia seemed to be turning into a clan property, when an interest group of politicians (Egaal among them), acting on behalf of such clan recommendation, later nominated Muuse Boqor as the SYL candidate for the uncontested post of the Presidency. Apart from clan chieftaincy, Muuse Boqor was also a politician connected to the administration in several ways. Once Abdirashid usurped to power, Muuse Boqor enjoyed a special favour for land properties and other profitable business and the administration soon granted him a license to be the only trader to import gold to Somalia. As the official administration bulletins show, his position was uninterrupted from 1960 until 1969 and he had a special authority over politicians and State bureaucrats. 98 A kind of kingmaker, Muuse Boqor shared a business profits with Yasin. More tellingly, Muuse Boqor and his fellow political broker Omar Mo’allim, the former Somali Ambassador to the U.S., had close contact with the Americans and this partially political and partially business connection was a serious concern to the Soviets. This was most likely because the Soviets had known that Omar Mo’allim was an agent for the CIA, as revealed by one former senior civil servant.99 Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein, the President of the Par- liament, who assumed the President of the Republic upon Abdirashid’s assassination, recalled that the Soviet Ambassador to Mogadishu approached him once the preparation for the President’s successor began and discussed over the looming repercussions for Somalia under Muuse Boqor to whom the Soviets considered an American marionette. 100 Concerns surrounding the suggestion of Muuse Boqor as President coincided with the controversies at home. Many Somalis, as Laitin and Samatar observed, ‘were disgusted by the self-serving posture of the political debate and by the very limited qualifications of the proposed successor’.101 It was in this spirit that a disgruntled group of the SYL parliamentarians, notably Ismail Jimale Ossoble and Aadan Isaaq Axmed, two former ministers, strongly rebuffed Muuse Boqor’s nomination. Instead, Ismail Jimale had recommended Abdullahi Iise, the former Prime Minister during the decolonisation, to be the SYL’s candidate for President. Iise, a popular nationalist politician with less oratory skills, lacked a clan base upon which he could rely, as he departed and deserted his clan for a commitment to Somali nationalism. His sub-clan, the Sa’ad of the Habar Gidir, blamed him—as did Aden Adde’s Udeejeen clan—for not upholding their interests, unlike his fellow peers from other rival clans. Bickering over Abdirashid’s successor aside, ordinary people were losing temper as Egaal showed strong commitment to use whatever State resources as his disposal to get Muuse Boqor elected for the post of Presidency.102 A Critical Appraisal 59 The New Version of Mobutu Sese Seko The competition and contestation of rival clans over who had the right to replace the assassinated Abdirashid were bound to stir up armed clan conflicts. Though the whole governmental system upon which State institutions were founded was on the verge of collapsing, the country went down toward economic and political breakdown.103 Siad Barre profited from such chaotic situation and created politico-military networks. Such corrupted democracy left and led to what Mabel Berezin called ‘an empty symbolic space’ wherein tyrannical, totalitarian and terroristic regime formed itself easily unchallenged to fill.104 Acting behind the scenes, Siad Barre conversed with other army officers that Egaal had sold the cause of Somalis in Kenya, when he had pursued a new policy of détente in settling territorial disputes with Ken- ya.105 So he argued for a sudden and swift overthrow of the government in 1968, a year before Abdirashiid’s assassination. Siad Barre’s political manoeuvring was unequivocal. A diehard supporter of the Abdirizak’s government, he once threatened those who voted against its approval in the parliament. When Abdirizak’s government was disapproved in 1964, Siad Barre warned Egaal, then an opposition leader, that the army would react had politicians not stopped blocking the approval of the government. 106 Siad Barre’s conduct of the coup was possibly precipitated that Abdirash- id and Egaal were involved in reducing the military budget. When Egaal suggested in 1968 to send Siad Barre to the Soviet Union for military training, his motion was noticeably overshadowed by contemporary clan advoca- cy. Siad Barre as usual deployed clan elders who convinced both Abdirashid and Egaal to leave their son alone. Prior to Egaal’s proposal materialised, it was averted by the clanistic reasoning put forward by Majeerteen politicians and brokers who insisted that, since a Daarood Commissioner of the Police had previously been discharged, they would never tolerate another Daarood being humiliated under their authority. One of those politicians was Daher Haji Osman ‘Dhagaweyne’, Abdirashid’s cousin. Mothered by a Mareehaan mother, Siad Barre’s clan, Daher Dhagaweyne persuaded Abdirashid not to dismiss the Commandant of the Army. 107 Siad Barre was subsequently successful in convincing his clan leaders that, if he was to vacate the position, he would have to leave the army in the hands of rival clansmen, as his deputies—General Mohamed Aynaanshe Guuleed, an Isaaq/Habar Yoonis, and General Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed ‘Liiqliiqato’, a Hawiye/Sheekhaal— hailed from these clan-groups. Siad Barre had his own covert plans. He would become and prove to be a tiger that ate those who had groomed. Upon the aftermath of the March election, he was promoted as Major-General following a recommendation from the Interior Minister. This allowed him to fish out inside the army as well as party politics which was by this time structured through a clan basis. 60 Chapter 2

Siad Barre owed—to some extent—his accomplishment of waging the successful overthrow of the administration to the irregularities of the election. But the fraud and falsification of the election as well as the subsequent assassination of the President as such did not trigger the takeover, but it provided with an excuse to carry out the coup. However, Siad Barre found a unique political justification to complete his coup plot. Given that the democratic rule came on virtual demise at Abdirashiid and Egaal’s hands, people began to envisage a coup being staged against the administration. 108 Ru- mours were prevalent in the capital that a military takeover was in the offing. Exploiting his position, Siad Barre shrewdly carried out campaigns of building up underground support for his plan, such as forming a military wing of singers and poets. An army with folklore band was mobilised from and inside the army, taking advantage of the masses’ grievances against the civilian administration. One of the most well-known songs claims that the army was the only institution safe from corruption and nepotism. The song aired on Radio Mogadishu months before the coup was sung by a male and female singer.

The male singer: The refuter of (clan) genealogies Who knows no nepotism Who sees the nation as equal That being the soldier Who is oblivious of it? The female singer: The defender of the land The unbendable one as a force The never-defeated debater That being the soldier Who is oblivious of it?109

If the male singer used abstract words, the female singer reinforced it with vigour and figurative calls. Campaigning for a coup d’état in this way was to put Somalia out of democratic gouvernementalité and push for a surrender of a military dictatorship that would create a totalitarian structure of authority. Within a week of Abdirashid’s assassination came the coup. Into confusion stepped Siad Barre and his soldiers. The democracy was scrapped. This brought down the civilian government exemplified by a kleptocratic and nepotistic patronage and the shift was now from oligarchic kleptocracy to autocratic kleptocracy. Many Somalis welcomed the coup and saw as a new down for Somalia. Whatever the case, the coup was far from bloodless as it filled the post vacated by an assassinated president. And the coup came and ended with violence. Some opposition politicians, such as Abdulkadir Zoppo and Abdirizak Haji Hussein, were quick in supporting the coup. Zoppo, A Critical Appraisal 61 another close friend of Siad Barre’s and of Abdirizak’s, later confided to the U.S. Ambassador in Mogadishu that he financed the coup. 110 A ccused of orchestrating a high-profile together, the ‘rumeur publique’ (public rumour)—as Compagnon put it—was established that linked Siad Barre and Zoppo with the assassination of Kamaaluddiin Saalah in 1957. 111 No stranger to assassinations, Siad Barre was the Commander of the Police in the Banaa- dir province of Mogadishu, when the Egyptian diplomat was stabbed to death. Hours before his assassination, Kamaaluddiin Saalah’s police guard was withdrawn. While the traces of the assassination were cleared, the assassin Wiilow Sheikh Abdirahman Dheere was himself assassinated in prison at the night of Somali independence celebrations on 1 July 1960 as he was about to be released in the early morning for a Presidential pardon.

The Capture of the State: Totalitarianism

Not a state with an army, but an army with a state. —Frederick the Great, 18th century, King of Prussia1

Chapter Three

Siad Barre and the Somali State

The Actor and the Action

THE COMING OF THE COUP

A New Epoch and a New End On 21 October 1969, early Tuesday morning at 03:00am, a dozen army officers commanding a considerable number of private soldiers emerged from their barricades and took over the parliament building, Radio Mogadi- shu, the Ministry of Information and the most important buildings in the capital. Added to the assassination of President Abdirashid, the coup was blooded as one man sustained a gunshot injury during the coup operation. Cutting off telephone services inside and outside the country, the military junta intent on overthrowing the civilian government took redundant measures to close the shops. But suspending the country’s constitution approved by a public vote in 1961 and so abrogating the civilian laws were early indications that sooner or later the Somalis would be driven into an uncertain destination.1 Like anti-Kwame Nkrumah’s coup, Siad Barre—the chief orga- niser of the coup—obtained the collaboration of the police force to make the coup plot succeed. Though Siad Barre convinced the Police Commissioner Jama Ali Qoorsheel that the fruits of the coup would be shared in a proportional manner, the police headquarters was one of the first buildings captured by the coup makers.2 This—more than anything else—indicates that the military junta saw their police counterparts more hostile than collaborators. Because some police officers resisted to the coup without action, many So- malis believed that military force was unneeded at this point. There was no

65 66 Chapter 3 overall physical protest against the coup since there was no sympathy for the hated administration. This is how one witness described the day of the coup.

Mogadishu opened its eyes early in the morning. The situation was most abnormal, preternatural. Radio Mogadishu continuously played martial music. Those who went to bed, whether with a sense of premonition or otherwise, awoke to find tanks and military vehicles on full alert and numerous soldiers in battle dress gazing threateningly and seizing all the main national institutions. There took place what has been called by the nocturnal walkers a bloodless coup, which later proved to be a bloody coup.3

Even if the police were not actively involved in the coup, Siad Barre—by his cunning political manoeuvring—decided to take them on board. The lack of presidential guards that could challenge the army suggests the institutional weakness of the civilian administration. Only the police were able to pose some challenge but its leader was deceived as will be discussed below. As the military seizure of power was ab initio articulated as a reclaim of authority, the military junta detained most senior politicians in the previous (past and present) civilian administrations, among them, most astonishingly, several elders who struggled for Somali independence, when Siad Barre was a sergeant in the Italian colonial army. Within hours after the coup, the most well-known of those elders, President Aden Adde, who had been relaxing on his farm at Mushaani in Janaale district, outside Mogadishu, and his favourite Premier Abdirizak Haji Hussein, were languishing in prison in Afgooye. 4 However, the only politician who was particularly targeted for severe punishment was Egaal, whose own mansion was confiscated. The fact that Egaal was imprisoned in solitary confinement, while Yasin was sent to exile with his fortunes by the order of Siad Barre, is suggestive of the unbreakable plot the coup leader had shared with the former Interior Minister. Though the original planners were seven, the coup makers released a list of 25 names, twenty from the army and five from the police, as the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC).5 Most of them inexperienced, immature junior officers, the 25 officers would constitute the founders of the coup. From the beginning, there was little mention of Siad Barre’s name. This was because he did not put himself forward and was not seen as the real instigator of the coup. Siad Barre was with Yasin at his home, when Lieutenant Colonel Salaad Gabeyre, as Chief of the Military Operations, authorised several Mog- adishu brigades to take control of the National Parliament. Indeed, Siad Barre convinced Gabeyre and Major Ismail Ali Obokor, two instrumental players of the coup, that he would entertain the powerful Interior Minister on clan politics, a subject to which the latter loved to listen eagerly. However, Siad Barre’s real intention was to prove himself to Yasin that, in case the perilous plan went wrong, he was not part and parcel of the coup attempt. Maryan Haji Elmi, Ismail Ali Obokor’s wife, described that this was ‘the Siad Barre and the Somali State 67 first trick’ that Siad Barre did to his fellow military junta. 6 Maryam mentioned that another trick was for facilitating a rift between the Hawiye and the Isaaq members of the military junta, only to weaken his potential contestants. Indeed, some officers played a more prominent role than others in the coup, with Gabeyre and Ismail coming on top of all others in persuading their clansmen in the army to support the staging of the coup. In an uncertain seas and settings, where any overambitious officer had his own plan and plot, the most experienced in matters of political cunning and crafty would come on top. Gabeyre apparently aimed to avenge his father-in- law, Aden Adde, who was lost the presidency—as was widely believed— because of bribery. Ismail’s objective was to become the most senior Isaaq in the army, conducting capably several conspiracies against his fellow clansmen, most notably General Mohamed Aynaanshe Guuleed, the second vice- Commandant of the Army, to pave the way for his ascent. 7 More tellingly, Ismail was Siad Barre’s spy on Egaal’s activities, despite the fact that the two men shared a close clan affiliation, an affiliation that swayed the Prime Minister to trust the young Isaaq military officer to frequent his office. 8 Manipulating the overambitious inclinations of much younger officers competing over who could become Somalia’s Nasser, Siad Barre widened their race and navigated who was prepared to take the first challenge, putting both Gabeyre and Ismail eventually on the frontline. Similar to the colonial indirect rule system, Siad Barre consolidated his power within competitive military junta through carefully selected fellow clan and non-clan clique senior officers. Undoubtedly, he took advantage of the vacuum created by Abdi- rashid’s assassination to impose an authoritarian structure of power unparalleled with other African dictatorships on a society accustomed to democratic ideals.

New Neguib or New Narrator? Siad Barre proved wrong to those who presumed him as a new Neguib in Somalia (Neguib being the Sudanese military officer easily ousted by much younger military junta after a coup). While Siad Barre partly owned the mobilisation of coup makers and the traditional clan network building, he did not lead the actual staging of the coup but subsequently hijacked the show by sheer manipulation of many unsuspected junta members. The unequivocal consensus among Somalis is that Siad Barre ensnared Gabeyre to attain his long-held ambition of ruling Somalia. Salaad Gabeyre was—as General Os- man Haji Omar ‘Falco’ who knew him put it—‘the implementer of the coup’ or—as Professor Omar Mohamed Addow described it—‘the mastermind of the coup’.9 At the night of the coup operation, Gabeyre gave the last orders and led the soldiers who captured the heart of the capital. In the case of coup failure, Gabeyre might have most likely succumbed and sentenced to death. 68 Chapter 3

Abdi Warsame Isaaq, a member of the 25 military junta, depicted Salaad Gabeyre as ‘nin taariikhdiisa wax ka dhiman yihiin’ (a man whose history was incomplete).10 This was because Gabeyre’s real position was purposely concealed throughout the period of the Siad Barre regime. In the first two to three weeks, most people were oblivious who had the real power within the military junta, as Gabeyre made himself a challenger to the attempts by Siad Barre to consolidate his grip of power. The subsequent leaked news that Gabeyre was the real actor behind the coup made him many enemies who had already envied his popularity in the army. A group photo of the junta taken few days after the coup features Gabeyre at the centre of all other military junta members by standing at the forefront while Siad Barre standing at the back with an edgy look. Considering his seniority coupled with his age—the latter too salient a factor in Somali standards—as well as inducements, the military junta first approved Siad Barre to become their (interim) chairman. However, real power was still supposed to have vested in Gabeyre, who felt dejected to accept anyone other than him assuming the chairmanship of the junta. Even if a leader was selected, Radio Mogadishu announced that all power was rested with the supreme council of the military junta who would in turn rest in the person of Siad Barre. 11 It proved unfeasible for Siad Barre to thwart Gabeyre’s power within the junta and thus go- getting promotions was the short resolution. One of the first presidential decrees issued by Siad Barre in November 1969 affirmed the unconcealed power of Gabeyre; the decree was issued swiftly with swift promotion, as indicated by his leaping in the early months of the regime from Lieutenant Colonel to Brigadier General by circumventing the full colonelship. 12 Though appointed to the Minister of Defence, the post of the Commandant of the Army which Gabeyre had favoured was given to General Mohamed Ali Samatar, who also shared the army promotion with him. This power dispensation made Gabeyre furious from the outset. In retrospect, Gabeyre cook up the coup but Siad Barre not only ate the starter and drank the soup, he would eventually eat the whole dish.

The Historicity of the Coup Kwame Nkrumah’s famous admonishment for his followers ‘seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you’ was the ready-made motto to pledge reform in the disappointment and disillusionment of independence euphoria on the whole African continent. 13 Not surprisingly, Nkru- mah’s moto became a useful call to regime change for the African coup makers. The pattern the Siad Barre’s coup was structured was similar to the other African coups in the 1960s, but was dissimilar in other ways. In contrast with other contemporary coups rampant in Africa, Siad Barre’s coup was a copycat, though. In Somalia, there was at least one (failed) coup before Siad Barre and the Somali State 69 his and one in preparation that he ran over it: the 1961 aborted coup of the Isaaq military officers sprang from mutiny and the 1967 preparation of coup by General Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed ‘Liiqliiqato’, General Aideed and Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed Hassan.14 With the coming of the coup, the latter military officers two were detained. However, Siad Barre was fearful of General Gabeyre than Aideed and Abdullahi Yusuf combined, both the latter officers constituting the same group in the army from the same military academies as his favourite General Ali Samatar. According to Abdi Warsame Isaaq, Gabeyre was part of the Liiqliiqato coup, but became enraged after Aideed and Abdullahi Yusuf were selected as co-chairmen of the operation.15 Siad Barre’s senior role of the army made him realise both optical and optimal formula and framework to conduct a successful coup in order to seize the State power. In the preparation for the coup, Siad Barre sought the revelation and reflection of the makers of the aborted 1961 coup attempt, only to obtain a deep deliberation that would permit him to succeed where others failed. In March 1963, he called on Ambassador Dualeh, then a captain in the army and later ambassador under his regime, inquiring him about their 1961 aborted coup.16 The information provided by this insider served an expedient example for Siad Barre to plan and prepare for the 1969 successful coup. The invocation of the earlier coup attempt was itself a clear sign that disaster lay ahead for Somalis. Siad Barre’s actual experiments for coup operation occurred in 1968. During this period, he reached many military officers for assistance and expertise. General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, well- known in the army establishment, comprised among young capable officers who returned from the Soviet Union for military training that Siad Barre contacted and consulted over the coming coup. According to Galaal, Siad Barre talked to him two separate nights in 1968, proposing him to participate in the coup. As he decided not to be part of coup and not to suffer from Siad Barre’s wrath, basically ‘biting’, Galaal declared that he ‘excused’ himself.17 As he recalled, Siad Barre also contacted Colonel Ibrahim Rooble Warfaa Abtidoon ‘Doonyaale’, one of the most senior military officers, who also rejected a participation for the coup.

The Salutation of Siad Barre Hours after the coup, there had been a fear that many hostile clans, especially those prospered under the civilian administrations, might wage resistance. This was the warning that the American newspapers were forewarning. 18 The initial American extrapolation over the fate of the coup demonstrates a painful prediction of what was restored for Somalia. A cable from the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu made these nuanced calculations: ‘Somalia's nomadic tribes are heavily armed and could resist army authority. Moreover, the army 70 Chapter 3 is tribally divided and could itself be hard [to] put to maintain its unity should serious tribal disorders develop. The emergence of tribal tension, ever present in Somalia, coupled with the political upheavals of recent days could usher in a period of serious unrest’.19 Given this fact, the coup was greeted with a popular demonstration wherein people cursed the Abdirashid-Egaal- Yasin civilian administration. Like the coming of Robert Mugabe to Zimbab- we in 1980, many Somalis cheered the Siad Barre coup with little idea and assumption of what it would bring to them.20 A story is told that one Somali student heard on his way to the Egyptian school in Mogadishu that the military men deposed the civilian government. Rather than going to his usual class, he saw himself attending in demonstrations in favour of the coup. His Egyptian tutor saw him after midday and inquired him on why he failed to turn up at his class in the morning. The student responded that he went out to partake in a public demonstration to welcome the political change of his country. The tutor prophetically warned him: ‘If you endorsed a military coup d’état in that way, it will take you many years to resist them in a different way’. The student would later become a resistance fighter to topple the very military regime whose victory he had celebrated.21 However, the selection of Siad Barre as the leader of the junta initially brought positive changes to the contemporary conundrum both internally and externally. One can hardly deny that the new military leader offered in his first few months a better leadership than the ousted administration. But many Somalis paid a heavy price by not conferring him the benefit of the doubt. The wholesale and wholehearted welcome had to accelerate his ambitions and permit to establish a totalitarian reign in Somalia. How joyful- ly ordinary people greeted the coup was reflected by praise and prayer songs composed on the occasion. One of those songs, chanted by the popular So- mali singer Abdi Tahliil Warsame, puts the poets and singers at the front in a campaign of backing up the new military regime. However, a close reading of the song suggests that it was an early warning of what reserved for Somal- ia would be a string of armed conflicts.

O members who took the responsibility on their shoulders O members who came up responsibility with intelligibility O members who their fellows and their country love them Whose hands refused evil and did not fail their people O members who only the idiot love their death O members who colonialism cocked his heavy weapons Chorus: It is transitional period and we are waging a war We have to prepare ourselves and be armed The one who walks slowly will be left alone Everyone has to take responsibility and fulfil obligations And convey the people that we are carriers of the victory.22 Siad Barre and the Somali State 71 The Composition of Coup Poems The popular support the coup attracted from the public was popularised by the traditional poets, the so-called ‘organic intellectuals’, well before the coup.23 The military junta considered the backing of the poets as a vital foundation to initiate the coup. Political poems had constituted a crucial part of the mounting pressures on the last civilian administration. Poems, such as dab iyo dhagax la iskuma dhuftee kala dhowraay (fire and stone should never be banged, watch out and separate each other) and ama waa la i dooran, ama daadku i qaad (either I must be elected or carted off by heavy torrential rains), were useful oral instruments in mobilising the public to rally against the civilian administration. By composing and chanting these scathing songs, the poets provided a poetic legitimisation for the coup project. The poets as the spokesmen of the society were the first to appeal for a coup and craft a trust for the coup makers. A sympathetic song, one that highlighted people’s gratitude to those who untied Somalia from the chains of corrupt politicians, was performed shortly after the coming of the coup. Apart from ululating for the coup and those military junta who took over the power from civilian administration, in addition to expressing the mood of the day, the Heegan (vigilant) singers greeted the coup with a political poem by Abdi Muhumad Amiin:

The eaters of the illicit wealth Those who disdained the public While embezzling their assets To those who have liberated us from them We feel grateful for the mission.24

To consolidate power slowly and step by step, Siad Barre came to rely on three groups: (1) the junior members of the military junta who were egotisti- cal for their delayed promotion and fully alert of the privileges they would amass and accumulate for serving and servicing him, (2) communists and left-leaning groups, mostly unemployed and marginalised by the previous civilian administrations, and (3) the traditional poets whose role diminished as independence gained in comparison with decolonisation period (under the new military regime, they secured promises of salary increases in translating public support into a poetic form). As though the poetic discourse for ration- alisation of the coup was not sufficient, Radio Mogadishu broadcasted a song sung by Mohamed Saleebaan Tubee’ and one of the most popular female singers Hiba Mohamed Huddon ‘Hiba Nura’. The song ‘either doomsday death or victory of life’ seeks to legitimise why the military junta came to power, using various wild animal creatures, such as lions, tigers, elephants and even horses, as a metaphor to historicise the political jump and journey of the coup makers. The purpose of the political poem was to garner as much 72 Chapter 3 public support as possible for the new military regime. Emotive and powerful, the song takes the listener to the heart of the common people and how— upon the coming of the coup—they felt relieved from their pains. Hiba inquires:

The night that the soil of our country rocked The rumbling of the hyena and the running of the horses The mumbling of the tiger and the waylaying of the lion They obtained the power of the elephant’s hand What motivated them [the junta], O Guuleed, so tell me?

Mohamed Saleebaan replies:

When the state became derelict as the parasites fattened Due to her wounds being eaten by wild animals When the independence cried, they took arms Acute rage and resentment were what stirred them [the junta]. 25

Siad Barre as Spokesman From the beginning, Siad Barre bore the title of ‘Chairman’ of the military junta, later crowning himself President in 1976. In his first speech on Radio Mogadishu, he justified his coup with the political language of nationhood, punctuated by Somaliness and backed up by fairness. Pointing out the need to reinstate the lost integrity of the nation and pledging to wipe out clanism and corruption, two predominant characteristics of everyday life, he discredited the politics of the successive civilian administration in which he characterised as ‘corrupt, clannish and capitalist’.26 By condemning the civilian administration for their ‘weak’ control of the country, he hinted his preference of strong State and weak society. Upon branding the past nine years as years of musuqmaasuq (corruption), he reduced the whole democratic governance as illegitimate in the eyes of the new regime. 27 Without mincing words, Siad Barre stated in an early speech that ‘[e]ducated people were at the bottom’ while ‘worthless people with not much value were at the top’.28 This speech was rescinded by another in which he asserted that he hoped not to lay the blame on the previous leaders. Though civilian leaders could be accused of fax pas, he stated, there were ‘also a lot of things they had done for the country’. With explicit instructions, he announced: ‘I have ordered that they should not be touched. They should not be called criminals unless crimes committed by them are proven’.29 By these words, Siad Barre was conscious of the fact that he was part of the system he had helped overthrown. As a member of the old school in the colonial and post-colonial establishment, his reputation was not less deferential than those politicians who had been ousted. Siad Barre and the Somali State 73

Given that no one was at least publicly punished from the outset, Siad Barre used other means to threaten the detained elders and former politicians. According to Radio Mogadishu news bulletin, Osman Mohamed Jeelle and Mohamed Omar Jees, two loyal members of the military junta, had cam- paigned for the trial of the previous civilian leaders. 30 It was common knowledge that Siad Barre was shrewd in delegating his ulterior schemes to his subordinates. This was partly because he had his own grudge against the post-colonial civilian leaders. As early as 1961, he used to complain a lack of promotion.31 Even when he attempted to take a military action to avenge, he was feeling powerless, for General Da’ud was opposed to the wind of coups sweeping throughout the whole African continent in the 1960s, as a senior officer who worked with him noted.32 Siad Barre began to amass as many friends in the army as he could during this period. He arranged the marriage of one of his daughters (Suuban) to Major Ahmed Saleebaan Abdalle ‘Dafle’ (the nickname meaning ‘the blade’), whom he nominated the commander of the department of army intelligence. 33 Throughout the first months of the coup, Siad Barre was insisting that the regime change emanated not from xukun askari (rule by the military force), but from xukun shacbi (rule by the people). This was still to some extent the honeymoon era, when the coup leader was described by many Somalis as ‘a soft-hearted old daddy’.34 But the situation soon soared, since it had given rise to dictatorship. Both the idea and the institutions of centralised control of oppression drew from colonial authoritarianism and, as such, reverted to colonial legacy. As a member of the beneficiaries of the colonial rule, Siad Barre and other African military leaders were trained to first safeguard colonial interests and second their own interests. What they did after the colonial departure—or more precisely, after they came to power—was to parallel their regimes with the colonial configuration of power, which was basically to rule by dictation. In Somalia, the post-colonial civilian leaders did not reform the army but maintained under the able leadership of trusted senior officer General Da’ud, while his deputy Siad Barre, upon assuming power, changed his strips and replaced the colonial term with clan but retained his own interest. Siad Barre knew that his clan was marginalised position in the bodypolitik of the negotiated structure of post-colonial Somalia, a theme to be explored in detail below. The new military junta promised that they would soon yield power to civilian government. As was often the case with contemporary African military coups, Siad Barre himself reiterated that his intention was to bring Somalia back to democracy by holding elections and promised that the military junta would hand over power to democratically-elected government as soon as the corruption created by the deposed civilian administration was rooted out. In what appears to be his first interview by a foreign academic, he again echoed that he would reinstate democratic rule, a point he had also 74 Chapter 3 noted on both Radio Mogadishu and the BBC Somali service. 35 Indeed, in the first statement, Axdigii Koowaad (the First Pledge), his military council made the pledge to hold ‘a popular election in an opportune time’.36 An answer to a question posed by the BBC for how long it would take to hold election reveals that Siad Barre had a plan of societal indoctrination in mind in order to set the stage for dictatorial rule. He plainly replied: ‘We will hold an election when people’s mind becomes a dutiful Somali’.37 Yet, inconsis- tencies and incongruities abounded his speeches. Few years later, he continued his beginning pronouncements to the restoration of democracy in another interview to the Daily Telegraph in London. In this interview, he talked about free elections and even a return to civilian rule. ‘There will be no delay’, he insisted, ‘in bringing about free elections because the people are even now almost ready for them’.38 Though it was clear that the ‘dutiful Somali’ was not yet succeeded in 1973, the year of the interview, Siad Barre’s statement suggests an early attempt to attract Western, in addition to the Soviet patronage.

The Clan Politics in Perspective The formation of the SRC in the first week of the coup was a much awaited declaration to gauge over what sort of path the military regime would follow. The composition of 25-member council of the military junta was not based on proper clan representation and some important communities such as the Digil/Mirifle had not even had a single member. As Siad Barre’s clan and sub-clan had the lion’s share, the majority of the junta council belonged to his clan: 10 Daarood, 6 Hawiye, 4 Isaaq, 3 Dir, 1 Somali-Yemeni and 1 Tumaal, the so-called outcaste community. 39 With no more than a year, half of the Hawiye members of the junta were purged, most notably General Gabeyre, General Ahmed Mohamoud-Adde Abikar ‘Qoorweyne’ and Colo- nel Bashiir Yusuf Elmi. While Qoorweyne was retired to a pension in the first place, Gabeyre was detained and later Bashiir sacked after protesting to the latter detention. 40 Their positions within the junta council were never filled, but each was substituted by a member of his clan. Central to these appointments was inserting loyalists from every clan on top of the regime. In light of these facts, it was scarcely surprising that Hawiye senior officers in the army were the first to defy Siad Barre’s authoritarian aims and ambitions at a time of power consolidation, when both Isaaq and Majeerteen military and police officers were working truthfully with him. The State-sponsored clanity —aggravated by the uneven and unbalanced composition of the junta—created clan suspicion and set the stage for a clanisation of the regime. As table 3.1 shows, the Daarood clan-group were predominant in the list. Lauded by his supporters for skilful oratory, often interspersing his speeches with guile, Siad Barre steered the wheel of the State from a govern- Siad Barre and the Somali State 75

Table 3.1. The Clan Composition of the Military Junta

Clan-Groups 1969 1972 The Outcome Hawiye 6 -3 3 Isaaq 4 -1 3 Daarood 10 -1 9 Dir 3 3 3 Other communities 2 2 2 Total in numbers 25 20 20 ment owned by the people to a people owned by his regime. In his first test of government business, he appointed a cabinet of secretaries solely consisted of the Daarood, the Hawiye and the Isaaq. There was no single member from other clan-groups and communities. Out of 14 members, half of the cabinet—seven secretaries—were from the Daarood, the other seven were four Hawiye and three Isaaq. Between November 1969 and June 1972, the cabinet was reshuffled for no less than three times. The inclusion of four members of his close clansmen to the junta and the cabinet, names, such as General Ali Mataan Haashi, Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Mohamed Mohamoud ‘Juge’ and Captain Abdulkadir Haji Masalle, was an initial experiment of clanisation of the military regime. However, Siad Barre was careful in maintaining partial clan balance in the first one to two years to be able to consolidate his power during which he accommodated the Isaaq to rectify their grievances against the civilian administrations. The first official presidential decree signed by Siad Barre was to appoint Mohamoud Sheikh Ahmed Muse, an Isaaq, as the President of the Supreme Court.41 The political ploy of appeasing aggrieved clans was aimed at foundering strong foundation for his power and explains how he usurped power for himself. In reality, Siad Barre sought to embrace as many servants as possible from other clans in his initial approach without overlooking to favour his clan.42 Evidence and observation by those who served him reveal that he was committed to advance the interests of his clan.

Revolution or Rebellion? The new military regime used duplicitous cards in playing an old-fashioned foreign policy of not remaining faithful to any political commitment. Both Ethiopia and Kenya showed concern over the change of regime in Somalia. Other African governments were reluctant to recognise until Siad Barre pronounced a moderate position on the Greater Somalia policy. Once he declared to abide by the regional agreements on the matter to resolve in a peaceful way did he to obtain a (regional) recognition. On the international dimension, Siad Barre followed in Egaal’s footsteps at the outset (without 76 Chapter 3

Table 3.2. The Clan Composition of the First Cabinet

Daarood Hawiye Isaaq Total 7 4 3 14 acknowledgement) to maintain good relations with the neighbouring countries. This was not consistent and ended with the consolidation of power. Given Siad Barre’s constant pledges of following non-alignment stance, his deeds proved to be heavily leaning on the East. From an early on, Siad Barre plainly and publicly disentangled Somalia from the Western fold. His regime had initiated hostile initiatives against the U.S. and thus turned to a different pathway in the international politics—that is, from peripheralised State in the cold war to a patron-client satellite State. Hardly two months elapsed, when the military junta gave an ultimatum to the U.S. Peace Corps to leave Somal- ia within two weeks in December 1969, apparently with an advice from the Soviet Union. As a result, the John F. Kennedy English Language Centre in Mogadishu, where many Somalis—vast majority of them civil servants— were being trained, was closed down. The enduring relationship begun during colonial period between secondary schools in the North and the Univer- sity of London that Somali graduates earned General Certificates of Educa- tion (GCE) from the latter institution with no charge from Mogadishu was also terminated, presumably to untangle Western reliance. 43 Siad Barre also reached a perilous unilateral decision, practically no non- alignment foreign policy which was radically different from civilian administrations, in establishing diplomatic relations with North Vietnam and permitting their ships to use Somali flags. 44 This hostile act to the U.S. created an unnecessary sour relationship with the West. The situation was further complicated by the U.S. retaliation to terminate aid to Somalia on the grounds that Somalia-registered ships had been trading with North Vietnam. Other Western States also followed suit. Germany, a big patron of development aid to post-independence Somalia, had also halted its economic assistance due to the new military regime’s recognition of East Germany.45 The neutrality and non-aligned policies of previous Somali State were now displaced by a regime heavily leant on the East. A shrewd manoeuvre (or lack thereof) was how Siad Barre refrained from using the terms ‘coup’ or ‘takeover’ to present an image of a progressive new regime in Somalia. Rather, he described the coup as a ‘revolution’ and continued to call it ‘the blessed revolution’.46 His was not even seen and suspected by even Somalis as a coup. Similar to Mobutu Sese Seko’s step to rename Congo as Zaire, the name Somali Republic was altered into ‘The Somali Democratic Republic’.47 The success that Siad Barre secured to convince some African heads of State was that his coup was the new better beginning for Africa. The question that Siad Barre and the Somali State 77 remains unanswered was what would make a revolution apart from a coup d’état. Franz Fanon, perhaps the most well-articulated African revolutionary, argued that:

Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every authentic revolution. This is what makes it a revolution, as distinguished from a military coup. One does not expect dialogue from a coup—only deceit (in order to achieve ‘legitimacy’) or force (in order to repress). Sooner or later, a true revolution must initiate a courageous dialogue with the people. Its very legitimacy lies in that dialogue. It cannot fear the people, their expression, their effective participation in power. It must be accountable to them, must speak frankly to them of its achievements, its mistakes, its miscalculations, and its difficulties. 48

If a dialogue was the characteristic of the authenticate revolution—from Fanonian perspective—then the Siad Barre coup constituted the perfect example of a military coup. As will be discussed below, dialogue and debate became crime during his reign since freedom of speech was forbidden. This led a revolution without a revolution. Military commanders commanded the society the way the soldiers were commanded: take the order and implement it without questioning. Siad Barre went a bit further by seeking legitimacy through deceit and denying blunders. In one initial instance, he betrayed General Qoorsheel, his counterpart in the police, by articulating a language both fully understood: since Abdirashid was a Daarood, the successor might likely be from another clan, so they both had to act swiftly to fill in the post. Again Fanon: ‘Authority can avoid conflict with freedom only if it is freedom become authority. Hypertrophy of the one provokes atrophy of the other. Just as authority cannot exist without denying freedom, nor license without denying authority’.49 Such became not an exception but a rule in Somalia. If one dared to consider Siad Barre’s totalitarian and terroristic dictatorship as revolutionary or revolutionary socialism, one would then put African fascism on board, however the latter was elusive to define. 50

THE COUP AND THE SOVIET COMPLICITY

The Soviets in Somalia With the guidance of the Soviets, the first few months saw the military regime providing a better alternative leadership than the last civilian administration. This was a Soviet design to prove that the new regime could achieve better concrete results than the Western-backed administration. Overall, the Soviet interest and involvement in the politics in Africa served a decisive opportunity for ambitious African military leaders to advance their political purposes, as evidenced by Siad Barre’s coup. Most importantly, the Soviets furnished Siad Barre with ideology and arsenals. The role of the Soviets of 78 Chapter 3 the 1969 coup has been unexplored for many years. The only scholar, who had written about the Soviet complicity, came up with the conclusion that Moscow hardly engineered the coup.51 Nevertheless, Gary Payton suggested—with less emphasis—that interlinked interests of the coup makers and the Soviet intelligence services made it possible for collaboration. De- void of evidence or any other document relating to these developments, Payton did not pursue the point further. A closer scrutiny reveals that the coup was manufactured from Moscow and its preparation was ongoing since at least 1963. The Soviet monopoly began with training and equipping Soma- li army, whilst supplying practically all armoury equipment. The majority of the military junta who instigated the coup had attended Soviet military schools and it was evident that the army could not operate without the Soviet advisers. The Soviets were instilling a sense of wild ambition in the Somali young officers in the Soviet military academies under the indoctrination sessions that they would someday be the future leaders of their country. The Somali officers’ sense of signifying observable eagerness for swift promotion also had contributed to the Soviet plans to replace the Western-backed civilian administration in Somalia with military rulers amenable to their interests in Africa. Figures drawn from Africa Confidential put the figure of the Soviet advisers at this particular period on the Somali soil as much as 10,000 personnel.52 Although the figure could be an exagger- ation, the number of the Soviets was indeed higher than the Italians, who once donated thousands of inhabitants in Mogadishu alone. The transitional President of the last civilian administration stated that they were cognisant that the Soviets were providing advices to the military, though he did not know about what, why, when and where.53 Indeed, the Soviets marked their influence on Somalia ‘stronger than in any other African country’.54 Not only were they involved in the building up of the Somali army alone, they also established the Kismaayo meat factory, the Laas Qorey fisheries and many other economic development projects that became beneficial to the Somalis. From military to economic, the Soviets became the biggest assistance and loan provider for the ousted administration. The date the coup came incidentally partnered the Somali regime with the Soviet October Revolution. It seems that the Soviets had advised Siad Barre and his coup makers to conduct their coup on 21 October, the same date the Stalinist State had come to power.55 The timing was of special importance because it occurred while the Soviets were looking for a conduit in the Red Sea Ocean. Once the coup was successfully staged, the Soviets were quick in welcoming the coup, in contrast with the western media which described it ‘regrettable’.56 This was partly because of Somalia’s shift to the East, as Mogadishu and Moscow were now twin ideological partners in the new political arrangement. Xiddigta Oktoobar (the October Star), the military junta’s first official newspaper, began to show eulogies of the Soviet leaders, Siad Barre and the Somali State 79 augmented and illustrated with Siad Barre’s. In a sense, the Soviet interest to Somalia in 1969 coup can be linked to the wider cold war politics, given the need of obtaining a safe route of arms deliveries to other African countries. Somalia’s distant neighbours had already suffered the same fate of coup operations. In May 1969, a coup had occurred in Sudan, in June in Aden, South Yemen, and in September in Libya. Congo-Brazzaville also underwent a military coup in 1969. Though they met trouble in the Middle East, the Soviets trundled along Somalia securely.57 In Somalia, they benefitted from the admiration held to them by most Somalis. Regarded as saviours, the Soviet popularity was encapsulated in a poem: ‘Ilaahow Ruush ama Roob’ (O’ Allah please grant us either Russians or Rain). Mogadishu became Mini-Moscow, where the Soviets sat the seat as the machine and the manpower driving the Somali State. When the coup makers once felt uneasy about the arduous task of dealing with foreign missions in Mogadishu, the dilemma was solved by experts and advisers provided by the Soviets. The report despatched from Mogadishu by Ralph Hawkins of The Times of London was revealing: ‘When staff of other embassies were refused permission to go to their offices or leave them if they were already inside, Soviet diplomats had free movement throughout the capital’.58 Of all foreign embassies in Mogadishu, the Soviets had the largest registered diplomatic staff, so large that it resembled a presidential palace than a mere embassy. In addition, the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu would later find out from one former Somali ambassador to the Soviets and later to the U.S. that the Soviets had paid the construction of the Somali embassy in Moscow, next to the U.S. embassy there, obviously to follow the movements of American diplomats. 59

The KGB Takeover of Democratic Rule There is no doubt that the politics and the political blunders pursued by the post-colonial Somali civilian leaders in the 1960s set the stage for the Siad Barre’s coup. These leaders, many of them had worked as assistants under Italian and British colonial states, made the new-born Somali Republic an open stage where both the West and the East compete themselves, hence the infiltration of the CIA and the KGB agents on the streets of Somalia. At one point in 1964, five years before the coup, a Soviet diplomat in Mogadishu was enquired by a Western confrere, whether he had not missed ‘the many theatres of Moscow’. Smiling, the Soviet diplomat replied: ‘Not at all’ since ‘this country [Somalia was] one huge theatre’.60 Given the tug-of-war between intelligence communities of the East and the West, then evident in Mogadishu, the Soviet diplomat’s remarks were not out of tune with the reality. Not only was Somalia a theatre, but it also was a political bazaar where diverse intersecting internal and external interests came together to 80 Chapter 3 catch one prized fish: the Somali State. While the Somali police officers of the intelligence branch were being sent to America, ostensibly taught by the CIA, their counterpart of the army were trained by the KGB. 61 Somalia as a theatre was a place that the audience was Somalis, while the actors were outsiders. This at the time the U.S. intelligence authorities were mounting any Soviet activities from their surveillance station in Eritrea. The CIA operations were concerned with politicians and who should replace whom, while the KGB agents were active in promoting their representatives in the army. To pave the way for the rise of their favourite Siad Barre, the KGB planned the premature death of General Da’ud in Moscow, because it became incredible under his command to oust what they considered a capitalist administration. A fierce nationalist who barely preferred power over the loss of sovereignty to the Soviets, Da’ud’s apolitical profes- sionalism, in addition to enhancing the army’s reputation in the society as a defence force, created a high esteem for himself as a person and for the army as an institution. When Egaal came to head the executive branch of The Somali Republic in July 1967, the KGB felt obliged to act fast. Egaal’s choice as Prime Minister incensed the Soviet Union, because he was a pro- Western politician preferring Western aid to the Soviet one. Dwarfing in a sea full of wolves, Egaal steered the wheel of the administration from the East to the West, switching the previous Abdirashid allegiance to Moscow. The Soviets were fully informed that Egaal had strong links with the CIA, as his appointment was facilitated by thousands of U.S. dollars provided by the CIA operatives in Mogadishu via a secret project aimed at strengthening pro- American elements during the 1967 presidential election. 62 The Soviets were anxious about Egaal’s motives as the CIA candidate for Premier in putting Somalia on the American camp and diffusing the militaristic and militant policies of the Greater Somalia pursued by the earlier civilian administrations. The Greater Somalia policy itself was keeping Somalia reliant on the Soviet Union, the only superpower sympathetic to the Somali cause since 1963.63 Egaal took a reconciliatory route in easing enmity toward the neighbouring countries. In October 1967, he signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Arusha, Tanzania, with Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta under the auspices of Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere and Zambian counterpart Ken- neth Kaunda.64 The Soviet embassy in Mogadishu financed demonstrations by left-leaning politicians against Egaal’s signing of the Arusha Memoran- dum, similar to the ‘No Bonn’ demonstration against Aden Adde. The demonstrators daringly demanded the dismissal of the Egaal government as their messages were constantly heard from Radio Mogadishu. 65 Not only had the administration tolerated communists’ extensive use of the Radio to dissemi- nate their poetic messages, but it also allowed to their political propaganda. The very signing of the memorandum served a pretext and justification for Siad Barre and the Somali State 81 some to call for the overthrow of the civilian government. This was reinforced by the fact that, whereas Egaal conceded to Kenya with his unilateral decision to withdraw support for the Somali Liberation Forces in the NFD province, he gained nothing in turn from Nairobi. This lack of balance in the political bargain created outcry among the Somali nationalists who demanded his resignation. To mount more pressure on the administration, the opposition pointed out to the anti-Somali French colonial policies in Djibouti. The Memorandum coincided with the contentious referendum conducted in Djibouti in which the French colonial authorities claimed that most Djibouti population rejected independence and voted for the maintenance of the colonial rule. Anti- Western demonstrations continued as another was held a year later against the U.S. Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, during his visit to Mogadishu in 1968, wherein demonstrators yelled ‘no Yankees’.66 With an American support, Egaal accelerated his endeavours to normalise the relations between Ethiopia and Kenya. President Abdirashid’s position was confusing enough, because, while he was still invoking Greater Somalia policy as a valid point on one hand, he supported Egaal’s initiatives of closing down that door on the other.67 In 1968, Egaal restored ties with the British that severed in 1963 at which their embassy in Mogadishu was burned down. Even though the British decided not to subsidy the budget of the incumbent administration as it had done before 1963, the normalisation of the ties was a step forward from international relations perspective. In March 1968, Egaal flew to the U.S., where he met President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. With continual U.S. support now confirmed, Egaal journeyed to Bonn, Brussels, London and Rome to expand a continuation of Western patronage for his détente foreign policy alteration and activism, not to mention his attempt at diffusing the overgrowing power of the army. After the 1969 March election, the relations with the Soviet Union had soured. In July of that year, the Soviets cancelled a pre-planned visit by both President Abdirashid and Premier Egaal to Moscow. 68 The cancellation was due to an intense dispute over rearrangements of outstanding debts. This—no less than political plot—was intended to mount a pale of pressures on the Abdirashid-Egaal administration, an administration already plagued by political dissention springing from the farce election results. However, when Abdirashid was assassinated, the Soviets seemed careful of their actions. The funeral was attended by high-ranking officials led by Muhamadula Kholov, then Vice President of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. 69 Included in the entourage were a team of KGB experts who specialised in African political crisis. This team was part of the advisory group that oversaw the achievement and accomplishment of the Siad Barre coup. The confidence Siad Barre had shown in a conversation with Somali military officers is illustrative at how certain he was with regards to the Soviet support of the 82 Chapter 3 coup in matters of intelligence. A former Somali army Colonel and later Ambassador who observed the internal and external moves of the coup observed that the Soviets had nudged the army to stage their coup with prompt. ‘There is no doubt’, wrote Ambassador Dualeh, ‘that the army coup against Ega[a]l’s government in October, 1969 was engineered by the Soviets’.70 Twenty years later, in 1993, Egaal himself provided unique testimonies about how his administration was toppled. After giving much emphasis on the external factor of the demise of his administration by insisting—and armed with the notion—that the Soviets seized the Somali State, rather than Siad Barre (he literally stated that ‘the Soviets carried out the coup, not Mohamed Siad’), Egaal admitted that the successive civilian administrations unwittingly succumbed to the communist world. However, Egaal could contend that the ‘inexperience about the culture of governance’ could be attributed to the blunders committed by his administration. Yet he continued to mount accusing finger to somewhere else as a scapegoat. This was how Egaal summarised the story over the Soviet complicity: ‘We put our country to the hand[s] of the Soviets in 1960, as we were guided by pomposity. We told them to coach our military, train them inside and outside and promote anyone deserved for promotion. They were prepared to topple us before 1969’.71 By 1969, the total number of the Somali army was 15,000 of which 13,000 were army personnel consisting of officers and men, with 1,750 air force and 250 navy in addition to 500 para-military border guards. 72 Egaal made a further revealing revelation, when he claimed that the proliferation of the political parties in 1969 was the work of the Soviets. He observed that ‘when they seized the power, the Soviets were better than the Americans and any other country, but they were disagreed with Mohamed Siad. The first 10 years, there was no single Soviet senior official who did not come to Somalia except Brezhnev. They made every effort in developing [Somalia], while Mohamed Siad went to the sky, for he was reliant on a superpower. When he became intransigent and they had accomplished their interest, they abandoned him’.73 Siad Barre subordinates were also cognisant of how Somalia descended into a satellite State. Upon a return from Mogadishu after two months of consultations, Ambassador Abdullahi Ahmed Addow, Siad Barre’s long-time ambassador to the U.S., conversed to senior American diplomats that Somalia had ‘virtually lost its independence’ to the Soviet Union.74 The Soviet active penetration had increased shortly prior to the 1969 coup. As early as April 1968, Soviet warships used to anchor in the old Mogadishu seaport. While ships from the Soviets docked Mogadishu from day in and day out as they would have been doing in Moscow, the U.S. ships were to encounter harassment. Siad Barre had his own suspicion toward the U.S. intelligence capability to topple or destroy his regime early on and decreed to penalise any ‘foreign ships’ that would have entered the Somali Siad Barre and the Somali State 83 coast without consent.75 This clause was not apparently applicable to the Soviets. Within a month of the coup, four Soviet warships arrived in Mogadi- shu seaport for ‘friendly visit’, as Radio Mogadishu portrayed it. ‘Since our achievement of independence in 1960’, the Radio continued, ‘the people of the Soviet Union were the first to give us generous assistance at a time when we were in dire need’.76 However, the real purpose behind the Soviet warships was to protect the fruits gained in the successful staging of the coup. The display of warships was followed by what the Radio described it ‘a powerful Soviet economic delegation’ in November 1969, apparently to ad- vise the new military regime on matters relating to rapid economic development for the sake of achieving legitimacy. 77 General Galaal, who was the deputy Chief Intelligence of the Defence Ministry at this time, recalled that, soon after the coup, the Siad Barre regime coordinated information sharing relationship with the Soviets. 78 No one knows whether or not this kind of information sharing was ongoing before the coup. However, with the coming of the coup, the biggest KGB centre in Africa was established in Mogadishu, in addition to Berbera as the largest Soviet ground base in Africa.79 The KGB made their headquarters at the building of the former Somali National Assembly during the post-colonial period. Transformed into a crucial Soviet military and naval base, Berbera port was ‘controlled by a Soviet harbour master’ from 1970–1976.80 The Soviets took Somalia for granted: they even defied to heed Siad Barre’s promise to the Americans that their military personnel could inspect all facil- ities at Berbera and blocked any entry to key restricted areas. Even though it was made secret, the Soviets had free use of Somali airspace and airfields, with their airfield base being Ballidoogle, southwest Mogadishu. This allowed them to use Somalia the circuit where the KGB organised conspirato- rial operations against pro-Western African leaders, most notably Ethiopia and Kenya. The main purpose of the Soviets was to spread their Leninist ideology throughout Africa by utilising the strategic locality of Somalia. 81 From Mogadishu, the KGB directed the coup that toppled Ethiopia’s Emper- or Haile Selassie and installed Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. The Soviets were, nonetheless, unsuccessful in their attempts to depose Ken- ya’s Jomo Kenyatta and install the left-leaning popular opposition leader Odinga Oginga who once served as the former’s deputy. General Hussein Kulmiye Afrah, Siad Barre’s deputy, recounted that the British intelligence aborted a coup against Kenyatta in which Soviets and Siad Barre collectively collaborated.82

Siad Barre, the Soviets and Socialism On 21 October 1970, during the first anniversary of the coup, Siad Barre pushed the new Somalia to the Soviet bloc as a promising socialist African 84 Chapter 3

State by declaring as the State guiding principle the Soviet-style socialism, the so-called scientific socialism, literally hantiwadaag cilmiga ku dhisan (the capital-sharing anchored on knowledge). This was a political ideology that considered Mao, Marx and Mussolini with the same mode of meaning. Never before his coup was Siad Barre portrayed himself as a socialist, let alone a Marxist. So the move was calculably aimed at making Somalia closer to the Soviets. Somalis were obligated to call each other ‘Jaalle’ (Comrade). The proclamation of Somalia as a socialist State was deemed as a ‘pragmatic’ step, even when it was designed to secure a supplementary Soviet patronage; one regime official remarked that ‘there was no real vision of socialism in place’.83 However, in almost all his early speeches, Siad Barre reiterated that his regime was to spread social justice, even though he evaded to mention political justice, which was a prerequisite for all other justices. Scientific Socialism was less ideology than political resource and instrument to internally arrest rivals and externally link to the patrons. Most important, it was a way of creating a linkage by maintaining to keep a close connection with the Soviets. The point that the relationship with the Soviets was dictated by political opportunism was clearly illustrated in an interview with General Ahmed Saleebaan Dafle, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, who used the Somali proverb ‘buur ahow ama ku tiirsanow’ (either be a mountain or have a mountain to lean on).84 For Dafle, the Soviet Union was the mountain for the Siad Barre regime to lean on for its survival. Indeed, socialism principally helped Siad Barre strengthen his power through the imposition and articulation of a new ideology. What he embraced was more like a suitable system for a Siadist State than a socialist one, more or less what Somalis would term ‘Scientific Siyadism’, that is—a means not an end, while based on purely tyrannical in nature devoid of scientific. 85 This pseudo-socialism camou- flaged with Siadism set an early foundation for his regime and helped Siad Barre consolidate his power in a time of ambiguity over the future on the fruits of the coup. Few Somalis could anticipate what would come next to the so-called socialism would be clannism. Socialism, later declared some Somali critics, was pure clannism by other means and suited to the dictatorial rule of Siad Barre.86 Due to the initial leaning on the Soviet Union, coupled with a strong presence of the latter, Somalia came to be crystallised as an African Cuba, with Siad Barre having painted and portrayed himself as a new Soviet man in Africa. Even though the Soviet had left socialism as an ideology by moving to communism, the Siad Barre regime hardly distinguished which ideology could make Mogadishu closer to Moscow.87 Shaken by the developments in the Horn of Africa, the West began to closely monitor the domestic and foreign activities of Siad Barre.88 As soon as ascending to power, he attracted world attention by making Somalia a ground play in one of the centres of geopolitical conflict. With the adoption of ‘scientific socialism’, Somalia was Siad Barre and the Somali State 85 dragged to the circuitous cold war sphere. The herald of socialism was preceded by a campaign of anti-Americanism. This was relatively what differed the Siad Barre from other Marxist-Leninist regimes on the African continent. In November 1971, Siad Barre paid the first visit to Moscow since he came to power. The relationship between the Soviets and the Siad Barre regime came to a turning point in 1974, upon the official declaration of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, following the visit of the Soviet Presi- dent Nikolai Podgorny to Mogadishu. Podgorny’s entourage included I. V. Arkhipov, Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers; V. V. Kuz- netsov, First Deputy Foreign Minister; General S. L. Sokolov, First Deputy Defence Minister; V. A. Ustinov, Head of the African Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and V. N. Sofinsky, Head of the Foreign Ministry Press Department.89 After signing the Treaty, Somalia became the first country in Africa South of the Sahara to do so. As a result, the Soviet Union sent massive arsenal and hardware as military assistance to the military regime, providing 150 T-35 and 100 T-54 tanks, fitted with 105mm guns, 50 MiG 16 (later added MiG 16 and 21) fighter jets, 200 coastal batteries, Il-28 bombers, 300 armed carriers and SA-2 ground-to-air missiles. 90 The military aid increased each subsequent year and cemented a strong client-patron relationship to such an extent that Somalia was supposed to be ever dependent on the Soviet Union for generations to come.91

The Fruits of ‘Scientific Socialism’ Backed by the Soviets, Siad Barre attempted to transform each facet of everyday Somali lives while at the same time shrewdly using them in consolidating his power. Indeed, with the Soviet assistance, some social and political changes rocked some parts of Somalia. The reliance of his regime on the Soviets for assistance—not just in terms of military and technical expertise, but the functionality of the State institutions—was almost total from 1969 up to 1976.92 During the first few months, Soviets and Soviet-trained Somali experts and technocrats worked so hard to provide a very competent bureaucratic work in administrative authority. In every minister and department in Somalia, there were a dozen Soviet experts providing technocratic skills and administrative advice. Acting upon the Soviet guidance, Siad Barre was advised from the beginning to invite ‘the best brains’ among the educated class. He soon assembled dozens of technocrats that acted as intermediaries between the military and the civilians. 93 The Soviet guidance was illustrated by the declaration of 14 secretaries of which—apart from Generals Gabeyre and Qoorsheel—all the other were technocrats. The first few months of the regime were shinned by the fruitful efforts carried out the new cabinet assisted by Soviet experts. Within a year, the new team balanced the budget, while the country still relied on foreign aid to cover expenditure. A Moscow-type 86 Chapter 3 of indoctrination organisation was established, where ordinary people were organised through villages, with National Guidance Centres reading speeches on socialism.94 Some—inter alia—of its missions were specifically framed as ‘friendship and international solidarity’, ‘indoctrination and mass mobilisation’ and ‘publications and propaganda’. That the word propaganda was used in the regime bulletins indicates to the extent of confidence that the regime was enjoying in solely spreading its messages unchallenged. 95 In addition to the written standardisation of the pastoral nomadic language, Af-Maxaa, in a Latin script, together with the sending of thousands of high school graduates and students to teach rural masses on how to read and write, a nation-wide campaign of bar ama baro (teach or learn) was carried out in 1974.96 This idea of community development was itself passed to the military regime by none other than Lev Mironov, the First Secretary at the Soviet embassy in Mogadishu, who had a special attachment to the Somali Ministry of Higher Education.97 The literacy campaigns in 1974, not to mention the drought handling, were times of honeymoon for the regime. Equally successful campaign was the result of adopting a Latin orthography for the standard Somali , which added some value for the regime’s efforts to legitimise its authority in 1972. The Somali language had already been given a written Latin script during the colonial period, but no Somali was able to adopt it in place of Arabic script. The Latin script was first adopted by the decolonisation government in 1957, but after a series of riots against it in favour of Arabic, forced the administration to abandon the adoption. 98 With Af-Maxaa in print, Af-Maay communities of the South were found themselves in the periphery as they were denied to write their language in print, similar in Kenya during the Mau Mau resistance to British colonialism where students were reported to have been punished if they dared spoke ‘their own language at school’.99 This led the Af-Maay intellectuals to employ other methods of secretly spreading their own scripts to their communities. How- ever, the momentous victory of Af-Maxaa speakers was reflected in a song entitled ‘Struggle for Somali Script’ sung by students for the occasion.

‘I am a bewildered student Lost in confusion with four books Haunted by the teacher’s cane Learning other people’s languages From my generation[,] I have lagged [behind] The boys I bettered boast to me Of their written languages O father of my children My pen weeps and I shed tears Tell me now what to learn Tell me know [sic].100 Siad Barre and the Somali State 87

With the invocation of scientific socialism, the Siad Barre regime became the sole authoritarian power insistently adopting new orthography for Af- Maxaa. And they achieved it with force. The government newspaper, Hee- gan (Vigilance), published a series of opinion pieces penned by regime authorities celebrating the adoption of the Latin as a script for the Somali and describing it a national victory. 101 This argument has been (re)used to contend that this was one of the best achievements that the regime had ever made. However, the usage of Af-Maxaa in government documents undermined the global academic pursuit of the Somali intelligentsia and came to the surface the marginalisation of some communities at the expense of others, as the standard Somali was not lingua franca for all Somali communities. Moreover, many Somalis held that standardisation of the Af-Maxaa was aimed at empowering ‘uneducated members’ of Siad Barre’s clan in order to be able to easily dominate the system of governance. 102 The direct intervention of education on the party of the military regime had a distressing effect on the Somali higher education where Arabic or English language were highly prized. However, there were certain achievements that the military regime achieved on the external front. First, they had woven closer ties with the Arab world, which was something that the previous civilian administration did not achieve. Indeed, the regime’s decision to join the Arab League met with a joyful salutation from the Somali public. 103 The consecutive achievements that the military regime made in 1974 on external fronts—due in large to the sharp and shrewd diplomacy of the respected ambassador to Cairo, Abdullahi Aden Ahmed ‘Koongo’—such as signing a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in February, joining the Arab League in March and hosting African Heads of State conference in Somalia for the first time in history in June, all spectacularly in the same year, spiralled Siad Barre’s reputation and paralleled to the highly-respected Arabo-African nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, seen by many Somalis as a role model. The formulation of the external policies—forged not through national interest, but opportunism—revealed confusion. In the official publication for foreign policy published in June 1974, the regime used Islam, communism, Arab brotherhood and third world solidarity, all simultaneously. 104 This served Siad Barre well for a while and provided him with a temporary prestige in the global arena. It is no wonder that the regime’s official English newspaper continued to permeate as late as 1980—when Siad Barre turned to the West—that Islam and communism fit together. 105 On the domestic front, things were not as successful internally as they were externally. Within five years in power, the Siad Barre regime was faced with one of the deadliest droughts in its history. The most notable accomplishment was how effectively the regime handled the devastating drought of Daba-dheer (the long-tailed one), thanks to the Soviets, whose experts and 88 Chapter 3 technocrats were later given awards for the rescue operations. 106 Benefitting from external patronage, the regime used Soviet military personnel and aircrafts to lessen the consequences of the famine. Assisted by nearly 4,000 Soviet advisers and volunteers, combined with Arab aid, the regime relocated hundreds of destitute families. As noted, the regime was less dexterous in internally than externally, notwithstanding Siad Barre’s acquired expertise in clan politics than global realpolitik. Abreast of forced labour schemes— development policies inherited from the fascistic Italian colonial empire— and socialist model of development, Siad Barre proclaimed iskaa wax u qabso (do something for yourself) self-help local development projects designed for building the infrastructure.107 Popular among many Somalis, these iskaa wax u qabso schemes changed the face of the regime and were mostly useful at Shalaambood, 90km south of the capital, where nearly 8,000 volunteers helped arrest shifting sand dunes by planting shrubs and cacti. 108 Many people were, nevertheless, obscured by self-help schemes, such as iskaa wax u qabso (do it for yourself), constructed on the rhetoric of the ideal of the ‘revolution’. Similar self-help schemes were also used to rebuild the burned State-owned Hotel Jubba, one of the two luxurious hotels in the capital. At this stage, the regime was so successful to garner public support for its community development projects that it reached rural areas. A free healthcare system begun in the post-colonial period was also sustained. Though healthcare system was theoretically free, patients had to purchase medicine in order to be treated. Part of the Soviet-guided projects through scientific socialism, anchored in Leninism and Stalinism, the community development schemes implemented in Somalia were popular. The Soviets guidance not only limited to social and economic development, but also touched upon internal politics. The architectural design and government framework of Somali society, politics and economy had to follow Stalinist-style of the Soviet state. Socialism was pervaded as a prerequisite for the socio-political development of Somalia. 109 The Somali oral historian Aw-Jaamac Cumar Ciise presented a celebratory account of the regime that failed to take into account on how totalitarianism was shrouded in the self-help schemes.110 Foreign authors—most left-leaning ivory tower—were also taken in by the regime’s rhetoric of socialism. Following the socialist rhetoric officialised in official regime news summaries, some authors came to eulogise socialism, so much so they suggested that the military takeover of power could be considered as ‘a benevolent deity’.111 The high expectations was such that when Siad Barre came to power, most analysts on Africa were tempted to write that the world of warriors—that is, the Somali world—was now reached at the end of the road, intrinsically it was near to over, given that ‘social transformation of a radical nature’ had been underway.112 Many authors sounded passive in their analysis on the performance of the regime, apparently due in part to ideological acquiescence. In his 1975 visit to So- Siad Barre and the Somali State 89 malia, Basil Davidson related that he encountered a country living between its ‘surviving past’ and ‘evolving present’.113 Only when authors adopt rhetoric than research could they dare to foresee a State being taken to society straightaway. Some of these scholars were so close to Siad Barre that they were sometimes received reward for their services. 114 In these descriptions, Siad Barre’s true colours were concealed. Indeed, what one would find from these descriptions was no happy ending. Not things were as smooth as were painted by the regime publications and socialist literature. The community development projects were different from the ways they were painted from Radio Mogadishu. The admiration of early regime initiatives would obscure autocracy at work. The internal and external developments made unnoticed the rolling consolidation of the oppressive rule. It was a poignant prop carried out very carefully that was used to consolidate dictatorship and formed a free rein for violent acts to soon suppress dissent voices. The community development projects came at a high price to civil liberties and human costs. For example, the forced labour and coercion in the iskaa wax u qabso were one of the first violations of the human rights.115 Siad Barre was reminded by a Somali elder that any employment involving a work without payment was akin to forced labour to which the President replied that the elder had ‘a colonial mind’.116 Another yet incident in 1972 was an early indication that the military regime was prepared to use brutal violence in any attempt to obstruct its projects. When local people in Bur’o, in the North, were called upon to participate in a self- help scheme and pay taxes, a riot broke out and the army intervened, killing eight civilians, upon which some nomads fled to Ethiopia. Reporting the incident, Africa Confidential was able to write in 1973 that ‘the methods employed to mobilise human resources for development and keep life under strict control resemble[d] some of the methods of communist dictatorships, of which frequent roadblocks and police searches faced by travellers, foreign or Somali, are a vivid remainder’.117 Indeed, the forced labour of self-help schemes had also a historical resonance tracing back to fascist Italian colonial empire in which Bantu/Jareer community in the Southern Somalia was forcedly farmed as labours in Italian farms. Economy and resources were heavily centralised under the tight grip of Siad Barre and marginalised communities faced the similar fate they had experienced under colonial rule. 118 Failing to live up to his initial promises of more peaceful Somalia and a return to democracy, Siad Barre with his Socialist rhetoric might have succeeded on various fronts if he had created real socialism rather than clanistic one. In the first two years of his rule, Somalia walked one step forward and two steps backward. In stressing the former while suppressing the latter, some analysts amenable to the regime hailed that the path of socialism was now completed.119 Alongside the self-help development schemes was a campaign of demolition to break the bone of potential opponents. One of the first 90 Chapter 3 initiatives of the regime was to tyrannise the State bureaucracy hitherto dominated by inefficient civil servants affiliated with the assassinated president. Nowhere was this more revealing than the 1970 dismantling and demolishing of Isku Raran, a Mogadishu neighbourhood, inhabited by inhabitants who were regarded as afmiinshaarro (rumourmongers).120 As a site where opponents continually articulated their grievances against the regime in private, Isku Raran (literally meaning, pilling up on top of each other) embodied the compressed ramshackle houses that typified the area. By virtue of its proximity to the presidential palace, the Villa Somalia, Isku Raran residents, mostly from the Abgaal, the Habar Gidir, the Murusade and the Majeerteen clan members, ambitious as they were, deemed a danger to the security and safety of Siad Barre and had to be dispersed once and for all.

The Formation of the Soviet-Style Party Striving to hold his grip of power through the Soviets, Siad Barre soon reverted to the abhorred tendencies of the last civilian administration he had overthrown, as nepotism came to characterise his regime. Amid growing pressure from the Soviets that, as long as the real power was vested in the person of the President, the military regime could hardly be equated itself with socialist states in Eastern Europe without the establishment of a political party, Siad Barre announced the preparations for the formation of a socialist party in 1973. Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, a former military regime minister, insisted that there was no pressure from the Soviets. 121 Even if there was no pressure, the advice and the idea to form a socialist party were derived from the many progressive ideas provided by the Soviet experts in Somalia. Salaad Osman Rooble, a member of the organisers committee, confirmed that the preparations for establishing a socialist Soviet-style party began in 1973. 122 The pronouncement of Xisbiga Hantiwadaagga Kacaanka Soomaaliyeed (Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party) three years later in 1976 came to change the face of the regime and amplified the consolidation of authoritarian rule. With the formation of the party preceded the demise of the original council of the military junta.123 Abdikassim Salaad maintained that the organisers of the party wanted to change the State structure from that of the military junta to popular party. 124 However, the very formation of a political party structure, albeit one without opponents, was to shift power from the founders of the military junta to a new breed of regime loyalists. Energetic as they were, this group—mostly young men—were ready to serve for Siad Barre under new tyrannical State framework. The so-called ‘second phase’ of the regime began, as a result of new recruits of the party. Whereas, under the ousted civilian administrations, the army was not allowed to partake politics, the top army officers in the Siad Barre regime were incorporated into the Xisbiga (the party). Siad Barre and the Somali State 91

The party members would report any dissent activities to the President. As soon as the party was declared, some loyalists within the party mindful of Idi Amin in Uganda suggested to Siad Barre to assume the title of Marshal, a suggestion he bluffed. The party members served as a rubber stamp as well as an instrument of power consolidation for Siad Barre, who used it and its publicised 3,000 founders to secure the continuance of his rule and alienate his rivals while allocating a special share for his clan. Out of 76 members of the Central Committee of the Party, more than half (38 members) belonged to his clan-group. This was, as General Falco observed, the beginning of the institutionalisation of clannism. 125 It was also one of the steps taken to further create and clanise one institution after another. In 1980, Siad Barre established and appointed a people’s assembly. This again meant to move from the party to the parliament practice. The charter upon which this assembly was formed did not state how the parliamentarians were chosen. 126 Yet a subsequent presidential decree showed that the power to appoint members of the regime parliament had solely rested on Siad Barre. 127 Under a presidential decree, party members were declared as legally superior to the parliamentarians and their monetary expenses were doubly increased than the regime’s mock parliament.128

Chapter Four

The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination

THE ADOPTION OF TYRANNY AND TOTALITARIANISM

The Beginning of the Predatory Power The use of free rein force occurred during the first night of the coup, when almost all civilian politicians of the post-colonial administrations—regardless of previous and present—were handcuffed from their houses. The basis and seeds of dictatorship emanated from within the military regime and began earlier than was assumed. It was during the first few weeks of his rule, when Siad Barre unexpectedly embarrassed one of his senior ministers, who suggested a proposal unacceptable to him to democratise and decentralise the power structure.1 This led the first opposition activity of the regime which began with the 1970 resignation of the first group to resign from the regime. On 13 July 1970 (served from November 1969), three senior ministers, Mo- hamoud Geelle Elmi ‘Dhurwaa’, a Secretary of Industry, a Habar Gidir/Eyr; Hassan Ali Mire, a Secretary of Education, a Majeerteen/Omar Mohamoud; and Abdalla Haji Farah, a Secretary of Commerce, also a Majeerteen/Omar Mohamoud, resigned from their ministerial posts and accused Siad Barre of authoritarianism. The resignation disrupted—and was a blow to—the regime’s honeymoon year. As imaginative intellectuals, Mohamoud Geelle and his colleagues were a symbol of free thinking, but any thinking that compatible to his plans were unacceptable to Siad Barre. His swift acceptance of their resignation was a remainder—even a reflection—that the President understood politics through soldierly lenses—that is, the military command structure of stand up and sit down order.

93 94 Chapter 4

The resignations did not stop there and resistance in the form of resignation came to the fore. In November 1971, the President of the Supreme Court, Dr Mohamoud Sheikh Ahmed, resigned for the growing dictatorial tendencies of Siad Barre.2 Considered one of the most popular legal experts in the country, Mohamoud was among those legal experts who opposed to last civilian administration’s fraud of elections. The regime’s official bulletin, which featured his resignation, did not specifically point out the reasons why he left from his post. Siad Barre was abrupt to accept his resignation and to appoint his close clan confidante, Ahmed Shire Mohamoud, to the post. 3 The appointment of Ahmed Shire clearly demonstrated that Siad Barre would not tolerate any challenge, let alone opposing views, from within his regime, be that the political system or the judiciary organ. Hardly a year passed, when he launched measures to establishing firm grip of power. That the first presidential decrees in November and December 1969 were about neither the military nor the police, but about restricting the judiciary system by restricting their freedom was an indication that the road was paved for enduring totalitarianism. Where decisions were reached on consensus within the junta in the first few months, it was now turned out to be authoritarian, more or less totalitarian. Arrests without charges soon peaked. It was a reaction to these developments that the poet Abdulkadir Hersi Yamyam composed a poem questioning the practice of injustices that came with totalitarianism. ‘Why have you promised’, the poet berated, ‘to uphold a justice that you are not adopting?’.4 In 1970, a bureau of censorship was formed to sanction work by panegyrics and isolate dissent voices. The board comprised members from the Minis- tries of Interior; Justice, Religion and Labour; Education; Information and National Guidance, as well as police and security services. 5 The information and national guidance ministry was particularly tasked to keep on eye over what the international press would write about the regime. 6 Two years later, in January 1971, Guddiga Faafreebka (the Censorship Committee), more draconian than the existing bureau of censorship, was established whereupon one had to present anything pertaining to prose and poem by seeking for approval before releasing to the public. Any fiction and non-fiction books, especially those published by Somalis, had to go through an arduous process of censorship.7 The Law No. 4 of 2 January 1971 was particularly promulgated for ensuring strict censorship.8 Under the Law, theatrical performances and cinema shows should not be circulated without a prior authorisation of the censorship committee, headed by Ismail Ali Obokor, the Minister of Information and National Guidance. A subsequent presidential decree provided further explanations over where the committee would glean from guidance. The Law No. 27 of 19 August 1974 decreed that the censorship board was to be directed from the Presidential Palace. 9 By facilitating oppression, the censorship board made censorship a normalised element, a measure that The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 95 obliterated freedom of thought.10 This was the beginning of the loss of individual liberty and freedom of association. The free expression of thought and opinion—characteristic features of the civilian rule—were forbidden.

The Formation of Repressive Institutions The Siad Barre regime was preoccupied from the beginning with promulgating draconian legislations to impose new authoritarian rules and regulations. So intervention and intrusion were these decrees that they even fixed for a price to sell cigarettes. 11 It was barely three months upon the coming of the coup, when Siad Barre had issued a presidential decree granting him the highest power of the Supreme Court.12 From January 1970 onwards, Siad Barre would abolish one by one the existing legislations that provided freedom of individual and democratic values. A series of presidential decrees were issued to give special powers for the new draconian court called Max- kamadda Badbaadada Qaranka (the National Security Court), the new Na- tional Security Service (NSS), the first time to establish an intelligence force separate from the police, the power of the military junta to judiciary matters and the abolition of Habeas Corpus —that is, the freedom of thought, individual liberty, self-expression and the right to form associations, either political or religious proscribed in 1970.13 Despite completing the totalitarianism, these measures legally strengthened Siad Barre’s power as he became the sole Supreme Court in matters of appealing from a verdict by the security court. Being the only one that could repent someone from crime, the official regime bulletin revealed an Omani national whose land properties in Somalia were taken but seeking the pardon of Siad Barre to retrieve his wealth. 14 The establishment of the Maxkamadda Badbaadada was one of the first signals of totalitarianism at work. Open declaration of a regime opposition was promulgated to be punishable to death. Under a presidential decree, General Mohamoud Geelle, the Head of the Court, was granted special powers to fulfil his incontestable rulings.15 That the salary of the court employees were drawn directly from the Presidential Palace rather than from the Minis- try of Justice was a clear indication that they were subjected to manipulation within the inner circle.16 Under this court, it was legitimised that a person could be arrested and detained without being charged with a crime. Anyone taken to the court was almost certain that its verdict would be a public execution or a life sentence, for there was no provision for an appeal from the court.17 As one of the most fearful institutions that the regime had established to force the public submission to the regime, the court was exemplified by conducting the so-called ‘subversion trials’. It was this court that charged the death of the first group of Somalis ever executed in a firing squad. In early 1970, the court sentenced five Somali men—one of them being charged for espionage—to death. In April 1974, 13 teachers were detained after they 96 Chapter 4 had organised street strikes against the regime and some of them were sentenced to 30 years in imprisonment. The fear of this court was strengthened by the creation of a mobile military court known as Maxkamadda Wareegta (the Roundabout Court). The NSS, nicknamed the SS of the Adolf Hitler’s Gustapo, also closely collaborated with the Maxkamadda Badbaadada. As one senior army officer reminisced, the establishment of the NSS originated from an idea suggested by the KGB.18 Led by General Dafle who had his own KGB advisers, the NSS made up of soldiers who were selected for their clan loyalty and trained by the Soviets. General Galaal, who initially worked with Dafle, the principle adviser to the NSS during its infant years was a senior KGB General nicknamed by the Somalis as Farah Ruush.19 Ambassador Addow had also raised this point in a private briefing in Washington with senior U.S. diplomats. 20 The relations between the KGB and the NSS were to be strengthened in the course of training and of constant visitation. In 1972, the NSS welcomed Yuri Andropov, the Head of the Soviet Committee of the State Security, basically the KGB Head to Mogadishu, while Dafle—responding to this visit—subsequently travelled to Moscow.21 By leading the NSS, Dafle grew so powerful that he began to eclipse his father-in-law. Infuriated by rumours of his son-in-law acting on his own, Siad Barre removed Dafle from the NSS which he commanded more than a decade, and Dafle was replaced with Mohamed Jibriil Muuse. However, the expansion of the Soviet involvement in the NSS was useful for the determined efforts to strengthen Siad Barre’s position of power through draconian institutions trained by the KGB. Through the NSS, people were punished or promoted, either for their adher- ence or for non-obedience to the regime. The fear of the NSS was such that a man and his wife could accuse each other of spying each other. In a sense, the relationship between the people was one overshadowed by paranoid symptoms: acute suspicion of everyone to everyone since everyone assumed that everyone else was an agent for the NSS. The NSS was assigned to enforce an order from the Presidential Palace that no more than three people could hold a conference without approval from the regime.22 The presidential decree that decreed its formation, publicised in the official regime bulletin, came into force on 8 January 1970. In article 6, no. 1 of the Law no. 14 of 15 February 1970, the NSS was given the power to arrest ‘any person’ and ‘enter any licenced [sic] premises’, while its agents were conferred the power ‘to search any person’ without a warrant. In article 3, the services of the NSS were included to reach ‘anywhere outside the Republic, when and as need might be’.23 Given its extra-judiciary trans- national powers, the NSS arrogated and exercised, to borrow from Mbembe’s words, ‘an unlimited hold over every individual’—in this case, every Soma- li.24 Indeed, the NSS agents possessed the power to shrug off and shelve Vienna convention by blocking the diplomatic works of not just unfavour- The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 97 able embassies, but also—more often than not—the embassies of regime patrons, such as the Americans and the Italians, whose governments provided uninterrupted economic and military on the Siad Barre regime throughout the 1980s.25 First evolved from the Xafiiska Wardoonka Sirta (the Office of Intelligence Information) of the army, an office that received a significant Soviet assistance, the NSS agents were to first read all books imported into Somalia and only when they approved could the books be shelved in the country’s libraries. Since the NSS agents were tasked to carry out dirty wars of terrorising the masses in order to compel them to accept the dictatorial rule, they employed a carte blanche license to kill, maim, torture and rape anyone found to have been involved in opposition activities. Anyone killed by the NSS (even intentionally or unintentionally) was deemed natural and normal, according to those who witnessed such activities. 26 Reports of the NSS were mostly conducted orally as most of the cadres were uneducated. Oral arrest warrants were released on daily basis while those arrested held a notorious torture underground called Godka (‘the Hole’). The fact that the site where the NSS tended to torture dissidents was a former garage of an Italian trader was a recurring remainder of fascist Italian colonial rule that made its presence intact.27 The systematic torture of prisoners by the military police, the Dha- barjebinta (the Backbreakers) and the Hangash (the burners), in addition to the NSS underground stations, were unchecked, with many former witnesses reporting electronic shock punishment to confess crimes they had not committed. A Somali entrepreneur, who worked for the American oil company Shell as a managerial level before the regime, recalled how he was taken to the sea by the NSS to make confessions of plots against the regime in which he had not been involved.28 Besides what was known as biya-cabsiin (forced drinking of sea water), there were other ways to extract confessions among prisoners. Nudity was a peculiar mode of torture to dehumanise and degrade prisoners to make them look sub-humans. This was meant to confirm that anyone who would be opposed to the regime was displayed as non-human. Some former prisoners of the regime remembered the humiliation they suffered after being stripped of their clothes in the Godka, sometimes at the presence of their families.29

The Somali Version of Druzhiniki The draconian institutions gave birth to the reputedly sadistic senior officers, such as General Dafle and General Mohamoud Geelle. This was set the stage for suppression and silence to any challenge to the Siad Barre regime. More perilous was to speak ill of the regime, which its punishment was first going to underground jail and sometimes disappearance. The expression of totalitarian control was to be made in a direct assertion of oppressive members of 98 Chapter 4 the regime and their families. When in the early 1970s, a Somali female gynaecologist—fresh from abroad after several years of studying medicine— berated the wife of one senior minister in the regime in neglecting her child, she was told thus: ‘You cannot talk to me [like] this way’.30 People had to follow the Somali Machiavellian motto gacanta aadan goyn karin waa la dhunkadaa (you should kiss the hand you cannot cut off). Mohamed Ali Nuur, a former Minister under the regime, recalled that people were classified into two categories: Kacaan (Revolutionary) and Kacaandiid (Anti- revolutionary).31 Where the former was to predict promotion after promotion merely for pretension, the latter was to subject a brutal treatment even for minor criticism. Ishaaq Nuur Hassan recounted that he was once detained after being accused of ‘kacaandiid’ (anti-revolutionary).32 Countless other Somalis were detained under the pretext of kacaandiid. The imposition and institution of these draconian organisations and their authorities have profoundly altered the concept of the State in Somali masses, which became synonymous with the predatory rule. As if nothing had been done, more measures would be taken in establishing a firm grip of power and rewarding stalwarts on the way. Few years after the formation of the NSS and the National Security Court, Siad Barre formed a militia called Guulwadeyaal (revolutionary victory bearers, known by Somalis as Guulwa- deyaasha ), formerly street boys recruited as watchdogs. Regarded as one of the ‘pillars of the revolution’ and trained to be vigilant and report on dissidents, the Guulwadeyaasha were tasked not only at guiding the public to what the President perceived to be the rightful path—which is complete compliance and conformity—but also at punishing his dissents. Like the NSS, the Guulwadayaasha were established on a Soviet advice and seemed similar to the auxiliary police wing for young people in the Soviet Union known as the Druzhiniki, which boasted seven million members. 33 Com- manded for the most part of their existence by General Abdirahman Abdi Hussein, known as ‘Guulwade’ (the victory bearer), one of Siad Barre’s sons-in-law, the Guulwadeyaal was also the Somali version of K’ebele (urban neighbourhoods) defence squads in Ethiopia, under the Mengistu regime, an institution that possessed unrestricted power to conduct house searches and arrest people independently from the police. 34 Ubiquitous from market to municipality, practically everywhere, the Guulwadeyaal took raucous and rough political surveillances and inspections to check how people spoke of Siad Barre, looked at the regime and thought about resisting it.35 The lash of whips on the streets to the people who loathed the regime was constant. Foreign visitors who would mistakenly take photographs without permission were prone to be detained by a Guulwade (a singular of Guulwadeyaal) on the spot. The regime official bulletin considers the Guulwadeyaasha as an important organ of the regime worth rewarding for a ‘gold medal’ for the services of ‘the state’.36 However, the Guulwadey- The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 99 aasha was less powerful when it compared to other draconian institutions. Of all the Siadist tyrannical forces, the Koofi-Cas (the Red Berets), an elite military-police under the command of Siad Barre’s son, was the most feared among the security and intelligence institutions. The Koofi-Cas were above any law and enjoyed the sole power to detain not only the Guulwadeyaal, but the NSS themselves. Even during colonialism, the Somalis had not been as fearful as they became following the founding of the Koofi-Cas , the NSS, the Maxkamadda Badbaadada and the Guulwadeyaasha. In the eyes of the public, these were the most notorious institutions upon which Siad Barre had heavily depended for his survival, with the last one to endure until the end being the Koofi-Cas. The police were constrained in this context to remain ‘a private security force’.37 After all, when the civilian democracy failed, it paved the way for the rise of military dictatorship.

THE EXERCISE OF THE STATE TERROR

The Execution of Fellow Junta From early on, Siad Barre began purging potential rivals from within and repressing dissenting voices from outside the military junta. Year by year, he was able to eliminate viciously and violently his potential rivals. The year 1970 was the breaking point on his plans to pave his way for totalitarianism since senior members of the fellow junta were captured and relieved forcefully from their positions of power. General Qoorsheel was arrested after having accused of involving a conspiracy in plotting against the regime and thus ‘killing the revolution’. The regime agents announced that it had discovered a plot planned to install ‘a puppet government working for the interests of imperialism’.38 This fictional coup attempt was attributed to the CIA after a bogus information given by regime agents. According to Africa Confidential, Siad Barre sent one Elmi Hersi Ali, a Police sub-inspector, to act as an informer to report from Qoorsheel’s movements.39 To succeed with swift promotion, the informer reported what Siad Barre was privately alleging against Qoorsheel: a coup attempt. Detained with Qoorsheel were Isaaq, Abgaal and Habar Gidir former politicians, men such as Mohamoud Sheikh Gabyow, Ali Kulane Abtidoon, Ali Geedi Shadoor, Mohamed Ali Shandille, Hassan Mohamed Wadaadiid and several others. 40 These figures were collectively accused of conspiracy against the State, a code term for anyone that exhibited signs of dissent. The local press under the grip of the regime reported that Siad Barre received messages of congratulations from the military rulers in Egypt and Sudan, basically Nasser and Gaafar Nimeiry. The political elimination was not limited to General Qoorsheel, but Gen- eral Aynaanshe was also subjected. Both of whom were relieved from their positions as early as February 1970 and nominated as State Secretaries for 100 Chapter 4 the Office of the President.41 Unlike Aynaanshe, Qoorsheel’s apprehension was given unwarranted publicity. This was because Qoorsheel attempted to bargain power with Siad Barre from the beginning. 42 Placards displaying a poetic catchphrase as ‘Qoorsheel qoorta gooya’ (cut off Qoorsheel’s throat) was distributed in Mogadishu. In May 1970, the ministry of information displayed all over Mogadishu a cartoon representing Qoorsheel ‘as a charging bull amputating his fore-legs on the barrier of “Revolutionary Vigi- lance”’. The title of the caption was: ‘Failed counter-revolutionary plot’.43 While Qoorsheel was later released and rewarded, General Aynaanshe was ordered to die and General Qoorweyne not so different. After his dismissal, Qoorweyne was arrested and then thrown out to the street, with some rumours stating that he had compellingly resorted to becoming a taxi driver in Mogadishu.44 Following Qoorweyne’s and Qoorsheel’s flight a year later came other high-profile eliminations inside the junta. Generals Aynaanshe and Gabeyre were also arrested and accused of coup conspiracy against the regime in May 1971. They were brought to trial on charges of planning a coup. Shortly after their arrest, Siad Barre issued a presidential decree expelling Aynaanshe and Gabeyre from the junta.45 However, the decree not only ordered their expulsion, but also their military services were ‘terminated’ and they had to lose their ranks and titles in the army effecting from 5 May. To deny their titles was to sentence them to double execution; put it otherwise, killing them twice. The remembrance of dead man within the Somalis depended on his title and the high esteem his society held for him. Upon the removal of their titles, Siad Barre wanted them to be a bare skeleton un- worthy of reminiscence, let alone tribute. This was a clear indication of how much fear Siad Barre had hold from Aynaanshe and Gabeyre unlike their colleagues in the junta council. As the turn came to Gabeyre, the usual political slogan to chant when someone was to purge from the junta was modified as Gabeyre Geedka Geeya (let Gabeyre tie up at the tree), the tree being a frightful metaphor of where to handcuff those condemned to be shot by firing squads. The arrest of Gabeyre was of a particularly breaking point. Siad Barre sent General Ali Samatar and General Abdalla Faadil, two of Gabeyre’s classmates, to take him to a restaurant in Mogadishu outskirts, where General Dafle and his bodyguards prepared him for a trap to capture him. At the outskirts of Moga- dishu, he had been stopped once by soldiers under the orders of Dafle, who informed him to return to Mogadishu rather than going to Afgooye for a weekend break. Osman Mohamed Jeelle, a fellow junta, recounted that Sa- laad Gabeyre was provoked and forced to make a coup attempt. 46 Prior to his arrest, Gabeyre was removed from power as the Minister of Defence and appointed as Minister of Public Works, a blow hit personally hard as the position was vacated by his brother-in-law Abdulkadir Aden Adde. 47 The appointment of public works ministry was to take him away somewhere near The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 101 the army premises. After his arrest, Siad Barre sanctioned the oppressive institutions to punish him in an underground prison. There, Gabeyre underwent a series of torture trials.48 Equally, or rather callously, one of Gabeyre’s supporters Abdullahi Iise Mohamed, then Director of Chamber and Com- merce, a man very close to him by sub-clan affiliation, was tortured to death after a letter addressed to him by Gabeyre in prison was intercepted. 49 The letter, provided to Dafle by a Hawiye/Gaalje’el prison ward whom Gabeyre had entrusted to convey Abdullahi Iise, was conveyed to Siad Barre. Abdul- lahi Iise was instructed in the letter to carry out certain operations and mobilise supporters for toppling the regime. Gabeyre designed a plan to blow up the meeting place of the three hardcore members of the junta. Using Italian language, he referred Siad Barre to tiranno (tyrant), while describing Dafle as Conte Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law) and Ali Samatar as Fabbro Ferraio (meaning the lethal-maker, a code word for the so-called Somali outcastes). 50 It was no secret that General Gabeyre was holding grievances over how power was concentrated around Siad Barre and his close clan confidantes. Apparently losing hope of a foreseeable change for his benefit, Gabeyre insisted a return to democracy within a year since the coup was confirmed and his suggestion angered not only Siad Barre, but also the Soviet advisers who always slated the Somali emulation of western capitalist democracy. As General Falco observed, it was less than three months when Siad Barre and Gabeyre squabbled over the direction of the regime. 51 As early as 1970, Gabeyre who became more sceptical about Siad Barre’s objectives began to organise a coup. He courted and contacted his former classmates in the Italian and Soviet military academies, men who were relieved from their posts early on by Siad Barre, such as Colonel Doonyaale, Colonel Mohamed Nuur Mohamed Osman ‘Baarqab’, Colonel Hassan Mohamed Sabriye Farah ‘Gaamuur’ and Colonel Elmi Nuur Tarambi Hersi ‘Tarey’. Owing to this unrealistic venture, these men advised him not to be impulsive and wait for his moment.52 Elmi Nuur Tarey was the only senior officer whom Siad Barre barred from promotion and dismissed from the army in the same military rank he held, when the coup was staged. After Gabeyre failed to take these officers from his clan-group on board, he proceeded with his plans and prepared one brigade outside Mogadishu, commanded by one of his subclan loyalists, to capture Avizione, Siad Barre’s then Presidential Palace and erstwhile army headquarters. Gabeyre was not as cognisant of the importance of clan mobilisation as Siad Barre. Most of those he trusted would latter testify against him in the Maxkamadda Badbaadada, nicknamed by Somalis as Kawaanka Dadweynaha (the slaughterhouse of the people). However, it is worthy of note that he did not add action to his plans to stage a coup. After more than a year in detention, on 3 July 1972, Generals Aynaanshe and Gabeyre were executed by a firing squad. A Somali medical doctor, who 102 Chapter 4 witnessed this execution, later recollected in his memoir, Sharks and Sol- diers, on how the execution happened:

Masked soldiers pushed the prisoners and bound them to the poles of death. They put a red cloth over each prisoner’s head. The firing squad got its orders for action. The thunder of different rifles echoed. The death squad was drawn from all the armed forces. The national army carried AK47 automatic guns, the police and the custodial corps had FAL automatic rifles. 53

As the first State-authorised political execution conducted on a Somali soil, for colonial powers never had executed one in a firing squad, people began to feel fear for violent death. Ostensibly to instil more fear in them, masses in Mogadishu were called on Radio Mogadishu to come out to witness and watch the execution. This was a demonstration of Siad Barre’s strategy to using violence to silence any conceivable critical dissent. Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, a former senior military officer, pointed out that the purpose of the execution was to enclose with a wooden fence for any potential threat from opponents. 54 Though many Somalis thought that the clans of the executed ‘would stand up in revenge, no one moved—no one even talked’.55 For no clan was powerful enough to confront a regime at its peak, this incident was widely interpreted to have led the clans of those executed to capitulation. There still would be a widely-held popular perception among the Somalis that the reason of the killing was that Siad Barre aimed at frightening the three clans to which the three executed belonged in case they would have posed a challenge to his regime. The three clans, the Isaaq of Aynaanshe, the Hawiye/Abgaal of Gabeyre and the Daarood/Ma- jeerteen of Dheel, were pigeonholed as potential rivals so balancing them in repression was pre-arranged policy. Apart from politics and clan aspects, there was an element of personal revenge in the execution. General Galaal listed a fear and a vengeance carried for many years by Siad Barre as triggers of the execution.56 Siad Barre was unwilling to pardon General Aynaanshe who once informed Egaal over the imminent coup. The third military officer executed, Abdulkadir Dheel, neither supported nor dissented the coup, but Siad Barre had a personal grudge on him, as recalled by one junta member. 57 The way in which General Gabeyre’s life was ended was nevertheless quite distinct from others. When a doctor approached and concluded that he was still alive, one Siad Barre servant, who later became the Mayor of Mogadishu, took his pistol and shot him instantly, as one informant revealed.58 For a couple of times, Siad Barre had been pleaded to offer a pardon to the executed, but insisted their execution. According to Habbad Waasuge, a businessman, who was detained with Gabeyre because he was related to him by sub-subclan affiliation, the Soviets approved the executions of Gabeyre and Aynaanshe.59 Drawing from intelligence sources, Africa The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 103

Confidential came out with a similar conclusion that Siad Barre sought So- viet opinion over the execution of Aynaanshe and Gabeyre and, once gained their authorisation, he proceeded taking them to the tree. 60 The Soviet involvement was evidenced by their moves and manoeuvres within the army. Prior to the order of executing Gabeyre, the Soviets carried out assessments and observations among Somali military officers. General Galaal was approached by Soviet officers before Gabeyre’s capture in May 1971.61 Wheth- er these were KGB officers or mere military men, Galaal could not deter- mine. Upon first commending Gabeyre for his competency and capability in performing his tasks with full potentiality, they asked Galaal if he knew about his impending coup. He replied negative, but only when he proved that he had nothing to do with Gabeyre did the Soviets stop questioning. The Soviet guidance was not restricted to portending potential dangers, but it would prefigure who was a rival and who was a reliable target. As one presidential decree uncovers, Siad Barre accepted a suggestion the Soviet Union had given to him in July 1974 to expel General Mohamed Jama Harbi from the police, for he appeared to be ‘not medically fit’.62 This was one of the ways that the tyrannical structure of the Stalinist State helped Siad Barre to consolidate his power not just politically but militarily by clearing out both promising politicians and potential rivals.

The Trial of Salaad Gabeyre Before the execution, the regime propaganda spread that General Gabeyre, an Abgaal/Wa’aysle, was to be charged in a legislation with which he himself crafted. His relatives held that this was not the case. 63 The legislation to which was referred suggested a death sentence to any member of the junta who would have opposed the regime. However, it should be discussed on the manner in which the Security Court had handled Gabeyre’s charges. Given the peremptory trial, for at stake was the legality of a criminal case lacking concrete evidence, the whole process of law constituted a farce. The judges of the court proceedings were handpicked by Siad Barre and included two of his clansmen, Mohamoud Geelle and Abdulkadir Haji Masalle. According to legal experts, since both Geelle and Masalle had supported the decision to expel and expunge Aynaanshe and Gabeyre from the junta council, they should not have been part of the court process, this if there was a real legal court procedure.64 Despite the fact that their lawyer Rooble Michael Mariano pleaded for a fair trial, the court judgements were overwhelmed by the whims of Siad Barre, who prepared for false testimonies and promised wealth for whoever testified against the accused. There was nothing legal or moral in the trial and the term ‘legality’ was itself on trial. In the court, Gabeyre insisted that he had never tried an actual coup other than the one brought Siad Barre to power. According to General Elmi Sahal, a senior 104 Chapter 4 police officer recalled, there was a lack of concrete evidence against Ga- beyre.65 In an interview with the Somali Section of the Voice of America, General Ali Samatar, now in exile, argued that the executed—Gabeyre and other fellows—had committed a crime as long as ‘evidences’ and ‘testimonies’ were provided.66 Almost all those who falsely testified before the court reiterated that Gabeyre consulted with them about conducting a coup. As recalled by key witnesses of the trial, prominent among those who made false testimonies (to gain rewards from the regime) were: General Jama Aw- Muuse Samatar, General Nuur Addow, General Abukar Suulaleey, General Mohamed Sheikh Osman, Colonel Mohamoud Muse Hersi ‘Adde Muuse’, Colonel Osman Jeelle and Abdullahi Geedi Shadoor. Later, Colonel Adde Muuse claimed that he and Mohamed Sheikh Osman were forced to provide ‘preuves fabriquées’ (fabricated evidence) to testify against Gabeyre. 67 The official regime bulletin shows that Siad Barre issued a presidential decree ordering a reward payment for certain close junta members in return of assisting him in consolidating his power through critical court cases. 68 Others who later hesitated to falsely provide evidence, such as General Ali Mataan Haashi Elmi, had to pay the price, as he was poisoned afterwards. Charges backed by false testimonies could hardly stand the real test of fair trial. In light of this evidence, the charges were based neither on legal nor on a fair trial. This lack of real trial gave birth to illegality as an institution over the process of the judiciary in the regime. The politicised and personalised (uncontested) court rulings without appeal under the Siad Barre regime could best be captured in a Somali parable of a predatory power. Once upon a time, there were a lion, a fox and a hyena. They agreed to hunt together and to share equally their kills. After coopera- tively killing a camel, the lion asked ‘who divides the meat?’. The hyena put up his hand and volunteered to divide the meat. He promptly cut three pieces, each of equal size, placing the pieces in front of the other two hunters. Furious, the lion slapped and swiped the hyena across his eyes, with his massive paws and claws causing the hyena to lose an eye in bloodied pain. ‘Is this the way you count?’, roared the lion. The fox intervened. ‘O father of the beast, the hyena does not know how to count the meat. I know how to divide it better than him’. She then began to cut the meat with three portions and gave all a piece by piece to the lion. Amazed, the lion asked, ‘O fox, where did you learn this outstanding distribution?’. The fox calmly replied, ‘O the father of the beast, I learnt from the eye forcefully thrown out from the hyena’. The gist of the parable is that the execution of General Salaad Ga- beyre served a warning for others for the consequence of defying Siad Barre’s enriching of his family and clansmen. The fox in this part of the parable was none other than General Ali Samatar. The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 105 Patron-Client Relationship For the first two years, the sudden changes of the whole State structure and systems would have produced a new cadres loyal not to the national interest, but to the President. In follow up to the Law no. 5 of 31 December 1969, the presidential decree no. 74 of 22 April 1972, the Circular SRC/III/1–5532 of 29 December 1972 and the Circular no. SRC/B/20/212 on 28 March 1972, the Law no. 9 of August 1972 on Local Government Reform was promulgated to ensure a system of ‘centralism’, the term being a euphemism for consolidation of power in one single hand, basically the President’s.69 These resolutions and declarations not only restructured but paved the way for the birth of a new breed of civil servants who trusted the ruler than any other, as he offered unanticipated opportunities for work. Without Siad Barre in place, there was no one else they could turn to their loyalty. The first author to note down Siad Barre’s dictatorship as early as 1971 was perhaps anthropologist Lewis. Writing in 1972, he observed after visiting Somalia that the regime’s ‘obsessive preoccupation with treachery and betrayal, and its growing reliance on harsh repressive sanctions, inevitably suggest[ed] that its leaders no longer enjoy the public confidence which they claimed when they seized power’.70 Lewis witnessed that ‘the airing of any opinion which can be construed as [a] hostile to the regime is a very serious offence’.71 Between 1970 and 1976, expulsions and dismissals—never witnessed before in military and police institutions—were rampant. In 1973, in particular, major purges and expulsions rocked the State institutions; 63 civil servants accused of ‘anti-revolutionary deeds’ were sacked from the State jobs they held since the 1960s.72 Considered as the backbone of the civil service, for they were more experienced and educated, their replacement constituted a challenge; the successors—mostly from Siad Barre’s immediate clansmen— were cadres and former clerks who could hardly fill in the void. From thereafter, the regime began to crumble a year after a year. Suppression and subjugation led to a rapid consolidation of totalitarian power. Most people began to surrender to him as the sole father of the State. Colonel Hoogsade recalled that people was literally ‘caged’ afterwards.73 Not all Somalis were acceptable to the imposition of dictatorial rule. Where some Somalis voted for their intention to fight, others their feet. Between 1972 and 1974, a considerable number of Hawiye, especially Abgaal and Habar Gidir civil servants, such as Abdulkadir Haashi Egaal ‘Dholodholo’, Omar Hassan Mo- hamoud ‘Omar Istarliin’, Omar Haashi Dira’ ‘Omar Jaahil’, Bashiir Nuur Ileey, Ali Kulane Abtidoon, Haashi Nuurre Aw-Diini and others, fled from regime reprisals after the execution of Gabeyre. 74 These exiles formed the first opposition Diaspora group who defied the regime. In 1974, the Hawiye political dissidents led by Mohamoud Geelle Elmi were travelling overseas as far off as Israel to obtain financial and technical assistance to form a 106 Chapter 4 resistance group against the regime.75 Together with some members of the Hawiye and the Daarood clans, they formed the first opposition group in exile. This exiled anti-Siad Barre movement spearheaded by Hawiye escap- ees has been absent in the literature on Somali opposition groups, even though it had similar features with other anti-resistance movements elsewhere in Africa, most notably in Uganda. 76 Following the execution of General Gabeyre, Siad Barre enjoyed free- hand in exercising a full autocratic control of State and society. Given the success in eliminating dissent, his regime began to execute people with slight speculation. Apparently, this worked in his favour as people became fearful of the death penalties carried out without due legal process. 77 It was this time when Siad Barre achieved to assemble the State and society to unimpededly accept his whims, marching them wherever he desired. From onwards, there was no objection within the military junta for his aims and intensions toward the future shaping of the State. Upon eliminating Gabeyre, his most feared rival, Siad Barre gave himself an unparalleled power to lead the country by presidential decrees supplemented by draconian laws. Thereafter, Siad Barre dictated the State by decree under a totalitarian-structured State of affairs, promulgating and reinforcing the law by simply issuing presidential decrees. He would decree on how and when someone had to be punished. Some of these personalised laws provided him with the power to be the judge, the prosecutor, the promulgator and the sole police man of the State. From early on, the junta council passed legislations conferring him the absolute powers of singlehandedly appointing all positions of power without the approval of them or of the council of ministers. 78 Under the law of intervening judicial matters in 1972, he had the power—while representing the council of military junta over which he presided—to ‘confirm, vary or set aside any judgement’.79 Even when courts had to rule a critical case and reach a final judgement, Siad Barre had issued a presidential decree giving him the sole power to make that ruling a null and void. 80 Indeed, the official regime bulletin shows Siad Barre revoking a judgement by the Banaadir regional branch of the National Security Court.81 This left out any accountability to check power in balance and ponder on decisions collectively. Subsequently, Siad Barre assumed, as was observed, ‘the supreme authority—[the] law-giver, judge, and executor’.82 Presidential decrees consolidated the tyrannical nature of rule over which Siad Barre was the only interpreter. He also decreed who would eligible to become Somali and who was not. In one instance in 1975, as the official regime bulletin states, Siad Barre backed by presidential decree revoked the Somali citizenship of four Yemenis born and bred in Somalia. 83 In the same pattern, four other Somali citizens of Yemeni descent were also forcefully taken from their Somali nationality from two separate occasions, the first in 1975, the other in 1986. It was a surprising step, when the bulletin claimed The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 107 that one of those citizens had voluntarily retraced his Somali citizenship. 84 Indeed, the bulletin does not explain on what legal basis all other Somali- Yemenis were revoked of their Somali citizenship and what sort of crime constituted to punish them as such. The bulletin published instead Siad Barre granting a citizenship to a man bearing a Somali name. 85 Likewise, another presidential decree issued earlier by Siad Barre had granted Somali citizenship to a European named Dieudonne Basunoki. 86 Honorary citizenship was also granted for Francesco Forte, the then Italian vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, a man who advocated for the regime in Italian parliament. The honorary citizenship was added to a clause allowing the minister to enter Somalia without a visa and live in indefinitely if wished so. 87 As was also the case, Siad Barre would exercise his authoritarian-style of leadership in the sense that he would decree—through the Law no. 47 of 23 October 1974 –who would become an assistant professor, professor or bare sare (senior professor).88 Everything depended on Siad Barre from school to clinic. He was to decree who could or should become a medical doctor. 89 As Dr Hawa Abdi, herself a medical doctor, reflected with a bit of naivety as far back as early 1970s: ‘Our president, Mohamed Siad Barre, had formed a medical school, a law school, and several other colleges in and around Moga- dishu, so students came from other parts of the country to continue their studies, rather than going abroad, as I had done’.90 This case shows to the extent that Siad Barre’s name was synonymous not just with the policy formulation, but also with the policy implementation of the regime. When Hawa Abdi wanted a permission to establish a private clinic for women’s hospital, she noted that she had to see Siad Barre to obtain approval for her proposal. The way she managed to see him was interesting. At first, she treated his secretary as her patient in Digfeer Hospital and then, through her, she communicated with him. When she eventually met him, Hawa Abdi made many excuses to augment her point and achieve his okay. Only after he had authorised was she able to carry out constructing what would later become Dr Hawa Abdi Hospital, just a few miles outside Mogadishu. 91

The Execution of Sheikhs The execution of Aynaanshe, Gabeyre and Dheel lent Siad Barre a short-cut method to violently silence his dissents. On 23 January 1975, the National Security Court sentenced ten Somali sheikhs to death. The political pattern and legal procedures in which the sheikhs were executed were different from the earlier executions. These sheikhs passionately raised their voices, when Siad Barre proclaimed publicly the promulgation of a controversial Law no. 23 of Xeerka Qoyska (the Family Law) on 11 January.92 Consisting of 173 and comprising 49 pages, the law was the longest document ever decreed by Siad Barre during his rule and it was a complete contravention of the Islamic 108 Chapter 4

Family Law. In addition to its interventionist methods of legislating how people had to marry, divorce and live as husband and wife, the law sought to repudiate what the Sharia has permitted to perform for Muslims and contradicted the Koranic verse of Annisa on the inheritance between men and women. In the Koran, Allah ordains Muslims in accordance with parental inheritance that males have portion equal to that of two females; specifically, woman’s share is half of a man. Contrary to Islam, where woman had to inherit half of man, the law decreed that men and women were equal in inheritance. The consequences of the law to the family value were domestic violence and increase in divorce. 93 The family law, drafted by several atheist members of the inner circle, one of whom was Mohamed Aden Sheikh, a clansman and special advisor to Siad Barre, generated public outcry to which the sheikhs felt compulsory to respond.94 In response, the sheikhs came out publicly in Sheikh Abdulqadir Mosque in Mogadishu five days later on Friday, 17 of January and by next Thursday, on 23, they were executed. Raising their voices during the Juma’a (Friday) prayers, the sheikhs denounced the imposition of ‘a foreign law’, and warned the repercussion of its adoption, refuting it as ‘an acceptable’ and ‘inappropriate’ for a Muslim society, especially the clauses concerning about hereditary and marital affairs. 95 The sheikhs might have a point in pointing out that this was a law imposed on Somalis from outside, even if a similar law was previously adopted in countries in the Muslim world, such as the Senegalese Family Law of 1972. But whereas the authorities in Dakar averted triggering conflict, the Siad Barre regime never expected any challenge toward the totalitarian structure of power configuration. Tunisia also adopted a different version of the family law. If his counterparts were fearful of using violence to impose the law, Siad Barre proceeded with power. It is important to underline that there were no concerns on Islamism or feminism in Somalia before 1975, even though the UN set the year as the International Year for Women.96 The Somali sheikhs, outraged by the extent of intervention that the law would effect on the Islamic family values, pointed out that one of the most crucial components of the Islamic jurisprudence referred to the family law and its rulings remains part of the practical rules of the religion. Nowhere were their voices more overheard than the Sheikh Abdulkadir Mosque, the epicentre of tafsiir (Koranic commentary) given by Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim, a scholar regarded as the Somali equivalent of Sheikhul Azhar (the grand Sheikh of Sunni Muslims in Al-Azhar University). Their condemna- tions were not occurring at the mosque alone, but similar denunciations simultaneously happened in many other mosques across Mogadishu and elsewhere. What the sheikhs at the Sheikh Abdulkadir Mosque was so successful was to give a voice for the voiceless by encouraging them to object to the interference of religious matters. Attended by activists already discontented The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 109 with the so-called scientific socialism so prevalent in orientation centres, the mosque was frequented by the NSS to report to the authorities over everyday activities. As soon as scientific socialism was proclaimed as a principle, it was predicted that sooner or later the Siad Barre regime would clash with the Islamic leaders. This point was confirmed, when the sheikhs’ anger intensely expressed at the Sheikh Abdulkadir Mosque was directed at the Soviets rather than at Siad Barre as a culprit.97 Sheikh Omar Faaruuq Haji Abdi, one of the well-known Islamic Somali scholars, observed that ‘a deep ideology unrelated to Somali society either as a lineage or as another relation was imported into the country and attempted to adopt it, but the nation refused it’.98 Influenced by a Stalinist conception of religion, Siad Barre claimed that the era of normative Koranic compulsions had over. ‘I am telling you today’, he announced, ‘that the Supreme Revolutionary Council has decided to inform you that Somali woman and man are equal and have the same rights’.99 Addressing a 1000-strong crowd in the Konis Stadium, his speech was a confrontational in the sense that Islam was framed as something that could hardly intermingle with modernity of the day. Given that his education and understanding of the world religions were little, Siad Barre invented in his speech a fictional follower of Prophet Muhammad to widen his declaration by claiming that the Koran was contradictory. Using with sarcasm language against Islam, he contended that the Somali society could not rely upon two wealthy men, Guuleed bin Ubeyd and Lord Scott, who protected their wealth through religion. Ironically, both bin Ubeyd and Scott were non-existent characters, though they could be found in the President’s dictionary. He continued to say, with very contentious tongue, that Islam was solely intended for ‘barbaric Arabs’. This meant that Islam had no place in his efforts at reconstituting a Siadist-style of socialism, one that tolerated no opponent whatsoever. Throughout his speech, there was no single religious law to which Siad Barre referred. Yet he challenged his audience whether they were ready to be slaves forever. By slaves, he seemed to suggest that the Somali masses had been enslaved by Islam. ‘How can hungry person would respect a religion; if the person is a woman, she would strip herself of naked, because she has a right to live’.100 Thus he stressed that the food of the self was better than the belief of a religion. Since independence, Somalia has experienced secular regimes which discarded and demeaned Islam, but unlike Siad Barre, no Somali ruler ever attempted to substitute Islamic values and social traditions with his own inventions. The victory of the two contrapuntal laws—the religion’s Family law and the regime’s—hinged upon who had and held the power.101 The sheikhs counted on Allah’s invisible power, but Siad Barre had satisfied with his visible power. In promulgating the Family law, Siad Barre’s foremost purpose was to increase his global image as a progressive 110 Chapter 4

African leader. He also intended to use women as a political resource for mobilising the public to keep his authority and consolidate his power to the level of absolute Gramscian hegemony. One female member, who was part of the drafters of the family law, suggested that Siad Barre instructed them that the law ‘should be progressive’.102 Progressive meant as much secular and far away from religion as possible. It was here that, while considering its repercussions as a secondary issue, Ahmed Samatar hailed the family law as ‘important progressive step’.103 The impact of the regime on family lives and values was more rigid than the colonialism. This was a reminiscent of five religious sheikhs killed by Italian Fascists in Merka in 1905.104 Even colonial authorities had not attempted to interfere in matters of religion, though they had imposed on their own legal systems. The civilian administrations recognised that any law should confirm to the general principles of Islam. 105 According to Maryan Haji Elmi, then Head of the regime’s Women’s Association, the family law was motivated by ‘pure emotion’.106 Siad Barre used the execution of those who challenged his law to send a message to his rivals not to oppose his word, even when he would dare blasphemy to Islam, the most sacred religion of the Somalis. While fear stroked the masses as a consequence of the authoritarian system, inasmuch as encroaching religious matters, the regime loyalists sensed panic as a result of the confrontation they had faced. In an era wherein the regime crossed its legs and predicted no defiance and disobedi- ence over their ‘socialist’ projects, the sheikhs’ uprising constituted incredul- ity. Maryan Haji Elmi observed that this resistance was ‘the first public challenge he [Siad Barre] faced because he was the only power’.107 The brutal repression of the resistance closed the door for any challenge to the rule. As a result of the execution’s execution, Somalia came to be considered in the Muslim world as the most despotic State. The legacies of the family law and how ruthlessly the regime adopted set the stage for the contemporary Islamic extremism in Somalia, as it aroused awakening in youths studying Islam at the time in Saudi Arabian universities. The propensity for not assessing the pros and cons in promulgating legislations blinded the regime to forecast the reaction and response to the law. What Siad Barre intended to achieve and what he in turn obtained were two opposing matters in conflict, which engendered fear among the public as well as his inner circles. It was propagated through the lenses of modernisation that such was part of the process of modernising the society, this being how the regime and its backers portrayed the whole saga behind the execution of the sheikhs. The opponents to the family law had been warned with publicly pronounced metaphorical expression: ‘Yeere yeere yam, Yaxaas qaade yam’ (whoever raises his voice will be eaten and the crocodile will take him and swallow).108 The crocodile, in this context, came from the countenance of Siad Barre. The outrage felt from the execution was recorded with outrage The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 111 but grief by the poet Said Sheikh Mohamoud Siad Haydho ‘Said Ga’amey’ in a poem he enumerated what Siad Barre and his regime did to the Soma- lis.109 However, the execution of the sheikhs has been something of a footnote in the scholarship on the Somali State and society. 110 It would be dis- honourable to footnote the ten sheikhs who most Somalis thought as martyrs: (1) Sheikh Ahmed Sheikh Mohamed, (2) Sheikh Ali Hassan Warsame, (3) Sheikh Absiye Diiriye, (4) Sheikh Muse Yusuf, (5) Sheikh Ahmed Iimaan, (6) Sheikh Ali Jama Hersi, (7) Sheikh Mohamed Said Hersi, (8) Sheikh Aden Ali Hersi, (9) Sheikh Saleebaan Jama Mohamed, and (10) Sheikh Yasin Elmi Awil.111 More senior sheikhs, such as the scholar Sheikh Ibrahim Suuleey, were not executed, but arrested, while Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment upon returning from Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage soon after the execution. It is useful as evidence to note by invoking the observations of Maryan Haji Elmi and Mohamed Ali Kamoole, two crucial insiders, that the executed—aged between mid-20s and late 30s—were simply youthful fuqaha (jurists), macallimiin (teachers of the Koran) and preachers of Islam, who could hardly be considered as extremists.112 They neither constituted a group of opposition to the regime affiliated with internal nor external organisations. Nor were they associated with particular movement, clandestine or otherwise, as Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, a former minister under the regime, recalled.113 Sheikh Bashiir Ahmed Salaad, who was very close some of the executed sheikhs, argued that the ‘uprising’ of the sheikhs was not ‘planned work’ but born out fury of the moment.114 General Elmi Sahal stressed that the sheikhs insisted to worship Allah and return any (legal) impasse (over family affairs) to the Koran.115 The only crime the sheikhs committed was criticising the regime since there was no declaration of fatwa (Islamic order) they had announced. The very right of raising their voices—and thus chal- lenging the regime—was enough for the judges in the National Security Court to try them on charges of crimes against the State and declare their execution. Their charges read at the court were ‘exploiting religion to create national disunity and subverting state authorities’. In no way was such charges of inciting subversion of the State punishable to death under the military regimes in Africa and elsewhere. For example, one of the executed sheikhs simply remarked, ‘O Allah, please protect us from the communism coming both from the East and from the West’.116 But these words were not acceptable to Siad Barre and his stalwarts. To them, as one senior police officer recalled, Islam had less of importance than of their own interests. 117 After all, anyone who spoke against the regime, as Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf observed, had to be subjected to death.118 Most members of the cabinet hardly knew about the concealed information that Siad Barre had planned to execute the sheikhs for their opposition to the Family law. This was because their case was not discussed or deliberated 112 Chapter 4 in the cabinet meetings. Nor were their case reviewed at the top council of the military junta, the Supreme Council. Abdikassim Salaad witnessed that the sheikhs were swiftly taken to the National Security Court. 119 Even though the case was cloaked under a court proceeding, the trial process was as frantic as before, as a legal expert who served in the regime remembered. 120 The involvement of General Mohamoud Geelle and General Abdinur Yusuf Ahmed, known for cases of swift execution, made the court very frantic. The case was also unlawful given that Ahmed Ali Saalah, the lawyer the regime had assigned to defend them from allegations of crime, was a judge in the National Security Court. The chief judges of the court were Colonel Abdul- kadir Haji Masalle, General Geelle and Colonel Abdi Warsame Isaaq, the same military men that tried Aynaanshe, Gabeyre and Dheel. What many Somalis were nevertheless incognisant was the advice the Soviets had provided to Siad Barre with regards to the sheikhs. According to Africa Confi- dential:

Siyad’s own Russian advisers, supported by a visiting delegation from the Soviet Union, argued strongly that an example should be made. As a result, they were not only executed, but were tied to poles near the police academy at Hamar Jajab and shot down with thousands looking on. Many Somalis considered this an act of revenge in conflict with Islamic principles and the highly civilised standards of Somali political behaviour of the past. 121

Given the sensitive nature of the execution, Siad Barre could have shrugged off the Soviet suggestion and considered the suggestions of some Somali elders who begged him to pardon the sheikhs. Rather, he heeded to the Soviet advice. When pleaded to pardon them, said Siad Barre: ‘I would not accept for the people to say we feared them’.122 Thus, he became the chief judge, the chief prosecutor and the chief policeman himself, assisted by Colonel Osman Maye Mo’allim, the deputy Prosecutor General of the regime, later the Head of the Military Court. Abdikassim Salaad revealed that the decision to kill the sheikhs was solely reached by Siad Barre. 123 The fact that he was the supreme judge of the charges levelled against the sheikhs and later their execution was confirmed by an interview he gave to an Egyptian newspaper. In the interview, Siad Barre not only rejected that the sheikhs were sheikhs, but he insisted that, upon examination, they came to be what he called ‘ordinary agents and subversives’, who hardly knew about Islam.124 His allegations further committed a blasphemy against Islam. Pretending as an authoritative on Islam, he asserted that:

These were not ulemas [religious scholars] or men of religion. They were not executed because they were so or because of the civil status law. During the trial, we found out that eight of them could not read or write. We asked one of them to recite one verse of the Qur’an, but he could not. We asked one of them The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 113

to perform ablutions, and he began by washing his left foot. One of them was not a Somali, etc.125

Using his usual label of wadaad xume (the bad-filthy sheikhs), coupled with the fallacious allegation that the sheikhs were acting upon ‘a wide-scale plan’ to topple his regime, Siad Barre admitted: ‘[W]e struck mercilessly so that no one would dare to tamper with religion, and in order to prevent the rise of counterrevolutionary forces’.126 He then called on a meeting with the most notable Somali sheikhs in which he reiterated his rhetoric that the executed were not culumaa’uddiin (religious scholars), but caamo (ignorant persons), who did not know even the first verse of the Koran. This increased the tension and led many sheikhs to flee the country. The NSS conducted a series of operations targeting the sheikhs. The most well-known sheikhs were silenced to speak of the truth after being subjected to detention and torture. Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim, who was arrested twice for his translations of the Koran and sickened in solitary confinement, dared to tell Siad Barre after he was released from prison that, if his detention was meant to alter his religious messages, he would now ‘braver than before’.127 This statement and the sheikh’s insistence to continue his sessions of Koranic translations at Sheikh Abdulqadir mosque rendered him to return to prison. Parallel campaigns of State terror—though much higher than Siad Barre’s—were ongoing in Uganda ruled by his friend Idi Amin.128 However, the religious leaders were among those who initially welcomed the Siad Barre’s coup and rewards for their support were partially compensated with the appointment of Abdul- kani Sheikh Ahmed as Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs; Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Nur ‘Garyare’ as Director-General of the Ministry; and Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim Hassan as a senior official in the Ministry. Shortly after the execution of the sheikhs, Somalia came to encounter disaster after disaster: it was hit by drought after drought, not just actual drought, but politically, economically and socially. The lynching of the sheikhs, pressed by the order of the President, proved to be a curse from Allah that hunted his regime afterwards. Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf observed that ‘the execution has left a mark that is still visible to this day and it was due to the persistent reaction that dragged Siad Barre to fall’.129 Sheikh Ali’s words resonated with the catastrophe of the execution day, when two war aircrafts in parade—intended for preventing possible disrupters—collided, killing several families in two Mogadishu neighbourhoods. 130 Most Somalis—both luminaries and laymen—were quick to point out that the collusion of the aircrafts was a curse from Allah. Sheikh Bashiir Ahmed Salaad described the incident as a sign that something disastrous was on the horizon. 131 This revelation was accentuated by the observation conferred by a senior regime officer. Hussein Saalah Muuse, who was then a senior military officer in the regime, visited the scene whereby one of the aircrafts dropped. He vividly 114 Chapter 4 remembered that this aircraft was nearly missed to hit the premises of the Defence Minister where he was with General Ali Samatar. 132 Before the collision, something resembled like stones had dropped from the roof of the Ministry and many assumed that it was the end of their world With the sheikhs’ execution began the first active anti-regime resistance movements. Upon their elimination—as well as others prior to them—the regime sent a signal to the dissenters in making violence the only means for one must come on top or to go to the bottom. From there on, Somalia turned out to be a killing field where disappearances became a common trend. Further arrests of sheikhs were made almost a decade later. Nine more sheikhs were sentenced to death in 1983 and 1987, among them hardcore Islamic leaders such as the blind Koranic teacher Sheikh Nuur Baaruud Gu- rhan, Sheikh Hassan Olhaye Khaliil and Sheikh Hassan Daher Aweys, though the death penalty was commuted in 1989. 133 The repression forced many sheikhs to flee to Saudi Arabia and distant places in America and Europe. Mosques and other Islamic centres were put under constant surveillance as NSS agents sent to report from the activities of aggrieved sheikhs. The Red Berets and the NSS used to crack down the mosques with their shoes.134 In appraising the regime’s Ibrahim Hassan Addow, a well-known Somali academic based in Washington, wrote:

President Barre has tried to destroy Islam by personally ordering the murder, torture, and imprisonment of many religious leaders. He has tried to force us to worship him. For example, he has ordered us to begin everything with his name instead of God’s name. He has tried to force us to believe that he is all knowledgeable and the provider of everything. He demands that we fear him alone instead of God. He has even interpreted the Koran to suit his personal interests. In order to rule our country for the rest of his life, the President has tried to create a corrupt and confused society. For instance, government-owned bars, liquor stores, night clubs, and hotels sell and serve liquor to everyone including minors. These are only a few examples of violations of the basic principles of Islam.135

Siad Barre’s accession to power rushed in him standing as a State ever since and no one else had the power to challenge him publicly or privately in Somalia. The fascist maxim of ‘all in the state, for the state and none against the state’ was in full swing in 1970s Somalia. But the State, in and of itself, was none other than Siad Barre himself, who was not only the actor, but the action as such. There was no military regime but Mohamed Siad Barre himself was the regime. What type and typologies of authoritarianism? In Ad- duun iyo Taladii, the Somali writer Rashiid Sheekh Cabdillaahi Xaaji Axmed explains the psychology of dictatorship by referring to Siad Barre’s regime. When dictators reach a peak of power, argues Rashiid, they convince themselves that they could act as an authority on every theme. 136 It was this The Dialectics of Dictatorship and Domination 115 unilateral authenticity that Siad Barre asserted a contradiction in the Holy Koran in such that he could announce that verses rebuked after verses. This was a simplistic interpretation from the perspective of Islamic scholars who would become deft in making a rebuttal. Somalis had been reliant on sheikhs in things Islamic, so it was typical to side with them in this case. Yet Siad Barre was attempting to break such religious reliance and refer to himself in coupling with political and economic dependence, inasmuch as strengthening through political violence and defending through State terror. This was a formation of force majeure condition in Somalia.

III

From Clanised to Criminalised State: Tyranny

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. —Lord Acton1

Chapter Five

Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy

THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

The Builders of the Cult For the first time in Somali history, the cult of personality around the Presi- dent was cultivated. While it was unique in the Somali case, the phenomenon of the cult of personality created under the Siad Barre regime was not that unique in other African experiences. From his early days as the absolute ruler of Somalia, Siad Barre made it a rule that the Xiddigta Oktoobar, the official daily newspaper, depict him as the founder of the nation and the father of knowledge. In addition to Somali and English editions, the Xiddigta Oktoo- bar had also Arabic and Italian versions known as Najmat Oktoobar and Stella d’Ottobre, respectively. As was also the norm in Zambia under Ken- neth Kaunda, who would appoint and fire editors of then daily newspapers, the Times of Zambia and the Zambia Daily Mail, Siad Barre alone had the power to handpick editors and writers for the existing regime bulletins. 1 A daily epigraph of Siad Barre was compulsory to be captioned on the top of the first page of the Xiddigta Oktoobar with bold letters carrying Siad Barre’s selected sayings, mostly didactics and exhortations of people to follow the proper path of socialism. 2 This tendency too resonates with another part of the Great Lakes. When he was holding the power of Zaire (present- day Congo DR), Sese Seko ‘made it a law that the national television broadcaster showed him descending from heaven and ascending to heaven before and after every news bulletin respectively’.3 This was an indication that the cult of personality was a phenomenon and preference common to most African military dictators.

119 120 Chapter 5

Perhaps a quite fearsome feature was the fact that the Villa Somalia sheltered lions and tigers who ‘wandered freely around the grounds’.4 Keep- ing wild animals in the Presidential Palace resonated with Zaire again where the tiger trademark put on the shoulder of Sese Seko was synonymous with the official State representation both inside and outside. The visible picto- gram of representation was important for the cult. In Somalia, the military uniform sported by Siad Barre in the beginning of his rule was replaced in 1976 by ‘political suits’—that is, Western-style suits. The personality cult also invites comparison to West African context. Here, what was carved up as the cult of personality in Cameroon also holds true for Somalia in the sense that Paul Biya was clothed in the State outlets as the champion of the ‘Third World’ and the architect of co-operation and cohesive community without discrimination.5 Siad Barre’s official appellations, such as the ‘Father of Wisdom’, the ‘Father of the Nation’ and the ‘Teacher of the Revolution’ were illustrative of the level of personality cult he had crafted which simmered in a people envisioned a better democratic government than the one presented by him. It was a compulsory for the Somalis to address Siad Barre as ‘Aabe Siyaad’ (Papa Siad). In 1979, Siad Barre was compared to Kim Il-Sung as the Somali equivalent to the North Korean dictator. 6 Beautifully sketched, paintings and portraits of Siad Barre were hanged on and hooked into the wall of every shop in the towns, not to mention to every government office. The portraits were framed in a way that made him look very younger than his age. In a society that associated older age with a lack of sufficient judgement, the re-portraying of the portrait was to reassure that the military leader was as young as ever in conducting his day-to-day political tasks. One official picture of Siad Barre was officiated by law as late as 1984 and decreed by none other than himself.7 The picture showed him in very younger age and the State institutions were ordered to use as ‘the official’ one. Such image of himself was to some extent aimed at sending a message to his opponents that Siad Barre would be able to live longer than anticipated. ‘Most of the pictures’, observed one foreigner who worked in Somalia, ‘were air brushed, softening the corners of the dictator’s eyes and mouth, though the retouching did little to remove the dour, humourless gaze’.8 Siad Barre’s image towered like a dinosaur over all offices, even hospital wards. A story is told that Colonel Elmi Nuur Tarey, who won a war hero medal in 1964, but was dismissed from the army by Siad Barre for a previous grudge, was admitted to the Digfeer Hospital for medical treatment. Once he saw the picture of the President, the man he held him responsible for destroying his life, Elmi Nuur’s blood pressure had to exceed high from borderline, as one of his relatives remembered. 9 Upon noticing the reason his blood pressure was floating, the doctors advised nurses to move him to a room without Siad Barre’s picture. The hospital authorities could not accept such an arrangement out of line with the cult of the parental authority of the Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 121

‘Father of the State’. At the end, a compromise was secretly sealed. Siad Barre would be at the room, but not somewhere visible to the patient, but below the bed (and with knowing no one). Subsequently, the colonel died in the hospital admission. While his death could not be attributed to the cult, one could glean from the evidence on how Siad Barre’s exacerbated his health. More than mere narcissism, Siad Barre appeared determined to making sure that the masses view him ‘as an omnipresent’.10 His photo had to feature almost every report, booklet or document the regime had produced. Posters showing Siad Barre next to Vladimir Lenin, Marx and Joseph Stalin were seen throughout the country. As Ali Jimale observed, people who had never heard of Marx began professing Marxist ideologies overnight. 11 When Siad Barre himself later found out that Marx was of Jewish descent, he berated his ideologues why he had not been informed in advance.12 This was some concealed element of anti-Semitic prejudices on his part, but it was unclear what he did upon discovering Marx’s Jewish ethnic background. However, Siad Barre’s cult was analogous to that of Stalin in terms of visual phenomenon.13 He at the same time adjusted his Hitlerian moustache in a Fuehrer way that echoed Adolf Hitler, an indication of his admiration to the reign of the Third Reich. Michael van Notten went as far as to suggest that Siad Barre was the Somali equivalent of Hitler. 14 Yet he was more Mussolini than the Nazi leader. This was partly played the amplification of the personality cult, similar to Hitler and Stalin, but his was maintained in intimidation and fear for survival. The personality cult captured many visible parts and bodies, which pol- ished the position of the ‘Father of the Nation’. A Congolese youth song has it that: ‘Nzoto ya Leta, molimo ya Nzambe’ (Our bodies belong to the State, but our souls to God).15 Wherever he visited in the country, Siad Barre would be greeted by mass applause and much adulation arranged by his stalwarts and ‘his loyal subjects’ would then salute him with dancing before him like Korean choreography and also in the tradition of other socialist countries like Romania and Yugoslavia.16 The cult itself was imported from North Korea following an extended visit by Siad Barre’s loyalist, Abdirizak Mohamed Abubukar, who—upon returning to Mogadishu—disseminated orders to use the Pyongyang model to make Siad Barre as the singular personality of the State embodiment.17 By fostering the cult, Abdirizak and others wanted to ensure seizing the special ear of Siad Barre. Indeed, the official regime bulletin demonstrates Abdirizak being rewarded a gold medal for his ‘revolutionary’ services to Siad Barre.18 It was revolutionary in the sense that such cult of personality was new to Somalia, with Abdirizak being one of the hardcore architects. From the outset of the regime, Ismail Ali Obokor was also among those who advanced the cult, repetitively referring to Siad Barre 122 Chapter 5 as ‘the teachings of our beloved leader’, as shown by the official regime documents.19

The Cult and the Poetic Propagation Somali artists and organic intellectuals were required to lead the construction of an invasive personality cult. In doing so, they would expect higher salaries and other patronage and benefits from the top of the echelon. Siad Barre’s persona was feted in poems circulated from Radio Mogadishu. One could witness across Somalia what Andrew Apter has termed ‘the politics of panegyric[s]’.20 Countless popular songs were composed, praising and praying for Siad Barre to be immortal; ‘Aabbihii Ummaddow ifka noo joog’ (O the Father of the Nation, stay with us in this world); ‘Aarkii Afrikow adduunyada ka arrimi’ (O the Lion of Africa, rule the world); ‘Caynaanka haay, weligaa haay’ (hold the reigns of leadership for life); ‘Nooloow Siyaad nooloow’ (long live Siad, long live); and ‘Wehelkii calankoow Siyaad; waalidkii ummaddow Siyaad’ (the partner of the flag, Siad; the parent of the people, Siad). In one of those songs that constructed a strong cult, singers from the official regime band disdainfully challenged their audience with the claim ‘horta qabo Siyaadoo, car mid kale ku soo dara’ (first and foremost, lest Siad Barre left the scene, who can dare to come up with a man of his stature?). The empirical reality and the discursive messages of these poems resonated with the Somali saying of ‘kaaf iyo kala dheeri’ (far from the truth). One vivid song sung by the orphaned young children, Ubaxa Kacaanka (the Flowers of the Revolution), showers Siad Barre with unprecedented praise and praying:

The one that explored the righteous socialism and planted on us The one that eradicated the thirsty and the suffering of droughts The one that took all Somalis to the sky The one that upheld the equality, the justice and the peace We greet you from our hearts with affection Morning after morning, hour after hour, we pray God for you To live in peace and remain our superior, O father Siad. The hero that denied colonialism from his slice, awakened at all times The one that stood up for the poisoned Africa, executing colonialism The one that took all Somalis to the sky The one that upheld the equality, the justice and the peace We greet you from our hearts with affection Morning after morning, hour after hour, we pray God for you To live in peace and remain our superior, O father Siad. 21

All these songs were composed to forge a fatherly figure of Africa, an all- knowing leader with everything under his belt. History was distorted to suit and serve this objective. It was also used—through the Ministry of Informa- tion under Mohamed Omar Jees, a fellow clansman—to promote and per- Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 123 meate clan superiority. The cult went as far as to put him under the frame of the SYL as the 14th founding member and a crucial cohort of the 13 original founders of May 1943.22 Since Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan (named by the British as the ‘Mad Mullah’ following an uprising against the British colonial rule) was an Ogaadeen/Daarood, it was naturalised that there was no any other legitimate heir apparent than Siad Barre, who considered himself a nephew of the Sayid. Popular radio programmes were broadcasted where anchors such as Ahmed Farah Ali ‘Idaajaa’ attempted to create what Said called in a colonial context ‘positional superiority’ that put Siad Barre’s clan- group above all others.23 Given that Siad Barre was an avowed pro-Italian police officer during colonialism, his biography was taken to the other side of the fence; he was painted as an anti-colonial nationalist who had fought against European imperialism. This was further contradicted by Siad Barre’s appointments of ministers. Even though he would select his ministers on the basis of clan, many he appointed whose fathers were staunch pro-Italians, especially those belonging to other clans. Prominent cases in point were the constant re-appointment of some known ministers in every reshuffle. Siad Barre’s childhood nickname of Afweyne ‘mighty mouth’ was made a criminal offence. The official calling and chanting of praising sons in schools, State buildings and prisons had to be ‘the Father of the Nation’, ‘the Father of Knowledge’ and ‘the Victory-bearer Siad’. As he was the sole distributor of the State resources, a culture of sycophancy was developed in public, but in private people were cursed him and his regime, calling Af- weyne to make his original nickname too bad to digest. The nationalist motto of ‘Soomaaliya ha noolaato’ (long live Somalia) was now shelved and replaced with ‘Guulwade Siyaad’ (Siad the victory-bearer). This latter praise was particularly foisted to chant loudly every morning. One former ambassador of the regime noted the obligation for one to sing the Guulwade Siyaad.24 The Somali medical doctor, Dr Hawa Abdi, also reported that, at Digfeer Hospital in Mogadishu, they had to sing every morning that ‘Siad Barre was the father of Somali society’.25 Though this practice was in place as late as in the 1980s, it was not as strict as she described, for the regime’s power was waned such that it left some cult calls and symbols in limbo. A story is told that Sheikh Hassan Daher Aweys, then an officer from prison corps and part- time Islamic preacher, refused to be part of the Guulwade Siyaad praise song, in the late 1970s. He was arrested for his defiance of singing for the ruler. 26

The Psychosis and Proponents of the Cult The strong personality cult, together with the fusing power with patronage, granted Siad Barre to behave like a commander of both soldiers and common people, the only one ordering orders and brought about demanded demands. One of his tendencies was wearing ‘his military uniform throughout his time 124 Chapter 5 in office, appearing as a commander in all official portraits’.27 Only after his power was emasculated did Siad Barre choose to switch his dress to civilian clothing. Yet he continued making himself the only embodiment of the State. This—as well as the imposition of the personality cult around the Presi- dent—was a new phenomenon. Criticising him was also akin to profaning to a religious tomb. Mohamed Aden Sheikh, his ideologue and adviser, pointed out that the prevalence of the cult led Siad Bare to consider complementary advices as enmity.28 The novelist Nuruddin Farah painted the grim situations of the early years of Siad Barre’s rule in his novels under the title of the variations on the theme of an African dictatorship. Farah, arguably less- known in Somalia, but well-known in the West, blended his writing of fiction with politics, with the benefit of writing from out of the regime’s gaze. Through different protagonists, he described characters of the cult in the person of Siad Barre. The main protagonist of Farah’s novel, Sweet and Sour Milk, fully understood this cult, when he echoed and uttered with a capital letter that ‘there is no General but our General’.29 A regular feature of the novel was people being silenced or slept, people who could not rise or resist to a regime gone mad. The loyalists attempted to declare Siad Barre President a vie (President for life), but since he held the State steadily and also safely, there was no need for such declaration on the part of the President. 30 The cult created by his servants and subordinates rendered to see himself as maqaldame (an infallible man), leading him to imagine that no Somali was more intelligent and possessed more wisdom than him. Ambassador Abdullahi Koongo recalled Siad Barre’s son-in-law Dafle telling him ‘only him [Siad Barre] can rule Somalia’.31 The perception of partnering him to superhuman was borne out of the illusion of the cult of what the psychiatrist Hussein Bulhan put it a ‘demigod’.32 Dr Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Siad Barre’s medical doctor and onetime vice Minister of Information, recalled that ‘his name was like [a] religion’ and ‘his personality arrived near to God’.33 In this milieu, the Presi- dent was no longer a person: he came to be considered something above personable personality. Siad Barre took his pleasure of becoming not the only the actor of one action, but the actor of all actions occurring in Somalia, as he was adamant of aggrandising his persona. His personal physician diag- nosed that his mental condition was close to ‘madness’.

What I found in him and the humiliation that I, not only me but I think many of my colleagues, found, was that his plan and his intention was a road in his mind and he expected you to just follow, and not to judge, or not to discuss, or not to give any different opinion about that. So, you got just a path drawn before you, by him, and the whole cabinet, the state instrument, should follow that. And even if you saw that the end was dark, you had to tell others that it is not dark, but that there is light, there is paradise we see after that. 34 Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 125

One of Siad Barre’s threatening attitudes was to pose his subordinates to the strange question of ‘yaa ku abuuray?’ (who had created you?) to which the feared servant would reply ‘you, my father’. As one insider recalled, for one instance, in a meeting with his subordinates, Siad Barre stated to them ‘aniga ayaa idin sameeyey, wax idin baray, anigaa idin abuuray’ (I made you, educated you and created you).35 His provocative words were partially true, when taken into account that his onetime Mayor of Mogadishu, Yusuf Ibrahim Ali ‘Abuuraas’, was a waiter in a small café in Waaberi district owned by Siad Barre in the 1950s.36 In another meeting with his party members, a certain Hussein Abdulkadir Kassim, a loyalist-cum-defector, took to the podium by proposing that a process of immediate improvement in the civil service was indispensable if the regime was to improve a bureaucracy filled with people without qualification. Siad Barre interrupted and asked Hussein Abdulkadir, ‘yaa ku abuuray?’ (who had created you?). Confused, Hussein became silent and could not respond. The dictator then ordered him to sit down, as witnessed by a former regime official. 37 Many of Siad Barre’s servants and stalwarts who crafted his personality cult were those who had no clan powerbase with which they would affiliate themselves. As such, they had to couple flatter with deed. Dubbed as the ‘yes man’ of the regime, General Ali Samatar, one of the most trusted stalwarts, went as far as to claim that he would fulfil any order from the President, even if that order would have concerned with his own children. Enlarging the cult from the public to private, Ali Samatar explained to a colleague thus: ‘I have twin sons. They are called Hassan and Hussein. If the president says that one of the twins, say, for example, Hussein, is not my son, I will follow his orders and disown Hussein’.38 Ali Samatar’s words demonstrate egoistic slyness given the necessity of survival in the power structure of the regime regardless of family values. But one has to acknowledge that, from his services, he was swiftly promoted to the extent of Sarreeye Guud (lieutenant general), the highest army position in the Siad Barre regime. Throughout the regime, Ali Samatar was the most senior military officer in Somalia and most of his military promotions were decreed from 1970 to 1977. 39 This is how one former regime employee commented on the secret behind Ali Samatar’s long years of unwavering loyalty to Siad Barre: ‘Samatar, an astute man, reclu- sive, may have been full of inferiority complex, but was a tough military man who survived poison, clearly from his rivals from Siad Barre’s side, served under Siad Barre as the longest trustee. The sure thing that kept Samatar as a close friend of Siad Barre was but the word, “Yes”’.40 Coming from the so-called outcaste community of Tumaal, General Ali Samatar lacked a clear clan base and backing, necessary components and constituents for anyone aspiring to hold a top position in the contemporary Somali politics. Indeed, anyone aspiring to become a powerful and prominent politician in the Somali politics had to possess a clan base. Even though 126 Chapter 5 he knew that Somali people knew that he hailed from the Tumaal community, Ali Samatar used to claim that he belonged to Iise Mohamoud sub-clan of the Majeerteen.41 This claim was one crucial factor that enabled him to attach and align himself with the clanised regime of Siad Barre, a regime that prized clan identity and affinity to differentiate a foe from a friend. In reality, one cannot belong to Somali society and thus become Somali without belonging (or attaching himself) to a Somali clan or community. Those who lacked ‘real genealogical links’ with the major clan-groups felt compelled to fabricate historical clan attachments, only to be able to find themselves within the clan system and even within the society at large. It is such a compul- sion of clan or else face the burden of being nothing in the midst of a hostile environment—whereby the one without a clan to protect would have to endure uncertain future—that made the clan system de rigueur in Somali politics at all times. Explaining how clan politics was ingrained in Siad Barre’s rule, Laitin and Samatar came to the conclusion that ‘the essence of great politics in the Somali context is the clever reconstruction of one’s clan identity’.42

POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PUNISHMENT

The Enter and Exit of Prisons The Somali sense of individual independence and freedom to act and think from outside interference and agency were broken by the abolition of existing legislatures safeguarding people’s basic rights. Under these military laws, no one was legally entitled to file a case against a minister or any other top official of the regime. As all means of communication—i.e., telephone and radio—were under the grip of the intelligence agencies led by Siad Barre’s fellow clansmen, people began to resist. In this context, repression was severely institutionalised and was taken for granted, as recalled by Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, a former judge under the regime. 43 There were no free heterotopias in which people could express their anger and anguish. This was because predatory power, political violence and clan plunder spiralled to unmatched level in the 1970s. This was not just an indication that the military regime declined, but the signs of a failed State. Albert Hirschman has suggested three options open to societies, when the State dwindles. First would be exit, second voice and third loyalty.44 The third choices were similar to the phenomenon delineated by the Somali poet who, after assessing Siad Barre’s regime, came to conclude: ‘Afgooye aad, Afkaaga xiro ama Afweyne raac’ (either to go to the Afgooye jail, shut up your mouth or be loyal to Afweyne).45 As previously noted, Afweyne was the (unofficial) childhood nickname of Siad Barre, meaning ‘big mouth’. Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 127

By the late October 1969, most nationalists of anti-colonial era found themselves under prisons, run by dictatorial military regimes, worse off than the Western European colonialism against which they fought. In April 1973, the regime felt so powerful enough—politically and economically entrenched and thus overwhelming the society absolutely—that it decided to release a selected group of political prisoners, in total 18 of the most prominent prisoners detained since the coming of the coup. Held without trial at the presidential summer residence of Afgooye, dubbed by inmates as the Af- gooye Hilton, the detainees included Aden Adde, Abdirizak Haji Hussein, Ismail Jimale and Abdirahman Sheikh Ali, a former Supreme Court Presi- dent. After summoning to the office of Siad Barre, they were told that they were forgiven. Some who sought to inquire about the crime they were forgiven had to be fearful of their lives, lest they were charged for a crime they had never committed. Many of them hardly knew that the military takeover had led to harsher autocratic rule and so repression was institutionalised. Detai- nees released from prison included Abdullahi Iise, the first Somali Prime Minister in the decolonisation period. Siad Barre sent Abdullahi Iise for exile as soon he was released from prison in 1973. Some others were also given ambassadorial positions abroad, such as Abdirizak. The release was apparently a response made by several other African States that theirs were more amenable to prisoners compared with others, like Somalia. While Siad Barre released some potential rivals, he retained some others in prison, such as General Aideed and Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, who were detained since November 1969, languishing in prison without trial. They were later released in October 1975 with the former Premier Egaal. 46 Many others, including the poet Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame ‘Hadraawi’, went to jail in 1973 for composing poems perceived to be anti-regime. This indicated a contrapuntal turn that, while others released, others entered into the military prisons. Where some poets aligned themselves with the regime and so becoming sycophants, many others decided to join the exiled opposition, though the most had decided to be silent. In 1978, a new group of political prisoners—Hadraawi included—were released by the regime to woo a West- ern aid, when liberalisation of the economy was promised. 47 Given that the purpose of the release was to form a human face of the regime at a time Siad Barre was due to visit European capitals to garner support, the human rights record of the military regime was still awful and exacerbating. Raised about the question of human rights abuses in Somalia, General Dafle replied:

There’re no violations of human rights in Somalia. Our record in this regard is excellent […] Today, the former President, Aden Abdulle Osman, is free and happy as a farmer and nobody bothers him […] If anyone could be charged with violation of human rights, it’d be myself since I’m in charge of the national security services. Yet I’m one of the most popular politicians in 128 Chapter 5

Somalia today. I walk anywhere in the country without a single bodyguard to protect me.48

The Abolition of Freedom of Thought During the successive civilian administrations, even the one before the regime, there was hardly a report about human rights violations. Whatever their record of maladministration and corruption, the civilian administrators were reputed to have not a single political detainee in prison, a clear contrast with other post-colonial African States. This was the era, when the BBC Somali broadcasters frequented to Somalia without any fear of arrest from the State authorities.49 By contrast, the regime despatched a strong complaint to the British government in 1975 through its embassy in London, demanding them to close the BBC Somali.50 The arrest of Mustafa Haji Nur, a BBC Somali broadcaster, in Mogadishu in January 1971 was a signal to the danger looming from the reconfiguration of the absolutist power. 51 The lack of breathing space increased public resentment. It was the first time in modern Somali history that people began to talk about the vanishing of family members, relatives and acquaintances, as well as the collapse of the culture of political freedom. Yusuf Jama Ali Dhuhul, the former editor of Dalka, once the most vocal and critical newspaper during the civilian administrations, was languishing in prison, because he privately criticised the regime. Yusuf Dhuhul left the country in June 1974 soon after he was released from prison.52 As suppression of freedom of thought and of political association were in place, distorting the reality on the ground to appease the regime was becoming a pattern to keep one’s career on track. Given that the freedom of speech was suppressed, plays and poems composed during the 1970s and throughout 1980s were not reflecting the reality on the ground and thus reiterating—as much of which were—the cult of the ruler. After switching from the Soviets to the West, the Siad Barre regime found committed partners in Western academe who promoted to Western audiences that the military regime was a panacea to Somalia. One American professor, who later suffered in the hands of the regime, wrote in 1979 that Siad Barre ‘reduce[d] the level of fear and oppression within his society’ and that Soma- lis were ‘beginning to feel that they can talk and joke more freely in public places’.53 While Laitin ostensibly carried some comforting messages with him to Somalia, he appeared to be the American professor who frankly stated to the U.S. ambassador in Mogadishu that ‘it was difficult to be other than restrained if one wanted to keep getting Somali visas’.54 In 1981, the military regime added a new internal front to the already external dimension where embassies abroad used to reject providing visas and renewing new ones to Western academics and journalists willing to travel to Mogadishu. Robert Dietz, the only Western journalist stationed in the capital, was forced to Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 129 leave, after the Ministry of Information refused to renew his visa. 55 No need for a correspondent reporting on the true side of the Somali stories.

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE SIADIST STATE

Clan Cronyism and State Resources Since he ascended to power, Siad Barre’s objectives and aims were palpable to the public. If he found a clanised State, he was now on a path of formulating it into a criminalised and cannibalised stage. In order to consolidate his grip on power, Siad Barre sanctioned pillaging public money and misappropriation of international foreign aid to his clan cronies and family members. In 1976, the U.S. intelligence identified following four main preoccupations of President Siad Barre: (1) to retain personal power, (2) to consolidate power in the hands of his clan, (3) to extend his control over the Somali territory in Ethiopia, and (4) siphon off foreign aid through economic development.56 Power, prestige and profit came to be inextricably interlinked. The State was maintained as something resourceful to suck, as his determination was to ensure ruling Somalia to the last, something that entailed him to satisfy those surrounded him. This gave rise to two paradoxical patterns: (1) the pattern of possessions, and (2) the pattern of poverty. In other words, the line between the haves and have-nots was ballooned. Those who had had something, they had had because of close clan affiliation with the inner circle and those who had had nothing were mostly from the peripheral clans. Under Siad Barre’s reign, the formal and informal economy was incorporated into the State control. In his memoir, The Road to Zero, Ambassador Mohamed Osman Omar mentioned a circular signed by the President which was sent to Somali embassies abroad, instructing them to remit fees acquired from passports to an account in a bank at Dubai. Sending State funds to a private bank was the most unusual in the eyes of the ambassador. In India, where Ambassador Osman was stationed, it was illegal ‘for people to trans- act in foreign currency outside the banking system’.57 Yet the ambassador followed the rule of the regime and began remitting money as was ordered. It was through such externally institutionalised corruption that the small island of Seychelles accused Somalia and Morocco of orchestrating a coup plot against their government. In 1982, Radio Seychelles broadcasted that they intercepted the tapes of conversations between an opposition leader and a ‘financial backer’, whose identity was not revealed. The latter told the former that he knew ‘Somali leaders personally and it would only take giving [Siad] Barre $200,000 and the vice-President $50,000 to obtain authorization to set up a base in Somalia’.58 From this evidence, the existence of the whole country hinged upon a small amount of bribe being offered to the regime leaders. 130 Chapter 5

Having moral and money on the same side was impossible. The want and wealth were crucial in making power consolidated from the centre to the periphery. Money flowing in as a foreign aid was the most after-sought source for clan cronies to compete for each other. The extent of the foreign aid poured into the country was unmatched in many cases. As Michael Mar- en noted in his The Road to Hell, ‘Somalia was the largest recipient of aid in sub-Saharan Africa, and in some years the third largest in the world behind perennial leaders [of] Egypt and Israel. But most of Somalia’s 6 million people never saw a penny’.59 Foreign aid was an area for State beneficiaries to prosper for themselves and for others closer to the regime gallery. Relief organisations provided curious stories of ministers and their relatives trying to persuade them to rent their houses, vehicles, hire their nephews and buy their food. Maren, who drew on his fieldwork observation, coupled with extensive research on corruption under the regime, had observed that the ‘[w]hole sale looting of government coffers kicked into high gear, and people were taking actions to protect their own turn. Foreign aid workers who challenged the rampant corruption were being threatened and even occasionally beaten up’.60 Most of those who constituted Mogadishu landlords were from Siad Barre’s clansmen. Nur Ali Qabobe, who worked for the Siad Barre regime as a banker, spoke of the sudden emergence of ‘sybaritic sycophants, solely concerned with ravenously and desperately grabbing undeserved opportunities in exchange for the allegiance granted as trade, regardless of the resultant difficulties even should these result[ed] in a colossal fiasco, irrepa- rable national loss’.61 Clannism, clientelism and corruption came to constitute a trademark for the regime by way of money extracted from the State coffers: international economic aid, local taxes and oil companies. Corruption was considered as a process of wealth distribution among clansmen. It was not uncommon to witness a bodyguard or a porter being appointed a governor or a diplomat in a long list of clan cronies aspiring for high political position for the purpose of wealth. General Mohamed Said Hersi ‘Morgan’, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, who started off as a bodyguard in 1969 but ended up the Defence Minister in 1990, was also a prominent case in point. Once he married the President’s daughter Anab, Morgan was elevated from bodyguard to one of the most powerful men in the military apparatus. Several other examples among many were the appointment of Ahmed Sugulle Hersi, a former porter in Kismaayo, as the Governor of Hiiraan and later the Consular to Rome; and Abdullahi Ali Kooshin and Abdullahi Artan Weged, as governors and district commissioners.62 Others of the same category was Abdulkadir Haji Masalle who was a low profile captain in the army but promoted to be the right-hand man of the President, while more competent brother Omar Haji Masalle had not been integrated into the founding members of the junta. The adoption of this preferential policy within his clan in the very beginning of the regime sent a Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 131 signal that meritocracy, as had promised, was rhetoric rather than reality. In this way, Siad Barre created his clan cronies from low-level clan cronies. Where the big men from the last civilian administrations enriched first themselves, second their families and third their clansmen, Siad Barre carried out an unconcealed strategy of siphoning off foreign aid to his own clan, conducting a policy to make his clansmen enriched from the coffers of the State. Within the first few years, the degree of cronyism and corruption became higher than it was in 1969. If civilian administrators pilfered governmental budget, the regime authorities came to embezzle public money with impunity, for no place for whistle-blower from within. Sheikh Mukhtar, the most senior parliamentarian of the last civilian administration, not without overstating his point, labelled Siad Barre for becoming ‘the father of musuqmaasuq (corruption)’.63 The whole system of bureaucracy was so corrupt that anyone failing to use the instantly gained wealth via clan advancement would hardly survive under the regime. Many unqualified people favoured for clan commonality became wealthy in this manner. Even if one had already possessed wealth, power would accrue to them more wealth. Power and profit were perceived as twins for one simultaneously seeking for a quick wealth. Common people were not oblivious of how power had generated patronage and wealth. This was not so indifferent from what was mirrored in Sierra Leone.64 The Somali poets were the first to point out the prevalence of clan cronyism and corruption. In his poem Daalacan (visible), the popular Somali poet Hadraawi questioned how wealthy men in the Siad Barre regime acquired wealth.

Wealth that was obtained not from abroad Accumulated without competency and hard-work Over which one had not taken time to travel far away to get it That one had not received with parental blessings That had not been descended from the heavens The man who are siphoning off that remarkable wealth With the belittling of the penniless And coupled with arrogance Won’t he pay the price? Can he conceal his castigation?65

Added to the officialised corruption, a new system of burglary was adopted. The Business community and other people with hard currency were subjected to constant harassment to pay bribery. In her memoir, Keeping Hope Alive, Dr Hawa Abdi recounted how some of Siad Barre’s clansmen acted ‘as bandits’ by ‘using their authority to steal from the poor, rural people, or favoring their own clan over another, more vulnerable group’. She recounted how such was institutionalised: ‘We heard, time and again, of Siad Barre’s relative guaranteeing their own private property over the national 132 Chapter 5 interest’.66 The process of peculation was so common that it was not just concentrated on local, but also touched on internationally. The regime facilitated a perennial condition where—drawn from the observations and insights of those who worked under the regime—‘everyone wanted money and power’.67 Through a combination of corrupt practices and exhortation, the only people who ‘had big money in those days’ turned out to be Siad Barre’s clansmen. The notion of ku-qabso, ka-qabso (catch the cake from others and then enrich yourself from them) became a rule and brought about uncontrolled corruption bearing many facets of kickback notions such as howlfudu- deyn (making someone something easier for bribery) or dhacdhac (kickback) rendered the largest trade deficit since 1969. 68 These kickbacks were rampant as, many ordinary people would be compelled to pay bribery to win a favour from the regime. Another term, is-afgarasho (understanding), was included in the everyday interactions and it stood for swift bribery like howl- fududeyn. The Somali term of dhacdhac was equivalent of what Cameroon- ians considered ‘la politique du ventre’.69 What was known in Tanzania as kitu kidoko—and maslaha in Gambia—was called in Somalia as madax- salaax and shifo shifo. In Cameroon, it was a sort of win-win (or a deal or no deal) as the proverb has is that, ‘you eat, I eat’ to cut a deal for corruption. In Somalia, corruption cases were more nascent than any other part of Africa. Denied to build a women’s hospital in Lafoole, her father’s farm, just a few kilometres away from Mogadishu, Dr Hawa Abdi, a gynaecologist, was astounded at how corruption had infected every level of the State bureaucracies. The officials from the Afgooye mayoral office demanded her to pay a bribe if she longed for establishing a private hospital. ‘I heard’, she would later lament to those who had exhorted her, ‘there were bandits in the region, but I didn’t think they would come from the mayor’s office’.70 In order to proceed her hospital plans, she bribed certain officials in the regime to embark on the construction work. Under such normalised corruption lay in a personal interest cloaked in the name of clan to attain a political aspiration. So rampant was racketeering inside the regime that the realms of the State and clan politics became inseparable. As the Somali banker Abdulqadir Arif Qassim witnessed, Siad Barre’s policies were aimed at promoting his clan interest at the expense of other clans.71 This was not surprising given the ethos of pastoral nomadic society. As van Notten pointed out, under Somali pastoral law a wealthy man is obliged to share his wealth with his clansmen.72 Bank loans that were not compulsory to give them back had been released to the sub-clan and to the whole clansmen. In his memoir, Somali Phoenix, General Jama Mohamed Ghalib, who served under the regime in various capacities, provided his reflections on how clan cronyism embodied the State structure in such a context: Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 133

One’s proximity to the nation state [sic] was measured by its centers of power. In other words, if one’s clan member was the head of government or the head of an important department, then that Somali government or department was not only identified with that clan, but that it would also earn a fitting sobriquet, not to mention incentives to corrupt king makers or vice-versa. Much depended, however, upon the personal integrity of the official incumbents for the nation state to function properly or otherwise. 73

Identifying with Siad Barre’s immediate clan was the most important ID card upon which one could draw to capitalise on when earning money from the national bank and also could prevaricate from extortion. One story that acutely illustrates the contradictory attitude of the President occurred in the early 1970s. Colonel Mohamoud Elmi Bowdo Le’eg, the then Head of the Criminal Investigations Bureau (CID) of the police, informed Siad Barre that his department had arrested a man identified himself as Farah Siad Barre, who falsely claimed as his brother (even though he was in fact his clansman) and borrowed huge money from the national bank and took land property from the Mogadishu local authority. Not surprisingly, Siad Barre responded, ‘leave him alone; if the man cannot use my name now, will he use when I die?’.74 The inner circle stories like this demonstrate that the President was content when his close clan cronies tended to embezzle the State funds, but remained vigilant when his supposed clan opponents did so. Though theoretically berating others for misappropriation of hantida ummadda (people’s property), his deeds and practical performance were attacking his rhetoric.

Misappropriation and Embezzlement Infused power required gradual plunder and patronage. The nationalisation in May 1970 of all foreign-owned private banks, industries, plantations, facto- ries and major companies, only to sanction close clansmen to seize the moment in enriching themselves, was another opportunity for Siad Barre’s close clansmen to pillage and plunder the private assets in the name of the State under the banner of ku-qabso (get-rich-quick style of corruption). Most of the nationalised assets were redistributed to his own clan. In this way, many destitute drivers became little Rockefellers, because power accrued to them via various ways, i.e. real estates and farms appropriated in the name of the State and the get-rich-quick projects from foreign aid, known as ka-qabso (grab your share), made them household names. The notion of ka-qabso and ku-qabso also referred to a corrupt clause where men in power went for a run to plunder their share of State spoils. The Italian businessmen, who owned most of the private wealth appropriated through ka-qabso, maintained out- sized enterprises earned in large during the fascist colonial rule. In July 1970, the Italian Foreign Minister, Aldo Moro, paid a visit to Mogadishu and finally reached a cut deal with Siad Barre to compensate the Italian-owned 134 Chapter 5 banana plantations and banks already nationalised. 75 After an Italian pressure, the compensation for Italian firms became effective after almost three years.76 It was clear that the Italian government paid these compensation under the shadow of the Siad Barre regime. As a sultanistic dictator, a type of reign anchored on personal belonging of the State guided by a combination of fear and farsamo (trick), President Siad Barre knew where and when to start political manoeuvring. 77 Hardly did he miss the opportunity to use his power to replace the Italian businessmen who left the country with his clansmen. Institutionalised system of gacan- qabasho (providing helping-hand) was available for those who belonged to his clan. The whole budget of the regime was decreed to be supervised by a close clansman of him throughout the 1980s.78 Many other clan cronies were also extended to enjoy monopolised favours in business and trade. One such clan crony was Abdi Hoosh Ashkir, a Mareehaan driver for the national army before the coup. As early as the first decade of the regime, Hoosh became and boasted himself one of the wealthiest men (if not the only one) in Somal- ia, for he operated beyond the State in the bosom of—and close clansmen and confidante to—the President, with the protection of clan solidarity. 79 Acting similar to a State within the State, Hoosh and other clan cronies were granted legal power to monopolise import and export business singlehandedly.80 They thus siphoned off government funds, when a legislation had been decreed to execute anyone stolen from the government coffins with the amount of 100,000 Somali shillings (6,000 dollars in 1975), life imprisonment for one who stole 50,000 Somali shillings (3,000 dollars) and 10 years for anyone stole money from the State.81 Never had this law been charged against those close clan cronies who were involved in public and private embezzlements under the regime. Instead of holding them accountable for the fraud of public money, Hoosh and others were more often than not rewarded for the favours they had done for the ‘State’.82 These favours were providing weapons for the regime from the black market. The appropriation of State assets on the part of Siad Barre’s clan cronies was not lost on the poet Mohamoud Tukale Osman, who composed ‘duceysane wiilkeygiayow’ (o my blessed son) sung by the popular singer Hassan Aden Samatar.83 The song details the overwhelming misappropriation and almost hysterical embezzlement of the State coffers. Shifting from the public to private, the plunder and embezzlement touched the necessitated commodity. Food aid was diverted from the coffers of international relief agencies to the pockets of influential army officers in the inner circle of Siad Barre. One poignant example was the regime’s equivalent of the Head of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Abdi Mohamed Tarrah, the National Commissioner for Refugees, an Ogaadeen, who was a former soft drink (Coca Cola) assistant salesman during the early days of the regime. 84 Tarrah was found to have embezzled millions of dollars from the coffins of the State Plunder, Predatory Power and Political Economy 135 and from the UN by declaring several UNHCR country representatives as persona non grata, after they protested irregularities in the use of refugee funding.85 Whenever the UNHCR staff would attempt to end its operation in Somalia because of daylight robbery, they had to face harassment from the regime authorities. Projects for economic recovery and other development-related schemes were competitively pilfered. Recognised as having one of the largest refugee centres in the modern world, Somalia was the epicentre of the refugee aid in the 1980s and it was branded as the ‘aided country’. This was the era, when Somalia was reported to have hosted ‘the largest refugee population in the world’ resettling in 35 refugee camps.86 The number of the refugees fleeing from Ethiopian oppression was inflated to the extent that they became more populous on the UN paper than the local population.87 Tarah and other regime associates went as far as to claim that one million refugees were in the camps, another million outside the camps. Through the flow of foreign money, Siad ‘Barre was able to divert much of the international and American assistance away from clans in areas of Somalia which were not supportive of his administration’.88 Tales like that of Tarrah reflects that Siad Barre failed to set a measure of corruption check for his clan cronies, as was the case in Zaire, where Sese Seko once advised his servants: ‘If you want to steal, steal a little, cleverly, in a nice way’.89 In Somalia, Siad Barre growingly turned his regime ‘into an instrument for accessing help from the outside and for creaming off external resources’.90 Stealing refugee supplies were so widespread that foreign aid agencies came to accept—if not adopt—the thievery. Most of the food aid was reserved for local military commanders who were acting as war profiteers pillaging the food and quarrelling over who should take what and when. Maren as a relief worker recalled that in his first day in Beledweyne, he saw ‘military vehicles leaving refugee camps loaded down with bags of food’.91 Most of the refugee aid was poured into Somalia from the U.S. governmental and non-governmental aid agencies. The General Accounting Office, U.S. congressional body, put a large question mark over the whereabouts of the U.S. food aid in Somalia.92 The relationship between the agency and the regime was one shrouded in a confrontation.93 In 1985, the UNHCR officially announced that the refugees were going home, but nevertheless most stayed.94 But refugees were still making reverse a year later by returning to Somalia.95 The push and pull phenomenon of refugees and foreign aid were beneficial to the regime. As late as 1985, the exiled opposition groups accused the regime of levying 50% tax on all NGOs handling a case of cholera epidemic in Northern Somalia, where most of the refugees were settled. 96 The UN itself was reported to have complained about this tax. 97 However, their complaint fell on deaf ears.

Chapter Six

The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications

THE POLITICISATION OF THE MILITARY

The 1977 war, popularised as the ‘Ogaden War’ in Ethiopia and the international media, but dagaalkii Soomaali Galbeed (the war for Western Somalia) in Somalia, between the military regimes of Siad Barre in Somalia and Men- gistu in Ethiopia remains one of the most misunderstood conflicts compared with the other proxy wars of the cold war. In his reassessment of the war, John Spencer as well as many Somalists and Ethiopianists framed the war as a continuation of the historical tit-for-tat conflict between Somalia and Ethi- opia.1 However, the war was a political appeal of popularity and public validity for both regimes though this fact was concealed from their people. Public validity provides regimes under the pressures of mounting resistance a life machine to sustain their lifespan. Looking after local long-term acceptance to hold onto power, authoritarian leaders tend to transfer their internal problems to each other by triggering violence with the attachment of external patron. Hamstrung by a lack of legitimacy, Siad Barre and Mengistu—both came to power through the barrel of the gun—attempted to rule through a big patron by settling scores of the earlier historical hostilities between the two countries. Thus, they began to germinate discourses and narratives of nationalism, unceasingly accusing against each other of aggression. While the war permitted both leaders to put the growing internal dissent on hold, as regimes secured massive support for their warfronts from the public, the consequences of the war took both to the graveyard.2 Siad Barre required more legitimacy than his Ethiopian counterpart Men- gistu, a relatively new ruler. Most of those who worked under him described Siad Barre as a man who had a dual personality and double character. 3 To 137 138 Chapter 6 consolidate power to the borders of the Somali-inhabited areas in the Horn of Africa, ostensibly to attract the support of the Somali masses who always yearned for attainment to the Greater Somalia policy, he realised that retriev- ing a Somali territory either from Kenya or Ethiopia would confer him a popular image. Thus he acted on his own to march into the Ethiopian-occupied Somali territory known to Somalis as Western Somalia and to Ethi- opians as Eastern Ethiopia, but to the world as the ‘Ogaden’.4 This territory covered the small village of Shiilaabo, his birthplace. And liberating this portion of land even if forceful violence would be used had been his primary policy since he came to power. The war was launched as his regime became surreal and swollen by any African standard of measurement. Officially called Xoogga (the mighty), the Somali military prowess was so enlarged to the point of gigantic recruitment, as were the police and State bureaucracies. Indeed, the Somali soldiers saw themselves as supra State and society. In his series of personal stories, the Somali-Yemeni poet and playwright Abdalla Nuruddin Ahmed Al-Keysar recorded how a young female Somali student whom he wanted to marry was taken by a senior army officer by using his power as a man from the military.5 On 12 September 1974, a military takeover in Ethiopia saw the demise of the oppressive rule of Emperor Haile Selassie. After massive bloody purges within the Ethiopian military junta and extended public slaughters that risked the existence of Ethiopia, Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu came to power on 3 February 1977. Fully armed with Soviet weapons, Siad Barre sought to seize the opportunity by taking advantage of the weaker position of Mengistu. This was reflected by a war song released by Radio Mogadishu: ‘Ow Allaahu Akbar, Ow Allaahu Akbar, Soomaalida Galbeedeey maalintaad sugeyseen, saakey waa la joogaa / legdanka iyo dagaalkuna sunno maahee, waa faral’, (O Allah is great, O Allah is great, O Western Somalis, the day you awaited has arisen this morning / confrontation and combat are not simple instruction but an obligation’.6 The decision for the Siad Barre regime to unilaterally go to war, even though it had first attracted much support, was suicidal. As Mohamed Aden Sheikh, his onetime adviser lamented, the war was disaster for the future of Somalia as a State as it has never recovered from defeat. 7 The whole available resources of the State and society were implicated in waging unnecessary all-out war. Though the regime started to prepare for the war by policy in 1970, the practical face began in 1971 with the State- sponsored programme for training civilians on how to use weapons. A presidential decree was issued to ensure that all civil servants of the State and secondary school leavers had to be trained on how to use small arms in the Halane Training camp.8 Thus was the beginning of the militarisation of the Somali State and society. Such militarisation and mobilisation of the masses rendered destructive consequences, as they produced many well-trained warriors capable of The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 139 endurable warfare in the conflict-prone Somalia. Since October 1969, the appointments of military officers to districts and regions were administrative emulation in view of the fascist Italian colonial rule, which used men in the military uniform to display power. Nominations of military officers to political posts were common and reshaping the military and implicating politics began from the ascent of Siad Barre to power. The official regime bulletin records a frequent restructuring and reorganisation of not only the army, but of the police and other security institutions. This phenomenon transformed the apolitical culture of the army and turned it into an undisciplined institution. As one senior military officer recalled, for the first time, there was daily news update over the politics of the country being given to the army officers.9 Nowhere the militarisation heavily more affected than the regions and districts where inexperienced army officers were tasked to become governors and district commissioners.10 Whenever the strict rule of the army was not complied, the officers would react by conducting collective punishment as part of suppressing dissent. This was because the army structure—so opposite to a rule based on consultations—was anchored on order and obedience, a contradiction to the past civilian administrations. However, it conferred Siad Barre the governing framework to dictate and decree his intentions not only as a personal but as a State policy.

The Backdrop and the Politics of the War Officially entering the war on 15 June 1977, the Somali army officially began its full offensive a month later. There had earlier been army units acting as insurgents inside Ethiopia and real insurgents who had collaborated together in facing Mengistu’s forces. The Siad Barre regime maintained to provide a moral and military support to various resistance groups in Ethiopia. However, the all-out-war transformed the war by shifting it from a guerrilla tactics into a full-blown conventional war with an unforeseen end of time. Hitherto assisted by relatively small units of the Somali army, contingents of the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), a group seeking secession from Ethiopia, were absorbed into the Somali National Army. By acting as auxiliaries, the WSLF leaders invoked the traditional hostility between So- malis and Ethiopians (the ancient Abyssinians) to garner support from the Somali masses inside and elsewhere for the Siad Barre regime. Somalis were called for defending ‘the dignity and pride of the Somali society’.11 The regime published a series of written messages with the WSLF to emphasise the historical hostility between the Somalis and the Ethiopians. 12 Such a joint collaboration conferred the regime with a short-term legitimacy to attain a long-term one. The relationship between the Siad Barre regime and the WSLF was not a clear-cut. Even when Siad Barre pulled his forces out from the Somali region 140 Chapter 6

Figure 6.1. in Ethiopia, the WSLF pledged—and they fulfilled—to continue their struggle against Ethiopia.13 This because they were more adamant to secede from Addis Ababa and form a Djibouti-style of a State. Here the war resulted in far various implications for both sides. While the WSLF’s objective of not uniting the Somali territory under Ethiopian domain with Somalia differed from Siad Barre’s wishes, it enjoyed support from Mogadishu. The clan linkage was quite important, as the bulk of the WSLF belonged to the Ogaadeen, the clan from which Siad Barre’s mother hailed. The Ogaadeen-dominated WSLF might probably have been a real insurgence group if he had allowed them to operate independently. This would most certainly have discouraged the intervention of superpower involvement, especially if the regime was not there physically. The WSLF might also have cultivated a closer relationship with the Soviets, as they once declared that, once they seized their territory, they would set up a ‘socialist state’.14 Though this could be a far-flung The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 141 imagination, the very fact that they had Moscow in mind must have helped them to talk to Mengistu to negotiate concessions with him. Siad Barre accorded much importance to the Somali region in Ethiopia, something not accorded to Djibouti, also seen as a lost Somali territory. The regime’s official party newsletter, Halgan, included news of Djibouti in the features of the foreign affairs section, while the WSLF broadcasts were put as a part of the local news.15 As such, the regime’s resources and attention were geared towards Ethiopia. Not only war battle, but legal front was prepared to recover the Ogaden, as the regime commissioned a report on the legality over who had the right to rule the Somali territory. 16 Having already gained its share, Ethiopia had laid claim to Djibouti, a part of the Franco- phone Africa to which France referred to chase gardée (private hunting ground). When its independence from France was near, Siad Barre and Men- gistu threatened to conquer it. From an economic perspective, the only importance Djibouti could offer was its port. Mengistu told the visiting French President General de Gaule that the only future that the Djibouti port had was ‘either a French one or an Ethiopian one’.17 Siad Barre was not interested in possessing a legitimate hereditary title for Djibouti, even though Mengistu vehemently suggested to the French authorities that he would not accept the control of the rail for Addis Ababa to pass to Somalia. It was these durable geopolitical and economic considerations that worsened personal and political configurations of the Somali-Ethiopian contestation over other Somali territories in the Horn. Had Siad Barre not implicated himself in the 1977 war, there appeared to have been a possibility that negotiations for Djibou- tian union with Somalia could materialise.

From Left to Right: Where to Go? Who got what from where and who was crucial. Whoever won the war would have created an enduring sense of nationhood that would allow the ruler to write his name besides the historical figures of the past, notably Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Ghazi (Ahmed Gurey) of Somalia and Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia. From the Somali side, no stone was left unturned to give the war not only to nationalistic justifications, but also to religious zeal. The conflict between Siad Barre and Mengistu captured reminiscences of Sayid Mo- hamed Abdulle Hassan (the so-called ‘Mad Mullah’), who fought against the British colonial regime and Abyssinian empire. 18 Siad Barre understood the additional advantage he would gather in projecting himself as the new Mad Mullah in the Horn. The Defence Minister, General Ali Samatar, apparently acting on an official regime policy, described the war as a jihad (holy war) between Muslims and Christians like the days of Ahmed Gurey. 19 Siad Barre himself pretended to be involving in what Gérard Prunier called ‘la jihad nationaliste’ (the nationalist jihad). 20 Without legitimacy to refer to Ethi- 142 Chapter 6 opian Coptic tradition, Mengistu employed the concept of nationalism as patriot’s battle cry. Analysing the impasse, Africa Confidential wrote that ‘[n]either side [was] prepared to surrender its claims. National feeling and pride [was] deeply involved on both sides. It [was] not surprising that both countries [were] preparing for a long and bitter struggle’.21 While many Somalis regarded the war an ambivalent project—both one man’s war and one group’s war—most paid huge sacrifices in the hope of merging a significant Somali territory under Ethiopia to Somalia. The one-man show aspect was clearly illustrated on Radio Mogadishu, which released dozens of war songs intended not at Ethiopia as a whole, but at Mengistu. Both Siad Barre and Mengistu maintained to accuse each other of aggression. 22 A cross border battle without foreign patron could hardly be plausible. To succeed, Siad Barre and Mengistu had to compete attracting Soviet patronage. After a tense of a marathon to Moscow, Mengistu won the race for Soviet support by winning the title—not so meaningless—of the ‘Moscow’s Closest Ally in Africa’.23 More broadly, when it came to Somalia and Ethi- opia, the Soviets were convinced and even certain that the former was less socialist than the latter. 24 As one French scholar was told by a Soviet diplomat, Ethiopia had a revolution resembled with the Soviet’s. ‘This’, the diplomat explained, was ‘their 1919’.25 Another Soviet diplomat opined that ‘only they [Ethiopians] can become good Marxists in Africa because they are Orthodox Christians’.26 Apart from ideological and religious articulation, the historical connection and continuation between the Ethiopians and the Rus- sians were a major factor linking both countries closer. Siad Barre pursued a type of clano-nationalism that the Soviets could no longer sponsor, while his communist ideals confounded with clannism. Communism was concerned with the troubled interaction between classes (the so-called petit bourgeoisie versus parish peasants), instead of nations and nation-states. So the path pursued in Somalia was contradictory to the claim of scientific socialism. Even the West was favourable to Ethiopia than Somalia as American observers in the Horn consistently suggested to the U.S. administration to engage positively with Mengistu regime rather than abandoning him for the So- viets.27 Predictions of the Horn conflagration played by superpowers had already been in place since 1963.28 Abdikassim Salaad, Siad Barre’s Information Minister, insisted that the purpose of Somalia for the war was to ‘liberate the carved up country’.29 The actual objective of the war was far from this dominant nationalistic rhetoric. Of all those five territories that the five- pointed white star of the Somali flag represented, it aroused suspicion on how Siad Barre put all his weight on liberating Somalis under the Ethiopian rule, considering it as the only single point of the star worthy of ‘a continued fight’.30 By contrast, he urged other ethnic Somalis in Kenya to solve any territorial problems—similar in many ways with that of Ethiopia—directly The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 143 with Nairobi government.31 The legitimate question one could ask was why Siad Barre was anxious about the Somali Ethiopians more than about the Somali Kenyans? His concerns were both personal and clannish. Personal because he was born outside of the colonial sphere of Somalia Italiana, so he had to claim an adopted clan district in the south, adjacent to the Kenyan border, as his birthplace. Like Libya’s Muammar Al-Gaddafi, who had roots in northern Chad and so sought to (re)capture it, Siad Barre was committed to liberating his native land, a place in which he was not only born, but bred in his formative years as a child and as a teenager. 32 It was reasonable for him to sacrifice for the repossession of his native territory than to a peripheral one. Clannish because he was committed to bringing the Ogaadeen clan— most of whom inhabited in Ethiopia—into Somalia so that he could be secure in staying power with readymade fresh military recruits. The clan connection was further strengthened by the overwhelming support he had obtained from the Ogaadeen, next to his immediate Mareehaan. As Africa Confidential reported in the early 1980s, the Ogaadeen were strongly represented in the army to the extent that, without their support, Siad Barre would not have stayed power so long.33 Added to this was the evident fact that the most major war advisers were Ogaadeen army officers who had a special stake in the region under deliberation.34

Against Ethiopia and Expelling Soviets Fluctuating accounts over whether the Soviets had warned Siad Barre on the corollary of attacking Ethiopia or they had given him a green light to go to war have been dominant in public commentaries in Somalia. The lack of a convincing explanation over where Siad Barre received the green light to go to the war resulted in assumptions to overshadow academic and public discourses. Documentary evidence shows that the Soviets approved his initial plans to attack Ethiopia under Emperor Selassie, but these had to be altered in the last minute after Mengistu’s ascent to power. This meant that, while the Soviets apparently encouraged Siad Barre to mount pressure on Ethiopia under Selassie, they changed this course by considering intolerable to under- mine the Mengistu process of spreading communism to the hitherto imperialist and capitalist State, a lexicon comprehendible to the Stalinist State. It was scarcely surprising that the Soviets pledged Mengistu that it would prevent a Somali invasion had the Siad Barre regime pursued such a perilous course. 35 Even when Siad Barre shed crocodile tears as soon as the Soviets showed preference to Mengistu and stressed that he was still counting on their support, his messages fell on deaf ears. Playing old-fashioned politics, he reported to the Soviet Ambassador in Mogadishu G. V. Samsonov that he demeaned U.S. authorities seeking his audience and proved his favour and preference to Moscow.36 The realpolitik was not as black and white as Siad 144 Chapter 6

Barre assumed. There were at once a ‘red threat’ and a no-entry zone for which the U.S. and the Soviets had to defend with their tooth and nail, given that whatever one of them touched on was seen as a threat to the other. Before they at last sided with Mengistu, the Soviets attempted two options: (1) to use trusted military officers in the army to influence on Siad Barre or (2) create friction so as to foil his plans. 37 When both attempts failed, they sought to settle the Somali-Ethiopian dispute. Ostensibly to ease the tension, they proposed a confederation between Somalia, Ethiopia and South Yemen in order to create one powerful Soviet-style State in the Horn, a confederation which would later expand to the other African States. All these manoeuvres—some of them had personally initiated by the Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny in his second visit to Somalia in April 1977—were less successful. Though Siad Barre initially embraced the idea, he insisted the transfer of the ‘Ogaden’ to Somalia. Seemingly to frustrate the Soviet mediation, Siad Barre ‘proposed to Ethiopia to resolve the disputed issues within the framework of creating a federation of the two governments’.38 No one listened to him. In an extraordinary special session between the Soviet senior leadership, Siad Barre was held accountable for ‘playing a dishonest game’ and almost all those present expressed concerns over his grand political aims. A closer examination of the session minutes reveals who the Soviets kept in mind to support when they would select their man in the Horn. 39 The Soviets kept on trying and lastly sent intermediary mission led by the Cuban leader Fidel Castro to Mogadishu ‘to do everything possible to arrive at an understanding between Somalia and Ethiopia’. Castro succeeded in hosting a closed-door conference between Siad Barre and Mengistu in Aden, soon after Podgorny’s visit. When his mediation efforts failed, Castro reached acerbic observations on the Somali leader drawn from this conference as well as his field visits to Somalia:

Siad Barre was very arrogant and severe; maybe he wanted to intimidate us [ . . . ] Siad Barre is a general who was educated under colonialism. The revolution in Somalia is led by generals who all became powerful under colonial times. I have made up my mind about Siad Barre, he is above all a chauvinist. Chauvinism is the most important factor in him. Socialism is just an outer shell that is supposed to make him more attractive. He has received weapons from the socialist countries and his socialist doctrine is [only] for the masses. The Party is there only to support his personal power. In his case there is a bizarre symbiosis of rule by military men who went through the school of colonialism and social appearances. Something about socialism appeals to him, but overall there is still a lot of inequality and unfairness in the country [ . . . ] He put on a socialist face and got economic aid and weapons from the Soviet Union [ . . . ] In addition, Siad Barre had not only been insulting, he was resorting to subtle threats. At a certain point he said that one could not know where all of this could lead [ . . . ] I said that Siad Barre's position represented a The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 145

danger to the revolution in Somalia [and] endangered the revolution in Ethi- opia.40

Subsequent developments confirmed Castro’s predictions, because even if he pretended to have understood the political consequence, he stressed that he saw ‘a great danger . . . if the socialist countries help Ethiopia, they will lose Siad Barre’s friendship. If they don’t, the Ethiopian revolution will founder’.41 The Soviets and their Cuban allies (Cuba being part of the War- saw Pact) were certain that war with Somalia was inevitable. Siad Barre made one last attempt in July 1977 by visiting Moscow to persuade the Soviet authorities to support him rather than siding with Mengistu. He left Moscow debased, because he was denied to see Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, as observed by Abdi Warsame Isaaq, a member of his delegation. 42 With his return began the gradual shift to the West. The Soviets had already reached a decision to shrug him off. In August, they suspended delivering weapons to Somalia while at the same time accelerating its military assistance to Ethi- opia.43 Whereas Siad Barre’s regime possessed more armoury than Mengis- tu’s which enjoyed superior manpower, the Soviets rushed military advisors and modern armoury, including 300 T-55 tanks. In addition to material and moral support, the ‘socialist commonwealth’ countries equipped the Mengis- tu army better than Siad Barre’s. However, the Soviets did more than necessary to force Siad Barre to come to terms with them. Within a month, Castro sent 50 Cuban military advisers to provide strategic training to the Mengistu army. Cuban confidential documents reveal that Mengistu requested their ambassador in Addis Ababa to ‘pass on to Fidel Castro a verbal message in which the PMAC requests Cuba to provide assistance to the Ethiopian Peo- ple’s Militia via deliveries of small arms’.44 It was thus sensible for Abdikas- sim Salaad, who was the Information Minister under the Siad Barre regime during the war, but demoted to the Sports and Youth Minister after the war, to stress that the ‘real threat to Somalia [was] not from Mengistu but the twenty thousand odd soldiers from Cuba and the additional support they received from the entire Warsaw Pact group’.45 Many Somalis still assume that Siad Barre ejected the Soviets before they abandoned him. The available confidential documents show otherwise: the Soviets completed their abandonment in 1976. In order to avert further embarrassment, Siad Barre decided to act before the Soviets were to act and expelled them out of Somalia. Before the Soviet expulsion, he attended in a long discussion with his council over whether or not the Soviets should be expelled. Six members of his party argued against the suggestion of expulsion.46 Most Somalis were voiceless and had no say in those deliberations, since the regime was inaccessible and unaccountable to the people. Hussein Saalah Muuse, then Somali military attaché to Sudan, recalled a courtesy call on Sudan’s Defence Minister, where he was advised to inform his regime to 146 Chapter 6 think twice before expelling the Soviets. Hussein Saalah was reminded that both Egypt and Sudan, countries which previously ejected the Soviets, achieved nothing from the expulsion. Armed with this advice, Hussein Saa- lah flew with AlItalia from Khartoum to Mogadishu, where he met General Ali Samatar who promised to pass it over to his boss. 47 Unmoved by Sudan’s advice, Siad Barre expelled the Soviets in November 1977. The Soviets were given 48 hours to leave the country they had been investing for more than a decade.48 The Soviet expulsion would profoundly alter the course of the war to Mengistu’s advantage. Ethiopia acquired more than $1 billion for economic and military aid. Thousands of Soviet advisers and technicians, reinforced by 20,000 Cubans (deployed from Angola) assisted by hundreds of South Yemenis, had to bring Siad Barre to his knees and helped Mengistu regain a new image of a diehard Ethiopian nationalist. Due to this swift developments, many Somalis still attribute Siad Barre’s defeat not to Ethiopia, but to Cuban soldiers backed by the Soviets. Cuban combat skills were both fasci- nated and frustrated the Somalis. A document from the Siad Barre regime shows a 20-year-old captured Cuban soldier called Carlos Orlando, surrounded by a Somali officer and three soldiers. 49 Found himself in a beggar’s position, Siad Barre turned to use a cold war language to lure the Americans into the Horn so as to counter the Soviet support of Mengistu. He remarked that he did not appreciate why the Soviets were allowed to dictate the Horn of Africa, condemned what he termed the ‘arrogance’ of the Soviets, complained about how they ‘surrounded’ Somalia and predicted that this would lead to ‘a third world war’. In his own words: ‘The Soviet Union will command—from the window or from the front I don’t mind—all the area[s] of the Red Sea, of the Indian Ocean, of the Gulf of Aden and they will do what they want’.50 His words echoed a similar statement given in 1970 by the American intelligence author Wynfred Joshua who postulated that, had the Russian succeeded ‘in incorporating the Middle East into their sphere of influence, the balance of power in the world would be seriously upset’.51 However, Siad Barre’s messages—designed as they were to solicit the U.S. support—clearly contradicted his earlier statements of anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism and anti-Western rhetoric. Stood in a hypocritical position, his new declarations were not just an embarrassment to himself, but to the Somali people in general. For a big power—the U.S. in this case—heavily criticised such that words used were unforgettable was now officially requested for a rescue operation. Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. encountered and experienced such hostile moods in different periods from the Siad Barre regime. In particular, Washington bore in mind the humiliation felt after the successful stage of the 1969 coup, when the CIA was degraded by the KGB.52 The U.S. welcomed the Soviet expulsion from Somalia. Aside from the Soviet expulsion, courting with the U.S. compelled the Soviets to punish The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 147

Somalia severely. Indeed, Siad Barre acted on following a proposal suggested by the Carter White House, which gave him plenty of promises for replacing them if he were to expel the Soviets from the Somali soil, as revealed by a former U.S. ambassador to Somalia. 53 Shortly after, he organised public propaganda against Moscow in which he used an undiplomatic language by describing them ‘liars’.54 On 13 November 1977, he announced the termination of the 1974 Soviet-Somali Treaty of Friendship. The impact of the termination was increasingly felt by the military which was the institution they had been providing the most sophisticated training and equipment.55 As a consequence, the Soviet expulsion followed by the war defeat and the subsequent abandonment of socialism was indeed what led the Siad Barre regime to the graveyard. Seen from the global and geopolitical perspectives, he misread the realpolitik, when he had imagined that the U.S. would fill in where the Soviets vacated. This miscalculation was what led him to go to war without superpower supporting his regime. As Somali military commanders stressed, it was suicidal to send forces to a war that no superpower was providing a political back up and military re-supply. 56 The attempts to exploit the existing American fears of the geopolitical changes, not just in the Horn region, but in the wider Middle East as far as the mouth of Arabia were concerned, did not help Somalia. This illustrates how much a reckless political blunder could cost and cause an epic debacle, for the regime almost descended into a breakdown following the Soviet departure. The evidence that the expulsion was an abrupt move could be found by how Siad Barre later sought to allure reinstating the Soviet support. Within two years, he searched for a pax Sovietica with apparent flip-flop diplomacy. In a Janu- ary 1979 speech, he stated that it was not inconceivable that Somalia and the Soviet Union could co-operate with a ‘mutual goodwill’.57 The speech was a last-ditch attempt to veil the growing internal pressure befalling and brewing in Somalia upon the removal of the Soviets.

The White House Betrayal By December 1977, Siad Barre declared ‘in a state of danger’ and spoke of an imminent invasion from ‘neighbouring countries’.58 Three years later, a state of emergence was declared in 1980 whereby all laws were suspended and Siad Barre assumed more totalitarian power through the pretext of internal and external pressures.59 However, a myriad of interlinked geopolitical interests weighed down Siad Barre’s anticipation that, when Moscow was ejected, Washington would be in a hurry to insert itself. The Soviets understood that nothing comparable to their earlier assistance to Somalia would ever come to the fore and that the Americans were paying lip service to their promises.60 The Indian Ocean Newsletter, commenting on the U.S. policy toward the Horn, defined it a policy pursued through ‘two facets’—that is, 148 Chapter 6 pleasing both sides of the Horn conflict. 61 As such, the Americans sustained in treating Siad Barre and Mengistu on equal terms, even if they seemed diplomatically aligning with the former than the latter during the 1980s. Similarly, the U.S. had a close relationship with Kenya, this fact being another crucial factor that impeded them to side with one single regional regime at the expense of the others. Branded as a pariah State in Africa, Somalia was isolated by 1977 and most African rulers, save for very few, had been particularly critical of the Somali claims on territories ruled by Kenya and Ethiopia. Nyerere of Tanzania, an earlier friend of Siad Barre, was one of the African leaders who condemned Somalia on this front. 62 Siad Barre did not promptly obtain the rapid support he desperately needed while at war from a big superpower patron. 63 To form a closer relationship with the White House, Said Barre hired one influential American medical doctor, Dr Kevin Cahill, as his personal physician. There were various ways of inducing Americans to get them on the Somali side, but most attempts became unfeasible. All these attempts were occurring at a time the U.S. press, principally those who had a focus on the international scene, were advocating a support for Mengistu in the face of aggression. 64 There was a slim chance that Washington could be convinced to back up a war based on inter and intra-territorial claims. Similar to the Soviets, the Americans were opposed to the Horn conflagration. The U.S. policy makers, cognisant of security interests and echoing other calls from the international community, especially the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), suggested that Siad Barre’s forces return to its border. However, Siad Barre cultivated his own sympathisers within the Oval Office, with the powerful voice lobbying American support for Siad Barre being Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. John Loughan, then U.S. ambassador to Mog- adishu and, beneficially, a Siad Barre sympathiser, was unable to convince the Carter White House to rescue Somalia militarily. In any case, Carter was not as more a cold warrior as his Soviet counterparts. However, Siad Barre accelerated his efforts to scavenge support from the U.S. as there was no any other superpower that could fill the Soviet void. To assure that American arms were never to be used against them, Siad Barre stated to a visiting U.S. diplomat that ‘if you give a Somali a gun, he will go out and shoot an Ethiopian’.65 The ouster on 16 January 1979 of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran, who was a supporter of Somalia, aggravated the efforts to accumulate arms and Siad Barre lost a friend who was committed to facilitating a close relationship with the White House. Shah devised a secret plan fouled by Washington in 1978 to send a number of Iranian and Pakistani forces to counter the balance by holding off Cuban and Yemeni advancements on the Somali border. Even though Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran strove to convince the Americans to support Somalia, the U.S. was primarily reluctant to do so. In November 1977, Siad Barre met in Mogadi- The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 149 shu an eleven-man U.S. congressional delegation, headed by Charles Price, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representa- tives. Upon returning to Washington, Price and his delegation reported to Capitol Hill how Siad Barre and his stalwarts were overoptimistic over the possibility of obtaining arms from the White House. Whether it was accidental or deliberate measure, the U.S. delegation arrived in Mogadishu airport while the Soviet advisers and technical experts were departing to Moscow. 66 In early 1978, senior American authorities led by Richard Moose, deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, visited Siad Barre to discuss possible ways of arming his regime.67 In October 1978, Moose’s successor, William Harrop, saw Siad Barre and promised weapons. In August 1980, the U.S. signed an agreement with Siad Barre to exchange arms for Berbera. The U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, also visited angst-ridden Siad Barre in early 1981 to reassure him that the White House was behind him. After spending a day in Mogadishu, Kissinger, a self-serving man who shaped and suited the American foreign policies with the amplification of his personal image, stated in Cairo that it should be intolerable that ‘the Soviet Union and its proxy forces engage in expansion all over Africa and in the Middle East without opposition’.68 Less than a year, Siad Barre visited Washington for three days from 9 to 11 March of 1982 and, whilst there were no surprises in the visit, 30 million military aid was promised. 69 An unexpected incident occurred in October 1977, when Palestinian hijackers diverted a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu Airport. To get a badly-needed Western backing, Siad Barre sacrificed Somali sovereignty by allowing the West German anti-ter- rorist squad to rescue the jet. On the account of the Lufthansa rescue operation, several Western countries changed their attitude toward Mogadishu and provided arms and other ammunitions. In June 1978, success was reported by Halgan newspaper, the Somali-written mouthpiece for the regime, after Siad Barre toured to Europe in order to garner support in place of the Soviets. 70 The UK became the first Western power to sanction a possible weapons delivery and London became a conduit for the sale, supply and servicing of the military equipment being deployed to Mogadishu. 71 This helped to alleviate the waning conditions of a regime gone near-bankrupt in critical means. Apparently remedying his earlier mistakes, Siad Barre was now shrewd enough not to put all his eggs in one basket and not fix his eyes on the Americans alone. He sought and succeeded to gather light arms from countless countries, both from the East and from the West. He had to look for Egypt, Iraq and Syria to find Soviet-made tanks, other heavy weapons and spare parts to maintain the armoury left behind by Soviet military mechanics. Chinese Deputy Prime Minister, Keng Piao, visiting the Somali capital, pledged and provided weapons. France too donated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. It was a joyful moment for the Siad Barre regime, when Saudi Arabia facilitated a deal between Somalia and the Gulf States in pouring 150 Chapter 6 financial donation for Somalia. When Siad Barre visited Riyadh, while the war was ongoing, he reached a secret pact with Saudi Arabia, a pact in which the Saudi Kingdom stressed the Soviet expulsion from the Red Sea. 72 The support Somalia had given to Eritreans was instrumental in ensuring that the latter’s struggle for independence was on the right track, but at the same it gave Siad Barre a legitimacy to garner economic and military support from the Arab States that sympathised with the Eritrean cause. It was such absolute certainty that Heegan, the English-written mouthpiece for the Siad Barre regime, would thus predict that ‘it is impossible to crush the Eritrean revolution’.73 There was another internal element in the support. By providing support to Eritrean nationalists, the Siad Barre regime, to all appearances, was counting on the fact that the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia would help Somalis in Ethiopia to join Somalia. 74

The Irreversible Losses The war resulted not only in a resounding military defeat for the Siad Barre but in the loss of whatever scanty support the regime had possessed. The imbalance of military hardware after the Soviet expulsion was irredeemable. Where the Somali forces were seasoned in fighting tanks, the Ethiopians were experienced in war aircrafts. Colonel Muhiddiim Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, a war veteran, explained that T-55 denoted by the So- viets had been new to the Ethiopians and this allowed his forces to capture many more tanks with intact.75 Though victory was obviously sought in any military combat, Siad Barre anticipated anything other than a winning outcome. Once realising that defeat was imminent, he sought a scapegoat to delegate his responsibility to someone somewhere. Colonel Mohamed Moha- moud Guuleed, the Commander of the Somali Air Forces, confided to Gener- al Galaal that he received orders from Siad Barre to ensure not to send any aerial enforcement to Dirirdhabe, despite the Somali forces in the town were surrounded.76 As the most senior army officer in charge of this important military front during the initial phase of the war, Galaal was appealing advancements and his forces were suffering from heavy losses inflicted on them by the much superior and sophisticated Ethiopian air forces. Even after the war ended, Mengistu maintained launching airstrikes on Somali towns as far inland as Baydhabo and Berbera.77 Apart from the military mismanagement and unreliability of military supply, the mobilisation of the reinforcements—so necessary for the success of an army in combat—had also contributed to the Somali defeat. Once the absence of reinforcements blocked a smooth retreat of his forces, Siad Barre took two dreadful steps to overcome the problem. He asked clan elders (1) to mobilise new army recruits in the midst of their clan territories and (2) to release those arrested in urban areas for thievery and robbery from prisoners The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 151 to fill in the vacuum. Both critical steps did not offer respite. First, clan militias used their experience in the armed combat to exercise intra- and inter-clan conflicts after the war. Second, the thieves and robbers released from prisons increased the low morale of the army and accelerated the ever- growing lost discipline. Doing more harm than good, the latter group was dubbed by the professional military men as Cali Dabakatoogte (Ali the back shooter) or Cali Maxbuus (Ali the prisoner). Since an army without discipline was not different from a clan militia, the once disciplined Somali army was metamorphosed into a conglomerate of competing clan militias. Never- theless, of all blunders, reverting to clan mobilisation was the most devastating.78 The third identical blunder later pursued was to arm the clans on both sides of the Ethiopian border to act as surrogates of the Somali army. The Siad Barre regime sanctioned military officers to grant weapons to civilians in order for them to protect reprisals from the Mengistu regime, which was also experienced heavy losses from the war. Military officers candidly informed the border clans that most of the Somali regular army was destroyed in the war and there was no way they could expect protection. As Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’ recalled, Siad Barre officially declared that ‘farmer Tadase’, an Ethiopian name symbolising Ethiopian military and ‘camel man Jama’, a Somali name embodying Somali nomadism, could hardly overwhelm each other if they were to be equally armed. 79 As soon as they acquired State weapons, whilst taking advantage of the war exhaustion of both regimes, border clans were quick to set earlier scores. Before the regime policy of arming civilians, most of the weapons were held in army stores and the regime enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly of violence. 80 The distribution of massive weapons to the pastoral nomadic civilians contributed to the militarisation of the masses. While the regime appealed to the public to return the arms in an official decree circulated by the Ministry of Defence, it proved difficult for the regime to disarm civilians again. 81 In spite of the regime’s official order, these weapons were later used two double purposes: to support or fight against the regime. The other contributing factor to the war defeat was the President’s persistence of projecting himself as the chief commander of the whole war operations and sending daily military direction to the warfronts from Avizione, his headquarters. According to the conventional military wisdom, the final decision of the military operations had to be taken on the warfront rather than from the central command. In other words, the war had to be directed on the ground field to assuage preventable losses. Siad Barre, nevertheless, led the war from Mogadishu. For close two months, the Somali forces fought the Cubans and the Soviets, which later defeated them. As one Somali colonel put it, what was destroyed ‘was not an army for Somalia [alone]. Rather it was the army for the whole Somali territories’.82 The war defeat was huge 152 Chapter 6 that General Ahmed Jili’ow Addow and many other military and police generals remarked that one of Siad Barre’s aims to the 1977 war not to reclaim a Somali territory but dismantle the power of the army. 83 This in- sightful and insider observation—often invoked through oral discourses— would have a merit if assessed through the measures of military rivalry and political infighting within the regime. By this time, as Dr Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Siad Barre’s onetime physician recalled, military regime resembled like a train travelling with a dark in the heaviest speed available. 84 Oral and visual testimonies of the former regime political officials and military officers show that the aftermath of the war led the regime to the edge of a climax prone to collapse, while a new era of anarchic chaos began for Somalia. 85 By late January 1978, Somali forces were pushed back to the provincial border by Ethiopian forces accompanied by two well-armed Cuban combat brigades with the Soviet military advisers.86 The hastened military method that the retreatment was conducted revealed the lack of resilience on the part of the Somali army. If they had possessed the most powerful military force in sub-Saharan Africa, as they used to brag themselves, it would not have taken four consecutive months for them to capture Godey, 30km from the border with Ethiopia. On March 8 1978, the Siad Barre regime sent telegrams to the front commanders to return to their barracks in Somalia. This impromptu retreat of ka soo baxaay (O come out) demoralised the military and created public resentment. As Colonel Hoogsade recorded, the army suffered heavier losses in the retreat than it had encountered during the war. 87 Overall, at least one third of the army was destroyed in the war and two thirds of their equipment lost or left in Ethiopia. It is estimated that as much as 80% of the heavy armoury and weaponry were left inside Ethiopia. Not only were much of human capital, manpower and economic resources ruined, but the whole Somali statehood, national identity and unity were wounded. This evidenced by the fact that from mid-1980s onwards, Siad Barre sought ever since to form a closer relationship with the Soviets to restore what was lost. 88 While visiting in the United States, Abdikassim Salaad, echoing the fluctuating foreign policy of the regime, expressed in an American soil his regime’s wish to have ‘normal relations with the USSR’.89 One of the main reasons why the Siad Barre regime suffered such a defeat was not a lack of military manpower or equipment, but ‘jab siyaasadeed’ (political failure).90 The defeat—when assessed from the regime policies— could also be related to political breakdown. Any armed conflicts encompass political and military success or failure. General Abdirahman Warsame Aarre, one of the most senior Somali army officers, has pointed out that ‘war can be won or failed, but it importantly combines politics and army actions’.91 Many Somalis wondered how a military general who failed a war— even though Siad Barre had never been to military academy—could succeed in politics upon a major war like that of the 1977. One of the most senior The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 153

Figure 6.2. members of the regime remarked that, when the President attended in the 1981 funeral of the assassinated Egyptian President, Mohamed Anwar Sadat, some attendees were struck how his regime was still capable of surviving from this disaster.92 To be sure, the aftermath of the war deformed Siad Barre as a leader, placing his regime on the horns of an impasse not just externally, but internally. He was no longer receptive to the fact that, given the consequences of the defeat, he lost most of his power and prestige. This led him to attribute to a perfect example of the Somali saying ‘Awr heeryadiisa cunay’ 154 Chapter 6

(a Camel who ate his back), as cronies and loyalists close to him by clan affiliation were contesting over the spoils of the State. 93 Speaking to an African heads of States summit, Colonel Mengistu referred to an Ethiopian maxim to warn Siad Barre that ‘[t]rying to snatch what belongs to other, one may lose what one already possesses’.94 Bearing in mind the inglorious defeat of his forces by a coalition of Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, Cuba and South Yemen, not to mention Libya’s funding, Siad Barre bitterly responded by urging a mass demonstration in Mogadishu to wait for the moment, when Ethiopia would tear itself apart. Instead, he tore Somali State apart. While Mengistu left Addis Ababa before the armed opposition groups reached to his compound, Siad Barre decided to fight until uprising reached his window.

The Ramification of Political Failure After the 1977 war, Somalia became a sinking boat where Siad Barre bent on holding power through thick and thick.95 The defeat demoralised most of the military rank-and-file and many attributed their plight to the President whom they prayed him ousted. But who was able to unseat him in the middle of anxiety and uncertainty? Realistically, no one, but the confusion created disillusionment. The fact that Siad Barre had made cabinet changes more than ten times after the war was testimony that the consequences could not be easily recovered. This created a further chasm between the regime and those clans who demonstrated opposition to his internal policy of clan favouritism and nepotism from the outset. The initial favouritism the regime allocated for specific clans had alienated some clans, which would lead to factionalism and fragmentation. Crestfallen as never before, the army—as it existed since 1960—was transformed into clan militias and recruitment followed along clan lines. As a consequence of promotions on the basis of clan membership, the morale of the army dwindled and deteriorated. To add insult to the injury, the President accelerated promoting his clan loyalists at the expense of more qualified senior army officers. This preceded the military to undergo a complete restructuring formula from professional army to clan militia. The previous laws of promotion were re-promulgated to pave the way for clan loyalists.96 The only way officers from other clans could be promoted was to prove themselves as ‘real revolutionaries’ or ‘for revolutionary work’, eu- phemisms for other clan officers to serve Siad Barre satisfyingly. 97 Where erstwhile army officers were sent abroad for training, a college named after the President’s name was created to train soldiers loyal to the Presidential Palace.98 The more qualified rank-and-file were left the army, with some travelling to Saudi Arabia as immigrants. As a result, the remaining capable and competent army officers were either demoted or dismissed from the army and the police forces. The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 155

The previous tendency of a group of senior military classmates network- ing each other through grades was replaced with clan coalitions within the army. The connection between clannism and military enlistment was not something confined to Somalia as it was mirrored in other African countries.99 But what made the Siad Barre regime unique was the shift from clan to sub-clan, all the way down to the family level. The impact this had on the army as an institution was devastating on many levels. Mariam Arif Gassim witnessed ‘a captain of one clan was more important and powerful than a general of another’.100 One officer has pointed out that he personally witnessed rapid promotion based on (sub)clan favouritism even before the war, sometime in 1976.101 Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, a former legal expert for the Siad Barre regime, shared a more detailed witness account. On one mid-day, while he was driving a car on the Industrial Road of Mogadi- shu, he gave a ride to a walking man wearing colonel’s insignia and uniform. The colonel was heading to the logistics centre, just few distance away from the new US-built premises of the Defence Ministry. When the colonel got off the car, four young soldiers were standing on guard but they did not salute him. They offered him no way to pass, but he dared to pass through them anyway. ‘From that day on’, stated Addow, ‘I realised that there was no more military and the discipline was lost, no army at all’.102 What followed were militias in army disguise. Given the disappearance of the national army, people began to protect themselves from a regime gone mad. This state of affairs could be captured in the desperate condition painted by a Somali poet and a camel man, who—upon finding himself in a point of no-return— lamented a bit ruefully over the fate of his beast thus:

One of my she-camels falls on the road And I protect its meat, At night I cannot sleep, And in the daytime I can find no shade.103

Foreign Policy Failures The failure of the war was not restricted to political and military aspects, but it affected one of the most crucial façades: the diplomatic front. Mohamed Ali Warsame ‘Kiimiko’, the former Somali Ambassador to the UN under Siad Barre regime, pointed out that there were several stages of failure after failure in foreign policies within which the most fundamental was the ‘hectic’ manner that the regime went to the war. 104 Offering a new insight, Kiimiko related the foreign policy failure to a historical phenomenon—a constant feature in Somali history—down to the medieval ages. This did not, nonetheless, meant that the regime failed in the war because Somalis failed in the past. The regime overlooked to formulate a consistent and comprehen- sible foreign policy towards what its priorities were and how ramifications 156 Chapter 6 before and after the conflict would be mediated by considering the intersecting interests stemming from internal and external constrains. There was no forward foreign policy contemplation compatible to that of Mengistu and his advisors in comparison with of the Siad Barre regime. The internal and external political pressures had blinded Siad Barre to assess the Soviet manoeuvring in the Horn. Coupled with the domestic dissatisfaction, such failures set the stage for confusion among very few countries that stood the Somali side of the fence. The internal power contestation had diverted the regime authorities to decipher threat in case the war resulted in failure. Fur- ther research on the 1977 war songs may show how Siad Barre was so successful in internal mobilisation but failed in external lobbying. 105 The foreign policy failure was such that the regime could not consistently convince the Soviets their political objectives. Pronouncing peace theoretically while contradicting it practically marked the interaction with superpowers. The Defence Minister General Ali Samatar pledged Moscow that they would not instigate armed conflict with Ethiopia. Considered more leftist than anyone else in the army, Ali Samatar condemned the Soviets a year later for selling out Somalia.106 This was the Ali Samatar who had avowed to the Soviets in October 1976 (and again in mid-1977) that his regime would never use force to resolve ‘the Horn issues’—which is to say, the territorial dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia.107 Accompanied him in this visit were Ah- med Mohamoud Farah, Abdirahman Aideed Ahmed, Omar Salaad Elmi, Omar Haji Masalle, Osman Saalah Abdikariin and Ali Haji Haashi, the latter being then Siad Barre ambassador to Moscow. A cursory review of the entourage shows that all members—except Ahmed Mohamoud Farah and Omar Salaad Elmi—represented one single clan-group. This was a clear illustration of internal conflict as some were more represented than other in major decision-making settings. When selected over who should be trusted, Siad Barre was no hesitant. Only his family first, sub-clan second and clan third had the upper hand. On one crucial incident, while concurring with the opinions on Ethiopia expressed by his son-in-law Dafle, Siad Barre described the assessment of the situation given by Jama Rabiile Good, his Health Minister, as ‘personal views’ and suggested that Rabiile was ‘provoked by the Sudanese’.108 The foreign policy inconsistences in dealing with superpowers would persist until the end of the regime. As the former U.S. ambassador to Somalia (from 1984 until 1986), Peter Bridges, recounted in his political memoir, he was once called in Abdirahman Jama Barre, the Foreign Minister and Siad Barre’s half-brother, after a news bulletin had been aired on Radio Mogadi- shu on how the regime would be working with Libya (at war with the U.S. at the time) on the problems posed by ‘imperialism’. When Peter Bridges asked him whether the reference was intended to the U.S., Abdirahman Jama was quick to refer the term to Ethiopia as an imperialist State. Subsequently, the The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 157

U.S. Ambassador went to see Siad Barre, who said that the reference was meant to the Soviets.109 The diplomatic approach of the regime authorities to the outside world was eclipsed by myopic thinking, which resulted more often than not in political and diplomatic ramifications. As far back as the beginning of the war, even though they knew that the Americans knew they were there, Siad Barre and his representatives refused to concede to their Western counterparts that the Somali regular forces were on the other side of the border inside Ethiopia.110 They lost a rare opportunity wherein they might have achieved a give-and-take bargain of a political pot if they proposed some sort of deal while the Somali forces were inside Ethiopia. More disconcerting were the conflicting statements given to the world media by Siad Barre himself and his half-brother. Whereas the President declared— even if his intentions were to the contrary—that he was prepared for peaceful settlements to the conflict with Mengistu, Abdirahman Jama would insist that there was no peace as long as Ethiopia ‘colonises’ Somalis in their own soil. By describing Ethiopia ‘a colonialist empire’, Abdirahman Jama put the regime in an untenable political and diplomatic cavity. Abdikassim Salaad, then Information Minister, also held that Ethiopia was a colonial power. 111 Following this line, the official regime publications also insisted that the ‘Ethiopian subject’ was a colonial issue.112 It was intolerable—even igno- miny—for many African States to swallow the notion that Africans too had their own colonialists, given a time close to the colonial departure, when the memory of victimhood was unremittingly reverberated in Africa.

The Aborted 1978 Coup During the war, Siad Barre trusted solely officers from his ancestral clan- group of the Daarood, especially the Majeerteen, who—benefitting from this clanship connection—played a leading role on the war fronts, though the bulk of the Somali army belonged to other various clans and communities. More importantly, he selected Colonel Mohamed Sheikh Osman ‘Irro’ as the commander of the Hararghe warfront—the most import of all fronts—while a more qualified senior officers from non-Daarood clans had been put under his authority. Irro, a Majeerteen/Omar Mohamoud, was swiftly promoted in the mid-1970s because his mother was a Mareehaan and the President perceived such a connection would compel this Arab-trained military officer to keep loyalty acquired from a uterine affinity. The reality was to the contrary as Irro had his own ambitions to seize the State. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, Irro’s clansman and close collaborator, was also assigned to the whole southern warfront. Their fear equally stemmed from clan calculation. If the Ogaa- deen were to be pulled out from the Ethiopian rule and then incorporated into Somalia, their prediction was that their clan would lose sooner or later their predominance within the Daarood clan-group in Somalia. 158 Chapter 6

Enjoying Ethiopian assistance in matters of intelligence, Colonel Irro and some other Majeerteen army officers, backed by few officers from other clans, attempted to overthrow Siad Barre in a mini-coup soon after the war defeat. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf confided to a colleague colonel that he and Irro were responsible for making the Somali army unmovable from Septem- ber 1977 until January 1978 in order to give the Ethiopian army a chance to adapt and adjust themselves with the newly-acquired Soviet weapons. 113 Colonel Irro was particularly observed collaborating with Ethiopia and providing intelligence information at the midst of the war. Ambassador Dualeh, who was called on from Kenya to join the war as full army colonel, remembered that ‘the Majeerteen officers decided to sabotage the war effort’ to enhance their coup chances. 114 Yusuf himself admitted this contention as he confessed to the Universal Somali Television that they wanted to overthrow the regime by taking advantage of the defeat suffered from the war. 115 As Colonel Muhiddiin Badar recalled, Irro and Yusuf had ‘a separate plan’ they set together and this plan was to oust the regime for themselves through clan politicking.116 However, Irro and Yusuf was calculative and strategic; they strove to see the army defeated so as to put Siad Barre in a perilous position to be toppled. Former senior military officers mentioned that Siad Barre visited Yusuf in a Somali-Ethiopian border town shortly after the war. 117 Yusuf did nothing, because he reasoned that, if he killed or captured, the Hawiye politicians in the capital would seize the State in his absence. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf and other Majeerteen officers began the preparations of staging a coup to (re)seize the State from the Mareehaan military ruler in 1976, well before the war.118 Prior to commencing their move, Colo- nel Irro paved the way for ‘clearing campaign’ on certain elements in the army whom he perceived as potential dangers. In March 1978, Irro court- martialled through makeshift military court eight senior military officers in Hargeysa and hence supervised their execution.119 The executed were accused of sabotaging the army, but the truth was a cover-up for the attempted coup. Irro had suggested to the executed to contribute to his coup preparations and, when they refused to be part of his plots, he took them to the military court of which he presided. The execution was to avert any leak out of the coup. One informant who witnessed these executions was at pains to point out that, when Irro was inquired about why the executed was executed, he falsely reported to senior authorities that they had found guilty of surren- dering their weapons to Ethiopian forces.120 The military could not recover from these purges. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf denied and did his best to exonerate the responsibility of these executions from Colonel Irro by delegating it to Siad Barre and his loyalists. To augment his point, he provided an account from a different context. According to Yusuf, Siad Barre sent him a military mission led by ‘a senior figure of the regime’ while his forces retreated to the Somali The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 159 border around Doolow, southern Somalia.121 The mission suggested to Yusuf to collect a number of soldiers for execution in order to instil fear in the furious officers that might try to topple the regime by way of mutiny. Yusuf claimed that he refused to fulfil this order and attributed his rejection for moral grounds. No one could confirm Yusuf’s claims. However, it was true that executions occurred several warfronts, but the most appalling one—still recalled by many Somali officers—were those conducted by Irro. Further executions occurred in Jigjiga, when close to a hundred soldiers and their officers were massacred by a death squad court-martialled by Colonel Osman Maye Mo’allim, the Head of the Military Court, under the supervision of Generals Ali Samatar, Mohamoud Geelle and Yusuf Ahmed Salhaan. 122 Ac- cording to Omar Salaad, then Governor of the Northwest region, Ali Samatar rationalised this type of massacre with a reference to the French autocrat Napoleon Bonaparte who—upon a war defeat—ordered that every ten soldiers, one must be executed.123 This is how one a former minister in the regime recounted what happened in Jigjiga:

The soldiers and officials numbering more than 100 were executed at valley of small mount at south of the Jigjiga town (opposite of Karamardha). The order was agreed by Colonel Irro, Colonel Osman Maye, Colonel Abdirizak Mo- hamed Abubakar and General Mohamed Ali Samatar. I believe Colonel Abdu- laziz Sheikh Abdisalam (a Mareehaan) was the commander of the execution platoon. The soldiers were accused of desertion of their fighting posts. Many soldiers have deserted the front because their commanders have mismanaged the war for their political ambition. Colonel Irro and his clan preferred failure and chaos in the persecution of the Ogaden war and they were busy preparing a coup to take over the power which was executed but failed after the disastrous Ogaden war defeat. Abdirizak Mohamed Abubakar, member of the SRC [Siad Barre’s junta], was the Coordinator (Kormeeraha) of the Jigjiga front. Colonel Irro was commander of the forces fighting at the front. Most of the commanders were Daarood.124

On 9 April 1978, Colonel Irro and his followers—cognisant of the outrage created by those army massacres—carried out their coup. Mogadishu witnessed a 20-hour of heavy warfare involving tanks and artillery between two groups: those defending the regime for clan reasons and those trying to topple it with the similar way. Upon capturing Radio Mogadishu, the Irro group played romantic songs rather than propagating insurrectionary message and calling people for support in attempts to overthrow the regime. Given that Mogadishu inhabitants were mostly Hawiye, Irro calculated like Abdullahi Yusuf that, if these inhabitants came out, they might seize the State before they reached the Presidential Palace. When faced to choosing between the Majeerteen and the Mareehaan, most Hawiye masses would prefer the latter than the former. The devious means Irro had used to realise 160 Chapter 6 the coup became counterproductive. For instance, early in the morning of 9 April, he went to several brigades around Mogadishu and misleadingly reported that armed conflict had erupted among Siad Barre’s five council politburo, reporting that General Dafle was wounded, Hussein Kulmiye killed and the rest—Siad Barre, Ali Samatar and Ismail Ali Obokor—were unknown whether dead or wounded. ‘Comrades’, he concluded, ‘should not we feel obligated to add our contribution to salvaging the statehood?’.125 Assisted by Lt Said Abdulle Gorod, a Hawiye/Habar Gidir/Sa’ad, who shared with him maternal affiliation, Colonel Irro was so successful to attract many unsus- pecting officers and soldiers. Animated by what they heard, many emotional junior officers took their arms and pledged their loyalty to him. Once the coup operation began, chaos and lack of command had to pre- vail in the group. The preparation was poor, coordination chaos. Colonel Irro could not control those he had mobilised through deceit and his plans would prove futile. The military officer he sent to take over the most important brigade in Mogadishu, the tank brigade, surrendered himself to Siad Barre loyalists while his soldiers did the same brigade. As the fighting over Moga- dishu escalated, the regime was forcefully defended by Mareehaan residents in the capital, as men and women of the clan came out to shield their ‘government’ from the aggression of a rival clan trying to rob them from power.126 The Mareehaan as a clan became stronger in the security institutions in the aftermath of the aborted coup. Those who came out to defend the regime included civilians, such as civil servants, secondary school students as well as women and children. The failure of the coup strengthened Siad Barre’s life-long decision to sustain a long-lasting power base for himself, his family and his (sub)clan. After this time the President surrounded himself with a small coterie of his close sub-clan men, while using others in his clan and non-clan as auxiliaries. He also used General Morgan, another Majeer- teen and son-in-law, to abort the plot to oust him. Professor Omar Addow observed that there were ‘many people’ in the army trying to overthrow the regime, but Colonel Irro and his clansmen stole the idea.127 Drawing from a military perspective, Colonel Muhiddiin Badar underlined that it was difficult to stage a coup at a critical juncture in the face of the war defeat.128 The coup attempt was thus ‘unrealistic’ and ‘disorganised’, more or less like ‘emotional exercise’, as General Elmi Sahal stressed. This point was illustrated by the first coup operation which targeted the military compounds around Mogadishu rather than the Presidential Palace. 129 Colonel Ali Hussein Ali ‘Aliyow’ witnessed that the coup instigators succeeded to capture several important regime loyalists, including Abdisalaam Sheikh Hussein (a long-time Minister), General Ahmed Sahal Ali ‘Iriiri’ and General Omar Haji Masalle.130 As Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf noted, Colonel Irro and his men were near to capture General Ali Samatar who he said ‘fled on his foot’.131 Siad Barre himself was taken to tank and stayed in a bunker. The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 161

Almost 22 people were killed, 40 wounded during the armed power struggle, though Siad Barre later put the number of death at 20 and those wounded at 34.132 The co-collaborators held that the coup attempt would not have ended in failure, if Irro and Abdullahi Yusuf had not deceived each other. As their collaborator Major Omar Ahmed Gaas (then lieutenant) recalled, the Majeer- teen officers fleeced and failed each other. 133 Since the clandestine covenant was to stage the coup on 12 April, the annual date of commemoration for the Armed Forces, Irro advanced his own unilateral plan on 9 April. 134 Opting for the pie of the top State position, Irro also misled his clansmen. However, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf stated that the coup had to be carried out beforehand due to ‘leakage of information’.135 Irro not only betrayed his clansmen, he also left the collaborators from other clans out of nowhere. Only a night before the coup attempt, he prepared himself for escape if the mission was to prove unaccomplished by preparing for himself a Land Rover full of fuel.136 Picking up who he wanted from the Hawiye, while the only Isaaq member was hijacked at a gunpoint, Irro involved his coup as much his clan senior officers as possible. According to one well-informed collaborator, he had also linked to Generals Abdullahi Mohamed Hassan ‘Matukade’, the Commissioner of the Police and Mohamoud Geelle, the Head of National Security Court, both from the Majeerteen. Major Gaas insisted that both Matukade and Geelle were helpful in the coup coordination and were providing crucial advices from behind the scene. 137 This explains the fact that the coup was a one-clan project planned for and by Majeerteen officers, as pointed out by Colonel Mohamed Hussein Loolow, who was later arrested for complicity, and as observed by Colonel Muhiddiin Badar. 138 One other influential collaborator of the coup concurred with this conclusion; Major Gaas explained that the outcome of the coup evidenced that the mission was not a ‘Somali coup’, but rather a ‘Majeerteen coup’.139 Rather than fostering common clan solidarity, the one-sided unilateral measures and manoeuvres further weakened the relations between the clans to which other officers in the coup belonged. When the coup aborted, as Major Gaas recalled, the instigators fled to two directions: some to the Northwest Mogadishu, the other the Southwest. 140 A Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan officer fleeing to Baydhabo was accompanied by a Habar Gidir/Eyr. As the later became tired, he begged for his fellow to carry him, but left him alone, after which the exhausted officer fell down. He was subsequently captured and killed by Siad Barre’s forces. In a similar incident, another Habar Gidir/Saleebaan travelled with a Majeerteen/ Mohamoud Saleebaan officer (a nephew of Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf). As the latter felt exhausted, he was uplifted and carried by his colleague, until both of them were detained.141 After the coup failed, these paradoxical experiences led some Hawiye officers to reach Siad Barre and pledge that they would never implicate in another attempted coup by Majeerteen officers. 162 Chapter 6

With another astounding twist, General Mohamoud Geelle, one of the behind the scene advisers of the coup, came to act as the chief judge that sentenced Colonel Irro and others to a death sentence. The regime had already decided on what to do about the coup instigators. In one instance, while at a court hearing, General Dafle intervened and ordered Colonel Mohamoud Aseyr, a senior military officer and a Hawiye/Abgaal/Wa’aysle, acting as their lawyer, to vacate from the courtroom. What made Dafle so furious was that Aseyr had insisted that no evidence could be brought against those captured without in action at hand.142 For example, Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye was arrested from his house without a prior knowledge of the coup, but was accused of having a lunch with one of the top instigators of the coup a night before the coup attempt. Kediye was arrested and released twice, once in the CID, the other in the Avizione, until he found a Mareehaan guarantor who convinced Siad Barre that Kediye would not have posed a threat to the regime. As the official regime bulletin reveals, he was appointed a judge in the military court afterwards.143 Following the detention of most senior members of the coup, Siad Barre stalwarts managed to secure the capital on their grip. Before Colonel Irro and almost all of his collaborators were captured, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf and several Majeerteen officers had defected to Kenya. Yusuf claimed to have received a telegram containing a coded message ‘your wife was aborted’, which meant the coup attempt had failed. Yusuf was later cited by a Kenyan radio as saying that the coup was precipitated by the grievance that Siad Barre had sent troops who were not members of his clan to die in the warfront, while he kept his clansmen around Mogadishu ‘to protect him’.144 Countering Yusuf’s claims, Radio Mogadishu broadcasted a scathing commentary that described Yusuf ‘a subordinate officer’. The Radio ended its diatribe with a curious statement: ‘Now the question is: What will that man [Yusuf] say when the culprits, led by Mahmud Shaykh Osman (Irro) [sic], who was the mastermind of the affair, are brought to court’.145 Siad Barre himself went triumphantly to Radio Mogadishu to give his reflections on the attempted coup. The language he employed—apparently borrowed from colonial dictionary—to put the blame on Irro was more emotive than the one used by Mogadishu Radio, such as ‘a lackey unit’ serving ‘foreign interests’. In a speech broadcasted on the Radio, he labelled Irro and others ‘irresponsible elements serving colonialist interests’.146 With an excited mood, the President predicted that they would be dealt with ‘according to the law after their guilt [was] established’. It was obvious that he had indicted before the court and, as such, reserved for a severe punishment for those who had attempted to topple him with a violent fashion. ‘Comrades’, Siad Barre ensured, ‘I shall respect a Somali individual as long as he deserves respect, but if he turns away from the correct path, then that is not my business’.147 This sort of revengeful tongue meant that the totalitarian structure of the State was The Politics of the 1977 War and Its Ramifications 163 prepared to reward loyalists and punish dissents with the most brutal violence. Negotiations began between clan representatives of the Majeerteen and the Mareehaan over the fate of Colonel Irro. In one of those meetings between the two clans, Siad Barre promised Majeerteen elders that he was not to execute Irro and other co-coup collaborators, a promise that would be unfulfilled. When they found out that execution was imminent, a hordes of Majeerteen militias took Mareehaan civilians as a hostage at their territory in a bid ‘to safeguard the lives of their clansmen arraigned for treason’, as Africa Confidential put it.148 This action was an extreme attempt on the part of the Majeerteen militias to revert to the pre-colonial pastoral nomadic culture of redeeming loses by hijacking anyone from the aggressor’s clan. As was predicted, Irro’s execution triggered a war between the Mareehaan and the Majeerteen clansmen living in the areas around the border with Ethiopia. Parallel negotiations were also carried out between the Habar Gidir and the Mareehaan over the future of Said Abdulle Gorod and over the wrong detention of General Abukar Mohamed Liban ‘Aftooje’ and Colonel Ali Haji Jaabiri, both detained during the coup with suspicion over coup involvement.149 These clan negotiations had exposed the unrepresentative face of the regime in clan wise. Six months later, Irro and others—17 men in total, all but one civilian, who were condemned for the coup attempt—were sentenced to death on 26 October 1978. With the exception of the two Hawiye/Habar Gidir (Sa’ad and Saleebaan) officers, one Hawiye/Hawaadle, one Hawiye/ Murusade and one Isaaq, the remaining 12 were of the Majeerteen clan. 150 Siad Barre did not differentiate who planned the coup from who was oblivious. Two of those officers executed—the Hawaadle and the Isaaq—were not implicated in the coup but had been hijacked by Irro. The fact that they were captured by Siad Barre supporters while fighting was deemed sufficient to sentence them to death. There were another group comprising 46 in number who were sentenced to 30 years in prison, while their property was to be confiscated.151 With his luck, Major Gaas survived to be executed after telling the military court that he had never been part of the coup plot, but was engaged in defending the kacaanka (the revolution) from reactionary elements.152 Others were not as lucky as him.

The Calamity of the State: The Terror

My own assessment is that the role of the writer is not a rigid position and depends to some extent on the state of health of his or her society. In other words, if a society is ill the writer has a responsibility to point it out. If the society is healthier, the writer’s job is different. —Chinua Achebe1

Chapter Seven

The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource

CLAN POLITICS AND PARTICULARISTIC POSITIONS

Burning or Promoting Clan(ism)? Whilst some members of the military junta aimed to impose a pan-Somali regime and started off as such from the beginning, Siad Barre turned to his clan-group, sub-clan, sub-subclan, until finally succumbing to all the way down to his family members. In early years, similar to the Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, the President pretended himself as someone sidestepping clanism and clan identity in the face of clan pressures. 1 But he served the clan whenever it fostered and facilitated his strategies of consolidating and keeping power. So were Islam and Somaliness—that is, the notion of pan- Somali solidarity. If politics was clanised and the State criminalised, the clan was politicised. The reassertion of authority through clan politics led to the destruction of ‘national unity’ and ‘rule of law’ and paved the way for social injustice.2 The threat Siad Barre confronted with other clans underrepresent- ed or repressed in his regime and those who had defied to his totalitarian State intrusion was so tense that he would proclaim the prohibition of anything pertaining to clan in the early 1970s. The agency and cogency attributed to it were such that any mention of clan was made punishable by law, but no so often when the mention had invoked certain clan superiority by way of eulogising the ruling clan-group. Any Somali who was caught identifying himself with clan identity and clan terms was to be severely punished. Without considering the social salience of the clan system, the mag-paying (or diya) system through which clans negotiated blood money for homicide was outlawed.

167 168 Chapter 7

Rather than treating clan as a private matter, it was taken to the public through a symbolic conception of division and dissolution posing a threat to the national statehood. In November 1971, clan effigy was buried with pomp in a well-attended ceremony in Stadium Banaadir (Konis) attended by the President, his cabinet and the majority of the military junta. The campaign of anti-clan(ism) was first invented and initiated by the SYL (at the time it was the most active nationalist political party), but Siad Barre banned and buried with some vigour and force the invocation of clan identity by drawing upon (without acknowledgement) that earlier nationalistic policy of anti-clannism. If the event of burying ‘tribalism’ was really aimed at reducing the power of clannism as illustrated in everyday interactions, the regime failed to develop alternative institutions designed to crosscut clan conundrums, even if clan was not so destructive at this time as was painted. In essence, the burial did not lessen the existing clan allegiances and alliances not just the public, but within the military junta. In the widely-attended event, the President attacked the clan system theoretically, but was not able to extricate himself from its practice. This contradiction revealed that what was basically buried was uttering clan names, not clannism per se. While declaring to move from clan citation to no alternative replacement of nationhood, Siad Barre himself practically practiced the clan in a State level. Under his rule, his clansmen took more of an active role in politics. It was surprising that Siad Barre, who— since ascending to power—declared that he would put an end to clan, was relying on his clansmen and sub-clansmen to consolidate and cling onto power. The burial of the clan effigy was not translated into the everyday engagements with regime officials as evidenced by the following accounts. Soon after the burial event, Omar Salaad Elmi, a former senior regime official, had a meeting with Siad Barre during which the President asked him about his clan identity. Salaad escaped the answer to the question by reverberating the clan burial.3 This was a subtle way of addressing Siad Barre to complain about Siad Barre. The inclination to inquire strangers about their clan identities was a norm in mostly pastoral nomadic Somali society, but when it was simmered in the State institutions it led to nepotism for close clansmen and prejudices against the other clans, especially those perceived to be hostile to the regime. If the clan was internally sustained, it was similarly maintained externally. Soon after the announcement of the clan burial, as Engineer Ab- dulkadir Mohamed Abdi ‘Mashanleyste’ witnessed, a Somali student who was pursuing university studies died in Italy in 1971. 4 The Somali Student Association in Italy asked the Somali embassy in Rome to take the body to Somalia by using student’s maintenance. The response from the embassy— its Ambassador was Mohamed Said Samatar ‘Ga’aliye’, a close clansman of Siad Barre—was that, since the deceased did not belong to ‘a major clan’, he would not be taken home for burial. The association reacted to close down The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 169 the whole embassy by blocking the entrance routs. Moved by the obstruction, the regime sent a senior member of the junta, Farah Wa’ays Dhuule ‘Faras’, who—upon assessing the matter—concluded that the student be buried in Rome. This tale is an interesting illustration on how the anti-clan rhetoric was not translated into practice.

Clan Favouritism and Manipulation Ordering the burial of clan names corresponded to the Somali proverb that professes ‘buur ahow ama ku tiirsanow’ (either be a mountain or lean on one). Belonged to a clan unable to claim ‘a commanding presence’ in the Somali political continuum and post-colonial State façade, the President was bent on repressing clanship ‘as a basis for advancement’ in the first few years of his rule.5 Siad Barre was so successful to monopolise the use of clan, which served his strategy to suppress the opposition. It became de rigueur for the regime to label its dissidents as clannists to justify violence. If clan as a pronunciation was verbally arrested, it was not as a practical application. Colonel Omar Saleebaan, a former NSS senior officer, remembered that the clan promotion was a policy adopted in the regime bureaucracy right from the beginning.6 The clan burial was a shrewd move to silence other Somali clans not to complain about the ongoing process of the clanisation of the State apparatus in favour of his (sub)clan. Ambassador Hussein Ali Dualeh ‘Awil’ called it a ‘clever ploy’.7 By outlawing clan terms, the President denied other clans to expose his strategy of clan nepotism, while indulging his adherents a freewheeling hand to exploit the opportunity presented by the regime. The more he continued clan favouritism, the more he generated animosity from other clan members. The poet Ibrahim Sheikh Saleebaan ‘Gadhle’ seizes this opportunity to quarrel with Siad Barre over the issue of clan nepotism.

For a State equitable to everyone The one who made it clanistic And embraced some of his closest While excluding the other distant You are undressed, considering The value of [good] governance With which you took nothing To acquit yourself in a graveyard.8

Throughout Siad Barre’s rule, there was no single cabinet, committee or council that the Daarood in general—and the Mareehaan in particular—did not obtain a lion’s share. In the most accommodating cabinet, 10 Daarood ministers, 4 Hawiye and 4 Isaaq were appointed. 9 In another instance, Siad Barre included four Mareehaan ministers in a cabinet consisting of 27, men 170 Chapter 7 such as Ga’aliye, Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Abdirahman Jama Barre and Shire Suudi Mohamoud (the later as vice minister).10 The clan favouritism was further escalated, when the cabinet was included by close clan members, such as Yusuf Ali Nuur, Abdulkadir Haji Masalle, Omar Haji Masalle, Mo- hamed Mohamoud Warsame ‘Jaango’an’, Abdullahi Mohamed Siad Barre, Abdullahi Mohamed Maah, Mohamed Haashi Gaani, Mohamed Haashi Egaal, Nuuro Shire Abdulle, Mahad Dirir Guuleed and Abdi Khaliif Shire. In his first appointments after the appointment of the junta members and the cabinet, Siad Barre appointed Ga’aliye, his close clansman from the same hometown Shiilaabo, as an ambassador to Italy on 11 November 1969. After the 1977 war, the Mareehaanisation took a surprising turn and the cabinet had come to accommodate 10 Mareehaan ministers and vice ministers. 11 Promotions and political positions was part of Siad Barre’s surreptitious strategies of clan favouritism. Who ruled what, whom from when, where and why often hinged upon his policies. As such, it was natural that some became State beneficiaries, if not parasites. From the outside, it was conceived that other clans were accommodated within the regime, even if there was no proportional representation or clan balance. But from inside, it was clear that the cabinet concentrated power in the hands of the President’s clan members who then chose their favourites from other clans. Nowhere was clan favouritism more obvious than in the army. The number of Mareehaan officers serving the army rose to 90% after October 1969. A closer examination of the army generals reveals that, when he came to power, Siad Barre was the only single general belonging to the Mareehaan clan. In retrospect, the only other senior army officer in the army hailing from Mareehaan was Ali Mataan Haashi, a lieutenant colonel in 1969, who was promoted to brigadier general in the mid-1970s. By the end of 1990, the clan boasted having no less than 17 army generals. 12 Out of nine senior police officers promoted in 1972, during the early years of the regime, seven were from his clan group.13 These promotions supplemented the process of the Mareehaanisation of the State, making the regime as the sole benefactor of Siad Barre’s immediate clan. General Falco observed that this process of excessive clanisation began with the arrest of General Salaad Gabeyre Kediye in 1971.14 Thereafter, with the constitution of clan alchemy, Siad Barre maintained and made his clan the only important single clan in Somalia.15 The policies of clan favouritism of the military regime had taken extreme route after 1977 war. In the early 1980s, it came to the attention of Western diplomatic corps and intelligence groups that the President had increasingly patronised and promoted his clan to the detriment of other clans. 16 This extreme clanisation was exploited by the Ethiopian mission at the UN, who—in front of Siad Barre’s half-brother Abdirahman Jama Barre—told the General Assembly that Somalia was under the dictatorship of ‘the fascist Merehan [sic] clan’.17 The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 171

However, this was not the first time Siad Barre (ab)used his position to promote the interests of his clan. Colonel Hassan Mohamed Sabriye ‘Gaa- muur’, the former chief of staff in the office of the Commandant of the Army in the first post-colonial administration, recounted that Siad Barre instructed him in 1964 to include three junior officers of his clan in a list of 38 officers suggested for promotion by General Da’ud Abdulle Hersi.18 After informing Da’ud about Siad Barre’s demands, Gaamuur was given strict instruction to proceed with the initial task. This manifests that clan favouritism was a characteristic of the President’s earlier engagements, but it does now reveal what he wanted to achieve with such clan promotion. Another account also offers coding clan identities from intelligence gathering. Few months after being appointed the Commandant of the Army in 1965, Siad Barre ordered General Mohamed Hussein Da’ud (Hiirane), a young Daarood military officer handling the military personal records, to submit him the clan names of every officer in the army. When the officer replied that such information did not exist in the files, he was suggested to search. Soon after he hesitated, Hiirane claimed that Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, later a Majeerteen clan commander, who returned from a couple of years training in the Soviet Union, replaced him to take the task and came up with a list of the clans to which all the army officers hailed. 19 This information was vital for Siad Barre to proceed with his coup plans in differentiating who from whom could be trusted by clan affiliation.

The Formation of Clan Regions Adopted both rural and urban, the adoption of clanisation enabled Siad Barre to restructure the State system through what could be linked to the discursive concepts of ‘nomenklatura’ and ‘clanklatura’. By nomenklatura meant ‘appointing loyal political agents to guide and control civil and military institutions’. This policy of protecting the rule by the President’s close clansmen and confidantes was introduced into Somalia by the Soviets. On the other hand, clanklatura referred to ‘placing trusted clansmen and other loyalists in positions of power, wealth, and cultural/espionage’.20 Power was to be restructured to expanding the internal organs of the political system and reaching out regions in order to maintain the regime. New regions were created to keep clan alliances. The expansion of regions were not based on the conventional form of regional formation, which are (1) population, (2) regional or (3) socio-economic necessities. From the observation of Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, a former District Commissioner under the regime, there was no specific criteria over which a region or a district had to pass to consider as a region or a district.21 Drawing from firsthand experiences, Abdi Dheere put forward two main objectives that dictated the formation of new regions. First was altering the form and the face of existing pre-regime regions in order for 172 Chapter 7 the regime authorities to claim the ownership of new progress for the country. Second was pleasing ‘places’ that the regime had ‘political interest’ or ‘clan interest’.22 The latter objective, the most important one, promised a ‘supplementary’ reward for those who supported the regime and alienated those who opposed to it. The clanisation of regional formation resulted in a widespread injustice to the extent that a territory worthy of becoming region had to remain a district and a district worthy of district had to remain a region. In this way, new regions were formed to accommodate supporters even if they lived in outside the Somali State perimeters and borders. Since Siad Barre failed to conquer the Somali-inhabited territory in Ethiopia, he chose to settle the Ogaadeen into the Hawiye and the Isaaq territories. The Ogaadeen refugees from Ethi- opia were relocated to Hargeysa and surrounding areas, as well as Hiiraan, Middle and Lower Shabelle regions. Not only Hargeysa in the North, but also Beledweyne and Jalalaqsi, were built makeshift homes for the refugees. While the only other region shipped to the refugees was Gedo, it did not suffer from the pressures of the massive numbers of refugees in the North- west and Hiiraan regions. Included within these refugees were considerable number of Oromo refugees who were coerced to claim lesser Daarood clans, notably the Abasguul, the Bartire and the Geri. 23 The witness account of an insider offers a unique insight into how Siad Barre planned to displace whole clans and implant new ones. This is the testimony of Abdullahi Boqor Muuse ‘King Kong’, who was later nominated by Siad Barre to replace his father, the traditional clan chief of the Majeerteen clan:

In 1983, Siyaad called the Harti elders together at Villa Somalia in Mogadishu and told them about a plan for the Daarood to control the country. ‘If we put half a million Ogaadeen in Beledweyne[,] the Hawaadle will be a minority’, he told them. It was his plan to move the Ogaadeen into all the strategic areas. The Warsangeli and D[h]ulbahante agreed to go along with Siyaad, but my father refused.24

However, this was not the first and last time Siad Barre called for fellow clansmen to bolster the clan-based policies of divide-and-rule. The invocation of clan in politics and emotional attachment of clanship ties in promoting clan interests were normalised. As a former minister, Ibrahim Meygaag Samatar recounted that, when meeting with clan chiefs, Siad Barre would take the role of the clan chief, basically capable of playing any role he wanted to play.25 To stifle the rumour that the Ogaadeen had no visible presence in the Republic, two regions were created to form their dominance. Another region with six districts was created for the Mareehaan in which the Ajuuraan, the original inhabitants of the territory, was displaced. To break the Hawiye dominance of the Banaadir, a Lower Shabelle region, southwest of Mogadishu, was formed. The Iise Mohamoud of the Majeerteen was solic- The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 173 ited their support in the campaigns against the Omar Mohamoud and thus was granted a new region called Nugaal. The Gadabiirsi of the Dir, allied with the Mareehaan, was also granted a new region called Awdal, an ancient medieval name. Omar Salaad, the former Governor of the Northwest region, stressed that Siad Barre had established the new regions to reward his supporters.26 Regions entirely unpopulated by the Daarood, such as Awdal, Northwest, Hiiraan, Bay, Bakool, Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle had to be restructured to massively populate for the Ogaadeen refugees and other associated clans from Ethiopia. The declaration of 18 regions—out of (original) eight regions—hardened conflict between clans and opened a Pandora’s Box in destabilising the State. As one observer pointed out, the formation of the new regions profoundly exacerbated the existing imbalances of clan power since the regime. 27 Oblit- erating one clan, while implanting another, was the main reason that preceded three types of armed conflict: a civil war, a clan war and a clanised war, both of which to be discussed later. Because most clans had not equally benefitted from the establishment of the new regions, not to mention the developments in education and health, it was predicted that their grievances would lead to conflict.28 Clan regions formed on the basis of clan allegiance by the regime still stands as an unsettled conundrum haunting attempts to reconstitute the Somali State. When asked the ramifications of creating regions along clan lines and how it is necessary to undo it, one informant compared such an exercise as to bringing a born child back to the womb of his mother.29 This meant that the creation of 18 regions was a matter that no post-Siad Barre regime could be reversed, since the clans for whom the new regions were allocated could hardly accept any attempt of restructuring their gains. Table 7.1 illustrates the original and the new regions. The strategy of regional clanisation and classification of clans coincided with a brutal expropriation of land in the inter-riverine southern regions as early as 1973.30 Land appropriation, similar to the regional formation, was a

Table 7.1. The Clan Distribution of the Regions

Clan-Groups Original 8 Regions 18 New Regions The Outcome Hawiye 2 3 +1 Isaaq 2 2 =2 Daarood 2 9 +7 Digil/Mirifle 2 2 =2 Dir Nil 1 +1 Other communities Nil 1 +1 Total in numbers 8 18 10 174 Chapter 7 political resource for rewarding fellow clansmen in order to sustain clan support. The Law no. 75 of 21 October 1975 on the agricultural land was specifically promulgated to allow regime authorities to distribute farming plantations through themselves.31 The law was formulated such that State beneficiaries were given unequalled advantages, while those far away from the inner circle were subjected to a massive appropriation of their farming land. Engineer Yarow Shariif Aden, a Bantu/Jareer community leader, and Engineer Saalah Sheikh Osman, a Digil/Mirifle community leader, remembered with a bit of bitterness that, in the name of the State, their agricultural land in the inter-riverine areas in Jubba was appropriated by clan cronies close to Siad Barre.32 To add more harm to the injury, there was a forced farming without salary under the term of a ‘revolutionary’ work, something that former regime authorities still carefully avoid to mention. However, the available documentations of the regime provide evidence. An official law decreed had legalised that ‘some prisoners’ be authorised to forcefully farm the farming land. 33 Issued by Ahmed Shire Mohamoud, the Minister for Religious and Justice Affairs, the law came into force in May 1979, but it does mean that the practice was new and not ongoing before. The Law no. 7 of 30 December 1971 for prisoners was also legalised that prisoners shall ‘be required to work within and without the precincts of any prison in any part of the Republic and in any employment assigned by the Com- manding Officer’.34 The law also mentioned that prisoners forcefully employed in farms and other regime places included females and juveniles. The Law no. 49 of 9 August 1984 also for prisoners featured a similar clause reinforcing the previous one.35 What these laws had in common was a sense of mimicry in colonial rule. It was not, in any way, so indifferent from the fascist Italian colonial rule, where such forceful farming was interpreted as part of modernisation and development. Mohamed Ali Nuur, a former minister of the regime, stressed that the culture of colonialism in things governance was an inspiration for the Siad Barre regime. 36 Hence, the regime was only a copycat.

THE FORMATION OF THE MODH COALITION

The Politics of Clan Domination The appointment of senior positions had reflected the relevance of the clan system to keep balance among competing politicians. While all government ministerial positions represented the different Somali clans, political favouritism dominated the State system from 1967 onwards. However, even when there was no real clan balance, there was a composition of clan politicians sharing power. From 1959 onwards, when Abdullahi Iise Mohamoud, then Prime Minister of the Somali government under decolonisation period, was The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 175 compelled to take the clan factor into account, any formation of cabinet ministers had to follow the clan balance. Such ‘tacit principle of clan balance’ since decolonisation was shelved in the Siad Barre regime. 37 From the beginning of the regime until the late 1980s, the upper hand of the State was firmly held by the President’s clan-group and those who were favoured because of close clan affiliation. The selection of political positions was dictated by clan composition intrinsically anchored on clan dynasty. Power and resources, as such, were almost concentrated around the dictator, who then imparted to his clan patronage. Parallel with this patronage was clan clientelism for peripheral clans attaching themselves with clan cousins in power. However, certain communities, such as the Digil/Mirifle, were almost excluded in the political power. In no time more than two Digil/Mirifle ministers (one full, the other State minister) were included in the cabinet. 38 In comparison with other highly centralised dictatorial political systems in Africa, Siad Barre did not encounter many difficulties to steer the State as he would have wished. From the very beginning, he based his regime principally and primarily on his immediate clan Mareehaan, the maternal clan Ogaadeen and the Dhulbahante, his principle son-in-law, General Dafle’s clan. Known as MODH, which stood for the initials of these three clans, its existence was first featured in Africa Confidential in 1978.39 However, from 1969 onwards, the MODH—having been reserved for the most key positions of power—dominated every facet of the State apparatus: from the council of ministers and the so-called the ‘house of the people’ to the army, police, security and intelligence forces. In adopting a programmed pattern and policy where the MODH members possessed a privileged position to power, he constructed a regime that not only profitable to himself and his family, but also to the wider clan genealogical group. Most of Siad Barre’s ministers, diplomats, generals and civil servants hailed from the MODH. As one American political scientist observed, the MODH members had a free access to ‘the corridors of power’ and ‘the resources of the state’ to gain favours and benefits.40 Apart from enriching his clan, the MODH clan coalition was vital for the survival of Siad Barre. The President convinced himself that such coalition was the only way he could sustain power. By deciding on all promotions and also surrounding himself with MODH mediocre staff, he managed to achieve three tasks: (1) to keep his opponents out from the State power, (2) to frustrate the confidence of his dissidents, and (3) to reward his close clan confidantes. Siad Barre operated under a clan network formed by close clan intellectuals, such as Mohamed Aden Sheikh and Ibrahim Mohamoud Abyan, two of the main architects of the MODH.41 Regarded as the ‘brain’ of the regime, Mohamed Aden was the main ideologue of Siad Barre well before October 1969. As the official regime bulletin shows, he shuttled from one powerful political position to another until 1982, when he fell out with the President. 42 176 Chapter 7

Mohamed Aden’s envision was that MODH members should fasten their rule over 30 years. Divided into three, the rule of the first decade was to be protected on military force, the second on economic means and the third on intellectual establishment. The final phase meant that the regime would be inherited by MODH offspring sent abroad for tertiary education in order to groom them for power. The Somali scholar Amina Haji Adan alludes to Mohamed Aden when she writes that ‘a Siyad Barre minister and a fellow clansman could in the late 1970s boastfully confide to an Italian journalist that his clan would in three decades rule Somalia forever’.43 However, the most diehard architects of the MODH coalition was General Dafle, who used his unrestricted power to promote his Dhulbahante clansmen. Dafle was once overheard by Ismail Ali Obokor, his fellow in the five politburo members, while exhorting his clansmen to defend their regime from both horizontal and vertical. Sitting in a room next to Dafle’s office, Ismail was shocked to hear Dafle urging a group of Mareehaan cadres that each country on African continent ‘is ruled by a clan or tribe’, so they had to protect the ‘Daarood power in Somalia’.44 However, within the MODH, some fared better than the others. Not everyone was a Daarood in the same way via the formula of the MODH. The lion’s share went to the Mareehaan, the leopard’s to the Ogaadeen and the hyena’s to the Dhulbahante.45 This was designed (as devised and defined by Siad Barre and modified by Mohamed Aden Sheikh) such that the benefits accumulated from the political and economic State resources were not equally be shared between the three clans. The Mareehaan was colloquially identified as 21 October (the day of the coup in 1969), the Ogaadeen as 22 October (the second day) and the Dhulbahante as the 23 October. 46 The town talk went acerbically to give each MODH clan a label: the Mareehaan was thought of being drunk on power, the Dhulbahante on pride and the Ogaa- deen on powdered milk.47 The irony of the story was that the Mareehaan, having overwhelmingly dominated in the State institutions, were obsessed with predatory power, the Dhulbahante were preoccupied with clan chauvinism and the Ogaadeen were after milking from the clan camel. But this does not imply that the Ogaadeen were sharing less power than the Mareehaan. On the contrary, the Ogaadeen officers in the army were more numerous than the Mareehaan. The Minister of Defence, General Aden Abdullahi Nuur ‘Gaby- ow’; the Commander of the Navy, Admiral Mohamed Omar Osman; and the Commander of the Police, General Aden Abdi Dualeh ‘Aden Kuukaay’. So were General Bile Rafle Guuleed, Minister of Agriculture; and Colonel Mo- hamed Omar Jees, Minister of Information, with all belonging to the Ogaa- deen and possessing land farming in Mogadishu for keeping allegiance to the President.48 Ironically, Somali-Ethiopians served the bulk of the group, playing a decisive role in the regime throughout the regime. The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 177

Other army members from non-MODH clans were unrepresented in the chain of army command. All army sectors, divisions and brigades were commanded by the MODH coalition. After field assessment, Africa Confidential found out that 80% of the army commanders and 50% of the police commanders belonged to the MODH. During this time, 15% of the army commanders were of the Majeerteen, 12% the Ogaadeen and 10% the Maree- haan.49 There were five sectors in the country and all were commanded by officers of the MODH: (1) the 26th sector in Hargeysa in the northwest regions commanded by General Mohamed Haashi Gaani, a Mareehaan, later replaced by General Mohamed Said Hersi ‘Morgan’, a Majeerteen, and later by General Mohamed Hussein Hiirane, an Awrtable, with the latter two so close to the MODH by marriage and other clan affiliations; (2) the 54th sector in Garowe in the northeast regions commanded by General Hussein Hassan, a Dhulbahante, later by General Hussein Shuqul, a Mareehaan; (3) the 21st sector in Dhuusamareeb in the central regions commanded by General Abdi- rahman Khalif Dhi’is, an Ogaadeen, later by General Mohamed Farah ‘Ga’magooye’ (the nickname means ‘the hand cutter’), a Mareehaan; (4) the 60th sector in Baydhabo in the southern regions commanded by General Mohamed Aden, a Dhulbahante, previously led by General Muuse Hassan Sheikh, an Ogaadeen; Colonel Abdisamad Ali Shire, a Dhulbahante; and General Abdirahman Khalif Dhi’is, an Ogaadeen. The fifth sector in Mogadi- shu and its surroundings were headed by Siad Barre himself. The artillery and armoured brigades around the capital were commanded by Colonel Shire Mohamed Siad and General Abdinasir Haji Haashi, Siad Barre’s son and a brother-in-law, respectively. Drawing on intelligence sources, Daniel Com- pagnon observed that ‘the number of senior army staff in the senior ranks far exceeded the number of available commanding officer positions in the active service. For example, in December 1986 twenty-two colonels were promoted to generals at the same time! […] This is an example of patrimonialism: many of these officers were Mareehaans or MOD[H]’.50 Whether patrimonialism or clannism, these commanders had enjoyed the freedom to conduct attacks in suppressing regime opposition with the most brutal violence.

The Core of the MODH Group In addition to commanding the military, police and intelligence institutions, there were more powerful reserved positions for the MODH. The ministries of defence, the foreign and the education were untouched for MODH members. One of the most reserved ministries that the immense MODH dominance became visible was the foreign ministry, where the ministers, permanent secretaries and director generals must have come either from the Maree- haan or from the Dhulbahante. Former diplomats recorded that the overwhelming majority of the ambassadors abroad came from the MODH. 51 178 Chapter 7

Whenever a MODH ambassador was relieved from his post, he had to be replaced by his clansman. This phenomenon became standard. In 1980, Ah- med Mohamed Aden ‘Qaybe’, a Dhulbahante ambassador in London, was replaced by Mohamed Jama Elmi ‘MJ’, another Dhulbahante.52 This was not a patrimonial or client-patron relationship as such, but a typical trait of prebendalism, the system of political patronage favouring clan closeness for power dispensation. Many MODH ministers, ambassadors and army and police generals were not from the Somali Republic, but from across the border in Ethiopia and Kenya. This explains why Somali-Ethiopians served the bulk of the group and played a decisive role during the regime. The MODH clan members who held the power unchallenged in two decades of the regime was more successful than others, as they enjoyed special preferences in political appointments and contracts though naasnuujin (kickback). Many rural nomads who emi- grated to Mogadishu and to other areas were quick to be dominant politically and economically due to the unrivalled prebendalism in which they enjoyed. Financial institutions like the Somali National Bank was regarded as no less than a Restaurant for the MODH clansmen, with the bank tolerating the replacement of two Dhulbahante presidents—from Osman Haji Yusuf to Sheef Mohamed Ali Bulaay, while the Development Bank was headed by one Ali Hassan of the same clan. Second to the Ogaadeen and the Dhulba- hante in milking from power were other Daarood clans. While working in Somalia during this period, some witnessed that, in the late 1980s, the Ma- jeerteen were also promoted along with the MODH upon reaching a deal with the regime.53 The MODH favouritism escalated after the 1977 war. The occasional appointments of other clans as ambassadors were an exception to the rule. The diplomats were selected not for their qualifications but for their loyalties conditioned by clan coalitions. Indeed, when the diplomatic postings became mainly political, contestation and confrontation emerged. From early on, diplomats were observed who hardly trusted each other and the ‘spy versus aura within an embassy preclude[d] creative initiatives’.54 Physical fighting and violence were reported in some instances. In his political memoir, the former consular in London Abdullahi Dool recounted an incident where he was beaten by his bodyguard inside the London embassy.55 This incident resonated with another, where two diplomats posted to Canada had a physical fight inside the premises of the Somali embassy in Ottawa. One of the diplomats brought his wife to partake the fight. 56 It was a common knowledge that many diplomatic corps were sent without diplomatic training. Pro- fessor Omar Mohamed Addow, who was the legal adviser of the foreign ministry, explained that the domestic state was the mirror of the external affairs.57 The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 179 Clan Discrimination and Clan Differentiation The MODH as an identity was the only prerequisite for one to find a secure better position in the regime. Who had suffered or blossomed under the policies of nepotism demands employing a discursive and individualised narrative to reveal the extent of the MODH favouritism. Nowhere is this more illuminating than the personal accounts of one insider and one witness from within. In the early 1980s, an accountant who belonged to the Hawiye/ Murusade clan had returned to Mogadishu after studying in the U.S., with a Master’s degree in Accounting and Administration from Oklahoma Univer- sity. He applied for a vacant position at the United States Agency for Interna- tional Development (USAID), only to be succeeded for an interview. Upon undergoing oral and writing assessment, he came to the final stage. The panel inquired him, ‘you seem to be qualified for this post, but there is a prerequisite: are you from the right clan?’ Puzzled to realise to what the interviewer was alluding, he demanded, ‘sir, what do you mean by “the right clan”?’. The interviewer made his question bold and blatant by stating, ‘I mean the MODH clans’. The poor Hawiye who lamented he wished to rescue his people from the drought of the 1980s rushed to the Somali border with Kenya and returned to North America to resettle there permanently. 58 The personal narrative and experience of the accountant resonate with another incident worthy of note, a witness account recounted by the former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, Peter Bridges. It transpired that the U.S. Consu- late in Mogadishu had advertised a job vacancy sometime in 1985. Among several Somali applicants applied for the job, one of Omar Arte’s daughters became successful, at a time her father, the former Foreign Minister, was a political prisoner in the Siad Barre regime (Arte was in prison from 1982 to 1988). Upon hearing the news, presumably from the NSS, that Arte’s daughter got the job, one senior Siad Barre regime officer contacted the U.S. Consular Christopher Costanzo and warned that the regime would not accept that Arte’s daughter obtain access to the U.S. embassy. Consular Costanzo informed Ambassador Bridges that he met rejections from the Siad Barre regime to give Arte’s daughter the job. Bridges instructed Costanzo to tell the regime authorities that the U.S. embassy had hired the daughter, not her father. Then the consular shrugged off the regime attempts in intervening in the process of hiring employees for the U.S. embassy.59 The tale of a young Mareehaan woman, who referred to Siad Barre as ‘my uncle’, was of different nature. In her memoir, Born in the Big Rains, Fadu- mo Korn offered a vivid account of clan nepotism that she herself could not stomach. As soon as Siad Barre came to power, her family—a distant relative of the dictator—‘moved to a new house on the shore of a lake in the middle of a park. The floors were marble and from the terrace you could look out onto the beach’. Incidentally, the house was previously lived by the Soviet 180 Chapter 7

Ambassador to Somalia and was now refurbished for her uncle Abdulkadir Ahmed Hussein Aanageel, who was appointed to be the Head of the National Printing Agency. ‘It was, after all’, she wrote, ‘[a] government property’.60 Korn travelled to Germany with her uncle and decided to stay behind. There, she married a white German man. Several years later, along with her husband, she returned to visit Mogadishu. She recalled that, wherever they would pass, her family bodyguards extorted the public—from the plantations to the petroleum stations—and when she and her husband intervened such predatory acts, they were told that everything belonged to her clan. Korn’s conclusions were sober but reality. ‘My family had power and believed [in] themselves infallible [...] Dissatisfaction was growing throughout the country and I wondered for how long my family could hold on to their power’.61 As she foretold, her family had to lose all unaccountable powers as the time came for Siad Barre to fall. ‘My family’, she later lamented, ‘was respected, wealthy, and influential. We were in the government. And the government was the family’.62 The admission of ‘we were in the government’ came to the reverse when the last passage of ‘the government was the family’ is taken into account. Here it is revealed—not without nostalgia—that Siad Barre had forged an unmatched clanised State where his clan were entrapped to feel obligated in defending predatory power and riches gained by protecting their clan leader. In this way, the leader and the family stayed on inseparable twins envisaging their fate with the same angle from the same window. However, Korn was very candid in reflecting on what went wrong with such critical reconsideration of the reality in the 1970s and the 1980s.

At the Back of the MODH The presence and physicality of some politicians who hailed from non- MODH clans enabled Siad Barre’s stalwarts to suffuse the masked face of clannism with a national commonality of power sharing between clans. The President’s personal capability as master-manipulator to amass unrepresentative individuals from other clans and communities served his rule better and prolonged his reign.63 Positions and power were available to politicians from other clans for their labours and services of Siad Barre. As in Mengistu’s Derg, some non-MODH politicians became involved in the political and economic power of the regime to the extent—and in ways—that had proved inconceivable to the public and pundits.64 Though they could hardly connect their clans to the regime, some of them were successful to do so in a sub- subclan level. To get his ear, these politicians had to imitate humbleness and a sort of fake allegiance to the President, his clan and his family. Ibrahim Meygaag Samatar, a former non-MODH minister under Siad Barre, recalled that: The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 181

Of the most painful, sad and indelible of my experiences were the council meetings: a collection of men on whose shoulders lay immense responsibilities; instead of meeting to debate and decide, honestly and truthfully, on the critical issues awaiting them, they were confronted with harangues, threats and insults and consequently meetings with no order and agenda. They would then disperse with gloom, with no solution for the problems of the nation. It was a pitiable scene and with no end in sight!65

The way the regime dealt with the non-MODH clans followed the motto: fad ama ha fadin, waa lagu fadsiin (accept or not accept, but you’ll be forced to accept). Some senior regime employees had to endure physical assaults to safeguard their employment. In his memoir, Ambassador Mohamed Osman Omar, a senior diplomat in the foreign ministry, recorded a personal agony he suffered while he was in Siad Barre’s entourage in 1981. He was ‘punched’ on the nose by a bodyguard of the President at the front of his room in a hotel in Rome. When he heard the incident, the ambassador recorded that Siad Barre ‘said nothing, not even an apology which was too much to expect’.66 This strange incident indicates how the President was entrenched in clan cronyism and protected his clan cronies around the inner circle by hook or crook. Herein lay a President intentionally punishing or excluding any effective participation and power sharing with other clan groups in the country. It was his unequalled power to (re)appoint or relieve a minister from his post by simply issuing a presidential decree. Mohamed Goodah Barre, a former minister, was astounded when he heard his name on Radio Mogadishu with the news that he was appointed a minister without prior knowledge!67 Many newly-appointed ministers found themselves in the cabinet through this mode of political shock. Theoretically, there was no pronounced clan exclusivity in the regime, but practically there was no professed clan inclusivity either. All ministers had to be handpicked by the President and most of the ministers were unqualified for the posts appointed. Anyone aspiring to hold a position of power was to be prepared to praise the President. While capitalising on the name of his maternal uncle, who was a minister in the regime, one layman who heard stories of postmen or salesmen having been appointed ministerial positions went to the Villa Somalia to see Siad Barre. The man was able to pass the security of the front gate, but was stopped in front of the office of the President. Given that many people were in a long queue to see him in a late afternoon, the man tried as best as he could to convince the bodyguards to let him pass first but in vain. He then thought a new idea: to cry loudly as much as he could. When he began to blubber, Siad Barre—curious as he usually was—came out to see what was going on outside his veranda and saw a man screeching and screaming. The President inquired his staff about who he was, but the man clarified himself that he was a simple chap counting two things on his life: the father of the nation Siad Barre and the Somali flag. The 182 Chapter 7

President escorted him to his office. After introducing himself, his clan and his family, the man was appointed as for his request the director of the moneyed ministry of industry.68 Possessing a position in the regime was one thing, but possessing a power was something else. As Maria Brons, who worked for international refugee organisation as a relief worker during the regime, has documented: ‘Through the formulation and implementation of state policies, certain groups and clans elevated themselves into positions of privilege and marginalized others who were denied a fair share of political influence and economic benefits. This unequal development began in the late 1960s and increased throughout the 1970s and 1980s’.69 Other non-MODH clans and communities had no say and selection on the appointments of their kinsmen apart from accepting whoever nominated for them as political representatives and what were allocated as political positions by the regime. Neither the Hawiye nor the Isaaq or any other non-Daarood clan were seriously represented in the senior level. As Mohamoud Mohamed Ulussow, a former regime minister observed, ‘Siad Barre had systematically excluded Hawiye and later Isaaq leaders from important positions of [the State] at the central and regional and district levels’.70 Africa Confidential reported that Hussein Kulmiye Afrah, a Hawiye/ Abgaal, and Ahmed Mohamoud Farah, an Isaaq/Habar Awal, as two nominal vice Presidents, held their positions without influence in the regime and without significant support for their positions from their clans. 71 This was also the case of General Ismail Ahmed Ismail, an Isaaq, who remained close to Siad Barre for many years, and was appointed an adviser while his clan- group were marginalised in the positions of power and commerce. 72 To call Mohamoud Mohamed Ulussow again:

Siad Barre Regime was a dictatorship. A brief review of dictatorial rule would explain that all powers were concentrated in the hands of President Siad Barre. Immediately after the revolutionary coup, Siad Barre asked members of the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) to give him the power to decide to take decisions without council deliberations because SRC members and the Coun- cil of Secretaries were having acrimonious debate. It was a condition he created to gain absolute power. From the beginning, Siad Barre ruled Somalia solely and with personal decrees.73

Not only the Isaaq, but many informants and interviewees reported that there was no one single Hawiye politician who had a visible influence, let alone power, in the regime. Hussein Kulmiye was at first appointed the first vice President of the regime in 1971 and, after holding that position for five years, he was demoted to second vice President in 1976 and again in 1980. 74 As the most senior Hawiye politician in the regime, Kulmiye was down- graded to the extent that he found himself below General Ali Samatar, his junior. After rumours were propagated that Kulmiye was discontented at the The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 183 way the President had concentrated power in his clansmen, Siad Barre appointed Kulmiye his personal assistant in February 1980 and again in March 1982.75 From this political gradations, one can clearly observe that Kulmiye was sent back and forth from one top position to the bottom in order to regulate his powerless position. Hussein Mohamed Siad ‘Hussein Aato’, a former vice Minister in the regime, witnessed that Kulmiye’s only ability was to fend off himself from the wrath of Siad Barre. 76 Ulussow also agreed and argued that ‘Kulmiye never had the power of influence except to be near the President for photo and fictional representation. All security forces were under the command of President Siad Barre’.77 This is how Ambassador Bridges put his surveillance of Kulmiye: ‘As the months went on, I gained the impression that Kulmi[y]e did not accomplish much. In good part[,] this may have been because Siad Barre, who could tolerate no rival, would not let him do much’.78 However, Bridges who was a seasoned diplomat would have known better that cold war African dictators did not sanction power any other than themselves and their close cronies. Mohamed Ali Nuur, a senior minister under the regime, stressed that ‘the only powerful personality of the regime was Siad Barre himself’.79 On his reflections from his years of working for Siad Barre, Ibrahim Meygaag Samatar apparently alluded to Kulmiye, when he wrote thus:

At his [Siad Barre] doorstep you would find a Vice-President with the utmost urgent state matters in his lap waiting for hours in a queue while President Siad would be chatting with an elder (or for that matter a junior nomad from out of town). The Vice-President or the cabinet minister has to bide his time, otherwise if he gets too tired or too impatient to wait then the state matter simply suffers and the President feels none-the-worse for it. 80

Positions of power were not on a proportional basis. The whole State was like a ‘teashop’ owned by Siad Barre with his own waiters. Here, he demar- cated, under pseudo-socialist strategies, that Somalis would enjoy clanless and classless egalitarian tradition rooted in pastoral Somali culture. Under the slogan of Soomaaliya Soomaali Baa Leh (Somali belongs to Somalis), all Somalis were equal, but some were more equal than the others in this Orwell- ian world of Siadism where no one could speak of inequality even if it was encountered on the daily basis. This political culture was compared to the satirical novel of Animal Farm.81 It was in this Orwellian political process, some lama-yaqaanaan miiran ah (people from nowhere or whom no one knew) came to power and prominence in the regime inner circles. These individuals were known as daba-dhilifyo (lackeys), macaanjecel (lavish life- seekers), gafanayaal (bloodsuckers) and dibkanaaxyo (those became corpu- lent lately). A Somali saying has it that ‘dheriga oo la kala beddelo, ma beddesho maraqa dhadhankiisa’ (the change of the cooking pot does not change the test of the soup), which suggests, in this context, that the replace- 184 Chapter 7 ment of unrepresentative clan ministers with others hardly contributed anything meaningful to the legitimacy of an already loathed regime. Siad Barre was also outsmarted the regional rulers to attract Djibouti and Yemeni support by incorporating one army general originally from Yemen and another colonel from Djibouti into his cabinet of ministers. 82 In this way, he secured the unwavering support of the regimes in Djibouti and San’a.

Panegyrics and Political Believers Though the politics of panegyrics was affirmed within the inner circle of the regime, it was also articulated through academic exchanges. In one crucial instance, during the Somali Studies Conference held in Rome, Richard Greenfield, a British author, took to the podium to condemn the human rights abuses against civilians being perpetrated by the regime authorities. The Somali scholar Hussein Mohamed Adam ‘Hussein Tanzania’ intervened and scolded Greenfield to go to the Amnesty offices in London instead of coming to the academic conference. 83 Such was the time, when academics and intellectuals were incorporated into the various institutional realms of the regime to consolidate power. Greenfield himself was a long-time adviser of the regime who drafted many documents, reports and even speeches of regime officials in the foreign ministry and at the UN headquarters. It was surprising statement, when the Somali National Movement (SNM) ‘strongly condemned’ the regime’s decision to dispense with his services’.84 Before his dismissal, Greenfield went through a Kangaroo court in Mogadishu and those who subsequently fired him consisted of Abdirahman Jama Barre, the Foreign Minister; Ahmed Mohamed Aden ‘Qaybe’, the Permanent Secretary, Mohamed Jama Elmi ‘MJ’, Director-General of the Euro-American Depart- ment; and Abdullahi Said Osman, the Ambassador to the UN. All the committee members belonged to the MODH (except Osman who belonged to the small clan related to the Ogaadeen) and Siad Barre was the supreme judge of the trial. But the President, as Qaybe described, was a ‘responsible judge’ in this trial.85 This was true because Greenfield was not sentenced to death. The MODH clan nepotism did not mean that Siad Barre had not accommodated other clans. On the contrary, he handpicked individuals who by no means had an influence on—and direct involvement in—their sub-clans. Notwithstanding that the majority of Siad Barre’s ministers hailed from the MODH, this should not be implied that the regime lacked lackeys from other clans, even as late as the 1980s. The hard fact was, nonetheless, that the State power was not shared with real representatives of other clans, except lackeys and panegyrics. A rule anchored on prebendalism and clan linkages where the distribution of State power and resources followed the MODH measurement, while borrowing panegyrics from other clans—was enforced. Senior positions with less political power had been available and open to politicians The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 185 of other clans well-prepared for serving Siad Barre or his clan interest, with many pursuing an affluence and influence in their clans. Political posts were part of the reward for which to disarm some other potential rivals while keeping others on the boat. Politics and power à la despotism became currency and commodity associated with assets. Alice Bettis Hashim, who conducted her fieldwork in Mogadishu during the last years of the regime, found that working for Siad Barre was ‘a quicker and easier road to a secure life’.86 The political pattern of the regime forced the non-MODH politicians to seek the services of the MODH clan elders to secure their political positions. Ambitious politicians wishing to keep or assume political position had to insinuate themselves into the regime by way of presenting themselves as nacamleyaal (panegyrics). The pretention of promoting the glories of the kacaan (revolution) was a shrewd way for one to keep his position. The council of ministers appointed in 1975 was consisted of 20 ministers: 10 Daarood, while the other 10 comprised of panegyrics from other Somali clans (4 Hawiye, 4 Isaaq and 2 Dir). As one former minister remembered: ‘During Siad Barre regime, a Mareehaan driver had the audacity and confidence to control and bully a minister or to accuse a minister of anti-[State] sentiment that will cost him his position, marginalisation, humiliation [and] demotion. Daarood officials used to complain or send their clan emissaries or elders to President Siad and accuse Hawiye ministers of Daarood antipathy or as threat to Siad Barre regime because they knew that they had sympathetic listening from Siad Barre who would take immediate action of retaliation or punishment. Ministers lived in constant fear of keeping happy to MOD[H] staff in their departments or at the presidency or prostitutes for protection and defence’.87

The Non-MODH for and against the MODH With Siad Barre as the actual State, there was no any other way for a minister to stay in the cabinet other than appeasing the President and his clan. Some ministers—MODH and non-MODH—had obtained and held their positions due in part to their wives who acted as mistresses for Siad Barre. In his memoir, Abdullahi Dool, a diplomat under the regime, has mentioned the wives of two ambassadors who used to act as mistresses for the Foreign Minister, Abdirahman Jama, Siad Barre’s half-brother.88 So it became a common phenomenon, as Cabdulqaadir Shire Faarax, an insider in the inner circle, witnessed, to hear people saying ‘that man was a minister because of his wife’.89 Drawing from a ‘candid’ conversation with Ali Khalif Galayr Warsame, a former junior minister under the regime, Mohamoud Siad To- gane, a maverick Somali critic, recounted a very unusual incident, where Siad Barre shamed one of his ministers by asking the whereabouts of his beautiful butted wife. Infuriated as ever before, the minister had to remain 186 Chapter 7 calm and showed no frustration, perhaps for fear of his ministerial position or safety.90 It was a fact for anyone who daringly chose to retort to Siad Barre to go through the repressive process of ifka ka qarin (hiding from the light of the day). The non-MODH politicians, even if they enjoyed Siad Barre’s approval, seemed unsure that their privileged political positions were secure. One unique strategy—though not the only one—for non-MODH aspirant to achieve political position was to seek ‘entry’ into the Siad Barre’s house. By ‘entry’ meant showing allegiance to him, his family and his clan. The intersecting web of political connections and matrimonial relations played a crucial role of who allied with, whom, where and when. After realising that clan informants were feeding Siad Barre with false reports against him, Abdullahi Ahmed Addow, the long-time ambassador to the U.S., managed to marry his daughter to the President’s son, only to win his trust to remain in the circle of power.91 In order to become a minister and preserve his political position, Galayr also married a member of Siad Barre’s close clanswoman, Habiba Isaaq Biihi. Mohamed Sheikh Osman also arranged the marriage of his daughter Luul to General Abdi Haji Haashi, Siad Barre’s brother-in-law. As a result, Mohamed Sheikh profoundly benefitted from his marital affiliation with Siad Barre.92 This kind of familiar attachment was not an issue confined to the Somali political scene, but it was also mirrored in other dictatorial rules in Africa, especially in Ghana. 93 However, Mohamed Sheikh and Mu- riidi Haji Dalfa’, both Hawiye, were the gatekeepers of Siad Barre’s wives and children, holding their accounts inside and outside the country. When the regime was ousted, they took some of the booty as their own. This prompted Maslah Mohamed Siad, Siad Barre’s son, to complain about Muriidi to Ab- gaal elders in Nairobi who later convinced Muriidi to give back some amount of the State booty to ‘his brother Maslah’.94 Many non-MODH politicians lived the contradiction of serving the very regime bent on destroying their clans for which they had been supposed to represent.95 Ambassador Bridges had observed that ‘Siad Barre and his ministers were as suspicious as they were rapacious’.96 This rapaciousness was most obvious on how ministers within the regime spied on each other. The President had the habit to pit one Hawiye minister against the other, only to prevent them from turning against him. The former Director of the Chamber of Commerce, Ali Haashi Dhoorre, related that an enmity was fostered between Mohamed Sheikh Osman vs Abdullahi Warsame Nur, Abdullahi Ad- dow vs Mohamed Sheikh Osman and Yusuf Hassan Elmi vs Abdullahi Osso- ble Siad, both of them Hawiye ministers in the cabinet. 97 Ali Haashi mentioned that he himself was ordered by Siad Barre to report on General Mo- hamed Ibrahim Ahmed ‘Liiqliiqato’, a Hawiye/Sheekhaal, who was his boss. Ali Haashi recalled the President berating and taking him to task by saying ‘our shirt is filled with blood and one with clean shirt cannot work with us’.98 The Exploitation of Clan as Political Resource 187

African novelists, who interrogated the problems of predatory power through novels and plays, traced how dictatorships verbally and orally respond to its contradictions. The Ethiopian novelist Dinaw Mengistu, through fiction, recounted how his father was beaten by the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia.99 His revelations had similar bearings on the Somali case. Siad Barre affronted publicly his ministers and—even more harshly—former ministers. In an interview with an Italian newspaper, he described Galayr a scoundrel, years after he had defected from his regime. 100 For any politician labelled a quisling, the punishment was so severe that his family was also targeted. A song threatening the so-called quislings with brutal violence was played on Radio Mogadishu in early 1972 to cause fear on rivals. The song warned that ‘to the one who is hiding but could not conceal his back, it is a broad daylight and you are under surveillance, so it is better for you to follow your people [who supported the regime], lest you lost yourself’.101 The song played the day Aynaanshe, Salaad Gabeyre and Dheel were executed and was still vivid reminiscent of many Somalis. It has remained a stark remainder for the days of the dictatorship. Critics of the clan nepotism were quelled and branded as afmiinshaaro (bladed mouths). Even slightest criticism was associated, to use the regime’s lexicon, with hay’ado shisheeye (foreign agencies)—an allegory for external patrons agonistic to the regime. It was a willy-nilly clear that anyone objected to the regime was at risky to have been branded kacaandiid (anti- revolutionary), dibusocod (reactionary), hantigoosi (capitalist), qaran-dumis (the wrecker of the State) and daba-dhilif (lackey), labels that could have had severe consequences to anyone to whom it was attributed. However, the grievances of the excluded clans were legitimate enough as long as they figured out the appointment of political positions. In a BBC Somali interview, an Isaaq elder—referring to the MODH clan structure—accused the President of merely promoting the interests of the Daarood. 102 The exclusion of rival clans was complicated in 1990, when Siad Barre announced a government where the Isaaq and the Abgaal were given one minister each. An Abgaal poet privately articulated the objection of what apparently regarded as cad quureed (the pariah part of the mutton). In a poem composed for the occasion, the poet questioned ‘siyaasadda sagaashanka sidaan miyaa, wax baan saxaa, Siyaad Barrow, sidaan miyaa?’ (is the agenda of the 1990s politics this way and ye Siad Barre, is your rhetoric of progress this way?).103 The question of (un)representation was not something that the regime authorities were oblivious, but it was something repressed both hori- zontally and vertically. In 1980, responding to a question on the clan composition of the regime, especially that the basis was on clan dominance, General Dafle, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, countered and conceded by saying that ‘[t]ribalism and nepotism exist in many third world countries. Somalia is, admittedly, no special case. However, the fact remains that we’ve done better 188 Chapter 7 than most in eradicating these evils. And I should add that all clans in Somal- ia are well-represented in the government, etc. There isn’t a single group which has benefitted from tribalism in the country’.104 However, the trust of the different clans and communities to the State and cohesively lived together was severely tarnished since the institution of the MODH policy. The deliberate exclusion of power from non-MODH politicians set the stage for the formation of clan coalitions. As clan nepotism reached unparalleled in comparison with other failing African States, the non-MODH politicians invented a way of resisting the regime. Many a minister working for the regime’s downfall and reporting to the world on how clan domination was institutionalised. In late 1990, the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu recorded a private meeting with one Abdirahman Jama Mo- hamed, an Isaaq minister, who accused Siad Barre of being ‘the principle stumbling block to a peaceful resolution of Somalia’s mounting political turmoil’. When the U.S. embassy asked the minister if he thought that the dictator would step down, the minister ‘shook his head slowly and sadly’.105 Likewise, Ali Salaad Hassan, a brother of Abdikassim Salaad, Siad Barre’s long-time minister, wrote a field report for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in which he detailed how special advantages were accorded to the MODH ‘in matters of business, employment and education [and] most government higher posts were given to [them] at the expense of other clans’.106 Also Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud ‘Siilaanyo’, Minister of Commerce under Siad Barre, an Isaaq, was one of those ministers who held a reputation of opposing the regime from within the inner circle without the President’s knowledge. Not only the cabinet members and their family members, were surreptitiously voicing against the clan nepotism, senior politicians like Hussein Kulmiye would secretly admonish Hawiye civil servants to mobilise the public against Siad Barre. 107 However, Laitin and Samatar were still able to write in 1987 that:

If the MODH alliance holds together in a succession struggle, it can, we think, easily hold its own against any combination of contestants. The Ogaadeen and the D[h]ulbahante have the requisite numbers, and the Mareehaan have the firearms—this potent combination of numerical strength and firepower will make it virtually impossible for any other [clan]group to dislodge them. 108 Chapter Eight

The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape

THE PROLONGATION OF CLAN POLITICS

From Sub-Clan to Immediate Family From 1976 onward, the emergence (and later proliferation) of the armed opposition groups were adding more fuel to the fire. The formation of the Somali Democratic Action Front (SODAF) and the Somali Salvation Front (SSF), both later transformed into the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) as well as the Somali National Movement (SNM) were beginning of the end. By 1980, the military regime was politically, economically and diplomatically ruined. At this period, the Siad Barre regime came to constitute one of those African countries that were branded the ‘non-governmental’ regimes.1 After facing years of active armed opposition—beginning from 1976, but accelerated in 1981—it increased the State terror on the civilian population in retaliation for their alleged support of the opposition movements. Given the worsening conditions of the country, the regime authorities could not help themselves, but to succumb to the middle of nowhere without military muscle. The regime institutions accelerated acting as a faceless predatory authority systematically plundering the State resources while distribut- ing the spoils among clan and family members. This was maintained through milking the State for the benefit of the President through different stages while not overlooking personal and political interests. Power was not only necessarily institutionalised as political, but both private and familial structure had special considerations. This was a political application of Machia- vellian philosophy. For one to maintain power—so the theory of Niccolo Machiavelli goes—one must possess many sides and keep in mind the art of

189 190 Chapter 8 showing each side to the issue at hand. In this way, power was reframed and reformulated throughout the regime to interact with pressurises from inside and outside. Siad Barre craftily and cunningly—but yet gradually—diverted power from clan-group to sub-clan, sub-subclan, sub-sub-subclan, all the way down to his children and grandchildren. Inherent in internal clan nepotism, the dispensation of power and distribution of political positions soon revolved around the President and his family. While set off as a clanisation policy that promoted the coalition of the MODH (Mareehaan, Ogaadeen and Dhulba- hante clans), by the late 1980s this narrowed down to Reer Diini (his sub- clan), then to Reer Kooshin (sub-subclan), then to Reer Hassan Kooshin (his sub-sub-subclan), then into Reer Barre Abdulle Yusuf (sub-sub-sub-sub- clan), all the way down to his children of five different wives. Starting to behave as he were a representative of his whole genealogical clan-group, the President was by now a Mareehaan/Reer Diini/Reer Kooshin/Reer Hassan Kooshin/Reer Barre Abdulle Yusuf. The dash between the Daarood and the Mareehaan—even the Reer Hassan Kooshin and the Reer Barre—illustrates the fluidity of clan and contradicts the earlier primordial measurement of the clan system as a static. Be that as it may, in the 1980s, the real power of the regime was concentrated in the hands of Siad Barre, with the assistance of one of his two wives—the principle Khadija Mo’allim, a quite opposite to Dalaayad Haji Haashi Jama, the second wife—and his more than seventy of his children and grandchildren who were appointed various positions beginning from presidential office to ministerial departments. 2 One has to list the core of the regime powerful members who apportioned riches among themselves by possessing real power through familial and close clanship to make the point clearer.3

1. Mohamed Siad Barre, the most powerful of all. 2. Mama Khadija, the powerful principle wife. 3. General Maslah Mohamed Siad, the principle son and the Comman- dant of the Army. 4. Abdirahman Jama Barre, the half-brother and Foreign Affairs Minister and later the Minister of Finance. He competed with his nephew Mas- lah over who would be eligible to the heir. 5. General Ahmed Suleymaan Dafle, the principle son-in-law and the fearful notorious Commander of the Gestapo-type NSS, married to Siad Barre’s daughter Suuban. 6. General Mohamed Said Hersi ‘Morgan’, the ‘Butcher of Hargeysa’, married to Siad Barre’s daughter Anab. 7. Ayaanle Mohamed Siad, a favourite son and chief assistant. 8. Abdullahi Mohamed Siad, a son and vice Minister of Health. The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 191

9. Faduma Mohamed Siad, a daughter and the most powerful person in the Central Bank.4 10. Anab Mohamed Siad, a daughter and second most powerful in the Ministry of Finance, except for her uncle Abdirahman Jama. 11. Hassan Mohamed Siad, a son and the Head of the mechanised division of the army. 12. Hawa Mohamed Siad, a daughter and the Director General of the Ministry of External Tourism. 13. Diiriye Mohamed Siad, a son and the special advisor to the Presiden- tial Palace. 14. Abdulkadir Haji Masalle, a close clan confidante and special consultant. 15. General Abdi Haji Haashi, a brother-in-law. 16. General Abdinasir Haji Haashi, a brother-in-law. 17. General Mohamed Haashi Gaani, the powerful Military Commander in the North, later vice Minister of Defence and then of Agriculture. 18. Sheikh Mohamed Guuleed, the Minister of Justice and Religious Af- fairs. 19. Mahad Dirir Guuleed, the vice Minister of Fisheries and Marine Transportations. 20. Mohamoud Geelle Yusuf, the chief judge of the regime and one of the most fearful men in the inner circle, the long-time Head of the Nation- al Security Court.5 21. Abdi Hoosh Ashkir, the army driver who after 1969 became the wealthiest businessman in the country, the close clansman of Mama Khadija and business partner of the ruling family.

The familial formulation of the State power had a history. Siad Barre began appointing his family members and children on top civilian and military positions after he had paid a visit to Romania in the mid-1970s. There, he observed Nicolae Ceaușescu, his wife and their family members holding almost all high positions of power. Thus the emergence in Somalia of le clan de Madame as was in Rwanda in the 1980s. The restructuring of the clan patronage and familial links—similar to the Swahili political phrase Baba na Mama (Father and Mother) in a Stalinist-style—created a Siadist State where Siad Barre was the father, while his wife Mama Khadija stood as the Mother of the Nation.6 This ‘political gangsterism’—to borrow from Bayart—made the whole State as part of the family business and property, the valid Affaire the Famiglia, advancing the perception of the first family that the State was their property.7 As the President’s main objective was to stay in power with his family members, he had to use clan members to achieve this goal and ensure the impossible. Indeed, Siad Barre was adamant to remain power ‘indéfiniment’ (indefinite) by passing the rule to his sons. 8 General Jili’ow 192 Chapter 8 stressed that ‘maamulka dalka wuxuu gacanta ka saaray qoyskiisa’ (he put the whole administration of the country to the hands of his family) by using ‘oppression and military force’.9 The ‘he’ here stands for the boss of the State. The Los Angeles Times echoed similar observations by noting that Siad Barre ‘filled top posts with relatives, and kept the wealth within his clan while others starve. He has unleashed his soldiers to kill protesters, including thousands of civilians’.10 Whereas Siad Barre scourged the State from above, his first wife and children seemed to lash it from below. International aid was to be diverted to the pockets of immediate family members as well as several sub-sub-clan cronies who would vie for the leftovers. An internal struggle over familiar power contestation was revealed by the Siad Barre’s car crash in May 1986 in which he suffered a ‘severe nervous shock’.11 It was barely three years prior, when the novelist Nuruddin Farah, in one of his novels, called for Siad Barre’s assassination.12 Even after the President received special medical treatment in a hospital in Saudi Arabia for three months, the accident created crises within the family. Conflicting reports about his condition drifted as wildfire and rumours were circulating that he would never be fully recovered again. Mohamed Omar Jees, a long-time stalwart and the Minister of Infor- mation, told reporters in Riyadh that the Head of State would be moved to Europe for further treatment. As the third referral for emergence to an external country indicated that Siad Barre’s health was extremely serious, Radio Mogadishu vehemently denied Jees’s statement, countering with a news report of his ‘imminent return’ to Mogadishu with a healthy condition.13 The President was shown on the Somali National Television meeting with Saudi dignitaries and other delegates who visited him at the hospital. 14 It was irrefutable, however, that after the accident, Siad Barre became a walking patient. The Djibouti newspaper, Le Nation, referring to Djibouti’s Foreign Minister, Moumin Bahdoon Farah, who met Siad Barre in Mogadishu in August of 1986, reported that he was ‘somewhat weak’ due to his age.15 Added to the health problem and the mounting pressure from the armed opposition groups were the inner circle rivalries between Siad Barre’s immediate family members and his stalwarts. General Ali Samatar attempted to take over as an acting ruler of the regime while the President was in hospital, but he met a fierce opposition, not only from Siad Barre’s close sub-clansmen, the so-called guardians of the regime, but also from Mama Khadija and her son Maslah, who contended the right to assume their father’s position.16 Even though incompetent and semiliterate, Maslah enjoyed the special preference of his parents. Ali Samatar’s attempt was futile as he had been demoted, because—as a Defence Minister—his commanders were ordered to report directly to the President. Supported by other elements of the Maree- haan clan, Ali Samatar insisted his legality to act as President in the absence of Siad Barre. Disgruntled, Maslah took direct command of the Reer Koo- The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 193 shin militias guarding the Villa Somalia and banned his father’s deputy and those supporting him from entering the Presidential Palace, a compound which had by now become a close clan compound. Ali Samatar, buoyed up by an inner circle faction calling themselves as the ‘Constitutional Group’ and his friend General Dafle, never intended nor aspired to climb to the top as Siad Barre’s successor, but his move was to show his loyalty and leadership abilities in a time of enormous uncertainty. This was obvious to Maslah and his mother, but their paranoid behaviour blinded them to carefully calcu- late the outcome of their actions. Ali Samatar was the sandwich between Siad Barre and other Somalis and even Siad Barre and his clan. It was not unusual that Siad Barre’s children had competed for power endlessly, while each wife proposed her elder son as the heir apparent. Of all his closest people, Khadija Mo’allim held the most crucial position. 17 With her mafia-like clan networks, Khadija reputed to have set up and commanded her own intelligence network, called Dhabarjebinta (backbreakers), and thus was regarded more formidable than Dalaayad, the other wife. 18 True, Khadi- ja hardly possessed the shrewd knack to get her son Maslah into the top post as once done by a female counterpart in the Rwandan court of the nineteenth- century.19 But she maintained her influence until the end of the regime. Her involvement of poaching business in Southern Somalia and Northeast Kenya added some value to the accumulation of wealth in the family business. 20 This business was ongoing while the regime had signed the treaty of banning poaching in June 1979 as featured in the official regime bulletin on 30 October 1982.21 This contravention of laws was the norm rather than the exception. With the dispute over who would succeed Siad Barre ongoing, The Indian Ocean Newsletter questioned who ruled who in Somalia.22 His family (re)appealed to other MODH clans, especially the Mareehaan members of the regime, to gather themselves in envisaging new ways of survival, in case the President passed away. Though several sessions were organised, the most important one was the clan conference of the Mareehaan elders in Mogadishu at which discussions were raised over the fate of their clansman, as well as appointing a potential successor. While Khadija insisted her son Maslah, the clan elders selected Abdirahman Jama to become his cousin’s heir apparent. Abdirahman was tasked to head a Mareehaan committee over- seeing the political developments and the health of the President. 23 The committee made a number of suggestions, most notably to nominate Mareehaan senior officers in the two most critical positions of the State: the Minister of Defence and the Commandant of the Army. Maslah was subsequently appointed the latter position, as the official regime bulletin reveals. 24 On 23 June 1986, Siad Barre was released from the hospital and returned to Mogadishu.25 Upon his return, in order to prove that he was more energetic as ever, he carried out several cosmetic changes, of whom those who defied his wife and son were sacked from the circles of power. He publicly 194 Chapter 8 blamed General Ali Samatar for the squabbles over power. 26 He restructured the power and appointed his former deputies Ali Samatar and Hussein Kul- miye as Prime Minister and vice Prime Minister. This was in line with a pressure mounted by his family who insisted that the five member political politburo should be (re)moved, in case one of them would put himself to the top in a matter of a sudden death. The politburo was dispersed and the deputy Presidents terminated. Those who considered themselves as ‘Constitutional- ists’—Samatar and several others, even though there was no real constitution in place—soon acquiesced to Siad Barre’s nomination of a cabinet majority of whom were drawn from his own clansmen.27 To show he was still in command and control, the President held a mock election in November of 1986 at which he had acted as the sole candidate for the presidency. As a result, he was hailed as a winner, obtaining 99.2% of all votes cast. Urban people were forced to come out to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to Siad Barre for Presi- dent.28 The conducting of the bogus election produced what the regime anticipated: the continuation of the international aid. Fake elections without democracies were phenomena faced by the most full-blown African dictatorships and unique ways of garnering more foreign aid from the Western countries as best as possible. To sustain the aid industry, the Western sponsors needed elections to prove the legitimacy of the aided regime, no matter fake or failure. So the election added a new value to the existing mutual benefit between the recipient and the receptive of the aid itself. One poet who felt astonished at the fake 1986 electoral process expressed his astonishment in these lines: ‘ar nin dooran doorta xaw dhahdeen’ (O ye, why did you order us to select an elected man?’.29 Similarly in 1979, the regime held a referendum for a new constitution to demonstrate that it was not as tyrannical as it seemed.30 The referendum was pronounced to have gained 99.69 votes cast.31 The wholesale mock voting in favour of the regime proposals was reminiscent of the last parliamentary election in March 1969. However, the assumption that Siad Barre lost the mental capability to effectively run and resolve crisis facing the country following the fatal car accident appears to ignore the centrality of the structured State terror of his regime since 1972.

The Harsh Treatment on Clansmen Siad Barre had the tendency to oppress even his clansmen, when his personal and familial interests were at stake. Early on, he eliminated potential Maree- haan rivals who challenged his authority, such reputable men as Aden Shire Jama ‘Aden Low’, Ahmed Shire Lawaaha, Captain Hassan Halane Afdhuub ‘Haruuse’, Major Hussein Diiriye Shire ‘Aabi’ and Mohamed Suudi Aflaw.32 Aaden Low was particularly emasculated and lost his manhood, as observed by his wife, Muraayad Haji Haashi, Siad Barre’s sister-in-law.33 The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 195

Providing documentary evidence, such as health certificates, gathered from Somali and Italian hospitals, Aaden Low’s daughter Shukri Aden claimed that her father was injected by poisonous syringes while in prison. To prove her point, she interviewed a Somali physician who examined her father upon his release from prison in 1973. The physician confessed that the President ordered him to conceal about the real reason of her father’s death.34 The elimination of Aden Low hardly ushered in a new political reconfiguration of Siad Barre’s relationship with the Mareehaan, as had probably been imagined by several of his opponents. In the 1980s, other potential Mareehaan politicians were also subjected to political humiliations, such as Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Omar Haji Masalle, Mohamed Said Samatar ‘Ga’aliye and their fellows. Where some were dismissed from their powerful positions, others went to exile or were put in prison. The harsh treatment that many Mareehaan elders underwent was testimony that, when his clansmen challenged him, the Presi- dent would not have even spared them. As long as the clan was acquiescent to his aims, he was prepared to make them prosperous from the State. Two senior members of the regime have agreed that Siad Barre was using clan as a tool to advance for his benefit.35 On the one hand, he had to accommodate as many clansmen as he could. On the other, he had to dismiss those who became obdurate and obstinate. This was reminiscent of Compagnon’s conclusions that Siad Barre ‘gouvernait par et non pour les Mareehaan’ (gov- erned [the country] not for but by the Mareehaan). In other words, Siad Barre ruled and repressed the Somalis by Mareehaan means and methods with the assistance of other MODH clan militiamen for their fortunes, but not for their futures.36 Had he chosen the latter—that is, considering their personal and professional developments, he would have behaved differently by concerning with their education rather than ruling through exploiting their manpower. Since Siad Barre considered the regime as a personal possession and property that must be inherited by one of his sons, notably Maslah, this created further dissent in his close sub-clan circles. Upon his return from Saudi Arabia, in an anticipation of his death, Siad Barre delegated most of his power to his son Maslah and the rest of the Reer Barre Abdulle Yusuf. This measure caused anger among his remaining Reer Hassan Kooshin loyal forces, who envied the preference given to their cousins. Thus, a coup plot was attempted in 1982, when General Omar Haji Masalle, along with other disgruntled Mareehaan elements in the regime, had planned (though failed from the start) a coup against Siad Barre. 37 In 1987, another coup was attempted within the inner circle to topple the regime, as recorded by General Aideed, who followed these developments from India as an ambassador. 38 Four senior officer close to the President were arrested: General Abdinasir Haji Haashi, a brother-in-law of Siad Barre and a Mareehaan; General Siad 196 Chapter 8

Da’ud Gudaal as the Commander of the Air Defence Forces, an Ogaadeen; Colonel Ibrahim Iilmooge, a military intelligence officer and an Ogaadeen; and Colonel Mohamed Samatar, Commander of the Military Intelligence and a Mareehaan. According to various firsthand accounts, Maslah was held responsible for the arrest, because the Maslihisites in the Presidential Palace carried out the operation. This was a testimony of how the clan interests were superseded by familial ones.

Defections and Disintegrations In the early 1980s, defections and denunciations of diplomats and ministers unrelated to Siad Barre by clan affiliation became a common trend. As early as 1977, Ambassador Dualeh fled to Kenya and pleaded to the international community not to ‘prolong the agony of the Somali people’.39 Senior other diplomats who defected to the U.S., the UK, Sweden and even as far as Australia throughout the 1970s and the 1980s comprised senior politicians and diplomats, such as Abdirizak Haji Hussein, the Envoy to the UN; Abdi- rahman Ahmed Ali ‘Tuur’, the Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE); Yusuf Hassan Ibrahim ‘Yusuf Dheeg’, the Ambassador to China; Mohamed Warsame Ali ‘Kiimiko’, the Ambassador to the U.S.; Haashi Sheikh Muuse, the Ambassador to Yugoslavia; Ibrahim Meygaag Samatar, the Ambassador to West Germany; Hassan Jama Wadaadiid, the Ambassa- dor to Saudi Arabia; Osman Abdillahi Zeyli’i, the Ambassador to Turkey and his successor Ambassador Hussein Hassan Bulaale. 40 All but Kiimiko, a Habar Gidir, and Abdirizak, a Majeerteen, were from the Isaaq clan-group. Ali Abdi Madar, Counsellor and Deputy Head of the Somali Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, also defected in November 1988. 41 Several other Isaaq ministers, such as Dr Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Engineer Osman Jama Ali ‘Kalluun’, Saleebaan Mohamoud Aden ‘Saleebaan Gaal’, and Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud ‘Siilaanyo’, also defected in the late 1980s. While attending in a conference at Tunis in 1989, when Osman Kalluun defected and flew to London where he applied for political asylum, he gave a scathing interview to the BBC Somali. Kalluun pointed out the ‘nepotism and injustice’ became characteristic of the regime, which led him to decide never return to Somalia under Siad Barre.42 The defections of Aden Farah Shirdoon, the Ambassador to Djibouti, and as such, the first Mareehaan Ambassador, who defected and applied for political asylum in the U.S. in the late 1980s as well as of Abdinur Yusuf Mohamed, the Ambassador to Canada, a Sheekhaal, who was related to the Siad Barre family by marriage, were unusual and exposed to the extent of the inner circle conflict.43 Probably distressed by the increasing politics of inward sub-subclan chauvinism, Abdirahman Diini, a Mareehaan and Second Secretary of the Somali embassy in Nairobi, also defected. This was the most The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 197 upsetting to Siad Barre and his close family members as they thought that those who began to defect were those they had provided favours and thus expected to make repayment for their loyalty. Defectors from the inner circle were a serious matter to the President in particular, because—in addition to the indication that his regime was on the verge of disintegration—they most certainly provided confidential information to the countries they defected. Two junior ministers, Hussein Abdulkadir Kassim and Ali Khaliif Galayr, who defected to the U.S., had detailed the oppression that plagued Somalia. Upon his defection, Hussein Abdulkadir made a fierce criticism through the BBC Somali Service, remarking that there was no government in Somalia and the situation was ‘a state of anarchy’. He also talked about ‘the killing of Somalis on Somalis’ that spread in Somalia under Siad Barre. 44 One way of averting defection from ministers was to nominate them a State minister for presidency, only to keep them inside rather than outside. 45 It is worth mentioning that Siilaanyo and Galayr defected after Siad Barre had demoted and dismissed them from the cabinet, though he kept them consultants for the Planning Ministry.46 It should also be noted that Abdirizak Haji Hussein resigned once he was relieved from his post.47 On 22 February 1987, two air force officers were reported to have defected to Kenya.48 This was not the first defections from within the forces. Others had previously fled to Arab States, Africa, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. Military officers defecting to Djibouti and applying to political asylum multiplied in the late 1980s, since the defection of pilot Ahmed Hassan, who refused to bombard Hargeysa in July 1988. In March 1989, defections affected the social class, when seven Somali footballers requested political asylum in neighbouring Kenya for fear of being conscripted into the North to the attempts at suppressing the Isaaq uprising. 49 The defectors were subsequently arrested by the Daniel arap Moi regime which denied their asylum application, despite the UNHCR’s opposition to this decision. As five were forcibly returned to Mogadishu, two of them escaped and proceeded to Uganda, where they were granted temporary asylum two months later. 50 Not just footballers, diplomats and politicians, but also poets were forced to flee from the oppression. Abdullahi Mo’allim Dhoodaan, one of those poets who supported the regime from the beginning, had also defected to Ethiopia in the early 1980s. The defections were multiplied at a time, when the regime was trying to convince to the western patrons that the human rights record was better than before.

Prisons and Prisoners The conditions of prisons and detention centres, built by the Soviets and East Germans for the Siad Barre regime, have never been explored. The documentation of prisoners and the prison conditions could be found in the contempo- 198 Chapter 8 rary reports produced by the human rights organisations. The Amnesty Inter- national sent numerous appeals to the President for the release of 13 political prisoners, including Saida Bootaan Elmi, a young girl jailed and tortured after her husband joined the SNM.51 However, one of the most notable political prisoners were: Abdullahi Warsame Nur, a former Minister arrested in January 1981 for protesting human rights abuses committed by Siad Barre’s forces against Mudug area. Several months later, the Amnesty made ‘an urgent appeal’ to the world to help stop the torture of six Somali figures among them the popular poet Abdi Aden Hayd ‘Abdi Keys’, arrested for political reasons and against whom no charges have been brought. 52 There was no reply from the regime. This led the human rights organisation to change the wording of its statement and shift away from appeal to a warning.53 The appeals of the Amnesty were constant but not strongly enough to force the regime to release political prisoners. Another late appeal from the former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, also fell on deaf ears. 54 Carter directly wrote to Siad Barre and asked the release of political prisoners held without trial, some nearly two decades. Reflecting on the price of these prisoners, Richard Greenfield predicted the coming of ‘civil disturbance’ in Somalia.55 In the early 1980s, the prisons and detention centres were teemed with political detainees, overflowing almost the size of their capacities with harsh conditions. The prison, as such, was no longer a form of criminal punishment to discipline convicted criminals, but it served as a notorious institution to punish political opponents. It was worse off than what one could grasp in Foucault’s discipline and punish.56 Indeed, the detention centres were reported as brutish at best and as bestial at worst. A 1981 report detailing the prevalence of abuses of power had documented detentions without trials, the death penalties, torture, cruel prison conditions and oppression. 57 The report noted the release of 2,685 prisoners from jails to attract U.S. aid in the early 1980s. However, a hundred political prisoners remained behind the bars, some of whom had severe health conditions that led to death. Some other prisoners were also reported to have suffered from acute and chronic diseases.58 According to General Jili’ow, prisoners held in prisons and detention centres in 1969 were 2,055 of which no one was held on ‘political issues’.59 A decade later, in 1979, almost halfway through the dictatorial rule, there were 24,000 prisoners of whom 13,000 of them were held because of ‘political crimes’, but 9% of them were put on trial.60 In total, throughout Siad Barre’s rule, nearly 80,000 Somalis entered into prisons, like Labaatan Jirow, Laanta Buuro, Buurweyn (Jalalaqsi), Haawaay (Brava), Mandheera, Waajid, Warsheikh, Alula and Qandala, not to mention the underground detention centres of the Red Berets, the Hangash, the Party Investigators, the CID and the NSS. The extreme oppression inflicted on society rendered many soldiers to act as inhuman in prison spaces. Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim Hassan, a long-time detainee, recounted the appalling conditions of his prison experi- The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 199 ence.61 While in solitary confinement, his tormentors carried out an attempt after another to force him testing what oppression meant practically. Another Somali, a U.S.-educated architect, who entered into those prisons, alleged torture was a way to compel inmates to confess crimes they had never committed; the architect was forced to admit that he was part of a clandestine organisation intent on destroying the regime. ‘I told them’, he wrote to The Washington Post, after returning to the U.S. that ‘I was not a member of any organization (above nor underground)’.62 In January 1983, the SNM, by now the only armed opposition group, after the bulk of the SSDF joined the Siad Barre regime, made a surprise attack on the high-walled security prison in Mandheera, capturing the prison guards and releasing inwards.63 A month later, Siad Barre paid a visit to the North and his presence there made no progress to assuage the public antagonism toward his regime. In one single day in 1983, about 801 prisoners in the North were pardoned following his visit.64 A year later, in October 1984, after the visit of a U.S. military delegation, Siad Barre announced the release of 4,000 prisoners. More prisoners were also released in 1986. 65 A senior former regime official declared that ‘there were people who had been in prison without trial for 20 years’.66 Under the grip of a tight fist, the Labaatan Jirow and Laanta Buuro, two of the most notorious prison centres, were still filled with political detainees. According to Mohamed Baashe, a former student, who was detained at Labaatan Jirow from 1982–1989, the prison guards of these notorious institutions were solely composed of soldiers hailing from the Mareehaan and the Midgaan clans. 67 Again in 1987, the SNM attacked Hargeisa jail and released two inmates. 68 In this hit-and-run ambush operation, they assassinated Colonel Ahmed Aden Abdi, the NSS chief in the North. Abdi was a loyal officer whom the Siad Barre regime memorised with a gold medal for his services, as shown by a presidential decree. 69

Fishing Out inside the Opposition Given the growing SNM attacks, as it became unsuccessful to entice them like the SSDF into the fold, the President decided to experiment a new idea. To defeat the SNM, he appreciated the need to have a deal with Mengistu. As the attempts to isolate the SNM from the rest of the Somalis bore no fruit, he had to open up a new front to cut them off from the support they acquired from Ethiopia. Throughout the clanocide campaigns against the Isaaq of the North, the Siad Barre regime maintained accusing the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia of arming this clan.70 In 1982, the President officially declared that he was willing to meet with Ethiopian President ‘anywhere and anytime to discuss the problems in the Horn of Africa’. Mengistu gave no reply and, in an editorial piece published in the Daily Nation, the Kenyan newspaper urged him to seize the moment as Siad Barre was losing the war with the 200 Chapter 8

SNM.71 Successive Ethiopian regimes had long pursued a policy of returning Somali threat into Somalia, so Mengistu began to play a chess game with Siad Barre. In September 1984, after his visit to Mogadishu, the Italian Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, pledged Siad Barre $340 to achieve his efforts of reconciling with Mengistu. 72 Craxi personally proposed to act as a mediator. The engagement between Siad Barre and Mengistu was shrouded in political bullying. After a peace mediation in January 1985, the two Horn of Africa dictators met in Djibouti in 1986, their face-to-face first meeting since 1977, under the auspices of President Hassan Guuleed Abtidoon of Djibouti, during the preparations of the establishment of the Intergovernmental Authority of Develop- ment (IGAD).73 From behind the scenes, the Craxi regime was the driving vehicle of the deal by brokering a truce to be done within two years. The final validation of the deal occurred on 4 April 1988. Siad Barre and Mengis- tu agreed to appoint a joint team who would follow up the implementation phase.74 Under the new deal, described as a fool’s bargain in diplomatic circles, Siad Barre renounced the territorial claims on the Somali-inhabited territory in Ethiopia.75 He specifically recognised the ‘territorial integrity of Ethiopia’, which meant formally withdrawing his initial policy of considering the Somali territory in Ethiopia as a ‘Western Somalia’. In other words, he reneged on the policy of the Greater Somalia which was one of the accusations he had mounted against the last civilian administration. Mengis- tu, however, did not fulfil an important clause of the agreement, which obliged him to give the Somali territory in Ethiopia an administrative autono- my (such self-determination would have differed from the one allocated to the South Sudanese in the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972). Other provisions of the agreement were the exchange of prisoners held since 1977 war, the opening of embassies and diffusing the contentious issues of border demarcation. By reaching a rapprochement with Mengistu, Siad Barre intended to isolate the SNM (Mengistu also intended to divert his attention to Eritrea), but he unintentionally detached himself from one of the most crucial members of the MODH coalition: the Ogaadeen. The agreement with Mengistu offended their officers within the MODH and sent a clear message that Siad Barre’s plans had never been to preserve a long commitment to the welfare of the Somalis in Ethiopia. Under the accord, the two Presidents pledged to cease all support they had provided to their armed opposition groups. Both agreed to create army-free zones on the provincial border between Somalia and Ethiopia. Each would cut off his support of the armed opposition to each other. While Siad Barre hosted Ethiopian opposition groups, such as the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Eritrean Liber- ation Front (ELF), the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Mengistu The Family Affair and the Absence of Escape 201 provided bases initially with the SNM and the SSDF, and later with the United Somali Congress (USC) and the Somali Patriotic Front (SPM). By contrast, what was left from the small remnants of the SSDF was ultimately disbanded with the deal.76 However, the Mengistu regime retained supporting the other Somali armed opposition groups as late as November 1990. 77 Mengistu might have probably been confident that, by this time, the Siad Barre regime was on the verge of collapse as a deserted toothless enterprise. It is believed that Mengistu suggested to the SNM leadership to comply with the agreement. Ahmed Siilaanyo, the then SNM chairman, admitted that their movement deceived the Ethiopian President by first disobeying his order and by second sending their fighters into the heart of the North. 78 On the contrary, a senior former military officer within the regime disagreed. Colonel Hoogsade argued with a conclusive certainty that Mengistu provided weapons and logistics enabling the SNM to fight for six months upon cross- ing the border.79 The Mengistu support of the SNM was not something ambiguous. Even when they went to a full combat, the Ethiopians supported them with artillery and anti-tank weapons. This information is corroborated by foreign witnesses. The French analyst on Africa, Gérard Prunier, who travelled with the SNM fighters in late 1989 reported that their crew carried ‘a few rather unappetizing Ethiopian Army rations’.80 Once the SNM authorities gained some successes in the North, the Mengistu regime started to behave them as they were ‘the legal government of northern Somalia’.81 The Mengistu support of the SNM was a matter that the U.S. embassy in Mogadi- shu had recorded. In a secret meeting with the U.S. Ambassador Frank Cri- gler, the Acting Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs Ministry of the regime, Ambassador Abdullahi Egaal Nur, was asked whether the Mengistu regime provided ‘resupply’ to the SNM, but he reiterated that ‘there was no hard evidence, only “circumstantial” indications’. Ambassador Crigler noted that Abdi Haji Ahmed Liibaan, the Chief Protocol of the Ministry, voluntarily asked him to contact the Soviets to ensure that Ethiopians keep their ‘hands off’. Crigler concluded a confidential report cabled to Washington that Siad Barre and his stalwarts apparently ‘serve[d] their own interests’ in dealing with the Ethiopians.82 The agreement between Siad Barre and Mengistu was preceded by another of similar nature reached with the Moi regime in Kenya in 1983 by Mohamed Omar Jees, the Minister of Information. 83 Apparently complying with the terms of the agreement, the Siad Barre regime authorities quarrelled on whether or not to condemn the forceful deportation of Somali business- people (the majority of them were from the Hawiye) from Kenya to Somalia in 1989.84 This caused two senior members of the regime, Abdikassim Sa- laad and Abdirahman Jama to make two opposing statements: the former condemnatory, the latter congratulatory. Once Abdikassim Salaad condemned the act, Abdirahman Jama instead condemned his colleague and 202 Chapter 8 claimed that the matter was on a Kenyan domestic issue. Indeed, Abdirah- man Jama won this tit-for-tat race, as he was successful to force Abdikassim Salaad to shut up his mouth. The forceful deportation of the businessmen was also contrary to the several agreements signed with Kenya in the 1980s with regards to the promotion of economic cooperation between the two countries.85 Some Somalis critical of the Siad Barre regime were also expelled from Egypt in 1988, as reported by confidential sources.86 However, it was not the first time the Siad Barre regime was silent on the Moi’s State terror. The infamous Wagalla Massacre on 10 February 1984 wherein the Kenyan security services deliberately massacred roughly 5,000 Hawiye/Dagoodiye clansmen at the Wagalla airstrip, 15km west of Wajeer was a prominent case in point.87 The Siad Barre regime’s complete tacit of the massacre, in addition to the deportation, was an obvious evidence that the regime was concerned more about those who had identified themselves with the genealogical clan-group of the President. After all, since they were part of the so-called enemy clans, the Hawiye people in this period were seen as a potential threat. This led to the formation of the United Somali Congress (USC), which would overthrow Siad Barre from power. Chapter Nine

The Turning Points and the Ending Point

MANOEUVRES, ATTEMPTS AND SUGGESTIONS

The Last Legs of the Regime On 26 May 1989, Mareehaan senior members of the regime with their intellectuals wrote a letter to Siad Barre and advised him to reform his regime. In March 1990, Ahmed Delhi, a reporter for the Paris-based Afrique Contempo- raine, interviewed a former Siad Barre loyalist and long-time Ambassador to France, Mohamed Said Samatar ‘Ga’aliye’—now fell out with him since 1982—who apparently co-drafted the letter.1 Ga’aliye presented himself as an ‘opposition leader’, when in fact there had been no opposition group based in Paris. After noting that the diplomat was born in Ethiopia and attended school there in an elementary level, the reporter inquired him about his reflections on the contemporary condition of Somalia. Ga’aliye made prophetic remarks, predicting that his old master was now on the brink of falling down. Speaking of the armed opposition groups with critical tongue, he stressed that they were incapable of destabilising the regime since they had exhausted their resources. Assessing the regime and the armed groups, Ga’aliye added that both were deluding themselves, because the President was no longer in a position to satisfy the public by realising the radical changes to which he had promised. However, he strongly protested the reporter’s inquiries on whether Siad Barre still heavily relied for support upon the Mareehaan other than his ‘sons and cousins’—which is to say, his sub- sub-subclan. Ga’aliye used the letter of the Mareehaan notables as a proof to argue that the clan no longer supported him at face value. The letter, which

203 204 Chapter 9 he said was placed in ‘his own hands’—Siad Barre’s hands—consisted of six crucial points, suggesting to:

• Make a statement on radio and television acknowledging the failure of his policy and his inability to find a solution to the civil war that is exhausting Somalia and the Somali[s]. • Appoint a prime minister to form a provisional government with the mission of preparing for the holding of free elections in the country within six months. • Revise the Constitution with a view to establishing a political system based on plurality of opinion and granting freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and freedom to demonstrate. • Set up a program capable of bringing the country out of its apathy and stagnation and starting the economy out on the path to liberalism. • Rebuild the northern part of the country, which has been seriously jeop- ardized by the civil war. • Hold an early, free, and fair presidential election that will allow the nation's great political figures to run without necessarily being members of the party.2

While the letter found Siad Barre guilty of his policies, it considered the clanocide unleashed by his regime as ‘civil war’. This explained the emotional attachment the drafters had with the President. In December 1989, Siad Barre again assembled the notables among the Mareehaan clan and asked them to provide him with another concrete advice of xal qaran (state solution). In response, they expressed grief concerns of the catastrophe that was unfolding in Somalia so they suggested to him to restructure the military upon which the ‘salvation of the state’ depended.3 They also counselled him to appoint ‘various Somali officers’—a euphemism for cross clan—in the leading of the army. With reiteration, they recommended him to nominate a credible, independent prime minister from the Isaaq clan. According to Afri- ca Confidential, Siad Barre had tasked Mareehaan clan elders to look for an Isaaq candidate for the post months earlier. 4 Other significant suggestions included the reintroduction of democracy, of freedom of press and expression, of an independent judiciary and of solicitous civil service. Though these were a firm confirmation from his clan elders that Siad Barre’s regime proved worse off than the last civilian administration, the proposal would have been noble and notable had the President headed to act upon what his clan members suggested to him. The Mareehaan notables did not take any further attempts to convince Siad Barre to change the political course to anticipate a different outcome. Instead, he pursued an inward policy of sending his sub-clansmen on the front lines to ward off his regime against further attacks from the creeping The Turning Points and the Ending Point 205 armed opposition groups from Ethiopia. He also tried to trick the clan elders by increasing the top leadership positions for the Mareehaan. He appointed his fellow clansman, Abdulkadir Haji Masalle, the Assistant Secretary-Gen- eral of the regime’s party, to become his assistant in his party and then Interior Minister. When Masalle later became inept for these positions, the President replaced him with Ahmed Suleymaan Dafle, his son-in-law. 5 The latter nomination added fuel to the growing dissention from the Mareehaan who urged him to appoint the post to one of theirs. The further appointment of General Guulwade, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, to replace the more experienced General Ahmed Jama, an Isaaq, as Police officer, further alienated Mareehaan police officers, such as General Osman Ahmed Hussein ‘Aana- geel’, a cousin and confidante to the President. Reaching to the point of nowhere, the President could no longer trust anyone except his family. In late 1989, he met sub-subclan chiefs of some Mogadishu and its surroundings clans to form an alliance between the Da’ud sub-clan of the Abgaal and the Diini sub-clan of the Mareehaan. 6 When such an attempt proved futile and failure, he continued and called upon his sub- sub-clansmen to defend their regime. He promoted his children to further seize the State. To pave the way for an unchallenged rise of General Maslah to power, he sacked eight senior military generals from the army in February 1990. To make matters even worse, he reappointed his stalwart General Ali Samatar as Prime Minister and carried on his policy of dealing with internal pressures by playing out clan cards. It took a month and half for Ali Samatar to put together a cabinet and the delay revealed the pressures of the President who insisted a cabinet featured by his sons and cousins. Mohamed Goodah Barre, whom Ali Samatar included in his cabinet on 15 February of 1990 as Planning Minister, recalled that the situation was irreversible, because the devastation of the country was politically and economically acute. 7 In his last days, Siad Barre tried whatever tool and method he thought to sustain, such as trying ‘to establish himself as a religious national leader by giving religiously inspired public addresses’, though ‘these events were generally ridiculed by the public’.8 He also made interventions in Sufi religious rituals held at the jameecooyin (brotherhoods). The jameecooyin were used to serve a site of sanctuary for people in suffer. Some of them were, nonetheless, used as exclusive club avenues for unscrupulous politicians during the regime under the name of danwadaag (cooperatives). This was an attempt on the part of the regime to align itself with the Sufi sects against Salafi of Islam to win the war against the armed opposition. The reconfiguration of jameecooyin to act as cooperatives and collaborators diminished any role they would have assumed in the aftermath of the regime’s fall. Even though options for survival seemed slim, Siad Barre was still searching for a way to remain power and retain his reign by hook and by crook. As if though the regime stopped functioning as an entity, mosques began to spread messages 206 Chapter 9 of cure, for they foresaw a regime collapsing. Young sheikhs trained in Saudi Arabian universities began to stand up in open markets by calling for the public to turn to Islam for survival.

The Lingering of the Clan Card When a group of visiting Westerners inquired Siad Barre in 1983 when he would set plans to step aside, he retorted: ‘Why should I?’, insisting that his people needed him.9 He was partly true because he had constructed a syco- phantic situation, where his close sub-clansmen had perceived no life without him. In early 1989, as he was interviewed by the BBC Somali and asked him again when he would relinquish power, his response was ‘markey buuqa iyo qaylada naga daayaan’ (when they stop fracas and uproar).10 Amid mounting pressures from the donor agencies in that year, he came to terms with his remaining patrons and pledged to transform his regime into a multi-party system of democracy. After days of debating, the Central Committee of the Siad Barre’s Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP) rejected to put an end to the one-party political system and to go on democratic elections in a special meeting on 3 July 1989. The President had no one to fool in these political manoeuvres and most people were yearning for democracy to be reinstated.11 From Mengistu to Mobutu, all other African dictators were similarly offering promises of multipartyism. However, both Siad Barre and Mengistu were quite different from Mobutu painted by Bayart for personalist corruption, as they had no visible personal wealth, only to pursue their power.12 The new political configuration sanctioning political parties did not take well with clan cronies and coteries who organised three days of demonstrations opposing to revert to the democratic system. Siad Barre himself who attended one of those demonstrations listened to assembled women chanting ‘we do not want the multiparty system and democracy; we want you, father’. He admonished them: ‘Prove your words in action’.13 This was a code direct- ing them to fight against the armed groups creeping to the capital city. He also sided with his loyalists, when he insisted that Somali people would not accept statecraft based on democracy, because such was not ‘suitable for us’. The ‘us’ here meant to refer to Somalis, but it can appropriately be returned to Siad Barre and his inner circle. Nowhere in Africa had it ever happened people preferring democracy over dictatorship. In particular, this was in the late 1980s, when most African States were fighting against dictatorial regimes fattened by the years of cold war but left alone afterwards. Since there was no clear legal framework to rule since 1969 and the country was under the grip of his single authority, Siad Barre had to come up with a new approach to legitimise his rule. He began tinkering with the freedom to form a political association. In October 1989, attempts were made The Turning Points and the Ending Point 207 to adopt a new constitution for Somalia and the President approved the suggestion of Italian embassy to appoint an independent six-member Consti- tutional Review Committee, with notable members such as Ismail Jimale, Ahmed Ashkir Bootaan, Ahmed Ali Saalah, Abuud Muse Abuud, Abdullahi Mo’allim Abdulle and Professor Mohamoud Ali Tuuryare.14 The committee was assisted by Italian jurists to write a legal document authorising the formation of political parties and multi-party system, keeping in mind with the explicit instruction of the President that political parties should not exceed for three parties he named even before their birth as the Nationalist Party, the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party. A constitutional referendum was suggested to ensure a new flow of foreign aid, during a brief visit in Mogadi- shu by Italian representatives, led by Susanna Agnelli, from 10 to 11 May 1990. However, the Italian delegation was informed by members of the committee that ‘Siad Barre and his regime intended to resist any reforms that might weaken his power’.15 The Committee’s work ended in vain as both the public and opposition groups saw them a farce. In an act of desperation, the regime set a date of holding democratic elections, a matter that opposition groups paid no heed to it. The suggestion of forming political parties was entertained until the end of the regime, with elections—not different from the one in 1986—was set for electing ‘parliamentarians’ in February 1991. Siad Barre’s declarations were ambiguous and ambivalent as usual; he would say something at once and then reassert something else in the next. In May 1987, he exclaimed that there was ‘no need to initiate a dialogue’ with the armed opposition groups.16 Near the end of his regime, he changed the threatening tune of his heydays. He reiterated—without deeds—that he was prepared to hand over power ‘to whomever the Somali public chooses’.17 The promising pledges of this kind—even if offered under immense restrain—did not sit well with the opposition groups who viewed them offensive. This was because, as they saw it, Siad Barre and his henchmen were adamant in taking ‘any dreadful course’ to have a firm grip on power through political manoeuvres.18 As Ambassador Ga’aliye observed it, during his late declarations, ‘no one tried to hamper his action or to make an already precarious situation worse’.19 All these manoeuvres were typical as the worst was yet to come. As Ga’aliye predicted, ‘the political fight that will soon begin should seriously jeopardize the position of Gen. Barre and his team’.20

THE SLIDE INTO THE END

The Collapse of the Economy On the eve of 1990, with a political crisis and failing economy, Somalia came to a cul-de-sac, not only morally and economically, but also politically. The collapse of the formal economy exacerbated the prevailing painful con- 208 Chapter 9 ditions. Into January, the regime, besieged in Mogadishu with the end of the road of terror, reached the ending point—that is, the cataclysmic collapse of not only itself but of all the State institutions inherited in 1969. A series of events in Mogadishu forced the public to force the regime to leave the scene. The 21 January festival contributed to the regime collapse. In their concert of dareenka fannaaniinta (singers’ feeling), the poets who had initially embraced the regime dared to chant ‘waa maan gurracan iyo garasho jaan, Land Cruiser gado, soo bari Galleey’ (it is a deranged mind and confused cognition, while buying out Land Cruiser and begging for a maize at the same time).21 The poets described the extreme poverty that engulfed many households as a result of the regime policies and predicted its demise. In- voked as a symbol of embezzlement, the visual recording of the song showed a brand new Land Cruiser—the most loved car in Mogadishu at the time— driving through the dust hollow streets of areas in the capital, areas inhabited by the most deprived section of the society. Months before 1990, the National banks—both central and commercial— were declared bankrupt and inflation reached uncontrollable levels. The Cen- tral Bank finally ceased its operation. Other banks, such as the Commercial and Savings Bank, were also closed. Since 1988, the bank officials were begging regime authorities to stop ordering money. However, the President had decreed several months previously the increase of wages and bonus to the senior staff of the banks.22 Specific measures were also attempted to assuage the crumbling of the economy. To generate income for the regime, the regular tax was doubly increased.23 The private banks were sanctioned in February 1989 for the first time since 1969.24 The performance of the economy was again pushed for improvement on the basis of a liberal framework, with the economic intervention of the World Bank and the IMF. Despite the fact that the economy was on the verge of total collapse, the regime had produced reports on economic improvement as late as 1988 and 1989. 25 Encouraged by the intervention of these monetary organisations, the unexpected partnership with these agencies was similar to a State that had been taken as a mortgage. However, since almost the whole budget was diverted to the army to contain the armed groups, no salary was available to the regime employees. For the seven months he served as a Minister (February-September 1990), Mohamed Goodax recalled that he only took his salary for one month. 26 The country came to depend on the importation of food aid. The situation was so bad that the regime requested food delivery in the face of a threatening famine in crucial parts of the country which the capital included. In Novem- ber 1990, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Jama Abdulle ‘Jengeli’, complained to the U.S. embassy that ‘hunger in Mogadishu’ had caused ‘insecurity’.27 This put Somalia into the habitation of hunger similar to the Zimbabwe caricatured in his novel, The House of Hunger, by Dambudzo Marechara.28 The Turning Points and the Ending Point 209

Somali diplomatic missions abroad were closed down due to ruined economy and to the fact that the regime was unable to pay the bills of its foreign embassies. Out of 41 embassies, nine were shut down, including embassies in Algiers, Ankara, Belgrade, Bucharest, Dakar, East Berlin, Ottawa, Tokyo and Tunis. Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, who led the committee the regime had sent to ensure the closure of those embassies, attributed it to the political and economic breakdown of the country. 29 With the emergence of freelance militias soon before the collapse, people in Mogadishu began to take flight from the city en masse and out of disorder surfaced a space popularised by the public as Jiiro Norway (the road to Norway) to negotiate foreign trips without the intervention of the regime intelligence groups. The Jiiro Norway became a place in downtown Mogadi- shu where anyone opting to flee from the State suffering found sanctuary. Deals of travel package—visas, tickets, so on and so forth—were to be discovered there. To find a visa, one had to pay $1000 dollars.30 Some people were even to celebrate obtaining a visa for the U.S. and Europe in a big party at their neighbourhoods in Mogadishu and other areas. While many were fleeing, Siad Barre was urging through the Xiddigta Oktoobar what he termed the ‘stubborn Diaspora Somalis’ to return back home.31 Yet, the provocative manner his message was formulated had to generate more escap- ees than returnees. Between 1980 and 1990, roughly half a million Somalis fled abroad, mostly journeyed to neighbouring countries.32 Upon meeting many who fled from Siad Barre’s Somalia in Europe, one insider who himself fled had to pose this question with a somewhat sarcasm: ‘Who are these people consisting of youth, old, children, women and men, showing signs of fear when you approach them? Can we say that the Teacher of Revolution followed them to Europe and America as refugees and pit one against the another?’.33

MANIFESTO CALL: THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY

The Last Chance to Evade Complete Collapse Somalia became like a sinking ship and what was in store for Somalia was clearly observed as disastrous. On 10 February 1990, The Indian Ocean Newsletter published a caption, entitled ‘Somalia: A Country without a Government’.34 The title reflected the armed conflicts in and outside Moga- dishu which were reported to have reached the capital on a large scale as the regime became too fragile to control Mudug, Galgaduud, Hiiraan, Lower Shabelle, Middle Jubba and Lower Jubba regions, as well as the North. There were warning signs that the country would sink deeper and deeper to the point of no-return. Many other Somalis and non-Somalis also warned that, when the armed groups would reach the capital, Siad Barre would deploy 210 Chapter 9 every residual trick left to crack down and create a blow to the public. His downfall would definitely represent a titanic for the country. Once Siad Barre would finally vacate the scene, some observers suggested in 1987, what followed him would be ‘a civil war among the contending clan-families’, considering that there had been ‘signs that a nascent civil war, and a poten- tially catastrophic one, is brewing in Somalia’.35 A Somali poetess aptly predicted in the early 1980s that clan reprisals would follow Siad Barre’s fall.

The committee [Siad Barre’s politburo] has let us down They eliminated the strong and the intelligent. They detain the young as they reach puberty The process of avenging these wrongs must begin We must support those preparing to fight.36

None had recorded the real essence of this fact than the Somali elders who came close to alert to the international community the catastrophe that would follow if Siad Barre was forced to step down.37 On 15 May 1990, 114 prominent elders and intellectuals—including Aden Adde (no. 1 of the list), the first and former Somali President—joined forces and attempted to convince the President to step down power. Having signed a manifesto calling for him to relinquish power and step down to save the country from total devastation, they pointed out the burning political settings primed for complete cataclysm.38 Offering a solution to the prevailing civil war, they reiterated, quite daringly, that Siad Barre ought to resign. Whereas Mengistu, a month later, in June 1990, had warned of ‘imminent national collapse’ in Ethiopia, Siad Barre shrugged off a comparatively similar scenario in Somal- ia.39 From an Islamic and Somali perspective, the signatories wrote, no one could ignore the magnitude of the State-sponsored violence that ravaged many parts of Somalia. However, it was not the first time that Siad Barre was asked to step down. In 1982, several Somali elders exiled in the United States first called for Siad Barre’s resignation.40 Charging the regime for the disaster that enraged the country, the manifesto signatories—or the Manifesto Group as they came to be called—warned a State collapse never seen before in Somali modern history by highlighting gross human rights violations. They lamented the loss of the Somaliness harmony, replaced by clan sentiments and sympathies, together with the absence of an authority that could reinstate peace to all Somali regions, which caused people to feel insecurity, unsafe and uncertainty. Even though majority of the manifesto signatories were Hawiye elders of the old school of the SYL, Hassan Dhimbil Warsame (no. 28 of the list), one of the prominent signatories, argued that the manifesto elders came together as Somalis and for the sole reason of Somaliness in order to offer solutions to the crisis.41 Part of this was to create a space where people would freely The Turning Points and the Ending Point 211 express their feelings towards the contemporary conundrums and contribute to a political solution. As the manifesto signatories concluded: ‘We cannot help but note, hereby, in a combination of shame and irony, that under European colonial rule, the ordinary Somali enjoyed the right to Habeas Corpus whereas he has been arbitrarily deprived of such rights as a citizen by the regime as early as October, 1969 with Decree Law No. 64’. Bearing the tragic developments plaguing Somalia in mind, coupled with the perilous path to which the country was heading, the making of the manifesto was a miracle at this point in time.42 The manifesto signatories proposed to hold a grand conference for the purpose of national reconciliation and State salvation. They defined the principle aims of the conference as (1) to stop the bloodshed and the restoration of law and order, peace and stability to the country, (2) to reach common agreement on the basic principles that gov- erned a new Somali constitution, (3) to reach a political agreement on the strict timetable to hold free elections for new parliament, new president, new regional and district councils as well as necessary reforms on administration, economy, public services and the armed forces, and, the most important of all, (4) the formation of a new caretaker government charged with carrying out ‘the final decisions and agreements arrived in the conference’.43 Apparently in a state of shock for the 20-years rule of the clano-military regime, the manifesto proposal—echoed in and outside Somalia—was timely and sensible, not to mention that Siad Barre would have saved his face had he accepted their suggestions. The manifesto elders reminded the President that they had consisted of ‘all Somali clans’, ostensibly a significant note if they had to attract his attention as otherwise meant for him an incomplete list. Leaving any clan behind or at their back would have constituted an Achilles’ Hill that could easily be used against them. 44 Siad Barre, who was more Machiavellian than Marxist, was furious after realising that the letter reached Mogadishu masses and diplomatic corps in Mogadishu. Responding with brutality as usual, he dispersed and arrested the signatories. Some manifesto members, such as Abdi Sheikh Aden (no. 32), Abdulkadir Aden Abdulle Osman (no. 50), Mohamed Said Iyow ‘Gentleman’ (no. 38), Hussein Haji Mohamed ‘Bood’ (no. 7), Ahmed Abdi Daher ‘Ahmed Shell’ (no. 144) and Colonel Doonyaale (no. 64), were put on trial and sentenced to death in July 1990. When the sentence was spread to the capital city, something close to kacdoon shacbi (people’s upraising) was felt throughout Mogadishu. General Abdirahman Guulwade, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, tried to mediate manifesto elders and his father-in-law, arranging a meeting with him. 45 Once Siad Barre saw the faces of Mohamed Abshir (no. 6) and Muuse Boqor (no. 3), two of his nemesis, he changed his mind. The Manifesto Group was initiated and inspired by the Somali human rights activist and politician Ismail Jimale (no. 4), recognised as ‘the central person of the manifesto’.46 Ismail’s name was famed in public venues as a 212 Chapter 9 defence lawyer of the regime’s cases against political prisoners from early 1970s up to late 1990. His position as a human rights lawyer led him detention after detention. As such, he was arrested in 1969, in 1989 and in 1990, more than once with Abdulkadir Aden Adde, the son of the first President Aden Adde. As his widow Maryan Hussein Mohamed ‘Awreeye’ remembered, as Somalia descended into like maro dhammaatay ‘a tatty cloth’—that is, a ruined country—Ismail collected the signatures of most prominent politicians, businessmen, professionals, former military and police officers to sign for the manifesto ‘to save the country’.47 By accumulating those signatories, he apparently sought the tacit support of some foreign embassies concerned with the collapse of the Somali State. Ismail’s demand of peaceful power transfer was to follow non-violent and non-clannish approach, for he projected himself as someone representing all the opposition groups, including the sheikhs.48 It was also a known fact that he was aspiring to take over the presidency from Siad Barre.49 With his sudden death, the leadership of the Manifesto Group went to Haashi Weheliye Maalin. The manifesto call was followed by others in Somalia and from afar. Even though they called it the first manifesto, this was not the case: there had been two previous petitions in the late 1980s issued in Mogadishu first by sheikhs, the other by university lecturers; both of them warned the imminent collapse of the Somali State. University lecturers and other professionals gathered and issued a petition called ‘The Rights Call’ in October 1990.50 There was another petition called ‘political manifesto’ released in 1987 by the SNM, which articulated its policy of contributing to the running of the country with the involvement of ‘Somali society, including community leaders and sheikhs’.51 The Indian Ocean Newsletter reported that several former politicians, Aden Adde included, sent a letter to Siad Barre as far back as June 1983, requesting him to step down.52 What all these calls had in common was the importance and emphasis they laid on a non-violent transfer of power, one without bloodshed. Consisting of a group of Somalis and British, the Anglo-Somali Society wrote to the British government in June 1990 to hold a national reconciliation conference in view of the imminent regime collapse.53 In August 1990, following internal and external pressures, Siad Barre dissolved the dreadful NSS and the draconian National Security Court.54 This was one of the demands of the manifesto elders, a call which inspired some other crucial segments of the society to add their voice to the mounting pressures exerted to the President to resign. The calls for Siad Barre to step down were shared by most Somalis who yearned for a regime change. One regime insider used the term ‘the abhorred regime’ to describe the Siad Barre’s long years of despotic rule, because ‘much agony had come with its rule’.55 Within few weeks after the manifesto was released, Mohamed Ibrahim Egaal, the Prime Minister overthrown by Siad Barre, issued a personal mani- The Turning Points and the Ending Point 213 festo addressing not only to the regime and to the armed groups, but—quite surprisingly—to the Manifesto Group.56 Egaal concurred that Siad Barre should relinquish power so as to enable the Somali people to formulate a new strategy of recovering from State terror. Summarising the reasons surrounding the regime’s demise, Egaal pointed out ‘immorality, unrest and ignor- ance’ of the top leadership. Somalia was by now similar to a case of ‘delayed pregnancy’ that was long-waited to give a birth. 57 Thus Egaal saw no reason to foment the regime and the armed groups to come to dialogue as the death of the regime was inevitable. Egaal’s critical reading of the situation and of offering a solution, apparently backed up by extensive years in politics, was indeed significant in the sense that it added a strong voice to the calls for Siad Barre’s resignation. Egaal’s letter came as a shocking to the President, because the author had hitherto had a rapprochement with his regime since he was released from prison upon spending—with being detained twice—no less than 12 years in solitary confinement. In 1985, it was surprising that Egaal surrendered himself to Siad Barre who appointed him Chairman of Commerce.58 However, it is worth noting that Egaal was a politician possessing an intense preoccupation with power. But as late as 1990, Africa Confi- dential reported that he refused to meet Siad Barre for a possible nomination of Prime Minister.59 This was most unlikely as both Siad Barre and his stalwarts perceived Egaal one of the most perilous politicians in the country. Egaal’s letter was much more balanced and broad than the manifesto letter in the sense that it warned the Manifesto Group not to jeopardise the crucial work the armed movements were doing to oust Siad Barre. 60 This was where Egaal’s proposal diverted to follow the ambitions of the core manifesto message. Indeed, the subsequent events proved his precautions right. Even if some manifesto members were occupied with salvaging the State, other members busied themselves narrowly with their clan interests. The tantalising tale of Ibrahim Mohamoud Abyan (no. 16) was a prominent case in point. Abyan confided to the U.S. embassy authorities that he and a group of his clansmen met to discuss alternative ways—quite the opposite of Siad Barre’s, though they informed about their deliberations—to advance the interests of their clan-group.61 The deliberation involved in planning which clan would rule Somalia after post-Siad Barre and the plan was to rule Somalia by someone from the Daarood clan-group who believed in democracy. These behind the scene clano-political arrangements were not only be- traying the efforts of fellow manifesto group, but were also a risk to the collective efforts of salvaging Somalia from total anarchy. Clan intellectuals, such as Abyan’s, were dominant in the Somali political scene, for there were—in the eyes of Ambassador Bridges—‘very few Soma- lis who [had] a political vision that extend[ed] beyond asserting their own clan rights and strength’.62 However, Abyan was not alone in such a political duplicity, shared by several other manifesto signatories, such as Abdiaziz 214 Chapter 9

Nur Hersi (no. 29) and Abdullahi Farah Hoolif (no. 70). On 17 December 1990, several members of the group—namely, General Abdullahi Mohamed Hassan ‘Matukade’, a Majeerteen/Reer Mohamoud; Mohamed Omar Jama Dhigi’ Dhigi’, a Majeerteen/Osman Mohamoud; Mohamoud Saalah Nur ‘Fa- gadhe’, a Dhulbahante; and Abdiaziz Nur Hersi, an Awrtable (accompanied by Osman Samatar, a Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan businessman who had links with the U.S. embassy)—met with the U.S. Ambassador in Moga- dishu. They voiced their concern that Siad Barre ‘had blocked the path of peaceful reconciliation, leaving only violence as a means of resolving Somal- ia’s crisis’.63 That this mission was undertaken without the prior knowledge of the other Manifesto Group was itself a sign of unilateral clan exercise. The regime was perhaps correct to describe the signatories as a ‘power-hungry elements who had once ruled Somalia’.64 But Siad Barre went too far to label them ‘criminals’ in an interview he had given to the Xiddigta Oktoobar.65 However, as a clan level, the President always preferred to offer them a pardon, when approached by clan elders. The violent treatment to the manifesto signatories by the regime evidenced that a peaceful transfer of power was out of the question. It was too oppressive to arrest the manifesto elders for merely voicing their concerns for the future of the Somali State. A statement by the Interior Ministry under the leadership of General Dafle claimed that the manifesto elders ‘were detained for inciting people to acts of violence against the government. 66 On 2 June 1990, the Italian Ambassador Mario Sica invited manifesto members on the Italian Republic Day celebrations. Only 15 out of 114 reached the embassy; the rest had either been arrested or dispersed by the NSS agents. 67 They selectively detained most of the Hawiye signatories, several of the Majeer- teen colleagues and, ironically, the only Isaaq member in the group. These were taken to the notorious National Security Court where many knew that its verdict would be a death penalty. Outside the court occurred demonstration calling for the release of the signatories. With the intervention of the Italians—and the President had to please the Italians, because their support was indispensable for his survival—they were later released by the Banaadir regional court after a presidential pardon. Their lawyer, Asha-Kiin Farah Dualeh observed that no accused was ever released in that manner and the release represented a new trend from the regime’s draconian courts.68 Given the President’s refusal of all calls for peaceful power transfer, it was evident that a violent takeover was imminent. A corollary to the contemporary conundrum, together with many other intractable political issues, the country came to the point where violent disorder appeared inevitable in forcing Siad Barre hit his legs to fall. Rather than relinquishing power, the President despatched delegations to the Arab countries for economic and military assistance. General Morgan came to be stranded in Kuwait in seeking money and weapons, when the invasion of Iraq occurred in August The Turning Points and the Ending Point 215

1990.69 Surprisingly, the regime offered Saudi Arabia to send a unit from their forces to join the ‘Desert Shield’ military operation against Iraq in turn of weapons.70 The Saudi authorities did not yield to this temptation. The visit of another regime delegation to Washington in October and another one for the Soviet Union earlier for obtaining weapons was a demonstration of how desperate the regime was at this point. 71 In mid-December, barely a few weeks before the fall of the regime, General Osman Aanageel was visiting South Africa to meet international arms dealers to buy more weapons. 72 The South African mercenaries and ex-Rhodesian pilots, who had been previously deployed for a momentary assignment in launching airstrikes on the North, were in Mogadishu as late as November 1990. Abdirahman Jama, then Fi- nance Minister, wrote to the Central Bank to pay $600,000 in salaries for them.73 Abdirahman’s pay check payment and Aanageel’s visit had a correlation with the widespread fear prevalent in Mogadishu that the regime intended to use mercenaries once more to suppress the armed militias infiltrat- ing into the capital city.

FROM SAMUEL DOE TO SIAD BARRE

Violence and Chaos in the Capital Throughout 1990, violence overwhelmed the capital. Foreigners were come to be targeted increasingly on a daily basis. On 18 March, a British agricultural consultant for the World Bank, Peter White, was killed and his car robbed.74 On 17 June, Giuseppe Salvo, an Italian professor, was brutally murdered (he was found hanged) at the Guuto Labaad, the tank brigade in Mogadishu outskirts, commanded by Siad Barre’s brother-in-law, General Abdinasir Haji Haashi. On 22 June, there was a ‘minor dispute’ between the regime and Italian authorities over the cause of Salvo’s death.75 On 28 June, a German Lufthansa technician Bernd Richter was killed by unidentified murderers and his partner raped. On 6 July 1990, Siad Barre’s well-fed and well-trained personal military police, the Koofi Cas (the Red Berets), fired at a crowd that booed the President at the Mogadishu soccer stadium, killing scores of people, almost a year after the incident of the Jasiira massacre, where Isaaq intellectuals were massacred on the beach. 76 In another incident, Siad Barre was thrown stones by disgruntled youths in Hargeysa two years earlier. The Red Berets, who stepped in, opened fire on the demonstrators, killing two and wounding several others in attempts at dispersing them. 77 Further demonstrators took to the streets in Mogadishu in October 1990. As usual, the Red Berets were called as reinforcements and they dispersed the demonstrators with the killing of two and wounding dozens. 78 In July 1990, the U.S. officially urged the Siad Barre regime ‘to control its own [military] forces and to take necessary political measures for national 216 Chapter 9 reconciliation’.79 But the Washington appeal came late. In September, Mo- hamed Goodah, a Minister in the regime, was assaulted by the Red Berets in his house after rumours were spread that he joined the USC, when in fact the man who had done so was a namesake.80 These chaotic conditions coincided with the decision by some foreign embassies to reduce their staff. On 17 May, Britain and France reduced the number of their embassy staff in Moga- dishu ‘due to the continued decline in security conditions in the Somali capital’.81 Bomb explosions began to rock Mogadishu, especially around foreign embassies, as Ambassador Mohamed Osman observed. 82 As the President lost control of most towns to the SNM, the USC and the SPM, foreign observers began to dub him as the ‘Mayor of Mogadishu’, because the capital city (and its surrounding areas) constituted the only part in the country—typically a Hawiye territory—he controlled.83 On 3 September 1990, Siad Barre appointed Mohamed Hawaadle Madar, an Isaaq/Habar Awal, to the post of Prime Minister to replace General Ali Samatar whose unwavering loyalty to the Presidential Palace did not shield him from the allegation of political incompetency. 84 However, Madar’s appointment was unacceptable to the armed opposition group as he came to represent Siad Barre’s family interest rather than alleviating the grievances of the SNM. On one hand, this evidenced an absence of leadership capable of salvaging Somalia from the looming upheaval. It was, on the other hand, a matter of political tactic for Siad Barre to appoint an Isaaq Prime Minister while choosing his own panegyric for the post. By 9 September, the new Premier appointed a new cabinet which reflected his inability to extricate himself from Siad Barre’s family pressures. The cabinet included several of Siad Barre’s in-laws and his half-brother Abdirahman Jama, who made a powerful comeback after seven months out of the cabinet (from February to September). Referring to one insider informant from the Villa Somalia, U.S. Ambassador Crigler reported: ‘The outcome [was] as a painful compromise between old guard supporters of Prime Minister Samantar (including the President’s wife Khadija) and Marehan-first [sic] elements of the family connected with former foreign minister Jama Barre’.85 Apart from political patronage, the new cabinet appeared to have a grand- scale ambition to reach out the countryside for not only peace, but ‘for democracy’. One of the appointed ministers, Abdirahman Abdulle Osman ‘Shuuke’, contended that their cabinet was ‘a civilian one’, given that the majority of whom were from a civilian background. Postulating that the memory of ‘representative democracy’ was bygone experience in a society in which 60% of the population were 25-year-old, he insisted that the cabinet of which he was a member planned to go to ‘the country to try to educate the population to democratic values and procedures’.86 The U.S. embassy commented that, given the degree of insecurity in the country, it was doubtful how this cabinet could venture there. Shuuke further requested U.S. support The Turning Points and the Ending Point 217 for ‘a program of political reform’. As the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu wrote in a cable sent to Washington, after he was reminded of the ‘occasionally deadly misbehaviour by government troops’, Shuuke provided no argument, a sign that he represented himself in the regime. It was this personal representation that Premier Madar was reported to have threatened Mogadishu masses with the same fate as that of Hargeysa and Bur’o, had they failed to refrain themselves from supporting the USC. The political developments of the Hargeysa bombardment, Jasiira genocide and many other precedents of the regime collapse have been dealt elsewhere with forthcoming book by this author. Following these perilous and precarious events, The Economist magazine in London concluded in September 1990 that, with the grip of military authority evaporated, Siad Barre’s regime collapsed: ‘The brutalities of this corps [Siad’s forces] are, alas, characteristic of today’s Somalia. The collapse of anything remotely like legitimate authority has left a vacuum that is filled by men with guns. A routine debating point in Mogadishu is whether Presi- dent Siad Barre has lost nearly all—or merely—most control’.87 Soon after, news spread that he hid himself from the insecurity in the capital. The Indian Ocean Newsletter reported that the President had become a ‘refuge’ in his own Villa and made a bunker near the airport. 88 The situation got out of hand, when defections to the side of the USC became a common. In October, Colonel Abdiweli Jama Warsame Gorod, a Hawiye/Habar Gidir pilot, defected with his military aircraft, two years after the Abgaal/Hawiye pilot had defected defying orders to launch an airstrike in Hargeysa. 89 Gorod took his aircraft to Eelbuur in central regions, where the USC had established a makeshift military post. Ambassador Mohamed Osman, who visited Siad Barre in the Villa Somalia in December, found a ‘weak’ man surrounded by ‘weak’ cronies. The ambassador compared what his supporters—including himself—expected from the President to the Somali saying, ‘Nin liita har kuuma jiido’ (a weak person cannot carry you to the shade).90 This meant that Siad Barre neither had the vision to create reconciliation nor the power to subdue the capital by force. Using Liberia’s then dictator Samuel Doe as an example, a Somali poet chanted ‘sida la yeelay Saajin Samuel Doe, Siyaad Barrena waa sugee (the way Sergeant Samuel Doe was treated is a similar fate awaiting Siad Barre).91 The poem was reverberating Somali public’s anticipation toward the detested dictator. Like Doe in Monrovia in 1990, Siad Barre was ruling a city-State confined to the capital. However, Somalia was not as a worst-case scenario of the civil war in Liberia, where the dictator was brutally killed after going through an agonising interrogation in September of that year. After being captured, Doe was slaughtered in horrendously and horribly by militiamen loyal to his war rival Prince Yormie Johnson. 92 Even though many Liberians held that Doe paid the price of the brutalities he had un- 218 Chapter 9 leashed upon civilians, the manner he was killed was unceremonious and inhuman. Unlike Doe, Siad Barre escaped death on the eve of his fall, but he succumbed to destitute life at the end of his life. Both dictators shared a system of ‘a brutal, predatory and personalised power’.93 It was not a coincidence that Davidson’s description of Doe matched the similar oppressive State system in which Siad Barre had reigned and ruled. 94 When assessed through the lenses of ‘pathological phenomena’ while taking colonial experience into account, Siad Barre and Doe were ‘men who have possessed the strength and character to seize power, but not the wisdom to control it’. However, they were not the worst in comparison with other African dictators, but they shared the painful legacy that led their countries to collapse. In a congruent context, it was when the dictators were lost ‘between greed and fear’ and from the stifling grasp of that ‘solipsism’ that they were to subject perish for punishment.95 V

The Cacophony of Control: The Torment

Been fakatay run ma gaarto (A propagated lie can never compete with a simple truth) —Somali proverb

Chapter Ten

The Outbreak of the Uprising

The Downfall

THE CAPITAL UNDER SIEGE

The Anarchy and the Atrocity By December 1990, anarchy and chaos prevailed in the capital. Most Soma- lis were cognisant of what was brewing: the regime was breathing its last. The situation was deteriorating on a daily basis throughout the month. As a result, the Siad Barre regime lost control over the most parts of the capital. Flouting as a boat to the point of nowhere, no return, the regime was now literally toothless, incapable to even secure the stability of the surrounding areas of the Villa Somalia, such as the airport and seaport. The excessive insecurity was such that an Egyptian cargo plane carrying arms to the regime was prevented from taking off by rocket fire. Similarly, a civilian Boeing aircraft owned by the Somali Airlines was fired and shot while trying to take off. On 15 December, The Indian Ocean Newsletter amply predicted that the violence in the capital appeared to be ‘more likely a sign of the downfall of the regime and the disintegration of its own armed forces’.1 This was a prediction that the regime greeted with a state of denial. To the President, the insecurity could have been handled had more arms been donated. Arms without idea led to anarchy and atrocity. Mogadishu was by now heavily populated by civilian exodus forcefully displaced by their territories in the North and Central Somalia as well as the immediate areas adjacent to the capital. These were mainly internally-displaced people (IDPs) after the bombardment of cities like Hargeysa and Bur’o.

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The situation was so anarchic and out of hand that, when some of the newly-recruited Red Berets complained to Siad Barre about insufficient salary payment, he famously stated that an armed man should never have felt hungry. The public framed this declaration a tacit encouragement, if not approval, of the ongoing ransacking of some parts of the capital by his own bodyguards. However, his associates were still trying to control the capital. In one of the last desperate calls, Hussein Mataan, now the Minister of Justice, went on the air on Radio Mogadishu to provide details of a new decree of ‘Anti-banditry Law’, issued by the President to control the capital. 2 The law stipulated that anyone who would act against the regime and commit ‘armed banditry and robbery of public and private property’ shall be punishable with death and confiscation of all property. It also made other provisions on how to be dealt with anyone who became complicit with ‘the bandits’ in their crimes and those who hid ‘known information on banditry’. The ‘bandit’ was defined someone who had no right to appeal from court rulings. The application of the ‘bandit’ as ‘anyone’ appeared to be alluded to anyone from the public who posed resistance to the despotic regime. In this attempt to adopt a new face of oppression, anyone who became a challenge to the regime was considered a ‘bandit’. However, the promulgation of the law was itself a clear indication on the level of insecurity that Mogadishu had encountered. The politics of chasing elusive ‘bandit’ granted temporary relief to the regime. Yet, the decree itself was unwittingly in contravention with provisions of the new draft constitution proposed earlier by the regime. Abdullahi Mo’allim Abdulle, a Hawiye lawyer, who was called on the U.S. embassy, described the decree ‘illegal’, referring to the draft constitution.3 Given the anarchic disorder, all vestiges of regime institutions had evaporated, except for the Red Berets who were exclusively drawn from the Reer Kooshin. The Red Berets maintained targeting Mogadishu masses on clan basis, as the USC increased ambush attacks on the regime strongholds in the capital. On Radio Mogadishu, the Interior Minister encouraged the public to track down ‘bandits’, which meant sanctioning a mob justice among civilians. Abdikassim Salaad let it be known that any bandit caught in the capital would meet dire consequences, pleading the public to fight against daylight bandits he had seen in his own eyes on the streets of the capital in late December 1990.4 Abdikassim Salaad announced that ‘[t]hese bandits, whose aims I have just mentioned, have been operating in other areas and in neigh- boring countries. As soon as they enter the city, they start terrorizing the people. We must contain these bandits. We must work in unison—for example, by offering tip-offs, by killing and arresting these bandits if they are carrying firearms’.5 The minister invoked a religious admonition to plead the public to keep the peace and fight the ‘bandits’, a term that joined the common vocabulary usage of regime’s attacks on the armed militias that crept to the capital. This is how Abdikassim Salaad painted the bleak picture of the The Outbreak of the Uprising 223 capital on 24 December 1990, a week before the uprising erupted in Mogadi- shu, in a long speech he released on Radio Mogadishu.

. . . last night there were many gunshots heard in the city. If I tell you about the gunshots, you might be led to believe that last night's gunshots could have turned the city upside-down. The majority of those firing—let me say 90 percent—were guards, especially those of individuals and government officials. We would urge protected officials to tell their guards to stop unnecessary shooting, for the ammunition is valuable and could run out. If they do not stop, we shall collect the weapons, be they in the possession of civilians or government officials. It is senseless to terrorize the city. Shooting is prohibited unless there is a genuine bandit attack and someone is compelled to defend himself. The habit of aimless shooting in order to show others that one has a gun must be stopped. This is for the sake of stability and peace in the city. The other day I personally witnessed a bizarre incident. A Somali girl was shouting at the top of her voice after being attacked by two bandits, while people in the bus she was traveling in looked on unconcerned. She was stripped of her jewellery. Let me ask the Somali people: Where have Islamic values gone? Where is the Somali ethos? The 20 people in the bus could have captured the two bandits, who only carried knives. God is angry with us because what we claim to be and what we do are two different things. We claim to be Muslims, but what we do is un-Islamic. That is why God is getting angry with us. That is why God is getting angry with us [ . . . ] I wish to inform the Somali people that the country is on the brink of catastrophe. Our beautiful flag, which our fathers fought for, is about to fall to the ground. I appeal to the Somali people, who believe in God and his messenger, to give priority to their national flag, which is a symbol of unity. There is nothing that is above our flag and sovereignty. There is nothing that is above our flag and sovereignty [ . . . ] No one will benefit from shedding Somali blood. We pray to God to cleanse the minds of the Somali people. We pray to God to cleanse the minds of the Somali people. [repetition as heard].6

The Outburst of the Capital On 27 December 1990, three days before the uprising, the new U.S. Ambas- sador, James Keough Bishop, met Siad Barre and cabled to Washington that, even though he seemed nervous, the President was in full alert. After the ambassador briefed and ensured him about the continued U.S. support, Siad Barre, in a somewhat serious manner replied, ‘O good, I though[t] you were coming to say goodbye and to tell me the other Americans also were leaving’. He was reasonable to recognise that the situation of the country was ‘bad’, again reiterating ‘bad’ because he became ‘a little bit old’. With the odd assertion ‘and we don’t know what will happen’, he concluded that what would happen ‘is up to [G]od’.7 However, Siad Barre refused to directly engage talks with the USC and other armed opposition groups. When Bishop offered assistance for this path, he replied thus: ‘They can come here and talk 224 Chapter 10 if they want to’. Bishop observed thus: ‘For the next ten minutes[,] I tried to draw the elderly President into conversation but could elicit only brief responses to the subjects I raised. He was anxious to terminate the meeting and probably would have done so, except for the fact that the juice he had offered had not yet arrived’.8 Given the precarious background and judging from his statement, Siad Barre was more consistent to the reality on the ground and appeared realistic to the fate and future of his regime than the U.S. administration and its diplomats in Mogadishu. Bishop concluded his observation that:

Siad's stride was vigorous for a man in his eighties, his handshake was firm, and his mind was alert. Having had to listen the previous day to the Somali Ambassador to Washington [by now Siad Barre’s son-in-law and an Ogaa- deen] insist for an hour that the situation in the country is in all important respects normal, and having been told by admiral [Said] Marino that peace had returned to the northwest as we chatted while I waited for Siad, I was surprised by the presldent's [sic] realism in acknowledging the regime's plight. However, he is considerably smarter than my other two interlocutors and certainly wise enough to realize he would have no credibility pretending to anyone living in Mogadishu that conditions here resemble normalcy [. . .] My general impression was that I was dealing with a worried man who does not feel he has a gameplan [sic] which will allow him to overcome the problems before him. Nevertheless he seemed intent to muddle on, giving no hint that he might be thinking of heading toward the exit.9

On Sunday afternoon, 30 December 1990, the uprising that sent Siad Barre to exist began in Mogadishu. The third week of the uprising (which ended the fourth), General Aideed decided to join and entered into Mogadi- shu. While on his way to the capital, Aideed captured Hiilweyne, an important military compound for Siad Barre on the outskirts of the capital. Weap- ons seized there escalated Aideed’s confidence to capture the capital with his own small number of fighters, though the Ethiopians had provided him with munitions stocks previously owned by the SSDF. Ali Said Hassan, a freelance journalist who travelled with the general, recalled that the USC military leader entered into Mogadishu on 19 January 1991. Within a week, on 26 January, Siad Barre was forced to flee from the Villa Somalia. 10 However, the USC political conflict and organisational fissures had also been coming to the surface. Mohamed Rooble, the USC spokesman in London, now representing the USC businessmen in Mogadishu, was the most outspoken figure among Aideed’s opponents. In an interview with the BBC World Service, Rooble condemned Aideed and went even further to assert that the latter had not been ‘part of the USC structure’.11 The spokesman pointed out that Hussein Bood was the real leader of the USC and General Galaal the military commander. The USC group to which Rooble represented in London was The Outbreak of the Uprising 225 known as the ‘Manifesto’, a group who were held responsible for the move that split the USC into two fighting camps. Days before Siad Barre’s ouster, a group calling itself Golaha Suluxa Soomaaliyeed (the Peace Somali for Somali Conciliation)—comprising 75 members representing all Somalis from all walks of life, including the Mani- festo Group, as well as the USC, SSDF, SDM representatives and 25 members from the Siad Barre regime—emerged.12 Men who represented Siad Barre were General Gaani, Abdirahman Jama, Abdikassim Salaad, Omar Arte, Mohamed Hawaadle Madar and others, while USC representatives were General Aideed, Hussein Bood, Abdi Osman Farah, Colonel Ismail Yaasiin, Abdikarim Ahmed Ali and others. Members of the Manifesto Group (by this time somewhat defunct) present were Mohamed Said Iyow ‘Gentle- man’, Mohamoud Geeddi Mohamoud ‘Fuuje’, Abdullahi Mohamed Hiirad, Ahmed Shell and others. The peace council shuttled between the regime and the USC to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power before the latter violently ousted the former. The first met Siad Barre who challenged their proposals for him to leave with voluntary exit on the condition that ceasefire had to be put in place. His insistence was stop the war before he voluntarily left the capital. During the meeting with the surrounded President, the bullets fired from the USC fighters were reaching to the door of Siad Barre’s conference room, while his forces were responding with heavy bombardment.13 More than twice, when the older council members complained to him that they could not hear each other due to the huge shelling going on in the Villa Somalia, Siad Barre ordered his soldiers to stop it. However, they defied his orders and argued that, if they stopped it, the USC would climb to the gate of the Villa. While these negotiations were ongoing, two core members of the Manifesto Group, Haashi Weheliye Maalin and Muuse Boqor, died in a shelling fired by the regime forces. For General Jama Mohamed Ghalib, both were killed by ‘operatives’ of the regime. The operatives might have perhaps assumed that the place the Manifesto Group was holding their conference ‘was the command post of their enemy’, thus they enjoined shelling.14 Even though there is a consensus on who killed them, variation from where they were bombarded has remained unsolved. According to General Falco, who was a witness, the shelling either came from the Villa Somalia or the seaport, both held by the regime forces.15 Another elder who was killed in a different shelling was Mohamoud Geeddi Mohamoud ‘Fuje’, a well-respected former senior police officer, who died after his house was shelled from the Villa. 16 The peace council then met the USC—under the military leadership of General Aideed—who interpreted Siad Barre’s suggestion a way to amelio- rate his political tactics and war strategy. When Aideed reasserted his groups’ predetermined plans—in the presence of some Manifesto elders together with a group of representatives of the Siad Barre regime—to force the 226 Chapter 10

President out without conditions and concessions, some members of the council publicly reminded him of the fact that the uprising against the dictatorship was not a one single man’s orchestration, but a public and popular plan. In the meeting with Aideed recorded on audio-visual cassette, Gentle- man, a prominent Manifesto elder, compellingly reminded Aideed that he was not alone in the efforts to topple the regime. 17 Aideed responded by insisting that the struggle was begun in the North by the SNM. The video also featured Omar Arte, Abdullahi Mohamed Hiirad, Mohamed Ahmed Abdulle ‘Sakhraan’, Ahmed Shell and other elders negotiating with Aideed for a peaceful settlement that would sanction Siad Barre’s departure. The precondition was for Aideed to accept ceasefire, something that he was strongly opposed. Two hostile groups evolved from such deliberations on who was the right to replace Siad Barre: the Manifesto Group and the Musta- hiil Group (Aideed’s camp).18 The next day Siad Barre fled, Manifesto and Mustahiil quarrelled over who had the right to talk on Mogadishu Radio to announce the victory.

The Role of the U.S. Diplomats Killing and counter-killing, as well as robbery to the civilians were camou- flaged during the uprising. Not only Somalis, but some of those targeted for pillaging in the midst of the war was foreign embassy staff stationed in the capital. Western embassies became sites of booty where groups at war were devoted to grabbing their share. Of the most valuable one that housed the most valuable possessions was the U.S. embassy. Though the USC forces took their share, most of the looting was carried out by the Red Berets. 19 Escaping to their clan-inhabited territory while the war over Mogadishu was still ongoing, Siad Barre and his militiamen, as Compagnon noted, ‘plundered the central bank of what was left of the country’s gold and foreign currency reserves’.20 However, the bank had previously been robbed well before the war by regime authorities. Because the plundered State was left it impoverished with no usage for anyone, some fight over the skeleton as part of the spoils. In contrast to the Italians, the U.S. authorities chose not to intervene in the war. There was nothing to lose in the crumbling and collapse of Somalia as a State since there was no American investment in the socio- economic infrastructure of the country. The tale on how the U.S. embassy was rescued from the war would be of particular interest for students of security studies. In September 1990, three months before the uprising, Ambassador Bishop arrived and replaced Am- bassador Crigler. Bishop, similar to Peter Bridges (and others) before him, continued the policies of promoting the Siad Barre regime as part of the cold war politics. The reason Bishop—just despatched from Liberia where he had witnessed firsthand the horrors of the demise of Doe in Liberia—was ap- The Outbreak of the Uprising 227 pointed to Somalia was clearly to prepare the large U.S. embassy staff for possible (abrupt) evacuation. Drawing from Monrovia, his experience of conflict-torn posting was supposed to help alleviate in case sudden conflagration in Mogadishu was to explode. Soon after his arrival with his family, Bishop tested the intensity and extent of violence prevailing in the capital, when a shot was fired at his wife by armed men he called ‘a gang of thieves’.21 He seemed unsure whether this gang was from Siad Barre’s forces or the USC’s. From September to December, Bishop did nothing to critically assess the situation, formulate a security policy and then adopt measures of averting hazard. When the security situation in Mogadishu was increasingly escalated, Bishop began to recommend Americans working in the capital for voluntary departure to send their dependents as well as non-essential employees to Washington. On 31 December 1990, Colonel Ken Culwell, a U.S. Defence Attaché, was attacked on his way to the embassy. However, he managed to reach the compound without injury other than several bullet holes in his car. This was a day after the uprising began.22 While parts of the capital city were under fire, the Americans working for the embassy were celebrating on the eve of the New Year with whiskey. They had not finished their party, when the bullets reached close to their compound. Only this time had they begun to worry about their own security and safety. Many ran up to the roof of the building on which the party was going from which they witnessed the first rounds being fired from Villa Somalia to civilian-populated areas. 23 On 1 January 1991, Ambassador Bishop himself observed that the regime forces employed indiscriminate shelling and ‘heavy artillery’ against certain neighbourhoods as well as ‘unrestricted use of their greater firepower’ to ‘distinguish the uprising’.24 Bishop did not know the neighbourhoods were the shelling was fired but he observed that guns were being distributed to members of the Siad Barre’s clan. In his piece, ‘Escape from Mogadishu’, he recorded that ‘uni- formed men had broken into several A.I.D. compounds [U.S. AID] to steal vehicles and were beginning to loot homes vacated by embassy personnel’.25 As the war briskly worsened, the U.S. embassy and the Soviet embassy helped each other to rescue their staff (as well as other foreign diplomatic missions) and get out from the quagmire they were partly responsible for the support they had provided to Siad Barre. It was a cinematic view, when the U.S. embassy compound came to host eight Arab, African, Asian and Euro- pean ambassadors and other diplomats. Roughly 15 foreign nationals found refuge in the U.S. embassy. Ambassador Bishop noted that his Kenyan counterpart was badly abused along with his wife by the regime forces while on his way to the U.S. embassy compound.26 Out of chaos, the embassy established its own Somali militia from the mouldy forces of Siad Barre, who were smashed to smithereens. The military officers of the embassy provided light arms to these militias whom they considered ‘local guards and armed 228 Chapter 10 policemen’.27 The job these ‘guards’ were tasked to perform by the embassy staff was to protect them from potential looters. A team of the embassy employees was instructed to prepare daily meals for them. Meanwhile, there was no doubt that these so-called guards were actually the very clan militias mobilised by General Morgan to face the USC. Intentionally or unintentionally, the U.S. embassy became part of the clanised war. The U.S. diplomats maintained their contact with the regime. Ambassa- dor Bishop and his team communicated with Siad Barre through Italian diplomats who had direct access with him. When they asked the President to grant landing permission to military aircraft to evacuate their staff, Bishop and his team were told to talk to the Foreign Ministry, a ministry which its gates were closed and later its building were abandoned. The U.S. diplomats then bribed an officer from Siad Barre’s former police called Major Sayid to rescue the Soviet Ambassador and his staff from the city centre. Taking the success of the previous undertaking into account, they bribed the Major again, this time with ‘a significantly higher per capita fee’ to bring 15 British nationals isolated in their embassy.28 Similar rescue operations were carried out to rescue the British Ambassador and the German Chargé d’Affaires. However, the South Korean embassy staff refused to trust travelling with these regime militias funded by the Americans in order to reach the U.S. embassy. One could surmise that their consternation was a diplomatic concern: once you allow yourself defended by one group of the armed conflict, you lose your impunity from the other side, a crucial point to which the American, Italian and some other Western diplomats totally turned a blind eye. On 5 January 1991, when the U.S.S. Guam and the U.S.S. Trenton warships came to evacuate U.S. embassy and its refugees, they had to pay the price or negotiate their departure with U.S. dollars. Major Sayid returned to extort by demanding massive money to permit helicopters to land. Aided by two other American staff, Ambassador Bishop took the Major to his office, making him drunk to allow the Marines more time to evacuate as many people as possible. When the last helicopter came to take Bishop and few others, they handed Major Sayid the keys of their cars and other important embassy possessions. About 281 foreigners were rescued in the operation codenamed ‘Eastern Exis’, while the Somalis working for the embassy were left on the sun. As soon as the U.S. diplomats’ helicopter took off, some ‘disaffected’ forcers of the Siad Barre regime shelled the embassy. 29 War broke out afterwards in the embassy premises within regime’s forces over who should have taken what. Combatants and civilians alike were reported to have lost their lives. With anxiety and apprehension, the Americans departed while the uprising was about to end, with the USC-led massive population of Mogadishu struggling to overthrow the U.S.-supported regime. Goodbye, the United States of America. Interestingly, as it was, when the U.S. policymak- The Outbreak of the Uprising 229 ers were blamed for the Somali syndrome, for they had extended economic and military support to Siad Barre, they ‘countered that responsibility for Somalia’s current crisis lay with Siad Barre himself and the former colonial powers, [namely] Britain and Italy’.30

THE DOWNFALL OF THE DICTATORSHIP

The Flight of Siad Barre Siad Barre fled while everyone was killing everyone with the shadow of the Siadist State, leaving the Villa Somalia without warning his clansmen on Radio Mogadishu. Few days before his fall, he used the same method employed by Abdikassim Salaad in inserting religious message into his attempts to survive. On Radio Mogadishu, the President released a strongly-worded message where he oddly urged ‘the Somali people to remember and thank God for the respect he has for human life’ and spoke of the importance of food production, calling on ‘the masses to get involved in various farming activities’.31 All his efforts to holding and hanging onto power through brutal force ended in disaster. As his forces became like a conglomerate clan militias from way back since 1977, he felt unable to fully secure his own security. The Ret Berets could not fend off the back gate of the Presidential Palace. The President himself was lightly wounded on the shoulder while fighting to secure the security of the Villa Somalia from the USC. On the evening of 26 January 1991, USC militiamen climbed to the walls of the Villa, entering the western section as Siad Barre was fighting fiercely for the survival of his rule. Minutes later, he was forcefully rescued from the Villa by close sub-subclan members and his sons-in-law General Morgan and General Abdirahman Guulwade. He and his close sub-subclan cortége ran to Kismaayo, which they reached the next day. In a hectic clan gathering, he met his clan-group elders to obtain their support for a possible return to the Villa.32 A certain Sheikh Ahmed Mursal, the gardener of the Presidential Palace, recounted to The New Yorker that he watched Siad Barre escaping from the front gate of the Villa. Thirty minutes later, he recalled, ‘his enemies’ entered from the opposite end of the compound.33 The Villa as a symbol of political power had a special significance, because anyone who seized it expected to be universally enjoying the high-ground panorama of the place to oversee the State and the society simultaneously as Siad Barre did. Each Hawiye clan (or within sub-clan) took control of specific areas in the capital they helped liberate. The Abgaal and the Habar Gidir captured together the Villa, the most prized property of all. Scott Petterson was among the first Western journalists to visit the Villa Somalia after Siad Barre was ousted. He found documents and ‘thick files marked “never let out”, listing enemies of the 230 Chapter 10 regime condemned to die in their dungeons’.34 Most of these documents were used something to wrap for food supplies in Mogadishu shops or, even worse, as toilet paper. Interviewed by a female Italian journalist, who visited him in Buurdhuubo in early 1991, Siad Barre claimed leaving Mogadishu intact. Speaking Italian, he insisted that everything was abosto (okay) in Mogadishu, when he left. Even gold, he claimed, were available in the banks.35 The fact was that he and his family fled with bags full of cash worth millions of dollars as the main key manager of the Central Bank was none other than his daughter Faduma, who held the keys of the bank. With chaos spreading into the capital, Mogadishu became dark, no electricity, no water, nothing. Artillery shelling from Siad Barre’s forces had already damaged and destroyed large swathes of the city. 36 That weapons stockpiles of the regime were massively pillaged added fuel to the prevailing random violence. Stray bullets were called yussuf, for whenever the freewheeling bullets flew by, it whispered yussuf. On the other hand, yusuf yusuf was a dark remainder of the violent brutal legacy of Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, who once bragged himself as the first man who instigated the war in 1978. People began to warn each ‘other if you see Yusuf on your way home, just ignore him’. A Western war correspondent reported from Mogadishu in the early 1990s that ‘[a]n outgoing rocked, mortar round or artillery shell was known as a “To Whom It May Concern”.37 Unparalleled loss of life—or to borrow from the words of one insider ‘death beyond compare’—that affected a considerable number of households was the upshot of the Siad Barre regime. The extent of human misery and material destruction that had befallen Somalia in 1991 was unprecedented: it is estimated that there was no Somali on earth that escaped losing a family member in the war. 38 The BBC Somali Service started to broadcast a programme for missing persons. The messages sent to this programme are indicative of a distressing tragedy that was So- malia. One caller requested: ‘Tell my wife that I am alive’. Another would say: ‘Since my mother’s house was destroyed, I do not know where she is [now]’. A man who left his family in the midst of the early uprising sent a desperate message to the BBC, lamenting thus: ‘I do not know if my children have been killed’.39 This was the legacy inherited from the Siad Barre’s 1969 coup.

The Vanished Victory Scarcely Siad Barre had fled than the perpetuity of the clan reprisals spiked, this time worse than ever. This was because the warfare had shifted from political violence to private and personal violence, so much so that paralysed and protracted clanised wars were pursued in parallel with political power positions. Put it this way, this was the time that violent order shifted away from State to clan, a continuation of war over the State by other means. What The Outbreak of the Uprising 231 followed Siad Barre’s fall and flight can best be captured by referring to the Somali saying ka dar oo dibi dhal or kud ka guur oo qanjo u guur (both bearing similarly with the English proverb, from the frying pan into the fire). With the fall of his regime, most Somalis anticipated democratic rule would be reinstated and the days of dictatorship would soon become a history. 40 Whatever popular prospects for the event heralded for the better was dashed to the ground by the unstoppable clanised wars which continued well after the downfall. The regime collapse was kindred with an upsurge of the clanised wars. Since Siad Barre fomented these wars to save himself and survive from ouster, no one was now able to extinguish them. Here, the warfare was a repeated cycle and final military victory was unattainable in the Somali clan conflicts. Military commanders claiming to be representing their clan- groups—men who either defended or defied the regime—now split their clans into sub-clans and sub-sub-clans in fighting amongst themselves. The victory that the USC achieved at excessive cost was euphoric from the outset, given the two decades of tyranny and totalitarianism. This was never a hoped-for victory, even if the USC’s capture of Mogadishu in Janu- ary 1991 came as a popular uprising, aided by neither the SNM nor the SPM or other existing opposition groups. Colonel Ahmed Omar Jees, who was by now controlling the Mogadishu/Afgooye checkpoint, did nothing to block Siad Barre. Questions abound why Jees failed to dislodge and capture Siad Barre. Hashim posited that ‘Colonel Omar Jess could have intercepted [Siad] Barre at Afgoi [Afgooye], as many expected he would, so that he could stand trial for crimes against the nation. Was it Darood loyalty that prevented Jess from moving against him or was it the fear that Barre’s retreating army might cause too many casualties among Jess’s men?’.41 It seems that the latter could be the case. However, a USC faction opponent to General Aideed— after the killing of Colonel Doonyaale, allegedly by the SPM militias— reacted swiftly and drove the SPM out from Afgooye, its then stronghold, 30km from the west of Mogadishu. In an interview conducted in early 1992, Jees accused Manifesto Group of the attack and of ‘using clan name’ in the assault on his forces.42 One cannot ignore that Jees was a staunch supporter of Aideed, even after this disruptive incident. This invites comparison with other armed conflicts in Africa. Jees’s challenge to Siad Barre, a fellow Daarood, could be likened to southern Hutu who joined Tutsi to topple a Northern Hutu dictator Juvénal Habyarimana in the early 1990s. On 24 April 1991, General Aideed captured Kismaayo, an act that forced Siad Barre to move from Baardheere to Buurdhuubo, further inland in his clan-inhabited region.43 Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan’s parting words in the discomfiting moment of his downfall, fleeing to his immediate Ogaadeen clan territory after British colonial airstrike in 1920, was best captured in Siad Barre’s condition and circumstance. Ridiculed by his poet rival Ali Jama Haabiil on what forced him—and why he was—to flee, the Sayid 232 Chapter 10 retorted ‘adiguba caqlaad leedehee, carar maxaa dhaama’ (from your own intellect, is there any other choice rather than running?). With a similar fate and fatality, Siad Barre attested to the Somali saying ‘Haad geed waayey’ (a bird without perch).44 It was from the shadow of these dark nights that compelled Abdullahi Waranle, a poet sympathetic to Siad Barre, to chant ‘Allow yaa Gereegko iyo raggii go’ay u nooleeya? / Allow yaa godkii Fort Sheki odayga gaarsiiya?’ (O Allah can anyone reincarnate all those deceased men such as Grekco / O Allah, can anyone help the elder [Siad Barre] reach the camp of Fort Cechi’.45 Marshal Andre Antonovich Grechko was a former Soviet Minister of Defence from April 1967 until April 1976 after which he died at the age of 72. The poet postulated that, with the Soviet Union at his side, Siad Barre would never have been run from Mogadishu. Indeed, it should be borne in mind that ‘dictators, however unpopular, despotic and incompetent, rarely fall because they have too many enemies. They fall because they have too few friends’.46 Rather than retiring himself, Siad Barre continued to play a role in a post- dictatorship Somalia. A Somali airlines aircraft hijacked by a Mareehaan military man who boarded from Mogadishu airport with the assistance of his Hawiye cousins was taken to him in Gedo. Ahmed Haji Elmi Guure ‘Ahme- dey’, the pilot of the aircraft whose flight destination was for Djibouti, related that, due to fear of being shot down, he informed the hijacker that he could not comply with his demand to land in Garbahaarey. The hijacker’s intention was to prove Siad Barre that he had hijacked the aircraft for him. At the end, after attempts to land in Mandheera, just across the Kenyan border, the aircraft was landed in Luuq. There, the pilot and other passengers—hailing from every clan, including the Hawiye and the Daarood—encountered civilians mostly comprising women and children chanting ‘down Hawiye, down Hawiye’.47 However, a certain former military colonel called, Abdullahi Abdi Wilif, commanding Siad Barre’s remaining forces at the town ordered his forces to shoot on the ear to disperse the crowds. Included among the passengers was Sheikh Hassan Daher Aweys, one of the most well-known fundamentalist Somali sheikhs, who dared to ask Siad Barre’s forces the release of the passengers, particularly women and children.

The Politics of Amity in the Enmity In 1991, Somalia went through a tragedy of disastrous and devastating pro- portions. With Siad Barre’s forced flight emerged an open-air arms market called cirtoogte (sky shooter) located in the Bakaara Market. Both heavy and light arms were available to anyone with the means to buy them. In a typical rule of the jungle, this was evident in the Somali saying that states ‘kii xoog leh reerka ha u taliyo’ (the one who is strong enough has the right to rule over clans). Even though both Hawiye and Daarood militias were implicated The Outbreak of the Uprising 233 in brutal clan reprisals, one interesting incident related by a witness illustrates the gap between the regime forces and the USC fighters. For roughly three days before his fall, Siad Barre ordered his sub-clan militias—the Red Berets—to bring together all his children and grandchildren, only to be found for a safe escape. A contingent of the Red Berets was sent to transport one of his daughters—married to Ali Sabriye, a Hawaadle—and her children. Upon consultations with her husband, Haweeya Mohamed Siad decided to stay in Mogadishu and told her father’s militiamen to return to the Presidential Pal- ace. Determined to fulfil the orders and backed up by enforcements, the militiamen forcefully brought Haweeya and her children to their military vehicle, while Ali Sabriye, a man who had never held a position in the regime, was begging them to have his children. Firing several shots at him, they left him dead with a pool of blood. As a family member recounted, Sabriye’s driver, sleeping when the incident was unfolding, was awakened with the bullets and saw a badly-wounded Sabriye, whom he took him to a local makeshift USC hospital. 48 Sabriye was hardly treated and taken to Kenya for intensive medical care. There, he found his wife and children. During the night Siad Barre vacated the Villa, one of his favourite sons Diiriye Mohamed Siad was captured by Hawaadle militiamen, who were affiliated by clan with Hawiye son-in-law Sabriye. Unexpectedly, the militiamen took Diiriye to his brother-in-law Sabriye who requested to hand him over to Ugaas Khaliif Ugaas Rooble, the then principle Hawaadle clan chief. Through his good offices and intermediaries, Ugaas Khaliif contacted Ugaas Omar Ugaas Hersi, the then Mareehaan clan chief in Gedo. The two traditional clan chiefs arranged the safe delivery of Diiriye to his father Siad Barre, who was by now the most powerful big man in Gedo. As the family member recalled, when Siad Barre saw his son, he wept, after which the Ugaas of the Mareehaan prompted: ‘I counselled you a couple of times to stop oppressing the Hawiye’, the clan-group that dominated the capital Mog- adishu.49 One needs to look at life histories of some prominent persons who witnessed the clanised conflict to understand how people sacrificed for protecting acquaintances and strangers. Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye, who saved General Morgan’s own brother Abdi Said Hersi during the clan reprisals in 1991, related an incident where armed men adamant to revenge on earlier brutalities committed by Morgan against their own families came to his house in search of the brother.50 Upon some negotiations, in which they were apparently offered cash, the armed men were convinced to leave Abdi Said alone and seek Morgan, the real villain. Macro-histories—such as that of Kediye’s and Sabriye’s—are useful to capture the nuances of the clan reprisals and reveal the clan reprisals were not clear-cut but more complicated phenomena than assumed by many outsiders. 234 Chapter 10 THE COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS

From the Sayid to Siad Barre Historically, Somalia has the longest record of clan conflcts in the Horn of Africa. Approximately, 35 armed conflicts occurred in the world in 1991, most were ‘ethnic conflicts’, including Northern Ireland.51 Hardly the Siad Barre regime collapsed than clans reverted backed to pre-colonial indigenous clan rules, when clan elders ruled over their clansmen (some minimally, some high-handedly).52 Indeed, 1991 saw the return to pre-colonial (and to a larger degree, colonial) world of Somali society, an epoch engulfed by the survival of the fittest. Similar epochs were visible in colonial ethnography. 53 Though Richard Burton made some redundant exaggerations, his nineteenth- century description reflected the contemporary Somali cosmology. 54 Clan cataclysms have been central to the undertakings and dynamics of violence in Somalia, even the so-called phenomenon of Al-Shabaab was not new in the Somali world, considering the holy wars of Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Ghazi (Ah- med Gurey) in the sixteenth as well as Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan in the early twentieth-century. Indeed, the 1991 convulsions were generally comparable to what had occurred, when the British colonial State retreated to the coast in 1909 upon failing to destroy the Dervishes’ incursions against them. The sudden loss from the rule of law on the part of the British led to clan massacres on an unprecedented scale that could be associated with qiyaamihii (the coming of doomsday). With similar vein, it began clan versus clan and soon degenerated into sub-clan versus sub-clan. In pre-colonial period, clans were in all probability equal in power. As noted, colonialism promoted some clans at the expense of others. However, c lans seeking to overwhelm others were common in pastoral nomadic Somalis since time immemorial and it was a common feature on the Somali oral tradition, to say nothing of the comparable accounts of colonial ethnogra- phers, travellers and officials. When Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan was finally ousted, civil war ruinously raged in Somali territories in the Horn during his reign (1899–1920). In 1991, Somalia was fully slipped into similar retaliatory clan reprisals, not just one clan-group versus the other, but clan versus clan, sub-clan versus sub-clan and sub-subclan versus sub-subclan. The legacy left by Siad Barre was not less significant than the one by the Sayid. Roughly one third of the population of then British Somaliland suffered death upon his departure following a fratricidal fighting between the local clans—the Isaaq versus the Daarood—that lived in the areas vacated by the British. As one colonial report summarised it: ‘With the withdrawal of British control of the interior, indescribable disorder and inter-tribal warfare broke out, and in the holocaust which followed it is estimated perhaps one- third of the male population of British Somaliland were speared to death’.55 The Outbreak of the Uprising 235

By comparison, according to data provided by Bethany Ann Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, from 1981 up to the mid-1990s, minimum 250,000 and maximum 350,000 Somalis died in the Somali wars. 56 Similar to the Dervishes, the legacy of the Siad Barre regime was an all- out clan cataclysms that reached beyond the conventional Somali borders. The British colonial authorities used clan clashes, so were the Italians. Both colonial States justified their campaigns to ‘pacify’ what they perceived to be the ‘tribal’-inhabited areas. Similarly, when the Italian colonial State was defeated, clan conflicts were resumed same as pre-colonial period, but not with the same tools and instruments. The fascist Italian authorities used such method of clan swivel, when they were about to capture pseudo-sultanates of the Majeerteen in 1924.57 By carefully avoiding clan connotation, the name they employed—as Siad Barre would have done—was the State slogan above anyone else. This approach served well for colonial swift pacification to the clan areas in the Northeast Somalia within the space of three years. Siad Barre attempted to follow in their footsteps, but failed, even though maintaining to resolve insurgents through free-rein methods of State terror. However, why colonial States survived so long in the midst of clan conflicts—not to mention a Pax coloniale—lay in the fact that they had mostly maintained a policy of non-clan favouritism.

Tracing the Perpetrators There was no single armed movement or clan that held their clansmen responsible for what they had done during years of service under Siad Barre. If this happened, almost all leaders of the armed groups would have been guilty in one way or another for working for Siad Barre, with the exception of Ali Wardhiigley, the original USC leader, who was an opponent to the regime since day one. Rather than punishing other elements, all armed groups sheltered their clansmen under the payroll of Siad Barre. 58 At the same time, while the armed resistance groups did commit war crimes between themselves, the Siad Barre regime maintained carrying out the campaigns of State terror. Chris Allen has argued that ‘the loss of total power ends immunity from accountability for the gross abuses of human rights of which leaders of spoils systems are always guilty’.59 This was not the case in the neighbouring Ethiopia. Similar to the Siad Barre regime, Mengistu’s regime is believed to have killed 50,000 civilians. Whilst in absentia, Mengistu and other co- accused of his regime were found guilty of crimes against humanity in one of the longest ever trials for genocide in Africa.60 Such a sentence and even trial of this kind would have seemed impossible in Somalia due to the extreme clan divisions. The brutality of the Siad Barre regime’s human rights record was not as disseminated as the Mengistu’s Red Terror—known Qey Shibir in Amharic 236 Chapter 10 language—campaigns.61 With a State vacuum leading to anarchy, there was no system in place that could have dealt with crimes committed in Somalia. 62 The Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights once proposed to the States outside Somalia in which many suspected former regime officials who had committed crimes against humanity were now resident to carry out trials to prosecute them under universal legal jurisdiction. 63 Nevertheless, unless and until such justice was put in place, the perpetrators would have disappeared and reappeared, as was now the case in contemporary Somalia, where most of the Siad Barre’s juniors have been holding the two top offices in the State. Without a task force to examine crimes committed in the name of the State, it is unfeasible to target those implicated in communal clan violence. The similar truth commissions established in Ar- gentina, Guatemala, Rwanda and South Africa were also badly needed in Somalia. The role and responsibility of Siad Barre in devising the strategy of clan reprisals as well as the State terror cannot be ignored.

The Complicity of the Clanised Wars The concept of human difference—clan difference in the Somali context—so embedded in the clannish psyche was what make many Somalis see Siad Barre’s exterminating campaigns normal, even when that was directed at their clan, such as the case of the Hawiye, who underwent one of the most vicious atrocities during his reign. This does not mean this clan-group did not have legitimate grievances before Siad Barre. It is worth noting that the Hawiye had no real power structure from 1967–1990. The last civilian administration had deprived them of all important government positions and made this clan-group marginal to their government before Siad Barre regime came to power. The marginalisation of the Hawiye in the 1960s led to the similar grievances expressed by the Isaaq. As one Hawiye elder wrote: ‘The Darods were the privileged in Somalia [during] the thirty years after independence, but suddenly in 1991, after the downfall of the Siad regime they lost almost everything they acquired, and they experienced in a short period of time hardship worse than what Hawiye experienced in thirty years’.64 Similar observations were also echoed by sociologist Abdi Mohamed Kusow, writing about the same time, when he recorded that ‘the Darood clan has been the dominant political power in the country since independence. That is also why the Hawiye and Ree-win [Digil/Mirifle] have deeply resented the Darood clan. It was mainly this deep resentment between the Hawiye and the Darood that has culminated into this savage civil war’.65 Anthropologist Virginia Luling too offered somewhat similar yet separate observation, writing that ‘during the time of civilian government[,] the Daarood and Haawiye [sic] clan-families competed for government posts. During Siyad Barre’s reign it was the Daarood who held power through him’.66 The Outbreak of the Uprising 237

Siad Barre’s favour of his clansmen over other clans made the Hawiye extremely Hawiye, the Isaaq extremely Isaaq, the Digil/Mirifle extremely Digil/Mirifle, the Ogaadeen extremely Ogaadeen, so on and so forth. As was shown, this extreme clanisation of clans occurred, when Siad Barre had unleashed clanocide on the Isaaq, then on the Hawiye, using both campaigns the Majeerteen militia leaders to perform the task. So the Hawiye belonged to the Hawiye, the Isaaq to the Isaaq, the Dir to the Dir, the Daarood to the Daarood and the Rahanweyn to the Rahanweyn, but not so to some communities outside the clan system, such as the Bantu/Jareer, the Banaadiri, the Bravanese, the Madhibaan, the Muuse Dheriyo, the Tumaal, the Yahar and the Yibir. The clan reprisals between the Hawiye and the Daarood civilians were merely a mimic of what Siad Barre’s forces had been doing from October 1969 up to December 1990. Since the regime had done so much to shape and reform the clanised wars, the latter was now to mould the form of post-Siad Barre Somalia. Whether post-Siad Barre clan cataclysms could be called ‘civil war’ is even a matter of a dispute. In fact, there was no such thing as a civil war, for there was nothing ‘civil’ in the war. As Afyare Elmi has posited, ‘civil wars end either through a military victory or through a negotiated settlement’.67 Unfortunately, the Somali one could not end both. In Somalia, as in Sudan, the trajectory of the root causes of the civil war lay in different factors and facts, punctuated by the roles played not only by internal also by external actors. 68

The Disruption and the Dissolution The mass upheavals in 1991 were not something unique to the world and could be equated with Berlin in 1945 after the demise of the Third Reich. As Richard Bessel reported: ‘Throughout occupied Germany, after the collapse of the Hitler regime many people desired a measure of revenge against their erstwhile Nazi neighbors and were willing to give vent to their anger at what they had suffered’.69 Indeed, the 1991 Mogadishu was particularly inviting and even grudges festered for more than two decades found a site to set the score. Any organised violence has organised target. If the clan convulsions in 1991 were organised violence by the USC, its militias—who were disjointed, mostly rural youth displaced by the State-sponsored clanocide—could not have been able to turn the violence on themselves. By contrast, it was the nature of random violence that permitted to the spread of random looting in the capital soon after Siad Barre’s fall. Whose orders and how could be carried out, if the USC leaders disagreed among each other on the vital work to implement law and order in the anarchic and chaotic capital. The eruption of clan convulsions should be understood ‘both as an outcome of historical processes and as a trigger mechanism for new developments and directions in that conflict’, as Daniel Branch put it in congruent 238 Chapter 10 context.70 How can one dismiss the opportunity of freedom of thought presented itself after Siad Barre’s fall which gave rise the birth of countless independent newsletter advocating for a culture of peace? At clan congrega- tion in Mogadishu a day after Siad Barre had fled, the clan elders of the Saleebaan sub-clan of the Habar Gidir declared that they would protect the Mareehaan with whom they have fought for a number of years during the regime. ‘Since Siad Barre was ousted’, they concluded, ‘there is no point we have to continue fighting’.71 This was never the case, as the clan conflicts offer not A and Z understanding but a push and pull structure. Yet, the declaration to cease the war at this point on the part of this sub-clan testified that they were conscious of what they fought against was a regime cloaked in a clan coat. The clanised wars between the two clans continued one way or another until 1992 till Siad Barre fled from his clan territory in April 1992 to Kenya, after which the two sides reached a peaceful settlement to end nearly a decade of revenge attacks where both lost nearly a thousand lives. Clan conflicts also continued among other clans in the mantra of kugu dhimey kaa dhimay (a condition of double damage in either way). 72 Oftentimes, reminiscent and resumption were of armed conflicts suppressed after many years of liberation struggle and this occurred not only in Somalia, but also in Nami- bia.73 ‘Disruption and local conflict’, writes AbdouMaliq Simone, ‘are a way of coming to the “state”–of making a particular group visible and known’.74 This is not so divergent from the Somali saying that ‘wax qof u daran ayaa qof u baraare ah’ (what is detrimental to someone is beneficial to another). In his pioneering work, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Stathis Kalyvas presented a ground-breaking analytical framework to show that civil wars are not that illogical and irrational, as often painted by observers when it comes to political economy. 75 Once applied to the Somali case, every clan would receive its own logic (at least in Stathis Kalyvas’s sense). Some have prospered while others became poverty. After 1991, there is no cumbersome change in Somali society, save for telecommunications and free market economy, areas that proved to be booming and blossoming. A modus vivendi was established without a State structure. This led some scholars to argue that Somalis are better off without a State.76 This oversimplification overlooks to attribute responsibility for what went wrong in the first place and who should be held accountable for the statelessness that seems to attract eulogy from corners afield. Indeed, the health impact—both physical and mental dimension—of the war on the Somalis cannot be ignored.77 Then there is the case of Somaliland. Since post-colony, sovereignty, separatism, secession and self-determination have been constant features in the African States. However, each case of secessionism in Africa draws from colonial boundaries as a legal validation of its argument—from Cabinda to Casamance and from Sahel to Somaliland. The Somali State was not made The Outbreak of the Uprising 239 by war. Rather, the war was made by the State. The notion of secession was not included in the official press releases of the SNM movement. According to one well-informed Somali analyst, who had done six-month fieldwork among the armed opposition groups (the USC, the SNM, the SPM and even met some remnants of the SSDF in Ethiopia in 1989) to report to BBC Somali Service, the objectives and the aims of the SNM had never been secession, even though the dream of reclaiming back the sovereignty of Somaliland was noticeable as far as December 1961 during the aborted coup.78 The SNM maintained to attract as many diverse clans as possible in their struggle from the outset. Speculation was, nevertheless, rife over the struggle of the Isaaq to split the country into two, a point once ambiguously mentioned by an SNM leader.79 Documentary evidence reveals an SNM intention of unity without predicting the later political developments. In 1988, The then SNM chairman, Ahmed Siilaanyo, stated that their movement was ‘neither tribal nor secessionist’.80 Again a year later, Siilaanyo emphasised that their movement repudiated clannism and had no intention of ‘dividing Somalia along former colonial lines’ as the regime had claimed.81 However, all these nationalistic objectives were dramatically altered in the Bur’o grand conference, when the SNM was forced to accept secession due to the State terror their people had experienced under the Siad Barre regime. It is a public knowledge that the argument for the case of secessionism derived from Garaad Abdiqani Garaad Jama. Fearful of the USC and the SNM power dominance, the Dhulbahante clan leader proposed to the latter authorities to declare separation from the rest of the defunct Somali State.

Chapter Eleven

The Reality and Realignment of 1991

THE USC LEADERSHIP(S): HOMOGENEOUS OR HETEROGENEOUS?

The Logics and Logistics Following a series of clan convulsions, upon the 1991 overthrow of the Siad Barre reime, blames abounded in place of praises. Pigeonholed together, the USC was wrongly accused to have ‘engaged in “clan cleansing”’.1 Surpris- ing though it is to speak of Somali conflict as insular, the USC was blamed on complicity for a campaign of chasing the Daarood clan-group (Siad Barre’s) in Mogadishu. This accusation presents an assumption that the USC leadership(s) was stable and coherent body of political figures in post-Siad Barre, a proposition that not only stood as an abstruse, but subsumed the USC into a homogenously static and monolithic movement. How a group that could not control its rank-and-file could organise a clan cleansing campaign was a puzzle to the rational mind. The opposing USC leaders failed to even unite their three hierarchical structure of power and thus provide centralised control over their armed militias, let alone organising a serious task as cumbersome and contentious as a campaign of clan cleansing. How could a ‘cleansing’ occur in a vacuum environment, when there was an absence of organisational structure and clear hierarchical power within the USC? The disorganisation of the movement and its inability to control the capital wherein Siad Barre’s repressive army failed to rule was evidenced by the different opposing military leaders of the USC. During the four-week uprising against the regime, the whole Mogadishu felt chaos and anarchy spread into the capital city. Many civilians took arms from the liberated barracks of the retreating Siad Barre’s forces to ensure the end of two decades of harsh

241 242 Chapter 11 clan dominance and dictatorship. 2 It was a repercussion of the war subtleties that ‘[t]he diversity of people and groups joining the crowd, the density of the town, and the availability of easy targets further inhibited attempts to lead, coordinate or at least direct the emotions of the uprising masses in Mogadi- shu. The USC was furthermore plagued by severe internal conflicts and lacked organisational capacities and experience’.3 The occasion of what could be referred to as a ‘moment of madness’4 led to Hobbesian horrendous of the bellum omnium contra omnes. There was no specific target of specific clans other than daily conduct of robbery and thievery common to a chaotic capital. People were doing their daily business without fear of clan reprisals, an experience ended with the fall of the Siad Barre regime. Besteman aptly pointed out that ‘the vast majority of Somalis were not combatants, but rather devoted themselves to protecting their families and properties and working toward peace’.5 What followed the moment of madness was a period of no-war-no-peace from where many warriors pursuing different agenda with multifarious ways emerged out of the vacuum. At this critical juncture, let me write in the first person to elucidate some of fieldwork notes from living in the chaotic capital at the time. In 1991–1995, our neighbourhood in Mogadishu lived the late well-respected poet Abdulkadir Hersi Yamyam, a Mareehaan (the same clan as Siad Barre’s) and a man who shared the former President not just with a close sub- clan membership, but also with a long association. Also lived were a Majeer- teen sheikh called Sheikh Bile and his family as well as the children and wife of General Mohamed Nuur Sharee’o, Siad Barre’s close clansman, who was then fighting for his return to power from Gedo region. 6 So if the ‘clan cleansing’ was structured, carefully-planned and organised, one may wonder on how prominent people from the clan-group assumed to have been subjected cleansing were spared from the cleansing. Far from a clear-cut case, it was implausible to imagine a cleansing in such a convoluted context.

‘Everyman with his own Sultan’ With no rule of law, no one could control no one. Ahmed Abdulle Osman ‘Qaawane’, an adviser to General Aideed, lamented thus: ‘A man with a gun, it is very difficult to control him. Our people are doing the best they can’.7 A Somali clan elder appears to have concurred: ‘I can’t control my own son— because he has a gun’.8 The Africa Watch team that visited Mogadishu in 1991 concluded that, under anarchic and chaotic circumstances in which most of the civilians were self-armed and self-financing, command and central structures tended to be tenuous to the extreme. 9 No doubt that, if Clause- witz were to be pushed to define such a Somali repertoire, there must be little that he would recognise.10 This was because if he once famously characterised war as a continuation of politics by other means and if contemporary The Reality and Realignment of 1991 243 scholars of African conflicts have considered the 1990s wars in West and Central Africa as a continuation of economics by other means, in Somalia, it was pigeonholed through outside observation as a clan ‘cleansing’ to another clan by other means. In Somalia, as was in Sierra Leone, much of the violence was involved the pursuit of economic interest or of political power. 11 Mohamed Haji Mukhtar mentions ‘a violent competition between the Darood and Hawiye clan families for political and economic dominance’.12 Each clan-group, clan or sub-clan had their own commander replaced on a yearly or sometimes monthly basis, depending on the specific context and the period. However, labels like ‘clan cleansing’ in and of itself run the risk of further clan reprisals. According to eye witnesses’ accounts, if clan cleansing occurred, it took place not after but during the Siad Barre’s regime.13 What followed afterwards in 1991 was what Bernhard Helander observed as a ‘militia warfare and brigandage’ that followed the collapse of the Somali State in 1991’.14 Before Mogadishu had fallen, Siad Barre oversaw the alteration of the uprising against his regime into clan lines. In view of this fact, it would be a mistake to consider the war as a clan war. Rather, it must be conceptualised as a clanised war. Eugenia Herbst argues that ‘one does not have to be a postmodernist to realize that each actor in a historical drama has a different perspective, both enriched and limited by his or her vantage point’.15 In fact, what accompanied Siad Barre’s downfall was clan reprisal after clan reprisal, punctuated by public outrage in a sort of mob justice pattern. Describing it otherwise—as an ‘organized clan cleansing’ or, more bizarrely and superficially, ‘organized and purposeful’—hardly capture or even contextualise the clan dynamics of Somali society with the reality on the ground. 16 A country brittle with contesting clans, random violence spilt over in various ways. A fact-finding mission of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the United Kingdom (UK) found Mogadishu as an anarchic and chaotic capital of which the USC had no control. As they witnessed: ‘The USC forces remain[ed] incoherent and undisciplined with no clear central command structure. Each clan [was] responsible for financing and feeding its own troops’.17 The harshest commentators of the USC have even noted that they ‘were powerless to control the very people they had supplied with weapons.18 Overall, anecdotal information is not enough to prove genocidal intent, when taken into account the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punish- ment of the Crime of Genocide.19 A purpose of ‘final solution’ is needed, when describing certain killings as a genocide or ethnic cleansing. 20 Not only that there was a lack of a final solution in the 1991 Somalia, there was no even a large scale deaths, except the Baydhabo famine in 1992. The testimonies by the actual actors complicate any claim of an organised singled-out campaign of clan cleansing. Reflecting upon the 1991 clanised wars, General 244 Chapter 11

Galaal, a former top military leader of both the original USC’s political and economic wings, has given a crucial detailed explanation.

After 28 days of fighting, Siyaad Barre was eventually overthrown. . . . It was popular insurrection, an up-rising [sic] against his regime. While the USC military was fighting in the central regions, there was a popular uprising against Siyaad Barre in Mogadishu. . . But as you know . . . popular uprising for itself is a disorder, the beginning of a disorder. . . . During the uprising we felt that anarchy will come. Everything was disorganised, as in itself popular uprisings are. In the popular uprising there were a lot of groups with different interests, among them thieves and looters. It was very difficult to control. Operationally, they were participating in the popular uprising, but in reality they were gangs and divided along clan-lines: Habr Gedir clans came from this side, Abgaal from the other side, Murosade and Hawadle from another side.21 . . . Like in business, there was a competition among the clans to sustain and expand their positions and to show their muscles. The only way to overcome this situation would have been to reunite the USC. But, as I have already explained to you, all attempts to reconcile the factions failed. 22

ALI MAHDI VERSUS GENERAL AIDEED

Becoming and Behaving Siad Barre In neighbouring Ethiopia, during Mengistu’s regime, the warning proverb was that stay away from politics and electricity as they kill you. The roots of the clan convulsions were originated from the Siad Barre’s State-sponsored violence of the 1970s and 1980s. However, the clan reprisals in early 1991 between the Hawiye and the Daarood warriors were not more devastating or detrimental than the one in the late 1991 between the Hawiye on the Hawiye or the Daarood on the Daarood. Previous observers have paid no attention to historical conflict within the Hawiye and the Daarood and at times seem unable to extricate themselves from the bonds of affiliation with one clan- group or another, for reasons understandable to the Somalis and those who understand the extremity of the clan factor. In analysing the clan convulsions between the two mutually abhorred clan militias, authors have overlooked the war between and within one single clan-group. 23 For example, many a Somalist appearing oblivious that the people who were massacred in the fierce fighting between the two Hawiye leaders Ali Mahdi Mohamed and General Aideed for four consecutive months from the mid-November 1991 to the mid-March 1992 were massively more horrendous than the people killed within four weeks from the late December 1990 to the late January 1991. More than 30,000 people were killed in Mahdi’s and Aideed’s war, while The Human Rights Watch reported that, in the previous clan reprisals between the Hawiye and the Daarood, about 4,000 were killed. 24 What leads The Reality and Realignment of 1991 245 one to minimise the post-Siad Barre war by maximising the war against Siad Barre could hardly be a matter of academic concern. After Siad Barre’s departure, Somalia became a chaotic country controlled and claimed by no single authority. No one was able to seize any commodity other than anarcho-clannism—the full Leviathan anarchy where everyone had to protect himself from everyone on the basis of clan—as was the norm in the pre-colonial period. By the time armed opposition groups came to depose Siad Barre, ‘there was no state as such to seize, and they were not prepared to provide an alternative to prevent anarchy’.25 Instigated and activated through legitimate grievances, the clanised wars were by now perpetuated by greed.26 Much as clan was to Somalis reigniting the old clan feuds turning them into full-blown sub-clan versus sub-clan violence. It was misconstrued that the clan that might fill in the top of the State would most certainly dictate the rules. If this was not the case, this should never have been so much to the importance of the State as a resource as to the fear of the clans, a fear created by the ousted regime. The reconfiguration and restricting of the State after Siad Barre offers a good example of this. On 29 January 1991, barely three days when Siad Barre fled, a considerable group of the USC nominated Ali Mahdi, a former parliamentarian in the last civilian government who later became a businessman in Siad Barre’s years, as Presi- dent. A member of the Manifesto Group, who fled from prosecution to central regions, then to Ethiopia, ending up in Italy, Ali Mahdi returned to Mogadishu before the uprising, which he partly financed and found himself as a valuable member of its leaders. 27 With the nomination of Ali Mahdi, the USC entered into the ‘danger zone’. The crisis over who ruled whom and what, as well as the kind of gouvernementalité to be reconstituted was so contentious that a coup against Ali Mahdi was soon attempted.28 Ahmed Mohamed Weheliye ‘Ahmed Hiji’, who was close to him and later became a vice Minister in his government, related that Ali Mahdi saw himself as a heir apparent of Ismail Jimale, the initiator of the Manifesto.29 Ali Mahdi was nominated abruptly by a small cluster of merchants who had financed the USC, installing him as President in Siad Barre’s stead. Active in the group were Mohamed Farah Siad and Mire Olaad Awale, two business-minded traders who later became his principal advisers. It was a continuation of the era of intermingling politics with business patronage. The configuration now followed two paths: the political and the business. Oddly, the new President kept Omar Arte, an Isaaq/Habar Awal, whom Siad Barre appointed a Prime Minister few weeks ago, his job and assigned to form a new government. The nomination of Ali Mahdi was vehemently rejected by General Aideed, according to the detailed report by Nicolino Mohamed, an authoritative insider. 30 Aideed released outright rejection, which was clear that he accepted no one for the top position other than himself. 246 Chapter 11

The reaction that arose from General Aideed was shared by senior members from other armed movements. In an interview with the BBC Focus on Africa, the former SNM Chairman, Ahmed Siilaanyo, now in London, but still a senior member of the movement, stated a day after Ali Mahdi’s appointment that their movement would not accept a President whose selection was not consulted with their group.31 A day later, on 31 January 1991, Hassan Ali Mire, the SSDF spokesman in Nairobi, via BBC Focus on Africa, echoed similar sentiments that their group would not recognise Ali Mahdi as President. Even though he put emphasis on the Manifesto Group as a stake- holder, almost equal to the USC, Mire acknowledged nonetheless that the new President had to come from the USC. ‘Instead of forming a government’, he lamented, ‘they should have called a meeting to show a really good faith to the country, so that they can win the trust of the people, the trust of the opposition movements’.32 A week later, Ismail Mohamoud Hurre ‘Buu- baa’, who claimed the title of the Chairman of SNM’s Political Committee, was interviewed in Jeddah by the Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and labelled Ali Mahdi as a man from nowhere. ‘Actually we do not know’, he said, who chose Ali Mahdi as President. 33 His words were a testimony that, from the perspectives of the SNM and other armed groups outside the USC, the selection of Ali Mahdi was a kind of an unexpected adventure. There is a little doubt that the selection of Ali Mahdi as a President was also a political shock for General Aideed. But SNM’s decision to take a separate path from Mogadishu conflicted with their liberation struggle to achieve a democratic and united Somalia. In other words, the decision to secede from the rest of Somalia belied the reasonable and realistic proposal document presented to them by Ahmed Siilaanyo, two months before the declaration of Ali Mahdi as President and two months before Somaliland was proclaimed in a cross-clan conference in Bur’o where elders from all the clans in the territory affirmed that they restored their sovereignty from the defunct central Somali State. Siilaanyo expressed himself a reliable mediator and relatively respectable politician who could bridge a gap between the USC and the SNM at the critical juncture. In drafting a lengthy well-researched proposal in which he intended for the SNM to ponder before negotiating with the USC, he understood that both groups were neither non-State or anti-State nor extra-State actors. As such, Siilaanyo provided several key important points and proposals. ‘Hasty decisions to form a national government for its own sake could be self[-]defeating’, Siilaanyo cautioned.34 Sug- gesting ‘speedy establishment’ of law and order in the areas under the control of the USC and the SNM and then slowly proceed to complete ‘the process of liberation’, a euphemism to search for Siad Barre and permanently force him to leave the country, his calls were seen as something stemming from afar. The Reality and Realignment of 1991 247

The most important element of the document proposed a new political formula for power sharing, one based on ‘the new political realities’, a clear indication that the new State had to be ruled by the armed groups in which the USC and the SNM were by now the most powerful winners. Subsequent- ly, two administrative regions had to be created: the SNM to rule the North, the USC the South. Bearing in mind of the two decades of one-man dictatorship, an interim political organ, intrinsically a transitional government ‘with limited responsibilities’, one which would act with ‘a ceremonial nature’ of power had to be put in place.35 A two-way government comprising half and half had to be created: half of the members of the government were to be nominated by the USC, the other half by the SNM. The State posts should be distributed not along clan lines, but along regional—that is, the South and the North. This arrangement appeared to prevent from the continuation of clan politics as well as from the re-emergence of dictatorship. Power to issue decrees was to be given to the government, rather than the Head of State who would be a ceremonial in any sense. This suggestion was purposely designed to curtail the powers of any succeeding President, in case he mimicked Siad Barre. ‘No attempts should be made’, Siilaanyo stressed, ‘to reimpose the old patterns, or dig up icons of the past from their political graves’. The message Siilaanyo was sending was another caution that the post-colonial arrangement of power distribution in the 1960s, which was later aggravated under the Siad Barre regime, should never be returned but revisited in a way amenable to the two armed groups. For their part, Siilaanyo proposed, the USC and the SNM ‘must demonstrate [t]hat they do not intend to monopolize power but that they stand for a pluralistic and participatory form of government at all levels [...] must prevent any form of reprisals against individuals or groups of individuals on account of their regional or clan background, or on the pretext of injustices committed in the past’.36 The proposal carried a careful clause for the Somali sovereignty that urged the establishment of a ‘high military command’ at a national level in case an external threat arose from the outside. The undertaking of this unitary stand was conditioned to pursue with the consent of the two regional administrations. Siilaanyo’s document was more thoroughly nuanced and across-the-board political proposal ever came out from the armed groups in the days of anarchy and chaos. Had it been heeded by the USC and the SNM, Somalia would have followed in the path of Ethiopia and Uganda in creating stable States after dictatorship. In addition, the proclamation of Somaliland Republic would have not been a unanimous venture. Although no one could consult with everyone in this context, the USC elders who nominated Ali Mahdi at least failed to contact the SNM for sharing power. It is an intriguing turn of political events that, once the SSDF remnants allied with Ali Mahdi, some elements within the SNM began to flirt with Aideed. 248 Chapter 11 The War over the State: Who Took What? Ibn Khaldun argued long ago that ‘factional struggle is a mode of political production, not of disintegration’.37 The post-Siad Barre Somalia required a time to heal and resources to heal the wounds in order to extricate itself from the legacy of the dictatorial regime. It was impractical and quite impossible to hold elections as some outside observers would have loved to see. General Aideed offered to heal the wounds of Siad Barre’s bequest prior to forming a government. How the wounds could be healed without a government was a puzzle to Ali Mahdi’s group. The intention of Aideed to court the SNM support on his rejection to the new government was predictable. More predictable was that the inheritance of the State would be a deadly and bloody venture. A consultative Mogadishu meeting was scheduled between the USC, the SNM and the SPM in early February 1991. The Los Angeles Times reported that ‘[a]t least three rival Somali rebel groups that helped oust former President Mohammed Siad Barre from power last month plan a conference in the capital city Thursday--if war doesn't break out among them first’.38 On the contrary, on 19 February 1991, Aideed’s USC faction and a visiting delegation from the SNM led by ‘Saleebaan Gaal’ issued a joint statement in Mogadishu, declaring that they did not recognise Ali Mahdi’s presidency which they described as similar to Siad Barre’s—which is to say, power taken by stealing.39 This portrayal was in contradiction to Ali Mahdi’s calls for free elections to hold after the end of his two years mandate. In an interview with, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the new President stated: ‘I am a democrat. I believe in party pluralism and the freedom of the press’.40 But, Aideed maintained that Ali Mahdi ‘hijack[ed] the power’.41 However, a closer examination of these counter-statements shows that there was no future thinking of how power was to be shared, what kind of government be created, who would take what, when and how, how the future government institutions would look like or differ from those created by the deposed regime. The appointment of cabinet comprising 83 ministers, deputy ministers and State ministers—the most cumbersome cabinet in the Somali political history—added fuel to the conflict, as General Aideed’s group was not given their share of the slice.42 Consisting of 13 Hawiye, 8 Daarood, 6 Rahanweyn, 4 Isaaq, 1 Iise and 1 Gadabiirsi, the new cabinet was not selected in proportional representation from a political point of view. Thus a political and personal tug-of-war between Ali Mahdi and Aideed had ensued. At hind- sight, the form of the State structure to which Aideed preferred was a mimic of the Siad Barre’s, while Ali Mahdi sought to adopt a literal 1960s system of government. Ali Mahdi aptly accused Aideed of trying to become another Siad Barre in Somalia since he was determined to seize the State at any coast. Aideed in turn condemned Ali Mahdi for trying to steal him from the presidency. In his own memoir, Aideed emphasised that Ali Mahdi’s presidency The Reality and Realignment of 1991 249 was ‘nothing but the continuation of Siad Barre’s regime indirectly’.43 Ai- deed had a point given that many ministers appointed by Ali Mahdi were holdovers from the last cabinet of Siad Barre, such as Mohamed Ali Haa- mud, the Foreign Minister. However, Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, who was a minister in the government, argued that ministers from ‘rebel groups’ were much more numerous than previous former regime ministers.44 Most of the pre-Siad Barre ministers were accommodated in the cabinet after the Djibouti II reconciliation conference, as another former cabinet member has clarified. 45 However, if the allegation by Ambassador Mohamed Osman that Ali Mahdi began to rule by presidential decree was true, then there was some truth in his rival’s claims.46 However, both Ali Mahdi and Aideed began to battle for power à la Siad Barre to grab the State. Indeed, they saw themselves the successors to the father of the State. But Aideed seemed someone more mimicking Siad Barre vis-à-vis authoritarian leadership than anyone else. Given his military tactics, his attempt was to take power through the barrel of the gun.47 Lee Cassanelli observed that the whole 1990s wars were ‘about power and legitimacy, about which leader from which clan had the right to head a reconstituted Somali [S]tate. And like all civil wars, it provided the occasion for some individuals and groups to redress past grievances to humiliate old enemies’.48 Founding and forming a State was weightier—and obviously more difficult—than flopping one. To form and foist a State, let alone formulate, was to be the hardest task for any victor. Who had the right to hold the State and how it would be held were some of the questions over which Ali Mahdi and Aideed battled. State from the below or the State from the top? In his meticu- lous study New Wars, Herfried Münkler, argued that post-cold war wars should be seen against the backdrop of State (re)formation. 49 This theoretical position was relevant to the 1991 political rivalry between Ali Mahdi and Aideed since much of the fighting was fought over State reformation rather than State failure or collapse. Both leaders pursued a process of State reformulation but with different frameworks, not to mention the USC’s institutional defects. Part of the difficulty in finding a common ground was that the impulse of reconstituting the State had spawned the movement into two hostile armed (sub)groups, with Ali Mahdi preferring Aden Adde model of a State, while Aideed insisting Siadist-style State. As Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf quite simply explained, Ali Mahdi and Aideed fought each other for ‘Dow- ladnimo’.50 The word ‘Dowladnimo’ is a noun in Somali and both referring to State and Government. The last constitution of Siad Barre even defined it as such.51 That those who vied for the State renamed and restored its previous name The Somali Republic, instead of Siad Barre’s sarcastic ‘The Soma- li Democratic Republic’ was clear manifestation that the war was now turned into a war over State formation. For the four-month-long incessant infighting, Ali Mahdi and Aideed vied for building a State, but not their own type of 250 Chapter 11 a State, but a continuation of the previous State structures. Who should occupy the position that Siad Barre had fled? Ali Mahdi or General Aideed? Both claimed to head a government of national unity. Even though the war between the two leaders began as a war to seize the State, the extent to which each leader brought clan politics into play by mobilising militiamen was not so indifferent. No one was left alone or ajar for the future of the State to be put in place. Soon after Siad Barre vacated from the scene, Ali Mahdi and Aideed quarrelled about State belongings and contested to capture the Radio. Each subsequent year until 1996, both of them used to confer annual presidential speeches about the independence celebrations in 1960. Mogadishu, the centre of real power and symbol of national leadership, became the primary focus for the economic and political rivalries in the country. At this point, while their clans were hopeful of becoming and behaving like Mareehaan, the two leaders competed to become and behave like Siad Barre. In the Somali Wel- tanschauung, each leader strove hard to replace the ousted dictator and every clan wanted to assume as new Mareehaan in the Villa, intrinsically the clan in power. But the eventual successor to Siad Barre—if that would have been attested to be real—had to inherit ‘nothing but disaster’.52 This meant that anyone who seized and snatched the State at this point was strained to start from the scratch.53 As one senior member of the RPF in Rwanda put it: ‘When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population’.54 In fact, the USC faced more complicated case; they met State and society criminalised by the departing dictatorship. There was no way they could master to escape this fact and create a peaceful ambivalence in this atmosphere other than leaving the status quo as they found. At this point, two choices were open to the USC leadership: (a) to hand over power to the elders—as the SNM had done in the North—or (b) to continue fighting. General Aideed chose the last option, while other USC military leaders decided to cooperate with the new Ali Mahdi administration. However, the latter’s calculation was strategic: since they had no political charisma or personal power to challenge Ali Mahdi, they chose to collaborate with his administration.

Seeing or Sensing like a State? Trying to build on a State in such a circumstance was out of tune with the reality on the ground which was tantamount to building a fire brigade where the brigade itself was burning. Indeed, Ali Mahdi and Aideed ‘battled for control of the remnants of the state—not the state itself, but the spirit of the state’,55 using two opposing militias to assert their authority. How much neighbourhood—and territory at that—each controlled was more important than providing peace for the ordinary people. So it became compulsory to The Reality and Realignment of 1991 251 fight over the sort of the State that could attract a formal legitimacy through a territory. The unaccounted wealth and unconstrained power, to say nothing of its resources and romances, made the State a highly-prized element to worth life-defying adventure much like the Somali maxim ‘ku dil ama ku dhimo’ (kill for it or ready to be killed for it). The situation can best be captured by looking at the dichotomy of killing, somewhat similar in what Amrik Heyer observed in Central Kenya.56 If the Hawiye and the Daarood warriors perennially perpetuated their puzzling war in post-Siad Barre over who ruled whom and who took what from whom, the war between Ali Mahdi and Aideed distinctively arose from an over-ambition. Where the Hawiye and the Daarood were implicated in clan reprisals, the Ali Mahdi’s and Aideed’s (as well as subsequent wars) were less personal and private than political, a fact noted by later developments. Caused by politics and power, the war between the two men was not on clan conflict, but purely less clan or personal than political in nature. On one hand, it was a tug-of-war between the Manifesto Group and the Mustahiil, represented by Ali Mahdi and Ai- deed, respectively.57 On the other, there stood the monetary wing and the military wing of the USC. Where the former was the financier, the latter was the fighters’ chief. Lack of political vision on the part of the USC leaders facilitated more fracture from within the movement. Every attempt at reconstituting a State has its own problematic and magic.58 In Seeing like a State, the political ethnographer James Scott—with full of Aristotelian vocabulary—speaks about devising phronesis and praxis to build a profound basis of a better State with concrete laws. 59 It is precisely this lack of political order that forced Ali Mahdi and Aideed to fail forming and formulating a new post-Siad Barre Somalia. Seeking a State was a quite different from sensing or smelling the State. Indeed, one has to sense before seeing the State. Isabelle Duyvesteyn uses the notion of ‘a faction as a state’ to compare the Somali case with the Liberian one. 60 This classification could be used after the 1991 war. Aideed’s faction—split off from the initial USC movement—was composed of an array of warriors known as Mujaahidiintii Farjanno, a group of ‘martyrs’ who commenced on their warfare in a small village inside Somali territory in Ethiopia. Mobile militias mobilised along the way were mainly those have-nots living destitute desolation in the interi- or as their pastoral life standards were depreciated. While they were successful in ousting Siad Barre, the USC leaders were unsuccessful in uniting themselves by forming a government acceptable to both of their camps. Partly, they were uncompromising to come up with a common solution to share the power. But they did everything at their disposal to destroy the other militarily, with Aideed possessing more weapons than Ali Mahdi. 61 For one to achieve the lion’s share of the State, one had to have more firearms than the other. Even if each wanted to ensure himself in victory, they had no interest in the perpetuation of war, each striving to outmanoeuvre and over- 252 Chapter 11 whelm the other to become the new Siad Barre of Somalia. Keith Richburg of The Washington Post reported during this period from Mogadishu thus: ‘At stake in Somalia are power and the competing egos and ambitions of two strong-willed men from the same tribal clan, each of whom claims to be the rightful successor to the longtime dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre, who was ousted a year ago this month’.62 However, one has to take into account that both men operated in a hostile, anarchic environment, over which no one could yield a real power. While his opponents and rivals agree that General Aideed was adamant to rule Somalia and to what he was up was the State itself, his imagination of the State was without any other political challenger. He could hardly escape the permeated perception that no military leader would be accepted to replace Siad Barre. According to Ga’madheere, Aideed had the personal ambition to become ‘the sole President of the state’.63 This over-ambitious adventure had transcended the USC principles of democratic reinstitution of Somalia. Ai- deed seemed someone who would either destroy himself or destroy others, using force out of anarchy to attempt the reconstitution of law and order. As a military man, he imagined himself sitting the seat Siad Barre sat over for two decades. Aideed’s expectations to seize the State was further advanced by the promises provided by Conoco, an American oil company, which had a representative in Somalia, a French man named Raymond Marchand, who lived in Mogadishu during the war and had a close contact with Osman Hassan Ali ‘Aato’, Aideed’s financier and right-hand man.64 However, as witnessed by General Jili’ow, the fact was that Aideed was not even able to constraint his forces, for no one could count the level of robbery, pillaging and thievery spread throughout Somalia.65 The new culture of pillaging and booty developed during the years of dictatorial rule was prolonged. The war slogan was: ‘Ama marqaan ama marxuum ahow ama Mariino meel ka aal’ (feel either euphoric with Khat stimulant, die or hang out somewhere in Mariino), Mari- no being a neighbourhood close to the Mogadishu’s eastern beach, where foreigners frequented during the Siad Barre regime). 66

The Djibouti Reconciliation Conferences From 5 to 12 June 1991, a reconciliation conference known as Djibouti One—the first peace session to hold after fall of the Siad Barre regime—was held in Djibouti, with the chairmanship of Aden Addde, while Egaal and Abdirizak Haji Hussein acted as deputies. The Djibouti invitation of some members to come for peace talks was something of a surprise. Djibouti authorities were among those neighbouring States, like Kenya, who provided support for Siad Barre. However, the main armed groups—even the now defunct SSDF, with the exception of the SNM—sent representatives to the conference and, at the end, renewed Ali Mahdi’s presidency, with the ap- The Reality and Realignment of 1991 253 proval of General Aideed’s delegation, led by Colonel Omar Haashi Aden. The armed groups also agreed to hold a grand conference a month later. After the nomination of Ali Mahdi, a political arrangement was reached in Moga- dishu that Aideed be given the position of the USC Chairman. In the same vein, from 15 to 21 July, five major armed groups were again hosted by the Djibouti government in Djibouti Two Conference to form a transitional administration for Somalia. After a month of deliberations, the conference similar to the previous one again approved Ali Mahdi as President after power distribution based on major clans. The Presidential position was agreed to go to the Hawiye clan, the first vice President to the Digil/Mirifle, the second vice President to the Daarood and the Prime Minister to the Isaaq. 67 The contested post of Presidency was reserved for the USC and Ali Mahdi filled it with the backing of a group of politicians who were averse to Aideed, who countered by insisting that the USC should nominate its candidate for the President, an apparent indication that he wanted the post for himself. While the official outcomes of both Djibouti conferences legitimised Ali Mahdi’s position, it also strengthened General Aideed’s power, even if he did not attend both. After the Djibouti conferences, the USC elders formulated a new power configuration corresponding to the reality on the ground. On 6 August, traditional clan chiefs of the Hawiye were able to arbitrate and secure an accord between the two leaders. That the arbitration was arbitrary as half-done mediation was expressed by one elder who declared at the end: ‘Ali gar leh, Aideedna gar leh’ (Ali has a point, Aideed has also a point). However, the elders got Ali Mahdi signed to consult with Aideed for any crucial appointments in the government. 68 The fact that Ali Mahdi signed the document as President, Aideed as Chairman, demonstrated that each entirely accepted the elder’s mediation. While his stance was somehow ambiguous, the deal seemed satisfactory to Ali Mahdi. But to Aideed, his position depended on his mood of the day. He accepted in principle on Ali Mahdi’s presidency. Ali Mahdi in turn pledged to comply with the political programme of the USC and involve Aideed prior to appointing any political position. This arrangement came after Aideed won a landslide victory over the chairmanship of the USC contested between him and Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf. In this election, Hussein Ali Shiddo, the original USC Chairman, decided not to run for re-election. On 6 July 1991, Aideed had been unani- mously elected as Chairman by all sides of the USC wings. 69 Out of 500 delegates, 347 cast their votes in favour of Aideed, with 53 abstaining. Be- cause it was deemed that the election would lead to cohesion among the USC leaders, placards were waved in Mogadishu with the slogan ‘Cali waa Ay- diid, Caydiidna waa Ali’ (Ali is Aideed and Aideed is Ali). However, General Aideed renewed his challenge to the new President and all over again showed signs of defiance by condemning Ali Mahdi for breaching the agreement to consult him with any appointments, especially 254 Chapter 11 the nomination of the USC ministers in his government. Expressing his opposition through poetic means, Aideed composed a poem, chanting on the BBC Somali Service ‘cadkaanow ku cunay ama ku ciideeyey’ (O’ this piece of mutton, you will either be on my way or the highway). The correlation of meat with power reflected the politics of the belly. Here, power as an appetite and an eating was a continuation and a continuum inherited from Abdirashid- Egaal-Yasin administration. Yet, the relationship between power and the belly was overwhelmingly entangled in the Siad Barre regime. This was similar in search of power and politics as a form and formula of what could be considered as a political expenditure. 70 To make matters worse, General Ahmed Iriiri and General Galaal, two of his opponents, were appointed positions to the new Ali Mahdi’s administration in an attempt to further isolate Aideed. After these appointments, some former regime diplomats turned around and attempted to join the new State formation in post-Siad Barre Somalia. To succeed in this new political adventurism, they came to lambast Siad Barre and his rule, a regime in which they were crucial members. 71 The very (re)positional political rearrangement of these figures into Ali Mahdi’s administration enraged Aideed, even when he himself was sought to satisfy for the new State. Ali Mahdi recounted that, soon after he was sworn in the presidency, he had a meeting with Aideed at which he suggested to him to become either Minister of Defence or the Commandant of the Army. Ali Mahdi lamented that unfortunately Aideed was unwilling to acquiesce to both offers, but his aspiration was to seize the Presidency for himself. 72 Aideed’s determination to become President was such that his former colleagues in the army claimed that he was once found mental health condition in his early years in the military. 73 Ali Mahdi was also condemned for his choice of Omar Arte, a man with a good reputation, as Prime Minister. Arte was the politician Siad Barre had appointed Prime Minister on 21 January 1991, tasking him to form a new government at the height of the mayhem in Mogadishu. However, much of the allegations against Arte were unfounded. When Arte declared in early February that Siad Barre’s soldiers must surrender to the armed groups, mainly the USC, the SNM and the SPM, there was no national army worthy of the name that held even minimum credibility in the eyes of the public. Rather, there were clan militias in army disguise. For example, the two army generals ruling the two sectors in the North as well as those assigned to lead the army brigades in the South were all from Siad Barre’s clan-group. Even if he was unpopular internally, Omar Arte was popular externally. He had remained special relationships with the Arab States throughout the Siad Barre regime. Ali Mahdi justified his decision of appointing Arte, for there was no any other alternative open to him. Had Ali Mahdi tried to seek other Isaaq politicians to convince them to form a government? He recalled that, when he approached Egaal for the post, the latter declined the offer. 74 As Ali The Reality and Realignment of 1991 255

Mahdi insisted, all armed groups—except for the SNM—presented Arte’s name to Ali Mahdi to appoint the post of Prime Minister. This was seen as one of the gravest political plunders that the new President had encountered as a test, indicating a lack of experience in government business, even though each Somali sub-clan was determined to see one of their sons included in the cabinet of ministers. Furthermore, how to handle foreign embassies overwhelmingly staffed by Siad Barre’s own clan became a difficult task for Arte’s government, with Faduma Isaaq Biihi, the former Ambassador to Switzerland and Siad Barre’s clanswoman, going to court in Geneva to defend her ambassadorship.75

Negotiated Statehood or Mediated Statehood? The State as a political and economic (re)source was worth fighting for from the perspective of both sides of the fence. Ali Mahdi and Aideed were both post-cold war and post-adjustment leaders craving for their share of the State spoils to siphon off foreign aid similar to Siad Barre. Who controlled the flow of the international aid and who had the right to control were never mediated questions. The SNM leaders maintained to boycott the Ali Mahdi and Omar Arte’s administration. This led some observers to conclude that General Aideed was the only Hawiye leader ‘who could negotiate a constitutional solution with the SNM on the north’s status’.76 To be seen as a State, one had to secure outside recognition from somewhere else. Recognition from outside was the most important, for internality was not so important when it came to recognition. Omar Arte travelled abroad to obtain international recognition almost all February in 1991. 77 Recognising that the domestic security was a prerequisite for foreign aid, Arte asserted that they ‘made huge efforts to salvage the country’s security and stability since conditions have calmed down’.78 The fact that Aideed blocked a fact-finding Italian mission, led by Italian Deputy Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Andrea Borruso, on their way to land Mogadishu airport to meet Ali Mahdi on 30 October 1991 was indicative of how far international recognition was important to both sides.79 The military operation, known to Somalis as isbaaradii cirka (the checkpoint of the sky), conducted by Aideed’s forces, revealed two central features: (1) the wakefulness on the part of both leaders of the indis- pensability of foreign aid in grabbing as well as grasping the State, (2) the role of foreign aid in prolonging the conflict by making the State the only resource for which worth fighting. Resuming to quarrel over the State and its spoils, Ali Mahdi and Aideed fought three separate wars. In September 1991, Ali Mahdi’s forces surrounded Aideed’s compound for several days, both drawing from their clan fighters. However, the first armed confrontation dubbed as the ‘Battle between the Abgaal and the Habar Gidir’ happened in June (three days), the 256 Chapter 11 second in September (the so-called ‘four day war’ from 5 to 8 September)80 and the third in November, by far the largest large-scale violence. 81 In other words, the last devastating one began on 17 November 1991 and ended on 3 March 1992. Of all clan cataclysms, the highest number of death tolls occurred in this war. More people died in the Abgaal versus the Habar Gidir militias than in the Hawiye versus the Daarood, rendering the city centre in ruins. It is estimated that 30,000 were killed in this fighting. 82 Following a primordialist stance, an Abgaal poet warning the Habar Gidir fighters declared that ‘sakiin ma goyso geed salweyn, sagaal Abgaalna waa sidaas, Sa’ad iyo Eyrna waa sirmeen, Saleebaanna waa sahan Abgaal, Saruurna waa siteey mugeed’ (a small razor cannot cut a big tree, so is the nine sub- clans of the Abgaal, the Sa’ad and the Eyr were misguided, and the Salee- baan are part of the Abgaal’s expedition, the Saruur are insignificant in number).83 The war was implicated by the fact that clan elders and politicians who were supposed to mediate between the two men had taken sides. During the fighting, most of the Hawaadle militias were aligned with Aideed, the Muru- sade militias with Ali Mahdi and so were the Saleebaan militias. 84 Respected elders from Habar Gidir elders, such as Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, General Galaal, General Iriiri and Ambassador Ahmed Mohamed Darmaan supported Ali Mahdi. Aideed also enjoyed the support of some Abgaal elders, such as Ibrahim Sheikh Ahmed ‘Ibrahim Kaah’ and Professor Mohamoud Ali Tuur- yare. Mohamed Sheikh Osman, the former Finance Minister of the Siad Barre regime, a Murursade, also supported him. These personal and clan alliances served each leader to maximise their claims for the top State position. Many efforts at reconciling their conflict were attempted and the calls to urge both men to restrain any resort to violence ended with no avail. 85 The so-called ‘Green Line’ between Ali Mahdi and Aideed was constructed in the city centre of Mogadishu. While Aideed was constrained nearby the U.S. embassy compound, Ali Mahdi’s authority did not even extend his hotel Maka Al-Mukaramah, later pillaged by Aideed’s militiamen. None of them had the power and capability to subdue the other. Looking forward to obtaining the IMF structural adjustment and monetary benefits, Ali Mahdi and Aideed each anticipated the similar aid slices previously provided for Siad Barre. As Ali Jimale pointed out: ‘Four things kept Barre in power and he used them effectively’—that is, ‘the Somali shilling and the dollar, the sword, the blessings (tacit approval) of traditional intellectuals, and his own considerable oratorical skills. In the post-Barre era, these resources are not monopolized by any one group or person. The clans and their leaders do not have at their disposal the millions of dollars Barre had, courtesy of the Cold War. Similarly, the sword is not the exclusive property of any one group. Thanks to Barre and the Cold War (and even recent involvement by other powers), there is enough ammunition to go The Reality and Realignment of 1991 257 around, but not enough for any one leader or group to subdue their opponents effectively and for a long time’.86 Weapons were most needed and some flowed from elsewhere. Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, a former supporter of Siad Barre, donated new AK47 guns and 1000 tons of weapons to Ali Mahdi’s administration in June 1991.87 However, Ali Mahdi and Aideed expected economic and military aid from the West. It was interesting that Aideed was seen ‘not unjustly yesterday’s man, still living in the 1980s in the world where to be president was the key to limitless foreign aid’.88 A research report about Somali conflict prepared for the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs found that:

Since aid was one of the most important sources of national resources, it was also one of the most important causes for elite competition and one of the most important motivations for the antagonistic mobilization of Somali society along clannish lines. Aid can be especially harmful if it benefits its administrators (as in Somalia) and if the criteria for the access to its administration were the de facto rule in the country and if its centralized management was not conditioned to democratic national rule. If the way to get one’s hands on the aid money was the ability to monopolize the use of force in a nation (de facto control), it seems clear that aid is creating a structure of deadly competition. If the ability to kill is a criterion for the access to national resources (as in dictatorships), instead of the ability to gain popular support (as in democracies)[,] any increase in national resources increase[s] the incentive to the ‘killing competition.89

The conflict between Ali Mahdi and Aideed erupted a month after Her- man J. Cohen, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, ‘intimat- ed that the aid pipeline might soon start to flow again, and that the American embassy could be reopened in Mogadishu as early as October [1991]’.90 This statement was released, when some other Washington officials asserted that they had no longer ‘geographical stakes’ in Somalia. This fact alone was sufficient to suggest that the war, even though appeared intractable in both clan and political level, it was also determined by outside factors. The U.S. diplomats maintained odd pretension that the war was a puzzle to them by asking this legitimate question: ‘How could Aideed and Ali Mahdi, both leaders of the USC and opponents of Siad Barre, inflict so much damage on each other and their people?’.91 This was a question that went unanswered in the U.S. circles where many contemplated over what went wrong with the USC after successfully ousting Siad Barre from power and what made them fight veraciously. The dominant standpoint in Washington was that whoever won the war would have to be endorsed as the legitimate authority of State power.92 In the midst of the war, in an interview with BBC’s Focus on Africa, Aideed insisted that ‘a peaceful solution’ was near.93 However, he 258 Chapter 11 seemed adamant to militarily overwhelm Ali Mahdi’s forces to proclaim himself President.

The Breach of Modus Operandi Abdi Dheere, an elder, who was involved in the reconciliation efforts to broker peace between the two men, recalled that the power struggle, first and foremost, arose from General Aideed’s claim of the USC Chairman in Mus- tahiil.94 Aideed’s Sa’ad sub-clan joined the struggle against the regime in 1989 and was backed up by the Eyr (a fellow Habar Gidir) clansmen who too joined the war in 1990. Both sub-clans were part of the deliberations in forming the USC that divided power among Hawiye clans. Under an unwrit- ten agreement, the Abgaal was agreed to assume the top leadership of the State, the Habar Gidir the defence, the Murusade the external affairs. This formula was concluded in a clan conference held in 1989 at the house of Ali Geedi Shadoor, a former member of the last civilian parliament. The Habar Gidir representatives in the conference plainly accepted the outcome and the very idea of holding the conference originated from Habar Gidir/Saleebaan elders who sought Hawiye solidarity for the clanocide unleashed upon their people in 1983.95 In order to prevent them from further danger, the Siad Barre regime was misled that the meeting was about forging a peaceful settlement between the Hawaadle and the Murusade who were then fighting each other in Hiiraan region. This was how Aideed was called to lead the USC and the background that gave rise to the formation of the armed wing of the USC. As long as he proclaimed himself the USC Chairman, Aideed behaved as though he was unaware of such a power modus operandi. After the death of Ismail Jimale, all pre-arranged agreements were further violated. Only after the United Nations sent a Special Envoy James Jonah to Moga- dishu did Ali Mahdi and Aideed accept a ceasefire. 96 From the approval of Pérez de Cuéllar, then UN Secretary-General, Jonah travelled from New York to Mogadishu on 31 December 1991, leading a small fact-finding delegation to assess the political situation of post-Siad Barre Somalia. Preparing to take over from de Cuéllar, his successor Boutros Boutros-Ghali gave orders to Jonah ‘not to negotiate’ with neither Ali Mahdi nor Aideed, but just gauge if they were prepared to accept a UN Manhattan-type mediation. If they were to do so, ‘get their responses in writing’ was the admonishment. Upon reaching Mogadishu, Jonah put more pressure on Aideed than on Ali Mahdi. He bluntly alerted Aideed that ‘he could not achieve his ambitions at the point of a gun’.97 However, a peace settlement was reached two months after Jonah’s arrival. Under the peace negotiation mediated by the UN international bureaucrats, both leaders were invited to send representatives to New York. Ali Mahdi sent two Ministers, Aweys Haji Yusuf and Mohamed Qanyare Afrah along with the former USC Chairman, Hussein Ali Shiddo. The Reality and Realignment of 1991 259

Aideed selected three of his clansmen, Osman Aato, Mohamed Hassan Awale and Yasin Dualeh Kaahiye. By choosing three different politicians from three different sub-clans of the Hawiye, Ali Mahdi proved more national than a factional leader. The external mediations were complemented by internal local reconcilia- tions. Observably, the poet Mustafe Sheikh Elmi alluded to the over-ambitious post-Siad Barre leaders in fighting for State power, when he chanted on a stage ‘kursigaasaan caashaqaye, madaxweyne, madaxweyne kol i dhahay- ee’ (I fancied that chair, call me president once’.98 The chair here was a symbol of the Presidential seat and the embodiment of the State itself. Once the war was realised that it was for Presidency did the local elders find ways to resolve it. Traditional clan elders of the Abgaal and the Habargidir, having recognised that that the war between Ali Mahdi and Aideed was a political by nature, had succeeded to formulate a new reconciliatory framework for conflict resolution among their clans without the two leaders. A peace accord was signed in the absence of the two leaders. Years of warfare were resolved in the Hiraab conference (Hiraab being the common genealogical ancestry of the Abgaal and the Habar Gidir, along with the Sheekhaal) held in January 1994, with the attendance of notable elders such as Imaam Mohamoud Imaam Omar, Ali Ugaas Abdulle, Malaaq Showri Malaaq Olow, Suldaan Jama Suldaan Ahmednuur Ali Guuleed, Ugaas Farah Ugaas Foodey, Abdi Daher Ugaas Nuur, along with politicians such as General Liiqliiqato, Abdi- kassim Salaad, Hussein Kadare, Sheikh Abdullahi Shaati’adde, Iise Mo- hamed Siad, Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, Abdirahman Mohamed Jimale ‘Shif- ti’, Mohamed Dheere and many others.99

AIDEED: ANOTHER SIAD BARRE OF SOMALIA?

The Complexion and Character One of the most misunderstood characters of the Somali civil war was none other than General Aideed. He was initially a popular figure among the Hawiye masses and there was no doubt that he would replace Ali Mahdi as President if he had waited for the two year interim term elected for the new President (1991–1993). Aideed appeared more flamboyant than all power contenders as his motivations were quite distinct from other leaders in the armed groups. While lobbing shells into the North Mogadishu, Aideed nonetheless overlooked that Ali Mahdi, as a wealthy businessman, had enjoyed the backing of the Abgaal clan, one of the most numerous and powerful Somali clans. The fact that Aideed ‘saw himself as having liberated Somalia from the oppressor and believed that this entitled him to be Somalia’s future leader’ made his claim sacrosanct.100 His uncompromising claim to the presidency, though violently contested by various groups, could only be under- 260 Chapter 11 stood in this context. Inspired and impressed by his military achievements against the Siad Barre regime, U.S. diplomats on the ground recorded that ‘Aideed had proven himself a formidable military leader’.101 Robert Oakley, who once brokered a peace deal between Ali Mahdi and Aideed, discerned a personal trait and political pattern distinct from one leader to the other. In his memoir with Hirsch, he wrote that:

These initial meetings with Aideed and Ali Mahdi revealed an interesting pattern that prevailed for almost all the many subsequent meetings, and offered insight into their respective strengths and political situations. Aideed attended alone except for a note taker, did all the talking, and presented a number of points in the form of letters as well as orally. Aideed’s was very much the approach of a general who wished to show himself in full command of a disciplined organization. Ali Mahdi, on the other hand, was openly collegial, offering few specifics and inviting a great deal of discussion—he frequently consulted with his seven or eight advisors before responding to a question or taking a position.102

Each faction leader was accompanied by an entourage of six to seven aides in a ‘typical Somali fashion’. When they met finally alone in December 1992, Ali Mahdi and Aideed asked Ambassador Oakley ‘to rejoin their delegations for a combined discussion with no foreigners present’. When their followers joined, they all embraced each other with much enthusiasm and eagerness. It was this time that the ambassador felt to comment thus: ‘This was not the last time foreigners failed to understand how Somalis negotiate and agree’.103 Indeed, the Somali way of negotiation was somewhat private than public. After two hours of meeting, the two leaders reached seven point agreement (1) to carry out immediate and total cessation of hostilities, as well as the restoration of the USC unity, (2) to affect immediate and total cessation of all negative propaganda, (3) to break the artificial lines in the capital city of Mogadishu as North and South, known as the Green Line (4) all their forces should be controlled by a joint committee selected by both sides, (6) the already existing reconciliation committee of the USC should start deliberation within 24 hours, (6) they called upon ‘all Somalis throughout the country to seriously engage on cessation of all hostilities and join with [them] for peace and unity of Somalia’, and lastly (7) they expressed their ‘deep appre- ciation to the international community for its efforts to assist Somalia and appeal to it to extend its assistance including not only humanitarian relief aid but also reconstruction and rehabilitation as well as a national reconciliation conference’.104 Particular observations brimmed with praiseworthy on Aideed is provided by General Anthony Zinni, Oakley’s adviser. In his memoir, Zinni wrote: ‘For all the uncertainties of working with him, he was far and away the one person who might have led this country. His organization was actually a The Reality and Realignment of 1991 261 mini-government with all the bureaucratic trappings (including—improb- ably—a Minister of Tourism’. Zinni further observed that Aideed run a State which no other leader ‘had anything like it’.105 In a recent research conference at the University of Oxford, an Oromo academic specialising in the Horn has pointed out with as perceptive precision as possible that Aideed was the only Somali leader competently capable of pacifying Somalia in 1991.106 This was a stance taken by President Yoweri Museveni, President Moi, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi as well as then UN Ambassador to Somalia Mohamed Sahnoun.107 Similar conclusions were also made by distinguished American Professors Tom Farer and Harold Marcus in addition to John Drys- dale, a British scholar, who had consulted with the post-colonial civilian Somali administration and the French specialist on Somalia Roland Mar- chal.108 Explaining Aideed’s attempts at conquering the whole of Somalia, Luling also wrote after returning from a fieldwork in Mogadishu in the early 1990s that Aideed was committed to uniting the whole Somalia to be its ruler through military means. As she put it: ‘This was Caydiid’s method perhaps one he saw as compelled by the supreme need to unite the country’.109 More empirical observations can also be drawn from conclusions generated not merely by General Aideed’s admirers but also by his adversaries. One of Siad Barre’s grandsons, Siad Ahmed Saleebaan, the son of General Dafle, once conferred to this author that he was of the opinion that Aideed was capable of uniting Somalia. 110 Said Samatar, a Somali academic long opposed to Aideed, also stressed—upon renouncing his earlier position in an interview conducted in Somali language—the fact that Aideed had encountered a clan burden that no other armed movement leaders in the Horn of Africa had witnessed.111 However, if General Aideed was proved to be a capable military man, he was not a capable political—even diplomatic—leader. Aside from structural and societal impediment, incorrect policies fed into him by his close advisers diverted him from attaining his devised vision and famous slogan of the ‘preferred future for Somalia’.112 Had Aideed, however, concentrated his policies more on political bargaining rather than on military exercising upon the Mogadishu conquest, the USC movement might have succeeded as did the RPF in Rwanda. Indeed, Aideed needed more than military might to pacify Somalia. Spending his energy on the warfront other than the political front rendered not only him to fail but also made the USC a failed front. Articulations and expressions of grievances through military means can never be justified, even when Aideed’s grievances were not confined to Siad Barre’s era, but extended to the reconfiguration of post-colonial Somali Re- public in 1960. More than once, Aideed insisted that his aims for the future of Somalia were based on two objectives (1) to create and nurture mutual understanding among the Somali people in order to achieve a lasting peace settlement in Somalia and (2) to pave the way for the formation of all inclu- 262 Chapter 11 sive broad-based government of national unity.113 The problem with this fine national position lay in the fact that the general wanted it to achieve with the barrel of the gun. As he once described himself, he was both a man of peace and a man of war. However, he sometimes pursued a reconciliatory approach toward other armed groups. In 1991, as Africa Confidential documented, Aideed contacted General Omar Haji Masalle, the Chairman of the Somali National Front (SNF), who was allied with Siad Barre, and Colonel Abdulla- hi Yusuf, who was released from prison and visited Siad Barre in Gedo, suggesting them to distance themselves from the deposed dictator. 114 When Jees joined his Daarood clan-group militias in February 1991, Aideed called for him to ‘return to the just struggle and play [his] role’.115 His emissaries and communications also reached Generals Gaani and Abdiaziz Ali Barre, Siad Barre’s clansmen, to join his group. In 1992, Aideed formed the Somali National Alliance (SNA), a coalition of four armed groups, mainly the USC, the SDM, the SPM and the SSNM (the Southern Somali National Movement, formed in 1991), while Ali Mahdi was chosen spokesman for the Somali Salvation Alliance (SSA), a coalition of 12 (partly armed, partly unarmed) political groups in 1994. Absorption and (re)alignment of different groups were Aideed’s approach to attracting different personalities and factions to forge alliances that allow him to assume the presidency. Indeed, a considerable number of politicians and militias from other clan-groups joined General Aideed’s ranks—i.e. an Ogaadeen faction led by Colonel Jees; a Digil/Mirifle group led by Colonel Mohamed Nuur Aliyow; a Dir faction led by Colonel Abdi Warsame Isaaq; and later a group of Mareehaan, Siad Barre’s clan. Aideed also managed to draw his foreign representatives from various clans. His Rome representative was Nicolino Mohamed, a Digil/Mirifle former senior civil servant in the 1960s, while in London he was represented by Qamar Aden Ali, a Dir and former university lecturer. Abdiladhif Afdhuub, Aideed’s long-time Nairobi representative, even when the claim of clan cleansing was in full swing, was an Ogaadeen. After unilaterally declaring the salballaar (the broad-based) government on 15 June of 1995, Aideed was able to include Mareehaan and Majeerteen vice presidents, Abdirashid Nuur and Mohamed Haji Aden, in his cabinet.116 Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf also became an ally of Aideed from 1993–1995. Aideed also counted support not only from his Habar Gidir, but also from some Dir clan-group in the South, the Hawiye/Sheekhaal, the Hawiye/Gaalje’el, the Hawiye/Hawaadle and other clans. The support he drew from Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamee’a, a Sufi group, also gave him a religious legitimacy. Indeed, General Aideed’s actions affirm his words as well as personal testimonies evident in his memoirs. 117 In the aftermath of the Mudug Peace Accord in June 1993, a peace settlement from which he reached an alliance with Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, General Aideed altered his image of warmon- The Reality and Realignment of 1991 263 ger and emerged as peacelord. Audio-visual clips show him in Kismaayo in May 1991, ordering his fighters not to fight with ‘anyone who is unarmed’. In a meeting with Daarood elders in Kismaayo, he informed that ‘every foreign visitor who visited here said to me “you are cleansing Daarood”. I told them we did not and cannot cleanse a clan; we are only destroying Siad Barre and his forces’.118 Another YouTube clip shows him in a Mogadishu mass gathering. Recorded at the height of the clan cataclysms in April 1991, the clip shows Aideed giving orders to his fighters not to rob and rape civilians and non-combatants. The clip also reveals him with two of the most revered Mogadishu sheikhs, Sheikh Mo’allim Nuur Mohamed Siad and Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhiddiin Eli, who asked him to defend Mogadishu from Siad Barre’s forces.119 In the same clip, Bantu/Jareer elders, led by Mohamed Ramadaan Arbow, invited Aideed to come to their territory to chase Siad Barre’s remnants.120 It was at the end of this gathering in Mogadi- shu that Aideed gave a speech to an audience in which he pledged to confront those who were trying to recapture Mogadishu. Then he continued to instruct his forces to ‘upheld the sense of Somalinness’. This was what he insisted the rest before he waged a war to capture Kismaayo:

We are against not the Daarood, but Siad Barre’s tyrannical regime and anyone who supports and fights for him, we are against them. They themselves need to be liberated from Siad Barre to restore brotherhood and justice [and] not to allow for people to be re-colonised again because people are equal. You [his fighters] must respect the people, protect the people you’re liberating, protect the sheikhs, protect the mosques. Face only the enemy, those who are firing at you. If they commit atrocity, don’t commit yourself, do otherwise which is goodness, for Allah has ordered us.121

This was the General Aideed who was charged for partaking the clan reprisals in the caricature of the clan cleansing claim. Since he wanted himself for the State, it was scarcely surprising that he maintained soft diplomatic tune while employing his diplomatic skills in India and imitating as a Statesman geared towards ruling the whole of Somalia. His attempts at convincing the Daarood clan-group politicians to back his struggle to seize the State was best captured in a poem. The Hawiye/Abgaal poet Ahmed Dha- qane Hassan ‘Subkane’, accused Aideed of being a Hawiye during the day but a Daarood at night. He inquired ‘Jelfiskii ka haray ina Siyaad, Jananku sow maahan / Hiraab jebiyey ina Jees la jira, Jananku sow maahan?’ (Isn’t the general one of the remnants of Siad [Barre]? / Isn’t the general the one who defeated the Hiraab while in agreement with the son of Jees [Colonel Ahmed Omar Jees, the Ogaadeen leader allied with Aideed]). 122 This poetic portrayal equated Aideed with the typical African big man who did not care ethnicity or clanity other than his own prestige and power. When confronted with the reconfiguration of military alliances destined for grabbing the State, 264 Chapter 11 this big man would sharpen his axe. Aideed apparently allowed any other compromise except for his reserved post of the Head of State. Not merely to the top post, Aideed at times used to question the titles of others. Soon upon the fall of the regime, a Habar Gidir militia commander, who had been a plumber, wore a colonel’s ensemble while in fighting against the Siad Barre’s forces. The charlatan colonel attended a USC conference where he could unable to avoid the gaze of his commander. Aideed inquired him about when he had become a colonel to which the pretender retorted ‘are we now beginning to squabble over and validate the promotions of the man we are now pursuing [Siad Barre], are you practically saying that he made you a general, but did not make me a soldier, let alone a senior officer’.123 Bewil- dered and silent, as Aideed became, there was no more quarrels.

Illuminating Vignette Given these newly gathered evidences, one can now talk of Aideed properly. The following personal testimony also explores outside close-knit clan sympathies and relationships fomented by General Aideed. Ambassador Daher Yusuf Aw-Mohamoud Mohamed Iise, a Mareehaan, met Aideed and managed to garner from him financial assistance at the height of the clan reprisals in early 1991. Ambassador Daher stayed in Mogadishu after the clanised wars that forced many of his clanspeople to flee from Mogadishu. At the house of Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Ahmed Sheikh Mohamoud, known as Sheikh Abba, one of the notable Shaanshi sheikhs in Mogadishu, Ambassa- dor Daher met coincidentally Aideed, who replaced him in India as an ambassador in 1984. He also knew him since the late 1950s, especially when Aideed was the Chief of Banaadir Police Province in 1958–1959. After embracing each other, Aideed offered to see Ambassador Daher in his office next morning. When the ambassador went to see him, Aideed suggested him to stay in Mogadishu until ‘preparations for establishing government’ was concluded and granted $3,000 dollars to Daher. 124 This personal testimony reveals that Aideed was acceptable to any big name who accepted him as the chief of the State. As a professional military man with extensive warfront career, General Aideed’s attitude was, nevertheless, shaped by his military training. He was not acquainted with the simple political rule of give and take or push and pull politics. He came up with the same Siad Barre’s strategy of power and resembled more like a modern-day Siad Barre.125 However, political machi- nations and mobilisations of post-Siad Barre clanised wars obstructed his ambitions as they were not dissimilar in some ways from other African conflicts, but were the same in the context of power competition. 126 Aideed was confronted with a political challenge that Yoweri Museveni of Uganda in January 1986 and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia in May 1991 did not encoun- The Reality and Realignment of 1991 265 ter. What would Meles and Museveni have done had they felt that their road to reach the Presidential Palaces of Addis Ababa and Kampala were impene- trable and impassable? As such, Aideed’s case cannot be firmly understood without reading within the context of Meles and Museveni. This was largely because his movement, albeit the most powerful of all, was the only USC wing that fought consistently against the Siad Barre regime. This should not be construed that Aideed had a special right than others to rule Somalia, but to point out that all these facts entail to taking into account when examining and analysing Aideed. The correlation of General Aideed to Meles and Museveni is not to follow a Machiavellian wisdom that war can be justified if it was done for the goodness of the State or society. In Somalia, the consequences of the war were quite simply ‘a total breakdown’, as Museveni who saw his own eyes described it, when he unexpectedly visited Aideed in Mogadishu in 1992 to mediate and broker a peace with Ali Mahdi.127 Interestingly, Museveni told them they were like men fighting inside their kitchen instead of fighting in the bedroom or the living room.128 General Jili’ow observed that Aideed’s opponents were so resilient that they hardly accepted even if he called for Mecca for reconciliation.129 The other USC leaders, such as Hussein Bood, Hussein Ali Shiddo, General Galaal, General Neero and others, were hostile to Aideed’s intentions of sitting alone at where Siad Barre had vacated. It was such a privatised and politicised setting that denied an exclusive power for the armed groups—i.e., the USC and the SNM—and their leaders and allowed a shift of power on the part of the latter to respective clan elders, as they traditionally were the hierarchical institution of clans. Unlike the USC, there were two choices open to the SNM to either (1) join the elders or (2) reopen new revolt. It is here where the two most powerful armed movements, the USC and the SNM, left each other by embracing and integrating these diametrical choices. While Aideed defied clan elders, the SNM surrendered power to them. Indeed, Aideed failed to achieve his aims by force, as was expected from any military man with military strength in Somalia. Like Jonas Savimbi in Angola, Aideed talked about peace while failing to implement it along with his potential messages. 130 His main political (and also diplomatic) blunder was his failure to ask Museveni to assist him militarily as he did for Paul Kagame in Rwanda in 1994.

Conclusion

The cold war considerations of locality in the mouth of Africa into Arabia was compellingly enough to bestow The Somali Republic on a high strategic importance. To compartmentalise what was inside the Siad Barre from what was outside, it was crucial to historicising the nature of post-colonial Somali State and its successor. The 1960s civilian leaders inadvertently plunged themselves into the internal and external dynamics of the cold war politics in the 1960s, which culminated in the collapse of the democratic rule in Somal- ia and then the whole Somali State. Gérard Prunier has pointed out ‘that giving brandy bottles to an alcoholic is not the genuine cause of his death. The question is: why did he start drinking in the first place?’.1 In 1963, when Prime Minister Abdirashid paid a historic visit to Washington, part of his plan was to convince the Kennedy White House to intervene in the Horn of Africa by arming massively the newly-born Somali Republic. When the Oval Office objected to acquiesce to his calls compelled by the search for the Greater Somalia policy, Abdirashid flew unexpectedly to Moscow where he was able to persuade the Soviets to cross the Red Sea and meddle not only in the Somali affairs, but also in Angola and elsewhere in Africa. Even though the then Somali President Aden Abdulle Osman ‘Aden Adde’ was unacceptable to this political manoeuvre—he did not approve the policy of heading to the East—he did nothing to block his Prime Minister’s perilous mission. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister paid the price: he became a victim of assassination in the KGB-orchestrated coup plot designed to pave the way for a Soviet-style Somalia under a military regime. The KGB plan dragged Somalia from Africa’s most democratic State into one of the most brutal African despotic regimes and then into a disaster—that is a complete collapse, or to put it differently, the quintessential failed State. It should be highlighted that the Washington parsimony led Abdirashid and his company

267 268 Conclusion to head to Moscow for arms support. However, even though one cannot skip over the external dynamics, it was indeed the internal political dimensions that mostly shaped the course—and causes—of events in post-colonial So- malia henceforth. By abandoning the Greater Somalia policy, the leaders of the last civilian administration (1967-1969) put themselves in a danger in striving to secure their stay in power, a partial whims that made Somalia vulnerable to the KGB conquest. The illustration and illusion of the Greater Somalia constituted a political platform in line with rigid State policy that can hardly be attained, even with the tremendous amount of army power. While the two merged destitute States—Somalia and Somaliland—could not exist together, it was sought to add more States, perfecting the Somali aphorism, ‘waan socon weynaye, aan orodno’ (as we cannot walk, let’s run on foot). This suggests one that could not walk straight can never run on foot. Similar to Jean Monnet, the so-called ‘Father of Europe’ in France, who famously remarked: ‘Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union’,2 most post- colonial civilian leaders of The Somali Republic in 1960 insisted that there was no future for Somali people in the new Republic other than in union with their brethren hauled up in Djibouti, Ethiopia and the NFD. 3 However, irredentism was a trap left behind by colonial regimes in creating a never-ending conflict, leading to a State and a society hostile to itself; to the Arabs, the closest society; to the neighbouring States; and to the outside world. That Somalia remains a threat to itself and to the world became more obvious after the 1969 coup. Even if the coup was succeeded without armed conflict, it was evident that it was maintained in blood. The death of General Da’ud was for Siad Barre a dream came true; it helped wear the shoes of the popular Commandant of the Army. Siad Barre partly benefitted from the Greater Somalia policy that led to the creation of a strong army as well as the political plunders by Abdirashid-Egaal administration, especially how they handled the March 1969 parliamentary election. The foregoing chapters have demonstrated that Siad Barre divided and ruled Somalia from a small clan clique power base, employing money and arms, coercion, outside that power base to maintaining his rule. At the very beginning of his reign, he promised the restoration of democracy and abol- ishment of clannism. Instead, the extreme opposite of democracy and the most brutal face of clannism were adopted. At the pinnacle of his power in 1970, he proclaimed socialism and in 1971, he declared the prohibition of the clan system, adopting whichever ideology that suited his purposes of political power: clannism, nationalism, socialism and even sultanism. However, clanity in general proved the most superior and determined principle and political force in his regime to the extent that his reign could be invoked as clanocratic gouvernementalité. The central role of clanship in shaping the evolution of the new élite political culture in post-colonial Somali State Conclusion 269 cannot be attributed to Siad Barre alone. The clanisation of the State had its origins in Abdirashid-Egaal administration, but its intensification and agency—from clanised to criminalised and then cannibalised—solely rested with the Siad Barre. Aden Adde’s appointment of two different Majeerteen politicians as Prime Ministers—this phenomenon later became contagious—was a political prescription that has been retained to this day. It was during the Siad Barre regime, when clanism was turned and transformed into criminality. Siad Barre was, up until his departure, the biggest purveyor of clannism at work. When he fled, there was no one who could garner public support in consequence of the excessive clanisation of the State and society. For, if the last civilian government was blamed for clanised State, the Siad Barre regime was marked a typical example of tallying up clanity. He was the sole person guiding the clan and employing how it fitted his purposes of power. Though heavily dominated by the Majeerteen clan, the successive post-colonial administrations, were not as clannish and corrupt as the Siad Barre regime, much less that people had a saying—a scathing one for that matter— to confront the government with a list of critiques to clan dominance, a democratic right denied during the dictatorship. In 1967, Yusuf Dhuhul, a Somali lawyer critical of the civilian administration, published a list of 40 police station commanders appointed by General Mohamed Abshir of the Police. Out of the 40, 38 were of the Majeerteen clan. 4 Abshir’s nepotism in police positions was designed to develop a sense of clan closeness in ‘con- centric circles’, so much preferable to what Janice Boddy calls ‘interiority’, in contrast with ‘exteriority’, which could be applied as putting one outside the social close-knit (sub-)clan cohesiveness. 5 Dhuhul and others were there to point out the aims of the clanisation and the criminalisation of the police as a State institution. With Siad Barre in power, the door of exposing nepotism was closed forever. The animosity he instantly had shown on the élites—the upper educated class of the society—with whom most of them differed from his view, labelling them ‘bourgeois’, resulted in the disappearances of anyone capable of salvaging the State in 1991. Portraying the democratic State as capitalistic and materialist would mean providing justification for the military totalitarianism. Abdi and Ahmed Samatar appear to agree with Siad Barre by polishing his labelling of the SYL and its supporters as the petite bourgeoisie, when claiming that there were ‘cleavages and contradictions within this class’.6 In his comparison of Somalia to Botswana, Abdi Samatar insisted the existence of Somali petite bourgeoisie in the 1960s. 7 If there were such a genuine bourgeoisie, Somalia would never have suffered from the clan convulsions in 1991, since the bourgeoisie community tended to prosper peace rather than war. Political scientists of Africa, such as Bayart, demonstrated the emergence of the ‘Bourgeois Illusion’—that is, the lack of a real bourgeois community on the African continent. In fact, what Bayart said about Africa in 270 Conclusion general also holds true for post-colonial Somalia; markedly, there could be no traceable Somali bourgeoisie since there was none in Africa. 8 Which group (the so-called petite-bourgeoisie and Siadists) were less destructive in Somali politics? A West African political proverb has is that ‘better a hyena that is full than one who is hungry’, which means it is prudent to keep wealthy politicians at play in politics, instead of giving a (new) position to someone feeling hungry and thus eager to eat more from the coffins of the State.9 The 1960s paved the way for the 1970s, what happened all these years was prologue to what happened in the 1980s, which in turn gave rise to 1990s. The beginning of political violence by the regime in the 1970s and proliferation of cannibalised condition in the 1980s were signs of the State failure. The dictatorship was itself an indicator of failure—Siad Barre failed in articulating his mission any other way in order to get his presence felt rather than oppression. A State being failed rather than failing was first observed after the 1977 war. When they were denied access to the State resources, many aggrieved Somalis went to Ethiopia to attack the regime from outside. Henceforth, the regime institutionalised clan conflicts and unleashed mass violence to the point of annihilation to certain clans. By undertaking a process on clanisation of the State and re-clanisation of warfare, Siad Barre ignited a type of (pre-)colonial clan conflicts. One common thing was that clan cataclysms were a common phenomenon, but exploitations were massive such that clanised wars were inflamed not just to remain or return to power. The clanised wars similar to civil wars ‘maim cultures, jar their very foundations, destroy crucial frameworks of knowledge and people’s sense of reality, ruin social institutions as well as infrastructure, and jeopardize identities based on place and communities’.10 Once seen as ‘a divinely symbolic’ saviour, Siad Barre could have evidently spared the So- mali people and himself ‘the purulent discharge’ and ‘fiendish anomie’ that followed his ouster.11 Somali politics is formal and informal, visible and invisible, but during the Siad Barre regime it was played under what Bayart described dominants and dominees.12 What Siad Barre pervaded as the ‘national’, ‘democratic’ and ‘socialist state’ was the mirrored image and ego of his own personal promotion to power, while maintaining it with clan hold. In most post-colonial African States, the State was named for a particular ethnic, tribe or clan- group. The base for that democracy was what Siad Barre pledged to reinstate at the behest of mounting pressure in 1990. There was a chameleon-like tendency of ‘whatever works’ to consolidate power in the adoption of Siad- ism as a principle guide. The structure of such dictatorship was typified by a twist to democracy. The phoney and farce elections, such as those held in 1979 and 1986 for Presidency and the so-called People’s Assembly were prominent cases in point. No candidate other than Siad Barre and no party Conclusion 271 rather than the regime’s Xisbiga Hantiwadaagga Kacaanka Soomaaliyeed (the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party) were allowed to contest. As Alex de Tocqueville noted, ‘an oppressive regime is at its most vulnerable precisely at the moment when it begins to reform itself’.13 The kaadiriinta kacaanka (the officials of the revolution) were in an inimitable position to provide Siad Barre with the incisive advice by an African poet, who—upon realising that his kinsman assumed power –composed a poem warning him of malpractice, injustice and bad governance.

Although I am near you [by way of clanship], I cannot talk to you I am not concerned, for I know whence my kin comes I come from a line of relationship which is attached to you When the King is in Court, he is like an elephant in the thorn scrub Like a Buffalo in the thick forest Like a garden of maize on a mound in the Zambezi floodplain Rule the country well! When the country dies, you will be responsible. When it prospers, it will be proud of you and will acclaim you. 14

Siad Barre’s behaviour was overshadowed by paranoid disorder and schizophrenic attitude, becoming extremely suspicious to any advice offering a solution to the impending catastrophe that was underway. At the height of his rule, he was known for his superciliousness and self-importance. Throughout his reign, he came to show signs of ‘narcissistic tendencies’.15 He seemed as someone to have suffered from a Bipolar disorder as he had signs of hypomania: paranoid attitudes, racing thoughts, impaired judgements, extremely irritable, unrealistic about his abilities, sleeping very little but feeling energetic, talking rapidly, unable to concentrate and delusion. Eventually, it was reported that he committed suicide on 2 January 1995 by eating overdose tablets, while suffering from diabetes and blood pressure. 16 However, according to his son-in-law General Dafle, he died of chronic renal failure and diabetes II.17 By exploring and examining much deeper dynamics, this book considered the military regime as Siad Barre’s personal property and thus a Siadist State. However, the brutality unleashed by Siad Barre cannot be atoned for anyone from his clan except him, even though he was not the only one responsible for all the war crimes committed during his regime. The most recent judgement by a U.S. judge against General Ali Samatar to compensate seven Somali victims of State terror under the Siad Barre regime as well as Canada’s decision of turning down Ali Mohamed Siad Barre’s claim of political asylum in the early 1990s on the grounds of ‘crimes against humanity’, basically referring to his father’s period, were crucial steps which would avert more authoritarian authorities in Africa. 18 Ali Samatar will have entered the history books as the first senior official of the Siad Barre regime to being charged for crimes against humanity. 19 If Ali 272 Conclusion

Samatar had freely conceded this earlier, he might have contributed to the healing of the wounds of the State terror. Rather than renouncing his role and responsibility of the brutal legacies, he returned to the typical state of denial common to almost all members from the regime inner circle. In an interview with the Somali Section of the Voice of America in 2009, Ali Samatar insisted (even ridiculed) that Somalia’s collapse as unitary State could be attributable to the military regime. Instead, he excavated scapegoat elsewhere—the armed resistance groups and oppressed civilians that toppled his regime. There is a Somali saying which forewarns that what has been taken viciously and violently could only be retrieved from the same means and modes. The catastrophe that confronted with Somalia had its roots in the psycho- logical effect of the legacy left behind not by colonialism, but considerably by the ideology of the Siad Barre regime, exacerbated by an extreme Darwin- ian culture whose basis was so perfectly laden on Somali nomadic pastoralist mentality.20 The steering of the State leaped from totalitarianism to terrorism. Prior to Siad Barre’s regime, the State apparatus was never used to be part of clan confrontations. The consequence of the regime was more than a sad event.21 One of the profound bequests left behind by his regime was making the State complicit in clanised wars, thus creating a fear for the State itself. This fear was most expressed in the 2012 election of a new president by a new parliament appointed by clan elders. While sitting with a group of Somali men—aged between 25-65—in Edmonton, north London, on 10 Sep- tember of 2012, watching the swearing-in ceremony of a new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, one middle-aged man conversed privately to another who sat beside this author. The man had been worried that the new President would revenge on his clan to redress past clan revenges. What would make one—unfamiliar with the Somali cultural nuance—bewildered enough was the fact that the man hailed from the Hawiye clan-group as Mohamoud, though he was of a different sub-clan. Unfortunately, this author was unable to ask questions to the man to be able elaborating on his point a bit further. The regime’s brutal crackdown of certain clans and communities under the guise of keeping national security constituted a point of no return for the cohesive existence of the Somalis. The abuse of power, guided by brutally excessive force, was characterised annihilating whenever disparate clans expressed dissent. Since Siad Barre left no State institution for anyone to inherit, yet every Somali was somewhat a Siadist, come under Siadism and had to work for Siad as a beneficiary, as his military regime was the biggest and largest employer people opted to work. However, all the post-Siad Barre leaders shared the aspiration of exercising some sort of Siadism. Since he used to nominate from top to bottom the positions of the government, every post-Siad Barre leader sought to seek for such an unfettered power. 22 This Conclusion 273 was because, as the official regime bulletin shows, Siad Barre had the exclusive power of setting sugar prices, home rental payments, cigarette prices, money for phone calls and the fee for newspaper adverts as well as how to distribute land in Mogadishu, how to create small industries and how one had to sell the medication of animals in the market. 23 In the late 1980s, former judges began to establish their own legal offices and notary centres in Moga- dishu and the other towns with the consent of the President who sealed his signature as approval of them leaving from the State employment. 24 Only Siad Barre, after all, could have the power to decree who should have opened a public notary. In his ‘Female Monkey’ poem, the poet Hadraawi approached Siad Barre with these lines: ‘What a destructive legacy you left, indicative of an awful memory and burning recollection’.25 In the face of an inexorably imminent and impending Tsunami, it was clear that Somalia was on the verge of disintegration. It has long been a bewildering issue for scholars what sustained an autocratic regime for two decades in the Somali world of resisting simple rules. This can be explained partially not just the capability and capacity for Siad Barre in shrewdly mastering and manoeuvring the clan politics, but also the unalleviated foreign aid pouring from everywhere and anywhere. When the U.S. stopped the flow of free aid, the regime could not survive and set off to crumble. The entrenchment of the lack of international aid, coupled with the creeping of resistance groups precipitated the demise of the regime. Will another Siad Barre come to fore again? Siad Barre was a colonial product and his ilk will hardly return to Somali politics if not a neo- colonial structure of governance is put in place. One of the purposes of writing this book was to warn future Somali politicians that history would critically and closely judge their disastrous decisions and deeds. The main task was to trace those plunderers pointed out by Farah Gololeey in the beginning of the Introduction to this book. Whether this task was achieved— definitive or authoritative—remains a matter that only scholars and students of Somali Studies will judge it. One only wishes that the discussions and debates presented throughout this book will not serve what Fernand Braudel once called ‘a dialogue of the deaf’– more or less similar for those who Somalis regard ‘joogaha maqan’ (the one who stays in this world and yet is away).26

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. His original words were: Soomaaliyeey, mar ay noqoto tuugo waa idiin talee. Oral information from Ali Abukar Guure., 29 April 2014. 2. Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 3. On the concept of gouvernementalité, see Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in Gra- ham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Govern- mentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–104. 4. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘State-Building in Somali Studies: Future Framework’. Paper read at the Horn of Africa Seminar Series Workshop, ‘Post-Transitional Directions in the Somalias’, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 30 April 2013. 5. State is defined here ‘a political authority structure that more or less effectively asserts sovereignty over a territorially defined entity, functions through an institutional framework, and propagates an idea or ideology that serves to bind population, territory and institutions’. Maria H. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State: Somalia, From Statelessness to Statelessness? (Utrecht: International Books, 2001), 158. 6. Basil Davidson, ‘Somalia in 1975: Some Notes and Impressions’, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), 18–26, 23 & 24 cited. 7. Dennis Austin, ‘The Underlying Problem of the Army Coup d’état in Africa’, Optima, June 1966; Chester Crocker, ‘Military Dependence: The Colonial Legacy in Africa’, The Jour- nal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1974), 265–286; Samuel Decalo, Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Studies in Military Style (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976); W. F. Gutteridge, Military Regimes in Africa (London: Methuen, 1976); Andrew C. Miller, ‘Debunking the Myth of the “Good” Coup d’État in Africa’, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter 2011), 45–70. On the Somali case, see I. M. Lewis, ‘The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1972), 383–408; and Gary D. Payton, ‘The Somali Coup of 1969: The Case for Soviet Complicity’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1980), 493–508. 8. Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd edition (London: Penguin, 1975). For an early observation of the African military regimes, see Claude E. Welch, Soldier and State in Africa (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). 9. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 10. Paul D. Williams, War & Conflict in Africa (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 70. 275 276 Notes

11. Patrick Chabal, Power in Africa: An Essay in Political Interpretation (New York: Mac- millan, 1994 [1992]), 5. 12. Cabdulqaadir Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya: Yaa Iska Leh Eedda Qaranjab- ka?, 2nd edition (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Percetakan Zafar, 2005), 136; and Cabdulqaadir Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda: Maxay ka Curteen Colaadaha Sokeeye?, 2nd edition (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Percetakan Zafar, 2005), 129. See also Axmed Jilao Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida (N.P.: N.P., 2001); Jama Mohamed Ghalib, Somali Phoenix (N.P.: N.P., 2012); and Jama Mohamed Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship: The Somali Experience (New York: Lillian Barber Press, 1995). 13. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 175. 14. Generals Mohamed Ali Samatar and Ahmed Saleebaan ‘Dafle’ argued that the coup was owned by Siad Barre. Colonels Osman Mohamed Jeelle and Abdi Warsame Isaaq asserted that Siad Barre was included in the mission later. Interview with Ahmed Suleymaan Dafle, http:// www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART- 1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014); interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http:// www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART- 1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014); interview with Osman Mohamed Jeelle, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART- 1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014); and interview with Mohamed Ali Samatar, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART- 1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 15. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey & David Pellauer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). 16. Ioan M. Lewis, Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society (Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 1994), 16. For similar reflections, see I. M. Lewis, ‘Confessions of a “Government” Anthropologist’, Anthropological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1977), 175–138. 17. Charles Geshekter, ‘The Social Anthropologist as Historian: Ioan Lewis as Chronicler of Somalia’, in Markus V. Hoehne and Virginia Luling (eds.), Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Society, and Politics, Essays in Honour of I. M. Lewis (London: Hurst & Co., 2010), 385–402. 18. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, revised, updated & expanded, 4th edition (Oxford, James Currey, 2002 [1965, 1980 & 1988]), chapters 9 and 10. Similarly, David Laitin and Said Samatar surveyed the Siad Barre regime in less than 21 pages. David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (London: Gower, 1987). Drawing on Marxian measurement of the political economy, Abdi Samatar also added a chapter on the military regime to his book with regards to the agrarian sector of the national economy. Abdi Ismail Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Madi- son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), chapter 5. 19. This work is also crammed with unconventional use of ‘I disagree’ or ‘I agree’ in engaging with arguments presented by previous authors. See Ahmed I. Samatar, Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric & Reality (London: Zed Books, 1988), 147. See also Abdi Samatar who also uses ‘my opinion’ in his study. Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation, 124. 20. Daniel Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire et Domination Per- sonnelle en Somalie: Le Régime Siyyad Barre (1969–1991)’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Université Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, 1995), Vol. I and Vol. II. 21. Anna Bruzzone, ‘Relazioni Pubblico/Privato, Aiuti Internazionali e Dinamiche di Ripro- duzione Sociale in Somalia Durante il Regime di Maxamed Siyaad Barre (1969–1991)’ (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Bologna, 2007). 22. Ahmed I. Samatar, ‘The Curse of Allah: Civic Disembowelment and the Collapse of the State in Somalia’, in Ahmed I. Samatar (ed.), The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 95–146, 129 & 137–138. For a simplistic reading of the Somali syndrome envisaging a swift and sudden ‘renewal’ from apocalyptic catastrophe, see the other various essays in the volume. 23. Ali Jimale Ahmed, ‘The Three Blind Men and the Elephant: In Search of a Holistic View of Somalia’, in Muddle Suzanne Lilius (ed.), Variations on the Theme of Somaliness (Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2001), 31–40; Ali Jimale Ahmed, Daybreak is Notes 277

Near: Literature, Clans, and the Nation-State in Somalia (Lawrenceville, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 1996); Catherine Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State; and John Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia? (London: Haan Associates, 1994). 24. Alice Bettis Hashim, The Fallen State: Dissonance, Dictatorship and Death in Somalia (Lanham, M.D.: University Press of America, 1997), 2–3. 25. Ibid., 19. See also Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 26. Anna Simons, Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995). This fine study was unfortunately tainted by heavy reliance of stereotypes culled from ‘expatriates’ – that is, Western employees for Western foreign aid projects in Somalia under Siad Barre. These expatriates tended to blame the plight of the country on the society rather than on the State system imposed upon them. 27. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya. 28. Hussein M. Adam, From Tyranny to Anarchy: The Somali Experience (Lawrenceville, N.J.: The Red Sea Press , 2008). 29. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State. 30. Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 2nd edition (Cam- bridge: Polity Press, 2013 [2009]). 31. Ibid., xxxvi. 32. Ibid., lix. 33. Ibid., lxxxviii & xxix. 34. Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 239–256. 35. Daniel Branch, Nic Cheeseman and Leigh Gardner (eds.), Our Turn to Eat: Kenyan Politics Since 1950 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010); and Staffan I. Lindberg, ‘It’s Our Time to “Chop”: Do Elections in Africa Feed Neo-Patrimonialism rather than Counter-Act It?’, Democ- ratization, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2003), 121–140; and Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower (London: HarperCollins, 2009). 36. David Keen, Conflict & Collision in Sierra Leone (Oxford: James Currey, 2005), 6. 37. John and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), 34. 38. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), xvi. 39. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya; Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda; and Cabdulqaadir Shire Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida (London: Afamia Graphics, 1990). 40. Abdi Samatar presumed that Siad Barre would prepare ‘the way for a multitude of “odd” regimes’ and, in his own eyes, the regime ‘may and probably will be replaced by another faction’. Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation, 153 and 162. Cf. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 159–161. 41. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo: Taariikh Nololeed (Struggle and Conspiracy: A Memoir) (Stockholm: Scansom, 2012); Cabdullahi Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd? (London: Horn Heritage, 1994); Hussein Ali Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed: Somalia: The Agony of a Nation (Nairobi: Stellagraphics, 1994); Jama Mohamed Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship: The Somali Experience (New York: Lillian Barber Press, 1995); Jama Mohamed Ghalib, Somali Phoenix (N.P.: N.P., 2012); Nur Ali Qabobe, Somalia: From Nation-State to Tribal Mutiny (New Delhi: Pharos Media, 2002); Mohamed Osman Omar, The Road to Zero: Somalia’s Self-Destruction (London: Haan Associates, 1992); and Dr Satya Pal Ruhela (ed.), Mohammed Farah Aidid and His Vision of Somalia (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1994). 42. See, for instance, Peter Bridges, Safirka: An American Envoy (Kent, O.H.: The Kent State University Press, 2000); John L. Hirsch and Robert B. Oakley, foreword by Chester A. Crocker, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995), and Mario Sica, Operazione 278 Notes

Somalia: La dittatura, l’opppozitione, la guerra civile nella testimonianza dell’ultimo ambasciatore d’Italia a Mogadiscio (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1994). 43. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 6. See also Harry F. Wolcott, Ethnography: A Way of Seeing (Lanham: Alta Mira Press, 2008). 44. Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, 35. 45. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978).

THE COLONIAL STATE AND SCHOOLING: TRIBULATION

1. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1969), 212.

1. THE GENEALOGIES OF AFRICAN DICTATORSHIP(S)

1. Gérard Prunier, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (London: C. Hurst, 2009), xxix. 2. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to Somalia. The explanations and investigations in African Studies have not heeded to engage with other post-colonial and Subaltern Studies. For a theoretical assessment, see Rita Abrahamsen, ‘African Studies and the Postcolonial Chal- lenge’, African Affairs, Vol. 102, No. 407 (2003), 18 9–2010. For an exception, see Frederick Cooper, ‘Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History’, The American His- torical Review, Vol. 99, No. 5 (Dec., 1994), 151 6–1545. 3. See Robert D. Kablan, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, The Atlantic Journal, February 1, 1994. For critique, see Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford: James Currey, 1996). 4. Besteman, Unraveling Somalia, 235. 5. Cf. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 6. Mbembe, On the Postcolony , 160. 7. Ibid., 15. 8. Ibid., 242. 9. Ibid., 9. His emphasis. 10. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 99. 11. Frederick Cooper is less interested in questioning colonialism than quantifying to those who criticised it, such as Franz Fanon and Mamdani. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Ques- tion: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). However, Mamdani is still stuck his earlier stance. For a most recent study, see Mahmood Mamdani, Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012). For Fanon in the settings of psychology, see the work by the Somali scholar Hussein Abdillahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (New York: Springer, 1985). 12. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1958). Later, Achebe appears retreated his earlier anti-colonial position and came to realise that post-colonial African leaders left their comrades on the sun. This is how he reflected upon what happened after post-colony: ‘We had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us–the smart, and the lucky and hardly ever the best–had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loudspeakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the Notes 279 next phase–the expansion of our house–was even more important and called for new and original tactics; it required all argument to cease and the whole people to speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole house’. Cited in Richard Dowden, Africa (London: Portobello Books, 2008), 69. 13. Langton Prendergast Walsh, Under the Flag and Somali Coast Stories (London: An- drew Melrose, 1910), 375. During the (un)civil wars of Sierra Leonean in the early 1990s and of Central African Republic in 2010s, there were shocking reports of babies cut in half. This information is drawn from an oral account collected in Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone (London: James Currey, 1996). 14. Richard Bessel, ‘Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany’, History & Memory, Vol. 17, No. ½, (Spring/Summer 2005), 195–216, 206 cited. 15. Johannes Fabian, Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 16. For an innovative analysis, see Lee V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 160 0–1900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). 17. For detailed studies on British colonial rule, see A. M. Brockett, ‘The British Somaliland Protectorate to 1905’ (unpublished DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 1969); Ademi Samuel Ol Fatoke, ‘British Colonial Administration of Somaliland Protectorate, 1920–1960’ (unpublished PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, 1982); Charles Geshekter, ‘British Imperial- ism in the Horn of Africa and the Somali Response, 1884–99’ (unpublished PhD diss., Univer- sity of California at Los Angeles, 1972); Patrick Kakwenzire, ‘Colonial Rule in the British Somaliland Protectorate, 1905–1939’ (unpublished PhD diss., SOAS, University of London, 1976); Jama Mohamed, ‘Constructing Colonial Hegemony in Somaliland Protectorate, 194 1–1960’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, N.D.); and Forest C. Russell, ‘British Control in Somaliland, 1908–1914’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Iowa, 1929). For more recent study, see Brock Millman, British Somaliland: An Administrative History, 1920–1960 (London: Routledge, 2014). For more recent study, see Brock Millman, British Somaliland: An Administrative History, 1920–1960 (London: Routledge, 2014). For two contrasting view on Italian colonialism in Somalia, see Robert L. Hess, Italian Colonialism in Somalia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966); Virginia Luling, ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Influences on a South Somali Community’, Journal of African Studies, No. 4 (Winter 1976), 491–511; and Sylvia Pankhurst, Ex-Italian Somaliland (London: Watts & Co., 1951). From the perspectives of the Fascist Italian rule, see Pietro Barile, Colonisazzione Fascista nella Somalia Meridionale (Rome: Società Italiana di Arti Grafiche, 1935); and C. M. De Vecchi, Orizonti d’Impero: Cinque Anni in Somalia (Milan: Mondadori, 1935). 18. ‘Taariikhda Qoyska Maxamed Saleebaan Tubeec BBC’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XllzJIQa1Ek (between min. 01:55–03:55), accessed on 22 August 2014. My translation. 19. Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 20. C. V. A. Peel, Somaliland: Being An Account of Two Expeditions into the Far Interior (London: Darf Publishers Ltd., 1986 [1900]). Cf. Henrika Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 21. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism, 5. 22. Quoted in Charles L. Geshekter and Said Ahmed Warsama, ‘An Introduction to Humour and Jokes in Somali Culture’, in R. J. Hayward and I. M. Lewis (eds.), Voice and Power: The Culture of Language in North-East Africa. Essays in Honour of B. W. Andrzejewski (London, SOAS: 1996), 141–153, 144 cited. 23. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), 11. For an interesting critique on how anthropology partly assisted colonialism, see Talal Asad, ‘Introduction’, in Talal Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanity Books, 1973), 9–19; and Talal Asad, ‘Two European Images of Non-European Rule’, in Talal Asad 280 Notes

(ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanity Books, 1973), 103–118. 24. ‘Cabdilaahi Suldaan Timacade–Kana Siib Kana Saar.flv’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3tPiomzX8po (between min. 05:39–05:50), accessed on 2 September 2014. 25. Ibid., (between min. 02:15–02:31). 26. William Tordoff, Government and Politics in Africa, 3rd edition (London: Macmillan, 1997), 48. 27. Edward W. Said, ‘Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Winter, 1989), 205–225, 206 cited. 28. ‘[H]ees Wadani ah “Alaahu Akbar” Erayadii Cabdi Muxumed Amiin (1969)’ https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqrkgSN2BzM (between min. 02:07–02:27), accessed on 5 Sep- tember 2014. 29. Paulo Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia: Rome and Mogadishu: From Colonial Administration to Operation Restore Hope (London: Macmillan, 1999); and Abdisalam Issa- Salwe, The Collapse of the Somali State: The Impact of the Colonial Legacy (London: Haan, 1996). See also Hashim, The Fallen State, chapter III. For a broader fine argument on Africa, see Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; and Mamdani, Define and Rule. 30. In a different setting, Abdi Mohamed Kusow’s has used the concept of putting the cart before the horse to critique the post-colonial Somali state formation. See Abdi M. Kusow’s edited volume. See Abdi M. Kusow (ed.), Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-State in Somalia (Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 2004). 31. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Cam- bridge: Polity Press, 1994), 171. For specific colonial technology of power, see Peter Pels, ‘The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Governmental- ity’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26 (1997), 163–183. 32. ‘Abdilaahi [S]uldaan [T]imacade’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2TblMm5EEQ (between min. 07:25–05:29), accessed on 5 September 2014. 33. Ibid., (between min. 02:32–02:41). 34. Siciid Sh. Cumar, Midnimaa Wanaag lagu Guntaa: Wartii Dhaqanka, Weerihii Murtida iyo Waanadii Maxammad Gacal Xaayoow, tirsiga koowaad (Lahore, Pakistan: Al-Noor Com- pany, 2008), 133–138. 35. ‘Hees WADANI ah Shirkii Carta Dayaay afrikaay Dayaay’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7atnGFGruy0 (between min. 00:15–06:31), accessed on 24 August 2014. My translation. 36. Mats Utas, ‘Introduction: Bigmanity and Network Governance in African Conflicts’, in Mats Utas (eds.), African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks (London: Zed Books, 2012), 1–31, 3 cited. 37. Ali Mazrui, ‘The African State as a Political Refugee: Institutional Collapse and Human Displacement’, International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. No. (Summer 1995), 2 1–36. 38. Patrick Chabal, ‘The African Crisis: Context and Interpretation’, in Richard Werbner & Terence Ranger (eds.), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London: Zed Books, 1996), 2 9–54. 39. Pierre Englebert, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty & Sorrow (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2009). 40. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Chi- cago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). 41. Cited in Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation- State (Oxford: James Currey, 1992), 38. 42. This was probably because the French had more colonies than any other colonial power in Africa. See, for example, the quality of studies published in Politique Africaine over the years. 43. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 52. 44. For an engaging sequential sketch of Siad Barre’s biography, see Hussein A. Bulhan, Politics of Cain: One Hundred Years of Crises in Somali Politics and Society (Bethesda, Maryland: Tayosan International Publishing, 2008), 142–149; and Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, Historical Dictionary of Somalia (Lanham, M.D.: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 158–159. Compag- Notes 281 non also provided a biographical sketch of Siad Barre’s life history. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques, Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 171–179. Referring to Philippe Decraene, Compag- non nevertheless follows the official regime biography of Siad Barre which put the date at 1919 (172). 45. According to two of his loyalists, Siad Barre was part of the indigenous soldiers and wounded in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Faarax posits that Italian fascists instilled Siad Barre hatred towards Somali society by way of training him their colonial tactics. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 85. See also Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 21. On duubcad, see Giorgio De Vecchi Di Val Cismon , Dubat: Gli Arditi Neri (Milano: A. Mondadori, 1936). 46. For the firsthand details of this war (one with one of the senior Italians who commanded one of the two war fronts), see Rodolfo Graziani, Il Fronte Sud (Milan: Mondadori, 1938). See also Pietro Badoglio, La Guerra d’Etiopia (Milan: Mandadori, 1936). For a survey of this period, see Angelo Del Boca, Gli Italiani in Africa Orientali. Volume II: La Conquesta dell’Impero (Bari: Laterza, 1979); and Alberto Sbacchi, Ethiopia under Mussolini: Fascism and the Colonial Experience (London: Zed Books, 1985). 47. For brief witness account, see Gerald Hanley, Warriors: Life and Death among the Somalis (London: Eland, 2004 [1971]); 173–177. 48. For the British anti-Mau Mau campaign, see S. M. Shamsul Alam, Rethinking Maw Mau in Colonial Kenya (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007); David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfield & Nicol- son, 2005); and Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London: Pimlico, 2005). For recent studies that seek more nuanced understanding of the Mau Mau insurrection, see Huw Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insur- gency in the Kenya Emergency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Daniel Branch, Defeating the Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolo- nization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 49. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 27. Compare European dictatorships during the War World I and II in Stephen J. Lee, European Dictatorships 1918–1945, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2000). 50. These inspectors were: Mohamed Abshir Muuse, Da’ud Abdulle Hersi, Mohamed Siad Barre, Hussein Kulmiye Afrah, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed ‘Liiqliiqato, Mohamed Aynaanshe Guuleed, Abdalla Ali Mohamed and Mohamed Bin Khamiis. See Maxamed Ibraahim Max- amed ‘Liiq-Liiqato’, Taariikhda Soomaaliya: Dalkii Filka Weynaa ee Punt (Muqdisho: N.P., 2001), 127. 51. Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 25. 52. Ibid., 26. 53. Manthia Diawara, ‘The 1960s in Bamako: Malick Sidibé and James Brown’, in Greg Tate (ed.), Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture (New York: Harlem Moon, 2003), 164–190, 168 cited. 54. Ahmed I. Samatar, ‘The Somali Catastrophe: Explanation and Implications’, in Muddle Suzanne Lilius (ed.), Variations on the Theme of Somaliness (Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2001), 7–29, 17 cited. Yet, Samatar maintains the existence of what he called ‘civic politics’ in Somalia (14). Where and when this was the case is out of elaboration. 55. Alice Hills erroneously notes that Siad Barre was the Somali Police Commissioner before 1960. On the contrary, even though he was a policeman, he was the commander of the special branch from 1958 until 1960. Alice Hills, ‘Somalia Works: Police Development as State Building’, African Affairs, Vol. 113, No. 450 (2014), 88–107, 95fn29 cited; Alice Hills, ‘Remembrance of Things Past: Somali Roads to Police Development’, Stability: International Journal of Security & Development 3, 1 (2014), 1–14, p. 14; and Alice Hills, ‘Security Sector or Security Arena? The Evidence from Somalia’, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2014), 165–180, 180n49 cited. 56. Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship, 46. 57. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowl- edge (London: James Currey, 1988), 92. 58. ‘Cabdilaahi Suldaan Timacade–Kana Siib Kana Saar.flv’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3tPiomzX8po (between min. 07:25–07:39), accessed on 2 September 2014. 282 Notes

59. ‘Laashin Maxamed Gacal Xaayow iyo Guurowgii Afrikaay is doono’, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0uqiQdzMhQ (between min. 00:00–08:29), accessed on 23 Au- gust 2014. My translation. 60. ‘Diidnaye Ogow–Somali nationalist Song’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otjz6d- Ms9E (between min. 00:43–05:17), accessed on 30 August 2014; ‘Magool Afrikaay Huru- dooy.wmv’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFWjbQGhglk (between min. 00:49–05:36), accessed on 30 August 2014; and ‘Midab gumaysi diida (Somali Pan-African song)’, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=01O5oR3MrAg (between min. 00:32–07:43), accessed on 30 Au- gust 2014. 61. ‘Afrikay (Qoomaal)’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1G0iLI9U7c (between min. 00:27–06:06), accessed on 30 August 2014. My translation. 62. Mammo Muchie, Sanya Osha and Matlotleng P. Matlou (eds.), The Africana World: From Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance (Pretoria, South Africa: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2012). 63. Crawford Young, ‘The End of the Post-Colonial State in Africa? Reflections on Chang- ing African Political Dynamics’, African Affairs, Vol. 103, No. 410 (2004), 23–49. This is not a matter limited to Young. Similar patterns abound all other post-colonial literature. For most recent study considering post-colony as an open-ended project, see Crawford Young, The Post- Colonial State: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–1950 (Madison, WI: University of Wiscon- sin Press, 2012). 64. My conceptual reformulation of post-post-colonial was inspired by Kwame A. Appiah, ‘Is the Post-in Postmodernism the Post-in Postcolonial?’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1991), 336–357. For the dialects of colonial and post-colonial power structures, see Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 1996). 65. Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 128. 66. Cited in Michael Rush, Politics and Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology (Hetfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 71. 67. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 44. The three concepts could be compared and contrasted within the framework of power and order. See Seifudein Adem, Anarchy, Order and Power in World Politics: A Comparative Analysis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 68. See Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 43. 69. ‘Soomaali baan ahay’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ1j61Dak1w (between min. 00:23–14:10), accessed on 30 August 2014. Translation mine. Yamyam’s poetic proposition is confirmed by the observatory prose offered 50 years earlier by one colonial official. See Douglas Jardine, ‘Somaliland: The Cinderella of the Empire’, Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 24, No. 94 (1925), 100–109. 70. Cf. Shaykh ‘Abdullahi b. Mu’allim Yusuf al-Qutbi, al-Majmu’a al-Mubaraka al-Mush- tila ‘ala kutub khamsa (Cairo: Matba’at al-Mashhad al-Husayni, c. 1919); Al-Shaykh ‘Abd al- Rahman bin Shaykh ‘Umar, Jala’ al-‘aynayn fi manaqib al-shaykhayn, al-shaykh al-waliyyi Hajji Uways al-Qadiri, wa-al-shaykh al-Kamil Abd al-Rahman al-Zayla’i (Cairo: Matba’at al- Mashhad al-Husayni, 1954); Al-Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Umar, Jawhar al-nafis fi khaw- ass al-Shaykh Uways (Cairo: Matba’at al-Mashhad al-Husayni, 1964); and Shaykh ‘Abd al- Rahman al-Zayla’i, al-Majmu’a al-mushtamila (Djibouti: al-Maktaba al-Islamiyya, 1972). For interestingly interdisciplinary analyses, see Ali Jimale Ahmed, ‘Of Poets and Sheikhs: Somali Literature’, in Kenneth W. Harrow (ed.), Faces of Islam in African Literature (London: James Curry, 1991), 79–89; Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Encounters and Interactions: The Qadiriyya Tariqa and the Colonial Powers in (and Beyond) the Somali Territories, c. 1884–1935’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, the Department of History, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2013); B. G. Martin, ‘Shaykh Zayla’i and the Nineteenth-Century Somali Qadiriya’, in Said S. Sama- tar (ed.), In the Shadow of Conquest: Islam in Colonial Northeast Africa (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1992), 11–32; Scott Reese, Renewers of the Age: Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial Benaadir (Leiden: Brill, 2008); and Said S. Samatar, ‘Sheikh Uways Muhammad of Baraawe, 1847–1909: Mystic and Reformer in East Africa’, in Said S. Samatar (ed.), In the Shadow of Conquest: Islam in Colonial Northeast Africa (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1992), 48–74. Notes 283

71. Personal communication with C. A. C. 72. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 120. 73. For thoughtful essays on South African context, see Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 1989). 74. I. M. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); and Lewis, Blood and Bone. See also Christian Bader, Le Sang et le Sait: Breve Histoire des Clans Somali (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1999); Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State; and Michael van Notten, The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa, edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum (Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 2006). 75. See, for example, Ahmed I. Samatar, ‘The Somali Catastrophe: Explanation and Impli- cations’, in Muddle Suzanne Lilius (ed.), Variations on the Theme of Somaliness (Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2001), 7–29. 76. My coining of the term of clanocracy was inspired by Ali Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (Beverley Hills, C.A.: Sage Publications, 1975).

2. A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

1. ‘Circular Letter sent by Emperor Menelek to Heads of European States in 1891’, Bod- leian Libraries, University of Oxford, Mss. Afr.s.770. For a sympathetic account to the Somali cause with regards to the colonial partitions, see Noel Anthony Scawen (The Earl of Lytton), The Stolen Desert: A Study of Uhuru in North East Africa (London: MacDonald & Co., 1966). 2. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Contance Farrington (London: Penguin Books, 1967). 3. Somaliland, Agreements and Exchanges of Letters between the Government of the Unit- ed Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Somaliland in connexion with the Attainment of Independence by Somaliland, Hargeysa, June 26, 1960 (Lon- don: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1960); and Colonial Office, Report of the Somaliland Protectorate Constitutional Conference Held in London in May, 1960 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1960). 4. Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia, 105 & 11. 5. Jay Watz, ‘Somalia Facing Grave Problems’, The New York Times, July 5, 1960, A1-A2. 6. Angelo Del Boca, Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale: Nostalgia delle Colonie (Milano: Mondadori, 1992), 344. See also Alphonso A. Castagno, ‘The Somali Republic in Transition’, Africa Report, Vol. (Dec., 1960), 8–10; Anthony S. Reyner, ‘Somalia: The Problems of Inde- pendence’, The Middle East Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 1960), 247–255; and Jay Walz, ‘Somalia Facing Grave Problems’, The New York Times, Tuesday, July 5, 1960, A1. 7. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 8. Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia, 94. 9. ‘Legge 6 Aprile 1960, n. 15 rep.: Istituzione dell’Esercito Nazionale della Somalia’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Somalia, Anno IV, Mogadiscio, 12 Aprile 1960, Suppl. N. 2 al. N. 4, 383–384. 10. This interview was recorded in a cassette series titled ‘Sahan’ by BBC Somali Section. For Aden’s position, see interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obo2T9YqJJE (between min. 0:53 – 1:40), accessed on 30 March 2014. On Abdirashid’s position, see ‘Preface’, in Somali Government, The Somali Peninsula: New Light on Imperial Motives (London: Sta- ples Printers, 1962), v-vi. For a Somali government-commissioned book on this intractable territorial problem, see John Drysdale, The Somali Dispute (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964). The only available study on the Somali irredentism – somewhat bristled with Ethiopian perspective – is Pierre Nganko, ‘L’Irredentisme Somali, 1960–1977’ (unpublished dissertation of International Relations, Universite de Yaounde, 1978). For lesser treatment on Greater Somal- ia, see I. M. Lewis, ‘Pan-Africanism and Pan-Somalism’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 284 Notes

Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1963): 147–162. For detailed analysis on Somali nationalism, see Hassan Omar Mahadalla, ‘The Origin and Essence of Somali Nationalism’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Tulane University, 1997); and Saadia Touval, Somali Nationalism: International Politics and Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963). 11. The Somali Republic, Government Activities From Independence Until Today: July 1, 1960 – December 31, 1963 (Mogadiscio: National Printing, 1963); and The Somali Republic, Somalia At a Glance (Mogadishu: The Somali Government, 1964). 12. For the economic and financial difficulties of the post-colonial administrations, see Ozay Mehmet, ‘Effectives of Foreign Aid – The Case of Somalia’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1971), 31–47. 13. Memorandum From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hilsman to Secretary of State Rusk. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Somalia. Confidential/Noforn. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v 21/d274 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 14. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaELar9m490 (between min. 0:30 – 5:25), accessed on 30 March 2014. In his welcoming speech, Kennedy said: ‘Separated, as we are by geography and history, we also find a sense of kinship to your government which, in its separation of powers between the Executive and the Legislature and the Judiciary, bears a resemblance to the balance of powers which we have felt in this country best insures the liberty of the individual, democratically elected and maintained government’. ‘For Immediate Release, November 27, 1962. Office of the White House Press Secretary. Remarks of the President Upon the Arrival of his Excellency Dr. Abdirascid Ali Scermarche Prime Minister of the Somali Republic, South Law’; and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaELar9m490 (between min. 2:05 – 2:19), accessed on 30 March 2014. See also David Binder, ‘Band and 19-Gun Salute Greet Somali Premier at White House’, The New York Times, Wednesday, November 28, 1962, A10. 15. Memorandum of Conversation, Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Somalia. Confidential. Drafted by Witman. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v21/d285 (accessed on 1 May 2014). See also Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Somalia. Department of State, Central Files, 033.7711/ 11–3062. Confidential; Priority. Drafted by Newsom on November 29; cleared by Coffin (AID), Whitfield (OSD), Little, Tasca, and Bromley Smith (White House); and approved by Witman. Also sent to Addis Ababa, Rome, Bonn, and London. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v21/d287 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 16. Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, ‘The United States, Ethiopia and the 1963 Somali-Soviet Arms Deal: Containment and the Balance of Power Dilemma in the Horn of Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (1998), 611–643, 642 cited. 17. Quoted in ibid., 643. 18. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Somalia. Department of State, Central Files, DEF 19 US-SOMALI. Secret; Limited Distribution. Drafted by Galanto, cleared by Newsom, and approved by Williams. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v21/d310 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 19. Lefebvre, ‘The United States, Ethiopia and the 1963 Somali-Soviet Arms Deal’, 632. 20. Memorandum of Conversation, Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Somalia. Confidential. Drafted by Witman. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v21/d285 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 21. For Abdirashid’s unilateral decision in seeking military assistance to the Soviet Union, see Max Frankel, ‘Somalia Accepts Soviet Arms Deal’, The New York Times, Monday, No- vember 11, 1963, A1. 22. Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid, 34. 23. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. See also John W. Finney, ‘Senate Discloses US-Ethiopian Fact’, The New York Times, Monday, October 19, 1970, A1. 24. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 25. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 139. 26. Lefebvre, ‘The United States, Ethiopia and the 1963 Somali-Soviet Arms Deal’, 640. 27. Mehmet, ‘Effectives of Foreign Aid’, 34. Notes 285

28. Ahmed M. Asker, ‘Correspondence: Freedom of the Press’, Dalka, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1 October 1966, 17. It is worth noting that Abdirizak had never supported a government of which he was not a full member since 1956. 29. Dajy, ‘The Armed Anarchy’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1st August 1965), 7–8. 30. ‘Our Administration: The Malady’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1st October 1965), 7–8; ‘The Leadership’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1st November 1965), 8–9; ‘Our Administration: The Reme- dy’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1st November 1965), 12–13; Geeddii, ‘Medicine or Madness’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1st November 1965), 14–15; and ‘Irresponsibility Unlimited’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1st December 1965), 1–2. For criticism on institutionalised clanism, see Dajy, ‘Anatomy of Tribalism’, Dalka, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1 September 1966, 3–5; and M. A. Abeer and A. Goulaid, ‘Correspondence: On Tribalism’, Dalka, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1 October 1966, 17. 31. J. Bowyer Bell, ‘Strategic Implications of the Soviet Presence in Somalia’, Orbis, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 1975), 402–411. 32. ‘Somalia: Still Odd-Man Out’, Africa Confidential, No. 1, January 7, 1966, 5–6. (It should be noted that Africa Confidential had no volumes apart from a numbering system in the 1960s). For how KGB infiltrated into Somali army, see Christopher M. Andrew and Visili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 33. ‘The New Somali Government’, Africa Confidential, No. 17, August 26, 1966, 6–8, 6 cited. It also emerged that the Soviets were attracted to exploring Somali natural resources. See M. Dolgykh (full name), ‘Exploring Somalia’s Mineral Wealth’, New Africa, Vol. 10, No. 5 (May/June 1968), 1088–1105. 34. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014; and ‘The Popular “No Bonn” Campaign and the Governmental “Yes Bonn’ Counter-ca[m]paign’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1st July 1965), 4. 35. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Somalia: From Finest to Failed State’, Africa Review, part II, September 22, 2010. 36. Lewis described this parliament ‘a sordid market-place where deputies traded their votes for personal rewards with scant regard for the interests of their constituents’. Lewis, ‘The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup’, 399. 37. ‘Judgements on Election’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 1; ‘High Court Gives Verdict on Election’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 5; ‘Judgement on Elec- tion Lists’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 6–8. 38. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 89. 39. Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 242. 40. Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship, 83. There are other knowledgeable Somalis who suggest Abshir was appointed to West Germany instead of France. Personal communication with Omar Mohamoud Mohamed. However, the official government bulletin shows the appointment of Abshir as Ambassador, but does not reveal to where he was assigned. See the Presidential Decree, no. 64 of April 1969. 41. There was no secret that General Mohamed Abshir worked for the CIA. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. In 2003, when Abshir’s visa to stay in the United States was expired and his application to renew it was subsequently turned down, some former U.S. diplomats supported a bill rapidly introduced by Representative Thomas E. Petri (R- Wisconsin) that urged the State Department to enable him to remain. They spoke of him as ‘a valuable U.S. ally’ who had done ‘more for the United States’. See E. Black, ‘Mohamed Abshir May Stay in U.S.’, Star Tribune, Friday, March 7, 2003; G. Lardner Jr., ‘Former Somali General Told to Leave U.S.’, The Washington Post, Monday, March 17, 2003, A15. 42. In his memoir, Ambassador Hussein Ali Dualeh related an incident wherein Mohamed Abshir, while drunk, said to him, ‘[l]ook here my friends, I believe that the Majeerteen are my own people. Therefore, they must hold all the prominent positions in the police force, the army and the civil service’. The ambassador commented that, though he was a young man, he was in fact astonished at ‘the degree of tribal sentiments expressed by a man holding such a very important post’. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 146–147. A police pilot who Abshir denied promotion (along with an assistant Director of Somali Airlines) defected to Ethiopia in 1965. 286 Notes

He was soon promoted to a lieutenant in Addis Ababa. The pilot branded Aden Adde’s administration a monarchy of the Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan. He also lambasted Radio Moga- dishu as Radio Majeerteen. ‘Defections: Dirt and Despotism’, Dalka, 1, 3 (1st September 1965), 8–9; ‘The Imperial Voice’, Dalka, 1, 4 (1st October 1965), 9–10. 43. Interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, telephone, 23 June 2014. For an account on the Somali police structure by one-time Commandant of the Police, see Hussein Culmie Afrah, ‘The Blue Berets of the Somali Republic’, International Police Academy Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April 1967), 1–3 & 16–17. 44. Personal communication with Omar Mohamoud Mohamed. I am indebted to Omar for drawing this point to my attention. Abdullahi Hoolif and Abdullahi Matukade, both Majeer- teen, were both superseded against other remaining fellow officers. In particular, Hoolif sur- passed his group of officers, such as Lt. Colonel Mohamoud Geeddi Mohamoud ‘Fuuje’, Lt. Colonel Nur Ahmed Darawish and Lt. Colonel Abdullahi Ahmed Addow. The latter, more politically-conscious, protested and pressed for promotion. As a result, he was appointed the Director General of the Somali National Bank. After the coup, he would continue to become the Somali Ambassador to the United States in 1970. Cf. ‘Governo della Somalia – Decreto Amm.vo 30 Gennaio 1959, no. 2, rep. Avanzamento Ufficiali della Guardia di Finanza’, Bollet- tino Ufficiale della Somala, Anno III, Mogadiscio, 10 Marzo 1959, Suppl. N. 1 al N. 3, 244; ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Re- pubblica Democratica Somala, 2 Maggio 1970, n. 107, Nomina del Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed Addou ad Ambasciatore presso gli Stati Uniti d’America’, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 11 Maggio 1970, Suppl. n. 3 al., n. 5, 356. 45. The well-known Somali journalist Mohamed Jama Urdoh had investigated this case, publishing not only full names and sub-clans of the most senior police officers, but also the districts to which they were assigned. The result was an overwhelming domination of the police by Abshir’s sub-clan. Mohamed Jama Urdoh, Al-Yoom, 7 September 1967, 20. For a reflective exploration of General Abshir’s tendency of appointing his close clansmen to most of police departments is also provided by Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 132–133. 46. This was a poem chanted by an anonymous poet, when Aden Adde replaced Abdirashid with Abdirizak Haji Hussein in the aftermath of 1964 parliamentary elections. 47. John Drysdale, Stoics without Pillows: A Way Forward for the Somalilands (London: Haan, 2000), 19. 48. Donald Horowitz noted that during ‘the parliamentary election of 1969, it happened that the army commander, Mohamed Siad Barre, one who looked out for the interests of his ethnic clan compatriots in the army, was accused of ballot-stuffing’. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), 524. 49. As an army officer, Colonel Osman Mohamed Jeelle (then Captain) recounted ferocious politically-aggravated attacks in the polling stations on the day of election. Interview with Osman Mohamed Jeelle, VOA Somali. Available at: http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/ somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 50. Drysdale, Stoics Without Pillows, 83. Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001), 29; and Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 206. It appears exception to the rule that Lewis, who was often accused of clanising things Somali, skipped over the significance of clan in the assassination. ‘President of Somalia Slain; Gunman Held’, Observer Reporter, Oct 16, 1969; ‘Somalia’s President Assassi- nated by Gunman Wearing Police Uniform’, Herald Journal, Oct 16, 1969; ‘Somalia Prepares for New President’, The Associated Press, October 20, 1969; and ‘Government of Somalia Overthrown’, The Blade, Tuesday, October 21, 1969. 51. Personal communication with Mohamed Siad Togane. In the 1800s, the Ali Saleebaan sub-clan had murdered nearly four clan Sultans of the Osman Mohamoud/Bah-Dir sub-subclan. For details, see Lieutenant C. J. Cruttenden, ‘Report on the Mijjertheyn Tribe of Somallies, inhabiting the district forming the North –East point of Africa’, Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, Vol. 7 (1844–46), 111–126; Wayne K. Durrill, ‘Atrocious Misery: The African Origins of Famine in Northern Somalia, 1839–1884’, The American Historical Review, Notes 287

Vol. 91, No. 2 (1986), 287–306; and Giulio Baldacci, ‘The Promontory of Cape Guardafui’, Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 9, No. 33 (1909), 59–72. 52. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 53. Cf. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya; Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida; Aw Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Qaranjabkii Soomaaliya (Mombasa, Kenya: N.P., 1995); Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship; and Omar, The Road to Zero. 54. As General Ahmed Jili’ow Addow, one of the most senior Somali intelligence officers, implied in his memoir, the assassination was a cover-up for the coup. However, Addow asserted that the coup was not pre-organised. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 18–19. By contrast, one of the founders of the military regime revealed that the preparation for the coup was ongoing well before October 1969. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http:// www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-1–18OCT 09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 55. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 78. In her otherwise excellent analysis on the clan politics in post-colonial Somalia as well as the politics of the military coup d’état, political scientist Hashim utterly omits to note this assassination. See Hashim, The Fallen State. 56. Simons, Networks of Dissolution, 46–47. 57. Amina H. Adan, ‘Somalia: An Illusory Political Nation-State’, South Asia Bulletin, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1994), 99–109, 102 cited. 58. Interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, telephone, 9 July 2014; interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, telephone, 23 June 2014; interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, telephone, 19 June 2014; interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, telephone, 20 April 2014, 18 June 2014; interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoog- sade’, telephone, 31 July 2014; interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, telephone, 5 April 2014; interview with Ahmed Salaad Kulmiye, telephone, 2 June 2014; interview with Mo- hamed Ali Nuur, telephone, 15 June 2014; and interview with Mohamed Isse Trunji, telephone, 9 February 2014. 59. The fraud during the election increased Abdirashid’s unpopularity such that the secondary school students in Mogadishu showed their back to the President in the summer of that year during the day of the independence celebrations. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 18 January 2015. 60. Payton, ‘The Somali Coup of 1969’, 502. 61. Williams insisted that ‘it is most unlikely that the Albertina [the aircraft] crashed as a result of pilot error, as claimed by the Rhodesian public inquiry of 1961–62 and by a private inquiry for the Swedish government in 1993’. Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (London: Hurst & Co., 2011), 232. 62. ‘President Shermarke Assassinated – Murderer in Custody – A 5-Day National Mourn- ing’, Somali News, Thursday, October 16, 1969, A1; ‘Abdi Rashid Shermarke: President of Somalia since 1967’ (Obituary), The Times (London), October 16, 1969, 14; ‘Somalia Buries President Shermarke’, Somali News, Wednesday, October 22, 1969, A1; and ‘Condolences from Sheikh Mukhtar and Yassin’, Somali News, Wednesday, October 22, 1969, A1. Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein was then President of the National Assembly, who assumed briefly the post of the assassinated President. ‘Wargeyska Kasmo oo Wareysi dheer la yeeshay Sheekh Mukhtaar Maxamed Xuseen’, Kasmo, June 2000. Available at: http://kasmonewspaper.com/ Warar/1451.html (accessed on 31 May 2014). 63. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, see Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 83–85. For an interview with Dubbad, see http://www.radiohormuud.dk/news.php?id=6363 (accessed on 13 De- cember 2014). 64. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-d2Nh50iJY (min. 09:01 – 09:29), accessed on 20 April 2014. 65. Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 85. 66. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 160. 67. Repubblica Democratic Somala, Corte di Socurezza Nazionale, Sentenza, No. 37/70 Reg/ Sent., 8 Ottobre, 1970. Copy on file with the author. Also https://www.youtube.com/ 288 Notes watch?v=WfUvc4Ln3nQ (part I) accessed on 21 December 2014; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=q_oUnR5oV8E (part II) accessed on 21 December 2014. 68. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 26 Aprile 1971, n. 121, Promozione Ufficiali della Polizia’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 11 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 5, 492. 69. According to the Court documents, Said Yusuf Ismail was 22-year-old, Mohamoud Yusuf Ismail 42-year-old, Sheikh Nur Ali Olow 42-year-old, Aynab Farah Miraf 50-year-old, Beddel Hersi Farah 40-year-old and Abdi Raabi Raage 49-year-old. See Repubblica Democrat- ic Somala, Corte di Socurezza Nazionale, Sentenza, No. 37/70 Reg/ Sent., 8 Ottobre, 1970, 1. 70. ‘Wasaaradda Howlaha Guud, 16,3,80, Naado Dhul Jaalle Beddel Xersi Faarax L. 618’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 1da Okt. 1980, L. 10, 1067; ‘Dawladda H. Ee Muqdisho 29.7.84, Naado Dhul J. Bedel Xirsi Faarax, L. 309’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 12aad, Muqdisho, 30 Sebt. 1984, L. 2 r 9, 704; and ‘Dawladda Hoose Muq. 19.1.85, Naado Dhul Jaalle Bedel Xirsi Faarax, L. 579’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 1da September 1986, L. 9, 649. See also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS L. 35 ee 23 Abriile 1981 – Xeeri Tix Xog/A/5/128 – Dallacaad Sarkaalnimo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdi- sho, 2 Luulyo 1981, L. 3 R. 5, 1005–1007. 71. Repubblica Democratic Somala, Corte di Socurezza Nazionale, Sentenza, No. 37/70 Reg/ Sent., 8 Ottobre, 1970, 6–8. 72. Sheikh Nur Ali Olow belonged to the similar sub-clan of the assassin. Personal communication with Mohamed Siad Togane. 73. Repubblica Democratic Somala, Corte di Socurezza Nazionale, Sentenza, No. 37/70 Reg/ Sent., 8 Ottobre, 1970, 6. 74. Ibid., 10. 75. Oral information from M. C. H, 21 December 2014. General Ahmed Mohamoud Adde ‘Qoorweyne’ was first included in the court proceedings and then relieved from his position. 76. Repubblica Democratic Somala, Corte di Socurezza Nazionale, Sentenza, No. 37/70 Reg/ Sent., 8 Ottobre, 1970, 6. 77. Author’s notes from Somali SN TV (Somali) interview with Ahmed Mohamed Moha- moud ‘Siilaanyo’, November 2004. It seems that Abdirizak thought that he would return to power when Abdirashid and his associated were to violently remove from power. 78. For brief biography of Abdirizak, see Mukhtar, Historical Dictionary of Somalia, 18–19. 79. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 23 Gennaio 1971, n. 36, Sospensione cautelare dal servizio del Magistrato Abdi Farah Basciane’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 9 Febbraio 1971, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 1, 174–175. 80. Interview with Abdirizak Haji Hussein, October 2002. In contrast to Abdirizak, Aden Adde was reported to have shown distaste to the coming of the coup d’état. Oral information from A. A., 14 December 2014. 81. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-d2Nh50iJY (min. 00:50 – 21:20), accessed on 20 April 2014. 82. Ibid. (min. 08:20 – 08:50). 83. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 14 Giugno 1970, n. 162, Reconoscimento della morte del Capitano Sadik Mohamed Farah’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 19 Luglio 1970, Suppl. n. 6 al. n. 7, 658. In a recent speech given in London and recorded on a visual tape, Abdulkadir Haji Masalle, a close clan confidante to Siad Barre throughout his regime, made a mention that, during his tenure as the Army Commandant, Siad Barre had a special relationship with Captain Saadaq. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cWCZssPFqk (between min. 36:21 –37:39), accessed on 4 August 2014. 84. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 85. Telephone interview with Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, 23 May 2014. Ambas- sador Aalim, a career army colonel before being transferred to the Foreign Ministry, was with the same army company enlisted in April 1960 with Captain Saadaq. According to Colonel Mohamed Ismail Ibrahim ‘Sero Sero Sete’, Captain Saadaq had close friendship with Siad Barre. Oral information from Colonel Mohamed Ismail Ibrahim ‘Sero Sero Sete’, 28 June Notes 289

2014. Colonel Sero Sero Sete was also with the same army company as Ambassador Aalim and Captain Saadaq. 86. ‘President’s Assassin Tried’, The Anglo-Somali Society Newsletter, No. 67, September/ October 1970, 1. 87. ‘Dalka, “Our Country”, Special Personal Issue for H. E. Mohammed Siyad Barre, Presi- dent of the Republic, Somalia, [by] Editor and Sole Contributor Yousuf Jama Ali Duhul’, Number 0, Volume 0, 1st July 1981’, 39. Copy on file with the author. 88. Shukri Aaden Shire, Xabaddii Dunida Gilgishey: Aaden-Low & Dhacdadii Walwaal (London: Kasmo, 2013), 124–26. 89. ‘Dalka, “Our Country”’, 39. 90. ‘Decree of the Revolutionary Council, No. 10 of 28 October 1969, Transfer of Judicial case from Borao [sic] Regional Court to Benadir Mogadiscio’, Official Bulletin of the Somali Democratic Republic, Year I, Mogadishu, 29 October 1969, Suppl. No. 2 10 No. 1, 29–30; and ‘Decreto del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 10 Gennaio, 1970, n. 9, Transferimento pro- cedimento penale concernente assassinio Dr. Abdirashid Ali Scermarche ex Presidente della Repubblica dalla competenza della giurisdizione ordinaria alla competenza della Corte della Sicurezza Nazionale’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 12 Gennaio, 1970, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 1, 36. For how the subsequent military junta quickened the trial of the assassin, see ‘President’s Assassin Tried’, 1. 91. Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 85. My translation. 92. Both Cabdulqaadir Aroma and Aw Jaamac Cumar Ciise used a same poem by a poet close to Abdirashid in which he had predicted after post-election period that the President would be killed. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya 204; and Ciise, Qaranjabkii Soomaa- liya, 126. 93. Drysdale, Stoics without Pillows, 19 & 79; and Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship , 65–69. 94. Faduma Ahmed Alim, Saa Waxay Tiri: Maansadii iyo Waayihii Xaawa Jibriil (Toronto: Jumblies Press, 2008), 94. Likewise, Nur Ali Qabobe, who worked for the Siad Barre regime as an economist, noted how Abdirashid and Egaal’s administration was ‘humiliated’ by their own clan constituencies by holding demonstrations in favour of ‘the nocturnal military take-over’. Qabobe, Somalia, 88. 95. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 101. 96. The Murusade dominated the western periphery of the capital and they maintained to have taken this stance in retaliation to a previous decision by the president’s clansmen who had earlier objected a deceased policeman from them to be buried in their hometown of Qardho. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Somalia: From Finest to Failed State’, Africa Review, part II, Septem- ber 22, 2010. 97. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 17. As shown by the official documents of the decolonisation administration, Muuse Boqor was a salaried clan elder during the British Military Administra- tion in Somalia (1941–1950) and in the early years of the UN trusteeship administration in Somalia. ‘ Governo della Somalia – Decreto N. 105’, Bollettino Ufficiale Dell'Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della Somalia (Pubblicazione Mensile), Anno I, Supplemento n. 1, al n. 8, Mogadiscio, 1950, 30. 98. ‘Decreto del Ministro dei Lavori Pubblici, 3 Ottobre 1966, n. 15. Concessione di area di terreno demaniale a favoure del Sig. Hagi Mussa Bogor’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Somala, Anno VI, Mogadiscio, 1 Febbraio 1967, N. 2, 21; and ‘Decreto del Ministro dei Lavore Pubblici, 5 Novembre 1966, 1967, n. 240 – Concessione di area di terreno demaniele a favour del Sig. On. Hagi Mussa Bogor’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Somala, Anno VIII, Mogadiscio 25 Dicembre 1967, Suppl. n. 5 al n. 12, 11. 99. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 100. ‘Wargeyska Kasmo oo Wareysi dheer la yeeshay Sheekh Mukhtaar Maxamed Xuseen’, Kasmo, June 2000. Available at: http://kasmonewspaper.com/Warar/1451.html (accessed on 31 May 2014). 101. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 78. Though no one could confirm, the Somali psychiatrist Hussein Bulhan insisted that Muuse Boqor was mentally unfit for the post, for he was suffering from a ‘mental disorder’. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 70. 102. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 290 Notes

103. ‘Somalia: After the Coup’, Africa Confidential, No. 21, October 24, 1969, 7–8, 8 cited. 104. Mabel Berezin, ‘Emotions and Political Identity: Mobilizing Affection for the Polity’, in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (eds.), Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 83–98, 87 cited. 105. Even those who tended to disagree with him on things political appear to be in line with Siad Barre on this accusation on Egaal. See Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 59, 66 and 73. However, a close reading of the Memorandum of Understanding between Somalia and Kenya indicates the contrary to such assumptions. Egaal was instrumental in easing the stalemate between previous Somali authorities and the neighbouring countries, especially Kenya. For Egaal’s political initiatives, see I. M. Lewis, ‘Somalia Stops the Wars’, Venture, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Feb. 1968): 14–17. 106. Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship, 67. 107. Ibid., 68. Yasin was also part of the clan politicians and elders who convinced Egaal not to send away Siad Barre. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques, Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 187. 108. Telephone interview with Isaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 109. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqzo1Bz_47E (between min. 8:20 and 9:07), a ccessed on 9 March 2014. 110. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu, ‘Leader of Somali Democratic Movement Ex- plains Himself’. Available at: http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/90MOGADI- SHU10384_a.html (accessed on 9 May 2014). 111. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques, Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 181–181. See also Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda, 72–73; Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 78; and Ghalib, The Cost of Dictat- orship, 65. Using confidential and oral sources, Cabdulqaadir Aroma also recorded that the first Minister of Justice under Siad Barre’s regime stated that the file detailing the assassination of Kamaaludiin Saalah, the Egyptian Envoy killed in 1957 in Mogadishu, was also taken from his office to Siad Barre. Note that Siad Barre was accused during the court proceedings of complicity over the murder. Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda, 73. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf claimed that he was assigned for the investigation of Saalah’s assassination and his conclusion was taken by Siad Barre. For his reflections, see Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo.

THE CAPTURE OF THE STATE: TOTALITARIANISM

1. Albert Seaton, Frederick the Great’s Army, colour plates by Michael Youens (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1973), 5.

3. SIAD BARRE AND THE SOMALI STATE

1. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Siad Barre’s Seizure of Power in Post-Colonial Somalia, 1960–1969’ (paper presented at a conference on northeast Africa titled ‘Struggles Over Emerg- ing States in Africa’), St Mary’s College, Durham University, 8–11 May 2013. See also A. A. Castagno, ‘Somalia Goes Military’, Africa Report, February 1970, 25–27. Abdi Samatar attributes to what precipitated the coup was a clan-based competition between ‘petite bourgeoisie’. Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation, 21. 2. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). See also Ralph Hawkins, ‘Soviet Advisors’ role in Somali Army’, The Times (London), Sun- day, October 26, 1969. 3. Qabobe, Somalia, 52. My emphasis. 4. General Ahmed Suleymaan Dafle, Siad Barre’s son-in-law, then the military intelligence officer of the army, recalled that he was the officer who detained them. Interview with Ahmed Notes 291

Suleymaan Dafle, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVER- SARY-PART-1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 5. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 6. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. 7. General Aynaanshe’s registered name in the army was Mohamed Haji Diiriye. 8. Telephone interview with Engineer Ahmed Warsame Abtidoon, 5 June 2014. 9. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014; and telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. 10. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 11. Cited in ‘Somalia: After the Coup’, Africa Confidential, 8. 12. Gabeyre and Siad Barre’s man Ali Samatar – both had been Lieutenant Colonels – were doubly promoted, thus immediately becoming Brigadier-General in the Army. See ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 30 April 1970, n. 101, Promozione al Grado di Generale di Brigata’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 11 Maggio 1970, Suppl. n. 3 al., n. 5, 351–352; and ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 30 April 1970, n. 102, Promozione al Grado di Generale di Brigata’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 11 Maggio 1970, Suppl. n. 3 al., n. 5, 352. 13. Nkrumah’s quote is from Ebenezer Obiri Addo, Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana (Lanham, M.D.: University Press of America, 1999), 82. 14. Drawing on interviews she had conducted, Brons mentioned another third coup attempt underway before Siad Barre and planned by Hawiye military officers in the army in 1967. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, 170. Even his senior wife, Asli Dhubbad Mohamoud, was as military-minded as himself. On the night of 21 October 1969, General Aideed was sleeping and, as he related in his memoir, Asli woke him up upon discerning military movements. See Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid. 15. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 16. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 24. 17. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. 18. ‘Turmoil in a Land of Proud and Hostile Clans’, The New York Times, Sunday, October 26, 1969. 19. Intelligence Note No. 747 From the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Denney) to Secretary of State Rogers, Washington, October 21, 1969. National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1967–69, POL 23–9 Somalia. Secret. Available at: http:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d280 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 20. For analysis on Zimbabwe under Mugabe, see Daniel Compagnon, A Predictable Trage- dy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 21. This section directly draws from Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘The Making of the 1990 Manifesto: Somalia’s Last Change for State Survival’, North East African Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2012), 63–94, 66 cited. Such reaction and attitude were also echoed by Mohamed Farah Jimale, then a secondary school teacher in Mogadishu. Interview with Mohamed Farah Jimale, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART- 1–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). For analysis on how the military regimes tend to rule, see Jimmy D. Kandeh, ‘What Does the “Militariat” Do When it Rules?: Military Regimes in the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 23, No. 69 (1996), 387–404. 22. ‘Hees wadani ah xubnayahow’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLAQTkn48Bw (between min. 00:07 – 06:45), accessed on 30 August 2014. My translation. 23. See Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 12, 101–102. 24. Excerpts of ‘Xaaraanquutayaashii’ (the illicit eaters) in Cabdi Muxumed Amiin, Dii- waanka Hilin Hayaan (Spånga , Sweden: Omhassan Publisher, 2006). My translation. Amiin’s allegiance to the military junta was not accidental; he possessed left-leaning Marxist views in 292 Notes the first place which made him abhor the civilian administrations often expressed in the form of plays and poetry. For his left-leaning treatise, see Cabdi Muxumad Amiin, Halganka Xoogsata- da (Muqdisho: Xafiiska Siyaasadda M.G.K., 1975). 25. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hAzejdi6ZQ (between min. 0:36 and 7:13), a ccessed on 9 March 2014. 26. Quoted in Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 172. Davidson was quite moderate, when he described the years of civilian governments as ‘a capitalist democracy’. Davidson, ‘Somalia in 1975: Some Notes and Impressions’, 20 cited. 27. Ahmed Samatar also echoes similar claim in emphasising that these were ‘nine years of civilian musuqmaasuq’. Samatar, ‘The Somali Catastrophe: Explanation and Implications’, 7–29, 16 cited. 28. Quoted in ‘President’s Assassination Followed by Coup’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 10 (November 15, 1969), 1548–1551, 1549–1551 cited. 29. Ibid. According to Hussein Bulhan, many Somalis anticipated that these politicians should be charged as ‘criminals’. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 169. 30. ‘Somali: Policies Following Revolution’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 11 (De- cember 15, 1969), 1581–1882, 1581 cited. 31. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 23–24. 32. Oral information from (the late) Colonel Ali Jagjag in Vervies, Belgium, in 2006. 33. Telephone interview with Engineer Ahmed Warsame Abtidoon, 5 June 2014. 34. ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 14, No. 14, July 6, 1973, 1–3, 1 cited. 35. Alphonse Castagno, ‘Mohamed Siad Barre: Somalia’s President: An Interview’, Africa Report, Vol. 16, No. 9 (December 1971), 23–25. 36. Somalia (Supreme Revolutionary Council), ‘Rivoluzione Senza Spargimento di Sangue’, Mogadiscio, 21 Ottobre 1969. A Pamphlet published by the Military Junta. Document in my possession. My translation. 37. Interview with Siad Barre, BBC Somali Service, January 1970. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZuNGDURWNk (between min. 09:51 – 11:23), accessed on 13 April 2014. 38. Quoted in ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, 2. 39. The 25 military junta officers were (1) Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, Chairman, (2) Major General Jama Ali Koorsheel, Vice Chairman, (3) Major General Mohamed Aynaan- she Guuleed, Vice Chairman, (4) Brigadier General Hussein Kulmiye Afrah, member, (5) Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Adde ‘Qoorweyne’, (6) Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Ali Samatar, (7) Lieutenant Colonel Salaad Gabeyre Kediye, (8) Lieutenant Colonel Abdalla Mohamed Faadil, (9) Lieutenant Colonel Ali Mataan Haashi, (10) Lieutenant Colonel Moha- moud Mire Muuse, (11) Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Sheikh Osman, (12) Major Ismail Ali Obokor, (13) Major Mohamed Ali Shire, (14) Major Ahmed Saleebaan Abdalle ‘Dafle’, (15) Major Mohamoud Geelle Yusuf, (16) Major Farah Wa’ays Dhuulle ‘Faras’, (17) Major Muuse Rabiile Good, (18) Major Ahmed Mohamoud Farah, (19) Captain Ahmed Hassan Muuse, (20) Captain Mohamed Omar Jees, (21) Captain Osman Mohamed Jeelle, (22) Captain Bashiir Yusuf Elmi, (23) Captain Abdi Warsame Isaaq, (24) Captain Abdirizak Mohamed Abubakar, and (25) Captain Abdulkadir Haji Masalle. 40. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 6 Marzo 1971 , n. 69, Collocamento in pensione Brig. Gen. di Polizia Ahmed Mohamud Abicar’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 29 Marzo 1971, Suppl. n. 7 al. n. 3, 319. 41. ‘Decree of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, No. 1 of 9 December 1969, Reconstitu- tion of the Supreme Court’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I, Mogadiscio, 1 Gennaio 1970, N. 1, 159. 42. For earlier swift promotions of clan cronies, see ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, No. 51 of 6 January 1971 – Transfer of Nada Ismail Koshin to the Custodial Corps as a Wardress’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 1 Marzo 1971, N. 3, 240; and ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 25 Aprile 1971, n. 142, Assunzione nei ruoli permanenti del Perso- Notes 293 nale Civile dello Stato del Dott. Warsame Abdullahi Ali’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 26 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 7 al. n. 5, 639. 43. Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 85. 44. ‘Somalia: Policy Planning Paper’, Approved by NSC Interdepartmental Group for Afri- ca, May 1971, National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 1 Somali-US. Secret; Noforn. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d314 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 45. ‘Somalia: Military Policies’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 11, No. 16, August 7, 1970, 6–8, 7 cited. 46. ‘Revolution: 1st Announcement’, October Star, Thursday, 23 October 1969, A1. 47. Repubblica Democratica Somala, Secondo Carta Della Rivoluzione, Mogadiscio, Gen- naio 1971. A decree published by the Junta and in my possession. According to Ambassador Abdullahi Koongo, another attempt was also made to change the national blue flag into a new one. Available at: ‘Halkan Ka Daawo Barnaamijkii Waayo Arag Dublamasiyadii 1961 C/laahi Koongo (SLNTV & DhamaysTV)’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdLYIpNpyxs (between min. 17:50 – 18:27), accessed on 26 August 2014. 48. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 128. As Michael Rush reminded: ‘There is also a particular rhetorical use of the term ‘revolution’ to which attention should be drawn and that is revolution as a necessary myth in the political culture or history of a society. This is where, definitionally, a revolution has not occurred, but those in power claim that it has in order to justify particular policies in ‘the name of the revolution’ or more generally to legitimise their claim to power’. Rush, Politics and Society, 181. 49. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 178. 50. See, for instance, Aristotle A. Kallis (ed.), The Fascism Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 50. On the back of this book, an ambitious promise is offered that the monograph will explore ‘the essence of limitations of generic fascism’. Upon the talk of fifty pages, one is warned that ‘that essence [of fascism itself] is difficult to define’ (51). 51. Payton, ‘The Somali Coup of 1969’, 493–508. Robert Patman agrees with Payton. In his otherwise very well-researched study, Patman concluded that the Soviets ‘did not orchestrate the Somali coup’. Robert G. Patman, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa: The Diplomacy of Intervention and Disengagement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 97. Even though they did not offer a source, Laitin and Samatar noted with a passing statement that ‘the Soviet advisers helped the Somali army stage the coup d’état of October 1969’. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 78. For a survey that focused on the Soviet involvement in Somalia, albeit from a Western perspective, see Brian Crozier, The Soviet Presence in Somalia, Institute for the Study of Conflict, London, 1975. For a detailed study on how the KGB penetrated into Africa in general and into Somalia in particular, see Ian Greig, The Communist Challenge to Africa: An Analysis of Contemporary Soviet, Cuban and Chinese Policies (London: Foreign Affairs, 1977). For a specific historical period, see Richard Crocket, The Fifty Years War: The U.S. and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 (London: Routledge, 1995). 52. TNA, CAB 163/97, ‘Somali Republic: Implications of Soviet Military Aid to Somalia’, 1966–1969; ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, Africa Confidential, 3. See also Ralph Hawkins, ‘Soviet Advisors’ role in Somali Army’, The Times (London), Sunday, 26 October 1969. 53. ‘Wargeyska Kasmo oo Wareysi dheer la yeeshay Sheekh Mukhtaar Maxamed Xuseen’, Kasmo, June 2000. Available at: http://kasmonewspaper.com/Warar/1451.html (accessed on 31 May 2014). 54. ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, Africa Confidential, 2. 55. The day the regime came to power was conferred bigger festival commemoration than the Somali National Independence Day. According to the official decree, signed by Siad Barre, 21st October had two days of holiday, while 1st July had only one. See ‘Law No. 41 of 23 May 1971 – Limitation of National and Public Holidays’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 29 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 8 al. n. 5, 653. 56. ‘Coup in Somalia’, The Times (London), Wednesday, October 22, 1969. 57. ‘Somalia’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 13, No. 16, August 11, 1972, 8. 294 Notes

58. Hawkins, ‘Soviet Advisors’ role in Somali Army’. 59. Bridges, Safirka, 77. 60. ‘Somalia’s Suitors’, Africa Confidential, No. 3, February 7, 1964, 3. 61. General Ghalib, who was among a group of senior Somali police officers sent to the U.S. in 1965, withheld the kind of training he undertook. This despite the fact that the General was the commander of the Somali police intelligence branch between 1960 and 1966. Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 87. The Soviet intelligence in Mogadishu had their own agent in the Somali army in the person of General Ali Samatar. Not only was Ali Samatar an agent of the KGB, he also worked for the Mossad, Israeli’s secret intelligence service. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. According to General Galaal, when the Siad Barre regime was ousted, Ali Samatar was resettled in Nairobi by the Mossad representatives and this connection was worked out in the first place by none other than Paulo Mori, a Jewish- Italian businessman who had lived many years in Mogadishu. Mori appears to be the farmer who moved to Somalia in the late 1930s after the adoption of anti-Semitic laws in Italy, as noted by the U.S. Ambassador in Mogadishu. See Bridges, Safirka, 92. 62. Cf. Roger Morris and Richard Mauzey, ‘Following the Scenario: Reflections on Five Case Histories in the Mode and Aftermath of CIA Intervention’, in Robert L. Borosage and John Marks (eds.), The CIA File (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976), 28–45; and Peter J. Schraeder, United States Foreign Policy Toward Africa: Incrementalism, Crisis and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 292n78. 63. TNA, FCO 1110/1666, ‘Somalia: Soviet Attitude Towards Greater Somalia Project’, 1963; TNA, FCO 371/173007, ‘Military Aid to Somali Air Force’, 1962; TNA, FCO 371/ 165485, ‘Military Aid’, 1962; and TNA, FCO 371/173000, ‘Military Aid’, 1963. 64. Interview with Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egaal, Djibouti Television. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSUS-LyGYs (between min. 42:06 – 44:44), accessed on 13 April 2014. See also ‘Somali-Kenya Joint Communique’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 1; ‘Premier Egal Back’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 1; and ‘Neighbours at Peace’, Africa Confidential, No. 5, February 28, 1969, 5. For brief analysis, see I. M. Lewis, ‘Recent Developments in the Somali Dispute’, African Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 263 (1967), 104–112. 65. ‘Neighbours at Peace’, Africa Confidential, 5. 66. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 67. ‘Idd Mubarak – Says President’, Somali News, Friday, February 28, 1969, 1. 68. ‘Somalia: After the Coup’, Africa Confidential, 8. 69. ‘President’s Assassination Followed by Coup’, Africa Research Bulletin, 1548–1551. 70. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 66 & 23–24. 71. Interview with Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egaal, Djibouti Television. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSUS-LyGYs (between min. 42:06 – 44:44), accessed on 13 April 2014. My translation. It is worthy of note that Egaal was the first Somali Defence Minister upon independence in 1960. During this period, Egaal had conducted a radical restructuring of the Ministry of Defence. ‘Decreto Legislativo 22 ottobre 1960, n. 2 rep. – Recluta- mento Ufficiali dell’Escercito Somalo’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I, Mogadiscio, 2 Dicembre 1960, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 6, 5–6. 72. G. Savage, ‘Country Profile: Somalia’, International Development Research Centre, No. 15, Ottawa, November 1973, 4. Harold Nelson put the number at 12,000, but noted how the Somali forces were well-equipped by the Soviets. Harold D. Nelson (ed.), Somalia: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: American University, 1982), 241–242. 73. Interview with Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egaal, Djibouti Television. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSUS-LyGYs (between min. 42:06 – 44:44), accessed on 13 April 2014. My translation. 74. Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, February 24, 1971. National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 2 Somali. Secret. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d310 (accessed on 1 May 2014). For more detailed report documenting the Soviet influence on Somalia from an American point of view, see ‘Somalia: The Soviet Presence’, Research Study Prepared in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, Washington, December 20, 1972. National Archives, RG 59, Central Files Notes 295

1970–73, POL Somali-USSR. Secret; No Foreign Dissem; Controlled Dissem. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d333 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 75. Cf. ‘Sharci L. 6 Jannayo 1974 – Dhembiyada Maraakibta Shisheeyuhu galaan’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, 31 Jannayo 1974, L. 2, R.1, 60; and Telegram 1856 From the embassy in Somalia to the Department of State, August 4, 1970, National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 33–6 Somali-US. Confidential. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d296 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 76. Cited in ‘Somali-USSR’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 12 (January 15, 1970), 1621–1622, 1621 cited. 77. Ibid. See also ‘Law No. 44 of 8 June, 1971 – Authorising ratification of the protocol to the agreement between Somali Democratic Republic and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on economic and technical cooperation of June 2nd 1961’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubbli- ca Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 14 Giaguno 1971, Suppl. n. 4 al. n. 6, 716. 78. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. 79. See Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 81–82 and 103. Berbera was later transferred to the US hands in the late 1970s. As the British explorer Richard Burton, who toured the Somali territories in 1954, wrote: ‘Berbera is the true key of the Red Sea, the centre of East African traffic’. Richard Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa (London: Longman, 1956 [1856]), 7. 80. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 28 and 26. 81. Telephone interview with Osman Jama Ali ‘Kalluun’, 5 June 2014; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 82. Quoted in Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 82–83. 83. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. See Alphonse Castagno, ‘Somalia Follows a Pragmatic Course’, Africa Report, Vol. 15, No. 2 (February 1970), 25–27; and J. Bowyer Bell, ‘Strategic Implications of the Soviet Presence in Somalia’, Orbis, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 1975), 402–411. 84. ‘Interview with Col. Ahmed S. Abdulle: American-Somali Military Alliance?’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1980), 53–54, 53 cited. 85. Lewis also used the term to capture the contradictions of socialism under Siad Barre’s reign. Cf. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali , 225; and I. M. Lewis, ‘Visible and Invisible Differences: The Somali Paradox’, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 74, No. 4 (2004), 489–515, 501 cited. 86. Telephone interview with Ahmed Salaad Kulmiye, 2 June 2014. For other analogous experiences, see Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 87. On the conceptual shift of the Soviets, see Hadley Cantril, Soviet Leaders and Mastery over Man (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960). 88. TNA, FCO 31/1751, ‘Military Activities of Soviet Union in Somali Democratic Repub- lic’, 1974; TNA, FCO 31/941, ‘Political Relations between Somali Democratic Republic and Soviet Union’, 1971; TNA, FCO 31/960, ‘Somali Revolution Anniversary Celebrations Octo- ber 1971’, 1971; TNA, FCO 31/965, ‘Foreign Visits by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, President of Somali Democratic Republic’, 1971; TNA, FCO 31/936, ‘Speeches and Interviews by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, President of Somali Democratic Republic’, 1971; and TNA, FCO 31/967, ‘Relations between British Embassy Staff in Mogadishu and Members of the Government of Somali Democratic Republic’, 1971. 89. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 105. 90. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 140. 91. Brian Crozier, ‘The Soviet Presence in Somalia’, Conflict Studies, No. 54 (Feb. 1974), 1–20; Helen Desfosses, ‘Naval Strategy and Aid Policy: A Study of Soviet-Somali Relations’, Warren Weinstein (ed.), Chinese and Soviet Aid to Africa (New York: Praeger, 1975), 183–201; Gary D. Payton, ‘Soviet Military Presence Abroad: The Lessons of Somalia’, Mili- tary Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1979), 67–77; and Richard B. Remnek, ‘The Soviet-Somali “Arms for Access” Relationship’, Soviet Union [Moscow], Vol. 10, No. 1 (1983), 59–81. 92. Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Guulaha Ka Dhashay Beelaha Danwadaa- gaha (Muqdisho: Wasaaradda Warfaafinta iyo Hanuuninta Dadweynaha, Juunyo 1978). The 296 Notes pilots who used to transport prisoners from the South to the North in the early 1970s were Soviets. See Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid, 60. 93. For the list of the 14 secretaries, see ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluziona- rio Supremo’, 1 Dicembre 1969, n. 25, Nomina dei Segretari di Stato’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 4 Febbraio 1970, Suppl. n. 1 al., n. 2, 71–72. 94. For a Marxist viewpoint of those centres by a senior member of the Siad Barre regime, see Colonel Ali Mattan Hashi, World Marxist Review, 11 November 1972. 95. ‘Law N. 40 of 26 March 1972 – Establishment of the Public Relations Office’, Bolletti- no Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, Anno III, 1 Giugno 1972, N. 6, 579. 96. For regime’s triumphant reports on how school attendance was spread, see Somali Democratic Republic, Our Revolutionary Education: Its Strategy and Objectives (Mogadishu: The Ministry of Information and National Guidance, 1974); and Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Shabeellaha Hoose iyo Ololaha H. R. M [Horumarinta Reer Miyiga] (Marka: Madbacadda Qaranka, 1975). See also Omar Osman Mohamed, From Written Somali to A Rural Development Campaign (Muqdisho: Machadka Maamul-Horumarinta iyo Maareynta Soomaaliya, August 1975). 97. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 107. 98. For the history of searching script for the Somali, see Hussein M. Adam, ‘A Nation in Search of a Script: The Problem of Establishing a National Orthography for Somali’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of East Africa, 1968). For a broader perspective on the same topic, see David D. Laitin, Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977). It is worthy of note that Somali sheikhs in the nineteenth-century, especially the Qadiriyya scholars like Sheikh Aweys Al-Barawi, used Arabic script in writing Somali. For details, see Ingiriis, ‘Encounters and Interactions’. 99. Cora Ann Presley, ‘Wambui Waiyaki Otieno Mbugua (b. 1928): Gender Politics in Kenya from the Mau Mau Rebellion to the Pro-Democracy Movement’, in Dennis D. Cordell (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Africa (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 209–229, 213 cited. 100. Cited in Hussein M. Adam and Charles G. Geshekter, ‘The Revolutionary Development of the Somali Language’, Occasional Paper No. 20, African Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA, 3. 101. ‘Effects of Writing of Somali Language on Education Studied’, Heegan (Mogadishu), November 1977. For a more detailed celebratory report, see Hussein M. Adam, ‘Language and Cultural Development in Somalia’, The Frantz Fanon Research and Development Center, Port- of-Spain, Trinidad, February 2nd to 5th 1978. 102. Dr Hawa Abdi with Sarah J. Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive: How One Somali Woman Changed 90,000 Lives (London: Virago, 2013), 34. However, Faarax, himself a member of Siad Barre’s clan, noted how ‘the culture and the education of Somali society were impaired’ with the adoption of the Latin script. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 20. My translation. For the politics behind the campaign of bar and baro as well as the history of choosing script for the Somali, see Ali A. Warsame, ‘How a Strong Government Backed an African Language: The Lessons of Somalia’, International Review of Education, Vol. 47, Nos. 3–4 (2001), 341–360. 103. ‘Law N. 12 of 28 March 1974 – Joins the Arab League’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, 2 Maajo 1974, I. 5, 217. See also ‘Friendship and Co-Operation Treaty Between the USSR and Somali Democratic Republic’, 11 July 1874 (in my possession); ‘Law No. 29 of 25 August 1974 – Ratification of the Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Somali Democratic Republic’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Tr. 11 Settembre 1974, L. 1, R 9, 422–423; ‘Sharci 29, Tr. 25 Agoosto 1974 – Meelmarin (ratification) Heshiis Saaxiibtinimo iyo Iskaashi’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Tr. 11 Settembre 1974, L. 1, R 9, 421–420; and Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Somalia and The Arab League (Mogadishu: The Ministry of Information and National Guidance, 1974). 104. Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Our Foreign Relations: A Review of Our Revolutionary Policies (Mogadishu: The Ministry of Information and National Guidance, Notes 297

1974). See also ‘The Only Way for Somalia: Scientific Socialism’, New Era (Mogadishu), March 1972, 4–40. 105. ‘Islamic, Scientific Socialism Principles Dovetail’, Heegan, 1 August 1980. 106. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, 20 Agosto 1975, L. 130 – Billad Dahab ah ee hawlkarnimo ee lagu maamuusay (1) Ciidanka Xoogga dalka Soomaaliyeed iyo (2) Wasaaradda Gaashaandhigga Midowga Soofiyeeti’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 13 Seb. 1975, L. 1 R 9, 611. 107. ‘Law No. 5 of 24 Dicember [sic] 1970 – Establishment of National Co-ordination Committee for Self-help Schemes and Public Relations’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 6 Gennaio 1971, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 1, 89–92; ‘Law N. 39 of 11 May 1972 – Coordinator of Self-Help Scheme’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubbli- ca Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, Anno III, 29 Maggio 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 5, 567; Somali Democratic Republic, National Campaigns 1971–1972 (A Record of Activities) (Mogadishu: Ministry of Information & National Guidance, October 1972); and Jamhuuriyad- da Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Somalia’s Self Help For Self-Reliance (Mogadishu: The Minis- try of Information and National Guidance, 1974). 108. ‘Somalia: A Sort of Marxism’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 14, No. 25, December 14, 1973, 1–3, 2 cited. 109. David D. Laitin, ‘Somalia’s Military Government and Scientific Socialism’, in Carl G. Rosberg, Jr. and Thomas M. Callaghy (eds.), Socialism in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Assess- ment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 174–206, 205 cited. 110. Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Thawra 21 Uktuubir: Asbaabuhaa, Adhaafuhaa, Munjazaatuhaa (Mogadishu: State Printing Agency, 1972). 111. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 77. See also Davidson, ‘Somalia in 1975’, 18–26; Jan. M. Haakonsen, Scientific Socialism and Self Reliance (Bergen: University of Bergen Press, 1984); and David D. Laitin, ‘The Political Economy of Military Rule in Somalia’, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1976), 449–468. 112. Davidson, ‘Somalia in 1975’, 22 & 25. 113. Ibid., 18. 114. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 43 ee 14 Luulyo 1988: Billad Maamuus “Commenda- tore” oo lagu maamuusay Professor Goosh Andrezjewiski & Mudane James Hohnsan [sic]’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 17ka Agoosto 1988, L. 1 R 8, 597. 115. See, for instance, Laitin, ‘The Political Economy of Military Rule in Somalia’, 454. 116. Oral information from S. I., 11 April 2014. 117. ‘Somalia: A Sort of Marxism’, Africa Confidential, 2. 118. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 119. Philippe Decraene, L'Expérience Socialiste Somalienne (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1977); Luigi Pestalozza, The Somalian Revolution, translated by Peter Glendening (Bari: Dedalo Libni, 1974); and Kübler Verlag, Somalia: Hantiwadaag (Heidelberg, Germany: Kübler Verlag GmBH, 1978). Cf. Haakonsen, Scientific Socialism and Self Reliance; and Laitin, ‘The Political Economy of Military Rule in Somalia’, 449–468. 120. Oral information from Engineer Mohamed Ali Weheliye, 10 January 2014. 121. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. Cf. ‘Somalia: A Sort of Marxism’, Africa Confidential, 1. 122. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 123. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. 124. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. See also Jamhuu- riyadda Dimuqraadiga Soomaaliya, Madaxtooyada Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Xaashidii Sad- dexaad ee Kacaanka, Muqdisho 1 Luulyo 1976. A Pamphlet published by the regime and in my possession. 125. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. 126. ‘Xeer Hoosaadka Golaha Shacbiga ee 27 Jenaayo 1980’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 15 Abriil 1980, L. 1 R. 4,483–502. 127. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 32 ee 2 Maarso 1980 – Magacaabidda Lixda Xildhibaan’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 8 Maarso 1980, Lr.3, 339. 298 Notes

128. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 46 ee 21 Sept. 1981, Nidaaminta Habmaamuuska’, Faa- finta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 23 September 1981, 1R9, 1418–1422; and ‘Sharci Lambar 19 Taariikh Isbeddelka 2aad ee Miisaaniyadda Dawladda 1988’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1988, L. 10, 724–728.

4. THE DIALECTICS OF DICTATORSHIP AND DOMINATION

1. Omar Arte Ghalib was humiliated by Siad Barre by asking: ‘Who has given you the duty to collect this proposal and read it out here in front of all of us?’. See Ruhela, Mohamed Farah Aidid, 53–54. For more details of an early imposition of the autocratic structure of rule, see Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship. 2. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 11 November 1971, No. 3–Resignation of President of the Supreme Court’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Mogadiscio, Anno II, 5 Gennaio 1972, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 1, 27. 3. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 11 November 1971, No. 4–Judicial Appointment’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 5 Gennaio 1972, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 1, 28. 4. Quoted in Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 41. My translation. 5. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, No. 51 of 6 January 1971–Establishment of Central Censorship Board’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Dem- ocratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 7 Marzo 1971, Suppl. n. 2 al. 3, 259. 6. Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Qalabka Warfaafinta (Muqdisho: Wasaa- radda Warfaafinta & Hanuuninta Dadweynaha, 1976); and Wasaaradda Warfaafinta iyo Ha- nuuninta Dadweynaha, Sooma[a]liya iyo Wargeysyada Adduunka (Muqdisho: Wasaaradda Warfaafinta iyo Hanuuninta Dadweynaha, Juun 1977). 7. ‘Sharci L. 44, Tr. 2 Oktoobar 1974–Qorista Buugaagta’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriy- adda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 2aad, Mogadiscio, 13 Nofembre 1974, L. 2, R. L. 11, 501–504. 8. ‘Law No. 4 of 2 January 1971–Censorship’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Demo- cratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 6 Gennaio 1971, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 1, 85–88. 9. ‘Sharci L. 27, Tr. 19 Agoosto 1974–Guddida Dhexe ee Hubinta (Cen[t]ral Censorship Board)’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdi- sho, Tr. 11 Settembre 1974, L. 1, R 9, 420. 10. Abdulkadir M. Diesow, ‘Censorship and Free Expression–Factors in the Political Crisis in Somalia’, in Muddle Suzanne Lilius (ed.), Variations on the Theme of Somaliness (Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2001), 58–72. 11. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 83 ee 7 Maajo 1980–Kordhinta Sicirka Sigaarka iyo Taraqa’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 30 Luulyo 1980, L. 2 R 7, 782–783. 12. ‘Decree of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, No. 34 of 31 January 1970’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I, Mogadiscio, 26 Febbraio 1970, Suppl. n. 4 al., n. 2, 114–115. 13. ‘Legge 3 Marzo 1970, no. 12. Sospensione temporanea diritto Habeas Corps’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I, Mogadiscio, 4 Marzo 1970, Suppl. n. 1 al., n. 3, 139. The legislations were: Sharciga 10 Jan. 1970, lr. 01–Awoodda Xarigga, Sharci- ga 10 Jan. 1970, lr. 03–Dhismaha Maxkamadda Badbaadada, Sharciga 15 Feb. 1970, lr. 14–Dhismaha Hey’adda NSS, Sharciga 10 Sept. 1970, lr. 54–Ilaalinta Nabadsugidda Qaranka, Sharciga 10 Okt. 1970, lr. 64–Baabi’inta Habeas Corpus, Sharciga 01 Nov. 1970, lr. 67–Difaca Bulshada, Sharciga 05 Abr. 1972, lr. 38–Awooda GSK Arrimaha Garsoorka. Documents in my possession. Those who made all these draconian legislations for Siad Barre were not necessarily Somalis, but included were a German named Professor Karl-Heinz Beyer and an Indian called Minjit Singh, as the official regime bulletin revealed. See ‘Xeer Wasaaradda Garsoorka Notes 299 iyo Diinta, Tr. 10 Maarso 1975, L. 61–Magacaabid Guddi’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abrile 1975, L. 4, 199. 14. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 46 ee 23 Maarso 1980–Cafis doonta Maxkamada Bad- baadada ka Hantiguurisay Jaalle Cabdulcasiis Yaxye Al-Kidi oo Cumaan[i] ah’, Faafinta Ras- mi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 29 Maarso 1980, L. 2 R 3, 360. 15. ‘Xeer L. 153 ee 21 Oktoobar 1975–Awood Siin’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho 12 Nofember 1975, L. 1 R. 11, 860. 16. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 21 ee 16 Luulyo 1983, Magacaabid ku xigeenno Xeer ilaaliye Guud ee MBD’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 11aad, Muqdisho, 1 Sept. 1983, L. 9, 556; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 30 ee 10 Maajo 1988: Oggolaansho Gunno Garsoor’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 28ka Juunyo 1988, L. 2 R 6, 474–475. 17. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 2 Maggio 1971, n. 124, Nomina Ten. Col. Mohamud Gelle Iusuf, membro della Corte di Sicurezza Nazionale’, Bollet- tino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 16 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 5, 500. 18. Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 93. 19. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. See also ‘Somalia: A Sort of Marxism’, Africa Confidential, 1. 20. Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, February 24, 1971. National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 2 Somali. Secret. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve05p1/d310 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 21. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 107. 22. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 23. ‘Law No. 14 of the 15 February 1970, Establishment of the National Security Service’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 23 Marzo 1970, Suppl. n. 5 al., n. 3, 203–205. 24. Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 31. 25. In their memoirs, both the American and Italians Ambassadors related stories of harass- ments by Siad Barre’s intelligence forces. Cf. Bridges, Safirka, 176–177; and Sica, Operazione Somalia, 44–45. Michael Maren, who worked in Beledweyne as a relief worker for the USAID, later found out that his Somali translator was an NSS man disguised as a relief worker. Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 96. 26. Abdulkadir Spinato, ‘Re: Jirdilkii iyo Gaboodfalkii NSS-ta’, Email to Mohamed Ingi- riis, 31 March 2014. 27. Qabobe, Somalia, 42. For a firsthand account on how the NSS interrogated people, see Ahmed Omar Askar, Sharks and Soldiers (Finland, N.P., 1992), 11–13. 28. Oral information from A. A. D., 23 March 2014; and Abdulkadir Spinato, ‘Re: Jirdilkii iyo Gaboodfalkii NSS-ta’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, 31 March 2014. Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf related that he witnessed the torture of his fellow prisoner General Aideed. Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 99. However, Aideed did not mention such torture in his memoirs. Instead, he appeared grateful to Siad Barre for releasing his salaries as well as that of Abdullahi Yusuf’s to their wives. See Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid, 60. 29. Telephone interview with Colonel Mohamed Hussein Loolow, 8 May 2014. This was confirmed to me by one former NSS member. Personal communication with N. A. 30. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 14. 31. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. 32. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 33. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 106; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 34. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 35. Telephone interview with Engineer Ahmed Warsame Abtidoon, 5 June 2014. As Dr Hawa Abdi observed: ‘It was hard sometimes, living with the idea that there were people going after you, to see you what you are doing, with whom you’ll talk’. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 32. 300 Notes

36. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 26 ee 11 Agoosto 1986–Billad Dahab Waddaninimo ah oo lagu Maamuusay Ciidanka Guulwadeyaasha Ummadda’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 1da September 1986, L. 9, 642. 37. Qabobe, Somalia, 19. 38. Greig, The Communist Challenge, 28. 39. Hersi was appointed the commander of the Boosaaso Police station, with the promotion to the rank of second lieutenant. ‘Somalia: Military Policies’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 11, No. 16, August 7, 1970, 6–8, 6 cited. This confidential information is confirmed by the official regime bulletin which shows a presidential promotion of Hersi to second lieutenant. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 13 Maggio April 1970, n. 124, Promozi- one Ispettore Elmi Hersi Ali al grado di Sottotenente’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 26 Maggio 1970, Suppl. n. 6 al. n. 5, 385. 40. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; and telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014. 41. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 1 April 1970, n. 77, Nomina del Generale Brigata Mohamed Ainanshe a Segretario di Stato alla Presidenza del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Soma- la, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 14 April 1970, Suppl. n. 3 al., n. 4, 258; and ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 1 April, 1970, n. 78, Nomina del Magg. Generale Giama Ali Korshel a Segretario di Stato alla Presidenza del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supre- mo’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 14 April 1970, Suppl. n. 3 al., n. 4, 258. 42. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. 43. ‘Somalia: Military Policies’, Africa Confidential, 6–7 cited. 44. According to his daughter, her father–by now an assistant to her mother who was involved in a taxi business–was seen in the capital by people who perceived that he had become a taxi driver. Telephone interview with Falhad Ahmed Mohamoud, 25 April 2014. By contrast, Qoorsheel was appointed Ambassador to Nigeria, an appointment which he turned down. Telephone interviews with Professor Hassan Mohamed Omar, 31 March 2014 & 5 April 2014. 45. ‘Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 2 Maggio 1971, n. 134, Expulsion of Br[i]g. Mohamed Ainanshe Gulaid and Brig. General Salad Gaveire from the Supreme Revolutionary Council and Council of Secretaries’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repub- blica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 20 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 5 al. n. 5, 528. 46. Interview with Osman Mohamed Jeelle, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 47. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, No. 67 of 13 March 1971–Appointment of Brigadier General Salad Gavere Kediye as Secretary of State for Public Works’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II., Mogadiscio, 7 Marzo 1971, Suppl. n. 6 al. n. 3, 308. 48. Siad Barre was sometimes so violently vindictive that he would visit his rivals in prison and wake them up ‘with booted kicks’. For specific vivid descriptions, see Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 244–245. Detained with Gabeyre were also 157 Hawiye military officers and businessmen accused of aiding him and 18 Isaaq civilians of being Aynaanshe’s supporters. Telephone interview with Habbad Waasuge, 19 April 2014. 49. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014; telephone interview with Colonel Mohamed Haashi, 5 April 2014; telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014 & 7 February 2014; telephone interview with Mohamed Isse Trunji, 9 February 2014; and telephone interview with Habbad Waasuge, 19 April 2014. Abdullahi Iise was appointed Director of Commerce in January 1970, when Salaad Gabeyre had probably possessed some power to influence Siad Barre in accommodating his men. See ‘Decreto del Consiglio Rivoluzionario Supremo, 5 Gennaio, 1970, n. 16, Nomina Commissario Straordinario della Camera di Commercio Sig. Abdullahi Issa Mohamed’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno I., Mogadiscio, 22 Gennaio 1970, Suppl. n. 4 al., n. 1, 48. 50. Telephone interview with Mohamed Isse Trunji, 9 February 2014. 51. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. Notes 301

52. Oral information from Colonel A. A. G., 30 March 2014. These officers had their own grudge against Gabeyre. They used to blame him on their exclusion from the junta inner circle, the so-called Supreme Revolutionary Council (and eventual dismissal from the army), which Gabeyre failed to include them. The senior military officers excluded were: General Liiqliiqato, General Ali Haashi Elmi Barre, General Abdulle Barre Sabriye, General Osman Sabriye Ali ‘Osman Sokor’, General Aideed, General Nuur Addow, General Abukar Suulaleey, Colonel Abukar Ga’al Muudeey, Colonel Doonyaale, Colonel Baarqab, Colonel Hassan Gaamuur and Colonel Elmi Nuur. Interview with Colonel Mohamed Haashi, London, 27 April 2014. 53. Askar, Sharks and Soldiers, 3. For details, see Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 89. Basil David- son seemingly suppressed the execution of these men in order to prove his laudatory reports of the Siad Barre’s first years. For a celebratory account on the earlier stage of Siad Barre, see Davidson, ‘Somalia in 1975: Some Notes and Impressions’, 18–26. It is also surprising that General Jili’ow did not mention the killing of these three senior military officers by the Siad Barre regime. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida. 54. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 55. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 33. My grandmother Madina Guled Farah ‘Aseey’ was among those terrified civilians watching the execution behind the firing squad. From my discussions with her, one thing appeared to have caught and came to her mind. She vividly recalled that, when the first round of fire hit him, Salaad Gabeyre used his hands by saying ‘keep on’ perhaps to alert the firing squad to take his life instantly, instead of making him die in excruciating suffering. 56. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. 57. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 58. Telephone interview with H. M. O., 31 March 2014. It is told that this man was Lieuten- ant Hassan Abshir Farah. 59. Telephone interview with Habbad Waasuge, 19 April 2014. This point was also echoed by one senior military officer. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoog- sade’, 31 July 2014. 60. ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, Africa Confidential, 3. 61. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. 62. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 10 Luulyo 1974, L. 78–Sarreeye Guuto Maxamed Jaamac Xarbi oo shaqada ka fadhiistay’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Tr. 1 Settembre 1974, L. 9, 38–388. 63. Telephone interview with Habbad Waasuge, 19 April 2014. 64. Telephone interview with Professor Hassan Mohamed Omar ‘Ookiyo’, 31 March 2014; and telephone interview with Mohamed Isse Trunji, 9 February 2014. 65. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 66. Interview with Mohamed Ali Samatar, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 67. Quoted in Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 318–319. 68. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 4 August, 1971, No. 209–Special allowance for Col Ali Mattan Hashi, Col Ahmed Suleman [Dafle], Lt Col Ahmed Hassan and Major Abdi Warsama, Members of the Supreme Revolutionary Council’, Bolletti- no Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 10 Agosto 1971, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 9, 913. 69. Somali Institute of Public Administration, Administrative Changes in Somalia (Moga- discio: Somali Democratic Republic, 1972), part I. 70. Lewis, ‘The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup’, 406. 71. Ibid., 405. 72. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014; and telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. Maryan Haji Elmi put the number at 75. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. 73. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 302 Notes

74. Previously, these politicians and personalities along with some Isaaq members were arrested in a military compound commanded by General Hassan Yusuf Mohamoud ‘Hassan Sallin’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT8hfXkDbuk (between min. 00:31 and 29:31), accessed on 21 December 2014; and available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FT8hfXkDbuk (between min. 00:30 and 29:31), accessed on 21 December 2014. 75. Interview with Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye, London, 22 June 2014; telephone interview with Ahmed Salaad Kulmiye, 2 June 2014; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Roo- ble, 4 June 2014. 76. Balam Nyeko, ‘Exile Politics and Resistance to Dictatorship: The Ugandan Anti-Amin Organizations in Zambia, 1972–79’, African Affairs, Vol. 96, No. 382 (1997), 95–108. 77. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 78. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 10 August 1972, n. 110–Closing of pending cases before the Supreme Court Constituted as Constitutional Court’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno III, Mogadiscio, 28 Agosto 1972, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 8, 846; ‘Law No. 80 of 6 December 1972–Amendment to the Law on the Organisation of Judiciary’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno IV, Mogadiscio, 12 Dicembre 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 12, 1490; and ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 27 November 1972, n. 176–Assunzione Uditori Giudiziari’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno IV, Mog- adiscio, 12 Dicembre 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 12, 1515. 79. ‘Law N. 38 of 5 April 1972–Power of S.R.C to intervene in Judicial matters’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, Anno III, 22 Maggio 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 1, 528; and ‘Legge N. 16 del 2 Marzo 1972 - Instituzione del’Ufficio del Giudice di Esecuzione della C.S.N. Corte Sicurezza Nazionale’, 11 November 1971, No. 4–Ju- dicial Appointment’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 25 Marzo 1972, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 3, 237. See also ‘Law No. 64 of 12 September 1971–Power of the President of the S.R.C. to deal with Administrative Matters’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 28 Ottobre 1971, Suppl. n. 3 al. n. 10, 1121; ‘Law No. 47 of 11 July 1971–Amendment of law on the organisation of the Government’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadis- cio, 14 Luglio 1971, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 7, 745. 80. ‘Sharci L. 9 Tr. 14 Marso 1974–Wakaalad la siiyey Madaxweynaha G.S.K. inay baad- haan dacwadaha Maxkamadaha’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Tr. 1 Abril 1974, L. 4, 158. 81. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 5 ee 17 Dis. 78, Kaalmo gaar ahaaneed oo loo fidinaayo Shirkadda Impresco’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Sannadka 6aad, Muqdisho, 28 Jennaayo 79, L. 1R1, 13–14. 82. Samatar, Socialist Somalia, 148. 83. The four were: Mohamed Abdurahman Ahmed, Saalim Awad Saalim, Said Aamir Saa- lim and Abdullahi Omar Salah. See ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 24 Feberayo 1975, L. 60–Jinsiyada Soomaalida’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abrile 1975, L. 4, 198. 84. The former group were: Saalim Awad Al-Abiid Bakhiid, Omar Said Muhsin Ahmed and Ali Muhsin Saalih Habiib. The latter single man was Mohamed Abdalla Mohamed Shaybaani. See ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, 20 Agosto 1975, L. 140–Ka tanaasulid Jinsiyadda Soomaaliyeed’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannad- ka 3aad, Muqdisho, 20 Setembre 1975, L. 2 R 9, 721; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 19 ee 19 Maarso 1986, Ka tanasulid Jinsiyadda Soomaaliyeed’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 2da Luulyo 1986, L. 7, 490. 85. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 37 ee 19 Juun 1988, Oggolaansho Jinsiyad loo oggolaaday Xuseen Maxamed Xuseen’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Agoosto 1988, L. 8, 565. 86. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 52 ee 15 Nof. 1984, Oggolaansho Jinsiyadda Soomaa- liyeed Dieudonne Basunoki’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 12aad, Muqdisho, 1 Disember 1984, L. 12, 970. See also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 49 ee 17 Nof. 1987, Xeerka Madax- weynaha oo lagu dhisay Guddi loo xil saaray Dib u habaynta Jinsiyadda Muwaadinka Soomaa- Notes 303 liyeed’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1da Agoosto 1987, Lambar 8, 950–951. 87. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 4 ee 16 Jannaayo 1988, Ku Maamuusid Xildhibaan Francesco Forte Jinsiyad Sharafeed’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Jan- naayo 1988, Lambar 8, 68–69. 88. ‘Sharci L. 47, Tr. 23 Oktoobar 1974–Sharciga Jaamacadda’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhu- riyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, 1 Dishembre 1974, L. 12, 533–542. For further extralegal interventions of the university work, see also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 24 Oktoobar 1974, L. 127–Xeerka Maamulka Gudaha ee Jaama- cadda Ummada’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, 1 Dishembre 1974, L. 12, 543–554; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. 7 Sebtember 1977, Xeerka Jaamacadda Ummadda, L. 93’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimo- qraadiga Soomaaliya, Sannadka 5aad, Muqdisho, 1 Disembar 1977, L. 12, 1208–1241. 89. ‘Sharci lambar 10 taariikh 15 Jen. 1984, Mihnadda gaarka ah ee Takhtarnimada’, Faa- finta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 12aad, Muqdisho, 18 Maarso 1984, L. 1 R 3, 195–200. Living in Mogadishu in 1996, I saw a letter that I could not trust its authenticity showing Siad Barre ordering a pharmacist to close his pharmacy. 90. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 3. Cf. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 27 ee 30 Juunyo 1985, Abuurid Kuliyad Takhasus iyo Cilmi Baaris’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 25 Luulyo 1985, L. 6 R 7, 448–453. 91. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 68. 92. ‘Law L. 23 of 11th January 1975–Family Law’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 31 Maarso 1975, L. 1, R. 3, 317–366. 93. For comparative study on Somali women’s position in post-independence period, see Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Between Struggle and Survival: The Social and Political Status of Somali Women’ (unpublished M.Sc. dissertation, the Department of Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, 2012). 94. For Mohamed Aden’s role in the Family Law, see Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 296fn2. 95. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014; Abdurahman Abdullahi (Baadiyow), ‘Re: Xogwareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, 18 June 2014; Tele- phone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; and telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 96. Oral information from Faduma Ahmed Aalim, 2011; and oral information from Nuurta Haji Hassan Alasow Jineey, 2011. 97. Interview with Sheikh Omar Faaruuq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). For a well-researched treatment on the execution of the sheikhs, Baadiyow, ‘Women, Islamists and the Military Regime in Somalia: The New Family Law and Its Implications’, in Markus Hoehne and Virginia Luling (eds.), Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Soci- ety, and Politics, Essays in Honour of I. M. Lewis (London: Hurst & Co., 2010), 137–160. 98. Interview with Sheikh Omar Faaruuq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). Also telephone interview with Colonel Omar Saleebaan, 30 September 2014. 99. ‘Khudbadii Siyaad Barre ee uu Quraanka iyo Culimada uu ugu gafayey’. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVmAqa0OPdE (between min. 0:06–0:20), accessed on 26 March 2014. 100. Ibid., (between min. 3:51–4:16). 101. For somewhat analogous yet different case of visible and invisible forces mediating State and society in Mozambique, see Helene Maria Kyed, ‘State Policing and Invisible Forces in Mozambique’, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 84, No. 3 (August 2014), 424–443. 102. Cited in Baadiyow, ‘Women, Islamists and the Military Regime in Somalia’, 157. 103. Samatar, Socialist Somalia, 107. 104. For more details, see Ingiriis, ‘Encounters and Interactions’. 304 Notes

105. Paulo Contini, The Somali Republic: An Experiment in Legal Integration (London: Frank Cass, 1969), 58. 106. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuGv78k6ndg (between min. 13:42–27:52), accessed on 13 April 2014. 107. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. 108. The expression is a part of Somali children’s play and was used by Hussein Kulmiye, Siad Barre’s Deputy, to warn the people against resisting the regime. Interview with Colonel Mohamed Haashi, London, 27 April 2014. 109. Available at: ‘Gabaygii Saciid Gacamey part 1’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PkuiuQy2Om4 (between min. 04:02–04:35), accessed on 9 September 2014). 110. Exceptions are some Arabic-written books produced by Arabic-speaking Somali scholars. Cf. Ali S.A. Abubakar, Al-Da’wa al-Islamiyah al-Mu’āsira fi al-Qarni al-Ifriqi (Riyadh: Umayya Publishing House, 1985); and Ali S.A. Abubakar, Al-Somāl: Judūr al-Ma’āsāt al- Rāhina (Beirut: Dar Ibn al-Hazm, 2007). 111. Seventeen other sheikhs were sentenced to 20 years of jail: (1) Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Osman, (2) Sheikh Abdi Ali Abdirahman, (3) Sheikh Abdi Abdullahi, (4) Sheikh Mohamed Mohamoud Weheliye, (5) Sheikh Ahmed Ali Yusuf, (6) Sheikh Sharif Mohamed Yusuf, (7) Sheikh Abdullahi Farah Egaal, (8) Sheikh Mo’allim Hassan Mo’allim Abdirahman, (9) Sheikh Yakub Mohamed Mo’allim, (10) Sheikh Mo’allim Abbas Muse Farah, (11) Sheikh Bashiir Sheikh Mohamed, (12) Sheikh Ali Mursal Mohamed, (13) Sheikh Omar Sheikh Ali, (14) Sheikh Abubakar Hassan, (15) Sheikh Mohamed Abdi, (16) Sheikh Ismail Hassan Aden, and (17) Sheikh Hassan Awale. One of the sheikhs was a relative of Ismail Ali Obokor, a member of Siad Barre’s five-member political politburo. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. For somewhat incomplete list, see Khaalid Cali-Guul Warsame, Taxanihii Taariikhda Soomaaliyeed, Juska Labaad (Dragor, Denmark: Brondby, 2003), 91. 112. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014; and telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 5 April 2014. One other scholar similarly stresses this point. Abdurahman Abdullahi (Baadiyow), ‘Re: Xogwareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, 18 June 2014. 113. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 114. Telephone interview Sheekh Bashiir Ahmed Salaad, 11 September 2014. 115. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 116. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. Also interview with Sheikh Omar Faaruuq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/ 40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 117. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 118. Telephone interview with Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, 3 September 2014. 119. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 120. Telephone interview with Hussein Diiriye Afrah, 24 January 2013. This point was also echoed by Mohamed Iise Trunji. Telephone interview with Mohamed Isse Trunji, 9 February 2014. 121. ‘Somalia: How Much Soviet Influence’, Africa Confidential, 3. 122. Quoted in interview with Sheikh Omar Faaruuq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAs- sets2/somali/2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 Sep- tember 2014). 123. Interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, Universal Somali TV. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcgfa6KFEZw (between min. 38:51–42:010), accessed on 9 March 2014. 124. The regime’s daily official newspaper, Xiddigta Oktoobar (the October Star) also deprived the executed of their titles as sheikhs, compressing them only ‘ten persons’. See the front page of Xiddigta Oktoobar, 23 January 1975. 125. Muhammad Awdah, ‘Interview with Somali President, Mohammed Siad Barre’, Rose Al-Yusuf, February 2, 1976, 35–38. The man to whom Siad Barre alluded was an Oromo sheikh, who was born and bred in Baardheere (southern Somalia) and whose parents fled from Ethiopian oppression. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 5 April 2014. Notes 305

126. Awdah, ‘Interview with Somali President’, 35–38. The then Mayor of Mogadishu, Has- san Abshir, was believed to have played a decisive role in the oppression of the sheikhs. 127. ‘Wareysi ay BBC Soomaali la yeelatay Sheekh Maxamed Macalin sanadkii 1994’, http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuZz2J-8Hro (between min. 20:33–21:50), accessed on 1 July 2014. 128. Edward Kannyo, ‘State Terrorism and Death Squads in Uganda (1971–79)’, in Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner (eds.), Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability (London: MacMillan, 2000), 153–179. 129. Telephone interview with Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, 3 September 2014. 130. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 131. Telephone interview with Sheekh Bashiir Ahmed Salaad, 11 September 2014. 132. Telephone interview with Hussein Saalah Muuse, 14 July 2014. 133. ‘Somalia: Religious Leaders Sentenced’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 25, 1987, No. 279, 6; and ‘Somali Democratic Republic: Death Sentences Lifted’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 5 (June 15, 1989), 9292. For how the NSS hunted down these sheikhs not only in Mogadishu but outer regions, see Askar, Sharks and Soldiers, 23–33. 134. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. See also ‘Somalia: Mosque Decree Dangers Gulf States’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, December 7, 1985, No. 209, 5. 135. Ibrahim H. Addou, ‘To the Editors’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 75–76, 75 cited. 136. Rashiid Sheekh Cabdillaahi Xaaji Axmed, Adduun iyo Taladii (Pisa: Ponte Invisible, 2010), 21–23.

FROM CLANISED TO CRIMINALISED STATE: TYRANNY

1. Arnold Joseph Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston and Victor T. Le Vine, Political Cor- ruption: A Handbook (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999), 16.

5. PLUNDER, PREDATORY POWER AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

1. See Francis P. Kasoma, ‘Press Freedom in Zambia’, in Festus Eribo and William Jong- Ebot (eds.), Press Freedom and Communication in Africa (Trenton, N.J.: World Africa Press, 1998), 135–156, 137 cited. 2. Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Tusaalooyinka Madaxweynaha (Muqdisho: Xafiiska Siyaasadda ee Madaxtooyada G.S.K., 1973). 3. Tapera O Chirawu, ‘The Flip Sides of Corruption: A Challenge to Developing Coun- tries’, in Mammo Muchie, Sanya Osha and Matlotleng P Matlou (eds.), The Africana World: From Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2012), 51–64, 54 cited. 4. Jon Lee Anderson, ‘The Gardner of Villa Somalia’, The New Yorker, December 15, 2009. 5. Cameroon Tribune, 5 October 1988, cited in Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 116. 6. I. M. Lewis, ‘Kim Il-Sung in Somalia: The End of Tribalism’, in William A. Shack and Percy S. Cohen (eds.), Politics in Leadership (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 13–44. 7. ‘Sharci L. 21 ee 8 Oct. 1987, Masawirka Rasmiga ah ee Xoghayaha Guud XHKS, Madaxweynaha J.D.S.’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 31 Oktoobar 1987, 1 R 10, 814. 8. Maren, The Road to Hell, 30. 306 Notes

9. Personal communication with Ahmednur Hassan Abdikarim. 10. Heather Marie Akou, The Politics of Dress in Somali Culture (Indiana: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 2011), 73. 11. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 95. 12. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 109. 13. Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2012). 14. van Notten, The Law of the Somalis, 140. 15. Filip De Boeck, ‘Inhabiting Ocular Ground: Kinshasa’s Future in the Light of Congo’s Spectral Urban Politics’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2011), 263–286, 282n5 cited. 16. For a firsthand account, see Lewis, Blood and Bone, 152–153. 17. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 18. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 30 ee 6 Maarso 80–Ku maamuusidda Billad Dahab ah ee Kacaannimo Jaalle G/Sare Cabdirisaaq Maxamuud Abuubakar’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 8 Maarso 1980, Lr.3, 338. See also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lamb. 22 ee 2.3.1982–Billado Qalin oo Hawlkarnimo lagu maamusay Jaallayaasha Xildhibaan Axmed Su- gulle Xirsi iyo Xildhibaan Axmed Maxamed Isaaq’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maarso 1982, L. 3r3, 234. 19. Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Somalia’s Self Help For Self-Reliance, iii. For more on the role of Ismail Ali Obokor in constructing the cult, see Somali Democratic Republic, Broadcasting Handbook (Mogadishu: The Ministry of Information and National Guidance, 1974). 20. Andrew Apter, Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 2007), 32. 21. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dc0DIHEvUc (between min. 00:01–05:07), accessed on 13 April 2014. My translation. 22. Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda, 72. 23. Said, Orientalism, 6. 24. Omar, The Road to Zero, 104. Comparing Canada to Somalia and reflecting on his school experience in Somalia, the Somali political scientist Afyare Abdi Elmi commented that ‘[s]tudents of schools in Canada and elsewhere usually sing their national anthem before the school day begins. In Somalia, we would sing a song that praised General Mohamed Siyad Barre: “Guulwade Siyaad, Aabihii garashada, geesigayagow” (Siyad, the pioneer of victory, the father of knowledge, our hero) every day before classes’. Afyare Abdi Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding (London: Pluto Press, 2010), 111–112. The other obligatory song was caynaanka haay ‘hold the reigns of rule’. See Charles L. Geshekter & Said A. Warsama, ‘An Introduction to Humour and Jokes in Somali Culture’, 152. 25. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 8. 26. Personal communication with General A. A. D. 27. Akou, The Politics of Dress in Somali Culture, 72. 28. Interview with Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Keyd Media. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-Bbfkub28 (between min. 04:05–04:24), accessed on 9 May 2014. 29. Nuruddin Farah, Sweet and Sour Milk (London: Allison & Busby, 1979), 177–178. 30. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014. 31. ‘Halkan Ka Daawo Barnaamijkii Waayo Arag Dublamasiyadii 1961 C/laahi Koongo (SLNTV & DhamaysTV)’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdLYIpNpyxs (between min. 17:50–18:27), accessed on 26 August 2014. 32. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 183. 33. Quoted in Evelin Gerda Lindner, ‘Were Hitler and Siad Barre “Robin Hoods” Who Felt Humiliated by Their Own Followers’ (unpublished paper, the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, 2001), 7. I am indebted to Evelin for permitting me to draw this quotation from her paper. 34. Ibid., 6–7. Notes 307

35. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014. For somewhat similar fascist ethno-nationalism, cf. Maxamed Siyaad Barre, Dalkeyga iyo Dadkeyga: Khud- badihii uu Jaale Siyaad Jeediyey (Mogadishu: Ministry of Information and National Guidance, 1972); and Adolft Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Pimlico, 1999). 36. Cf. Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda, 170; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 29 ee 23 Feb. 1980–Magacaabid Duqa Magaalada Muqdisho iyo Ku Xigeenno’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannad- ka 8aad, Muqdisho, 8 Maarso 1980, Lr.3, 336. 37. Hussein Abdulkadir later defected to the United States in 1987. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014. 38. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 39. In 1982, rumours pervaded in foreign diplomatic missions based in Mogadishu that Ali Samatar was about to lead a new military regime after Siad Barre would at last leave the scene. Cf. ‘Somalia: Two Candidates for the Presidency After Barre’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 3rd, 1982, No. 36, 3; ‘Somalia: General Samatar’s Tour’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 18th, 1983, No. 86, 5; ‘Somalia: Of Barre’s Making’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 23, No. 18, September 8, 1982, 1–4; and ‘Somalia: Towards Samatar’s Sword’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 24, No. 15, 20 July 1983, 3–6. 39. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 5 April 2014; and ‘Xeer Dowladeed Guddoomiyaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, 15 Luliyo 1973, L. 73–Dallacaad la siiyey Sareeye Guuto Jaalle Maxamed Cali Samatar’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Soma- liya, Sanadka I, Mogadiscio ah, 21 Luuliyo 1973, L. 14, 244. 40. Qabobe, Somalia, 106. Other insiders also echoed similar conclusion that Ali Samatar was ‘adeege’ (a manservant) for Siad Barre. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. Lewis maintained that General Samatar was ‘an undisguised atheist’. Lewis, Blood and Bone, 173n21. 41. Colonel Hassan Gaamuur, who went with Ali Samatar to Italy for military training in 1954, related that Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, himself a Majeerteen, who was their fellow, rejected to accept Samatar’s claims of Majeerteen clan belonging. Personal communication with Colonel Hassan Mohamed Sabriye ‘Gaamuur’. A French author mentioned a story told to this day by many Somalis that Ali Samatar once went to Siad Barre to get his son married to the latter’s daughter. The dictator replied: ‘I have nothing to decide about it, if you want to marry her, seek her opinion and see what she will tell you’. Christian Bader, Les Yibro Mages Somali: Les juifs oubliés de la corne de l’Afrique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 191ft2. My translation. 42. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 31 and 161. 43. Interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, Keyd Media. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xycjbmry7U (between min. 02:00:–02:39), accessed on 9 May 2014. 44. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1970). 45. These words were composed under anonymity due to a fear for prison, so the poet is unknown. See, for instance, Warsame, Taxanihii Taariikhda Soomaaliyeed, 93. Faarax summed up his acknowledgement section in eight sentences; he could not pay his gratitude to those who had helped him produce his work for fear of being punished by the regime. See Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, iii & 132. Mohamoud Abdi Dhuunkaal was another Somali author terrorised by the military regime forces for preparing a manuscript on natural sciences. He later wrote his preface that his house was raided after which he was taken from the original manuscript. ‘Two more books’, he wrote, ‘were robbed by the terroristic rule of Siad Barre, the first in 1977, the second on 14 July 1989’. Maxamuud Cabdi Dhunkaal, Hanoonka Dabeecadda Hawsha Nolosha (N.P., November 1987), i. My translation. 46. ‘Sharci L. 57 ee 20 Oktoobar 1975–Cafis Guud iyo Cafis gaareed [sic] lagu maamuusay sanad guurada 6aad ee Kacaanka 21 Oktoobar 1969’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradiga Somaliya, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 20 Oktoobar 1975, L. 2 R 10, 758. 47. Other poets, such as Abdi Muhumad Amiin, maintained their support of Siad Barre during this period. See Cabdi Muxumed Amiin, ‘Gabay’, Halgan, Sannad 1aad, Lam. 3, Dis- ambar 1976, 57–58. Ali Jimale made a very interesting connection between the consolidation of military dictatorship and the oral poetry. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near. 308 Notes

48. ‘Interview with Col. Ahmed S. Abdulle’, 54. Compare Mohamoud Hassan, ‘Status of Human Rights in Somalia’, Horn of Africa, Vol. III, No. 2 (March-June 1980), 3–11; and Osman Mohamoud, ‘Somalia: Crisis and Decay in an Authoritarian Regime’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1981), 36–37. 49. The National Archives, London (TNA), Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) 371/ 183996, ‘BBC programme organisers visit to Somalia’, 01 January 1965–31 December 1965. 50. TNA, FCO 31/1933, ‘Somali reactions to British Media, including BBC’, 13 March 1975–09 December 1975; and TNA, FCO 31/2630, ‘Somalia and the BBC’, 1979. 51. TNA, FCO 26/730, ‘BBC overseas service to Somali Arab Republic: arrest of BBC Employee, Mustafa Haji Nur’, 1 January 1971–31 December 1972. Mustafe Haji Nur would later lead an armed resistance movement against Siad Barre. 52. ‘Dalka, “Our Country”’. 53. David D. Laitin, ‘The War in the Ogaden: Implications for Siyaad’s Role in Somali History’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1979), 95–115, 113 cited. Three years later, Laitin painted a different picture of Somalia. Cf. David Laitin, ‘The Political Crisis in Somalia’, Horn of Africa , Vol. 5, No. 2 (1982), 60–64. In retrospectively, Laitin and his co-author Said Samatar recounted how they were subjected to harassment by the regime during fieldwork in Mogadishu in the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Said S. Samatar, ‘Oral Poetry and Political Dissent in Somali Society: The Hurgumo Series’, Ufahamu: Journal of the African Activist Association, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1988/1989): 31–52; and Crawford Young, Review of Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience. By David D. Laitin. Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1977’, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 1 (March 1979), 292–293. 54. Bridges, Safirka, 158. 55. ‘Somalia: No More Western Journalists’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, De- cember 5th, 1981, No. 6, 3. 56. Airgram A-86 From the embassy in Somalia to the Department of State, November 25, 1976. Department of State, Nairobi Embassy Files: Lot 79 F 186, Box 6, POL-Somalia 1976. Secret. 6 pages not declassified in time for publication. Available at: http://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve06/d168 (accessed on 1 May 2014). 57. Omar, The Road to Zero, 199. 58. Cited in ‘Seychelles: Somalia and Morocco Accused’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, December 4th, 1982, No. 58, 6. 59. Maren, The Road to Hell, 24. 60. Ibid., 82. 61. Qabobe, Somalia, 18. 62. ‘Xeer Wasaaradda Arr. Gudaha L. 23 ee 5.4.88, Magacaabid Guddoomiyeyaal Degmo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1988, L. 10, 732–733. 63. ‘Wargeyska Kasmo oo Wareysi dheer la yeeshay Sheekh Mukhtaar Maxamed Xuseen’, Kasmo, June 2000. Available at: http://kasmonewspaper.com/Warar/1451.html (accessed on 31 May 2014). For how corruption contributed to an ‘illicit trade’, see Norman N. Miller, The Other Somalia. Part I: Illicit Trade and the Hidden Economy (Hanover, New Hampshire, American Universities Field Staff, 1981); and Norman N. Miller, The Other Somalia. Part II: Illicit Trade and the Hidden Economy (Hanover, New Hampshire, American Universities Field Staff, 1981). 64. William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 65. The poem is recorded in Axmed, Adduun iyo Taladii, 30–31. My translation. For more on Hadraawi’s poems, see Maxamed Ibraahim Warsame (‘Hadraawi’), Hal-Karaan (Kleppe, Norway: Den Norske Somaliakomitten, 1993); and Maxamed Baashe X. Xasan, Hal Ka Ha- leel: Sooyaalka Hadraawi iyo Suugaantiisii (London: Bashe Publications, 2004). 66. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 41. 67. Ibid., 13. 68. ‘Somalia: Record Trade Deficit’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 28th, 1984, No. 142, 5. 69. Bayart, The State in Africa, lxvi. Notes 309

70. Abdi with Robbins, Keeping Hope Alive, 50. 71. Abdulqadir Arif Qassim, ‘The Collapse of the Somali Banking System’, Abdi M. Kus- ow (ed.), Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-State in Somalia (Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 2004), 177–195, 185 cited. 72. van Notten, The Law of the Somalis, 177. 73. Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 115. 74. Cited in Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 87–88. Aroma did not provide the date of this anecdote, but the official regime bulletin reveals Farah Siad Barre being granted for separate lands in Dayniile and Kaaraan districts of Mogadishu. Cf. ‘Wasaaradda Howlaha Guud, 26,2,1980, Naado Dhul Jaalle Faarax Siyaad Barre L. 515’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannad- ka 8aad, Muqdisho, 1 Setember 1980, L. 9, 956; and ‘Dawladda Hoose Muq. 20.8.85, Naado Dhul Jaalle Faarax Siyaad Barre, L. 312’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 31 Agoosto 1985, L. 1 R 8, 588. 75. ‘Africa ’70: Italy and Somalia’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 11, No. 25, December 18, 1970, 8; and ‘Somalia: Takeover of Banks and Oil Groups’, The Times (London), 8 May 1970, 23. 76. See ‘Xeer Dowladeed Guddoomiyaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, 3 Aprile 1973, n. 66–Magdhaw shirkadihii ajnabiga ahaa oy Dowladda la wareegtay’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sanadka I, Muqdisho, 4 Aprile 1973, F.R.2, 3. 77. For other similar African experiences in late 1980s, see Samuel Decalo, Psychoses of Power: African Personal Dictatorships (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989). 78. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 9 ee 1 Jen. 1982, Magacaabid Sarkaal loo wakiishay kharashkan Miisaaniyadda Sannadka 1982’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 2 Febbraayo 1982, L. 1R.2, 159–160; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 1 ee 15 Jen. 1983, Maga- caabid Sarkaal loo Wakiishay Kharashka Miisaaniyadda Sannad[k]a’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, San- nadka 11aad, Muqdisho, 28 January 1983, L. 2 r 1, 58–59; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 21 ee 3 Maajo 1984, Magacaabid Sarkaal loo wakiishay kharashka Miisaaniyadda Sannadka 1984’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 12aad, Muqdisho, 1 Juunyo 1984, L. 6, 388; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JD., L. 2 ee 4 Jen. 1985, Magacaabid Sarkaal loo Wakiishay kharashka Miisaa- niyadda Sannadka 1985’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 28 Jannaayo 1985, L. 1r1, 40–41; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 6 ee 15 Jen. 1987, Magacaabid Sarkaal loo Wakiishay Kharashka Miisaaniyadda Sannadka 1987’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 28da Feb. 1987, Lr. 1 R 2, 128; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 12 ee 13 Feb. 1988, Magacaabid Sarkaal loo wakiishay kharashka Miisaaniyadda Sannadka 1988’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 15ka Maarso 1988, L. 1 R 3, 187; and ‘Xeer Madax- weynaha J.D.S. L. 12 ee 1 Feb. 1989: Magacaabid Sarkaal loo wakiishay kharashka Miisaaniy- adda Sannadka 1989ka’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 26 Feberaayo 1989, L. 2 R 2, 88. See also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS L. 37 ee 14 Juunyo 1982, Dhismaha iyo qaabka Agaasimaha Guud ee Maamulka Lacagta M. JD.S’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 23 Luulyo 1982, L. 1 R 7, 582–590; ‘Xeer Duqa Magaalada Xamar L. 1 ee 27 Ma[a]jo 82, Cad dhul Dowladeed oo ku yaal Degmada Wadajir, oo loo oggolaaday Dhismihiisa Jaalle Cabdulaahi M. Xaaji Cabdi (Fartaag) kuna fadhiya mq.2.400/=’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Oktoobar 1982, Lr. 3 r 10, 1009–1011; and ‘Xeer Madaxwey- naha J.D.S., L. 31 ee 25 Okt. 1986, la Wareegid dan guud awgeed guri ku yaal Deg. Shangaa- ni’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 1da Nofembar 1986, L. 11, 670. 79. Telephone interview with Engineer Ahmed Warsame Abtidoon, 5 June 2014. Drawing from his insider position, Faarax included Hoosh–nicknamed by the public as Hoosh Kibray (the arrogant Hoosh)–on the top of those who became enormously affluent during the regime. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 29. For Hoosh’s extrajudicial activities, see Adam, From Tyranny to Anarchy, 62; and Qabobe, Somalia, 113. Overall, as Simons observed, Siad Barre’s clan network increasingly profited during his two decade reign. Anna Simons, ‘Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1997), 273–290, 275 cited. 80. ‘Sharci L. 61 ee 21 Oktoobar 1975–La wareegid ganacsiga dibad ka keenka Baabuurta iyo Toleyn Hoosooyinka Waaweyn’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 1 Nofembre 1975, L. 11, 821–822; ‘Sharci L. 62 ee 21 Oktoobar 1975–La wareegidda ganacsiga dibad ka 310 Notes keenka iyo qeybinta: dharka, maacuunka guryaha iyo qalabka Xafiisyada’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 1 Nofembre 1975, L. 11, 823–824. 81. ‘Sharci L. 24, Tr. 1.3.1975–Wax ka beddelid Sharciga ‘Dhowritaanka Badbffada [sic] Ummadda’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 10 Maarso 1975, L. 2 R. 3, 173–174; ‘Sharci L. 27, Tr. 12 Maarso 1975–Wax ka beddelid Sharciga ‘Dhowritaanka Badbaadada Ummadda’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abrile 1975, L. 4, 190–191; ‘Xeer- ka Madaxweynaha JDS Lambar 28 taariikh 7 Mar. 1982, Magacaabidda Xubnaha Guddiga Qaranka ee Xisaabi Xil ma Leh’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abriil 1982, L. 4, 253; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 30 8 Maajo 1982, Magacaabidda Xubin Guddiga Qaranka ee Xisaabi Xil ma Leh’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 20 Maajo Abriil 1982, L. 1 R 5, 399. 82. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 29 ee 8 Oktobar 1986, Billad Qalin Waddaninimo ah oo lagu maamusay J/sha Ganacsade Cabdi Xoosh Ashkir Bur-yar iyo Ganacsade Jaalle Jaamac Guuleed Cabdi’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 1da Nofembar 1986, L. 11, 666–667. 83. Available at: ‘Duceysane Wiilkayow’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWp- Mo7rf0 (between min. 00:19 and 07:05), a ccessed on 20 August 2014. 84. ‘Xeer: Madaxweynaha JDS L 30 ee 11 M[a]arso 1981 Magacaabid Maamulaha Sare ee Hay’adda Qaxootiga Qaranka’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soo- maaliya, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 1 Juunyo 1981, Lr. 6, 884; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 101 ee 6. Okt. 1980–Abuuris Xafiis’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 1 Nofem- ber 1980, L. 11, 1109; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 26 ee 12 Abr. 1981, Hey’adda Qaxootiga Qaranka’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 1 Juunyo 1981, L. 6, 865–874. Both the Commissioner Tarah and his deputy Mohamed Said Gees belonged to the same clan camp as Siad’s. ‘Somalia: One in Three Refugee’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 1 (1981), 46–51. 85. Hashim, who interviewed one of these representatives in the United States, mentioned the existence of large sums of money intended for refugee purposes for which no one could be accounted. Hashim, The Fallen State, 104 & 120n225. Maren, who worked for USAID in Somalia and had a working relationship with Tarrah, witnessed that Siad Barre’s close clansmen and relatives ‘were the ones who magically got all the contracts’ from the UNHCR and other relief organisations. Therefore, ‘Tarrah ran the NRC with an iron hand and sticky fingers and eventually became one of Somalia’s richest man’, because he ‘had gotten rich from his eight years at the helm of the NRC’. Maren, The Road to Hell, 63 & 131. See also 163–164. 86. ‘Rhetoric or Reality at the U.N.?’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1980), 43–49, 43 cited. Some authors attributed the refugee problem of Somalia to not only irredentism but colonialism. See Vincent B. Khapoya, ‘Historical Origins of the Refugee Problem: Somalia’s Colonial Experience and Irredentism’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 29–31; and Ismail Wais, ‘An Account of the Colonial Experience of the Western Somalis’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 4 (1981/82), 23–29. For foreign aid with regards to refugee assistance, see also Abdi Sheikh- Abdi, ‘Current American Relief Efforts on the Refugee Crisis in the Horn’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1980), 55–57. 87. For the terror these refugees subjected, see ‘Ethiopia: Conquest and Terror’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 1 (1981), 8–19. 88. Stanley B. Andrews, ‘Reconstructing a Shattered Somalia’, Washington Report on Mid- dle East Affairs, August/September 1991, 47. See also Helen Winternitz, ‘Somalia: The Largest Relief Program in Africa–and the Most out of Control’, The Washington Post, August 23, 1981, C3. 89. Quoted in Chirawu, ‘The Flip Sides of Corruption’, 54. 90. Güther Schlee, ‘Regularity in Chaos: The Politics of Difference in the Recent History of Somalia’, in Güther Schlee (ed.), Imagined Differences: Hatred and the Construction of Iden- tity (Hamburg, Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2002), 251–280, 256 cited. 91. Maren, The Road to Hell, 93. 92. ‘Somalia: U.S. Food Aid Goes Astray’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 28, 1986, No. 238, 5. Cf. ‘Somalia: Increase in the US Food Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newslet- Notes 311 ter, Saturday, January 21st, 1984, No. 115, 7; and ‘Somalia: Boost in American Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, March 10th, 1984, No. 122, 8. 93. ‘Somalia: UNHCR-Government Confrontation’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, November 14th, 1981, No. 3, 5; ‘Somalia: NGO’s to Leave’, The Indian Ocean Newslet- ter, Saturday, May 15th, 1982, No. 29, 2; ‘Somalia: New Dispute with the UNHCR’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, October 17, 1987, No. 302, 2; and ‘Somalia: UNHCR to End its Programme’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Nov 19, 1988, No. 357, 3. 94. ‘Somalia: Refugees Go Home’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 16, 1985, No. 206, 3. See also Michael Simmons, ‘UN Ends Somali Refugee Work’, The Guardian (London), Monday, 11 January 1988. Cf. ‘Somalia/Ethiopia: What Future for the Refugees’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 25, 1989, No. 407, 4; and ‘Somalia/Ethi- opia: Refugees Want to Stay in Somalia’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 10, 1990, No. 417, 3. 95. ‘Somalia: More Refugees Flee Ethiopia’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, 1st March, 1986, No. 221, 2; and ‘Somalia: Refugee Camp to Move’, The Indian Ocean Newslet- ter, Saturday, July 5, 1986, No. 239, 3. 96. ‘Somalia: SNM Alleges Tax on Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, May 11, 1985, No. 181, 4. 97. ‘Somalia: New Tax Ministry Formed’, ‘Somalia: U.S. Import Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 24, 1985, No. 194, 6. See also ‘Somalia: UN Protests At Ex- change Rate’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 27, 1985, No. 179, 8.

6. THE POLITICS OF THE 1977 WAR AND ITS RAMIFICATIONS

1. John H. Spencer, ‘A Reassessment of Ethiopian-Somali Conflict’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July/September 1978), 23–30. For analysis somewhat sympathetic to Somalia, see Robert E. Gorelick, ‘Pan-Somali-ism vs. Territorial Integrity’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1980–81), 31–36. For most recent investigation on the military history of this war, see Tom Cooper, Wings over Ogaden: The Ethiopian-Somali War, 1978–1979 (Solihull, England: He- lion & Co., 2014). For pioneering study exploring women’s role of the war, see Remco Van Hauwermeiren, ‘The Ogaden War: Somali Women’s Roles’, Afrika Focus, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2012), 9–30. 2. Peter J. Schraeder, ‘The End of the Cold War and U.S. Foreign Policy toward the Horn of Africa in the Immediate Post-Siyaad and Post-Mengistu Eras’, Northeast African Studies 1, 1 (1994), 91–119. 3. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 274; and Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 32. 4. ‘Horn of Africa: The Stakes in Ogaden’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, De- cember 4th, 1982, No. 58, 1–2; and ‘Ogaden: The Land but not the People’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 1 (1981), 42–45. This region was erroneously known as ‘Ogaden’, as though the whole Somali clans (of which the Ogaadeen as a clan is one of them) living in the area was from that clan. This is a mind-boggling phenomenon that warrants its own study. Almost all Somali clans have been found to be populated in the territory. Some authors distinguished Ogaden as the region from Ogaadeen as a clan. Cedric Barnes, ‘Gubo – Ogaadeen Poetry and the Aftermath of the Dervish Wars’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2006), 105–117; and Maren, The Road to Hell, 53. For the contesting narratives surrounding this region in relation to Ethiopian historical infiltration, see Cedric Barnes, ‘The Ethiopian State and its Somali Periphery, circa 1888–1948’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cam- bridge, 2000). For the background of this conflict, see Edmond J. Keller, ‘The OAU and the Ogaden Dispute’, in Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (ed.), Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Atlanta: African Studies Association Press, 1991), 97–116. For historical overview of the Somali- Ethiopian conflict through the ages, see Richard Greenfield, ‘Towards an Understanding of the 312 Notes

Somali Factor’, in Peter Woodward and Murray Forsyth (eds.), Conflict and Peace in the Horn of Africa: Federalism and its Alternatives (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994), 103–113. 5. Cabdalla Nuuraddiin Axmed Al Qeysar, ‘Aniga iyo Jaceyl: Naftaa igu kaa Qasbeysee uma Qalantid Caashaqa’, Qaran, 1997. In his song, Duceysane (the blessed son), the poet Mohamoud Tukale Osman through the voice of singer Hassan Aden Samatar with female chorus acts as a poor private soldier, who is cognisant of the power of the military officers, as well as the unaccounted wealth accrued and amassed in the name of the army. Available at: ‘Duceysane Wiilkayow’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWp-Mo7rf0 (between min. 00:19 and 07:05), a ccessed on 20 August 2014. 6. ‘Xulka heesaha wadaniga #2’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGW1BK5MWg0 (between min. 00:31 – 01:51), accessed on 30 August 2014. My translation. The literature on this war is varied in content and scope, with the most concentrating on the regional conflict from the perspective of international relations. For a work sympathetic to Somalia, see Louis Fitzgibbon, The Betrayal of the Somalis (London: Rex Collings, 1982). For an Ethiopian perspective, see Gebru Tareke, ‘The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977 Revisited’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (2000), 635–667. For a similar work, but one about the 1964 war, see Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, ‘The Background of the Ethio-Somalian Boundary Dispute’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1964), 189–219. 7. Interview with Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Keyd Media. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-Bbfkub28 (between min. 04:40 – 04:055), accessed on 9 May 2014. 8. ‘Law No. 40 of 19 May, 1971 – Revolutionary Orientation Course for graduates before employment and amendment to Law on Training Course for State employers’, Bollettino Uffi- ciale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 26 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 7 al. n. 5, 633. See also ‘Somalia: Mandatory Military Services’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 19th, 1983, No. 106, 3. 9. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 10. Telephone interview with Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, 31 July 2014. 11. ‘Isu diyaarinta difaaca, sharafta iyo gobannimada ummadda Soomaaliyeed’, Halgan, Sannadka 1aad, Tirsiga 10aad, Agoosto 1977, 9–10. 12. ‘Go From My Country – Western Somalia and Abyssinian Colonialism’, a booklet published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Somali Democratic Republic, Mogadishu, 1978; ‘Consequences of Abyssinian Colonialism’, a booklet published by The Government of the Somali Democratic Republic, Mogadishu, 1979; and SONNA, ‘Information Minister Warns Against Abyssinian Danger’, Heegan, Monday, Dec. 1978, 2. See also ‘Somali Insurgents Say They Have Seized Ethiopian Town’, The New York Times, Wednesday, August 3, 1977; ‘Ethi- opia Now Talks of Full Scale War: Somalia Again Accused of Using Regular Forces in Conflict’, The New York Times, Tuesday, August 9, 1977; and Edward Cody, ‘Somali Guerril- las Intensify Fight for Ethiopian Region’, The Washington Post, May 22, 1980, AI. 13. ‘Letter from Jeddah: An Interview with WSLF’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April/ June 1978), 7–9. 14. ‘With the WSLF’, Middle East Research and Information Project (Merip) Reports, No. 106, Horn of Africa: The Coming Storm (Jun., 1982), 16–21, 21 cited. 15. Cf. ‘Xoreynta Jabuuti’, Halgan, Sannad 1aad, Lam. 3, Disambar 1976, 29–32; and ‘Jabhadaha Soomaalida Galbeed’, Halgan, Sannad 1aad, Tirsiga 11aad, Sebtember 1977, 5–8. The Somalis’ expectations for Djibouti to join Somalia was dashed down to the ground. For critical account predicting a grim future for Djibouti, see Said Yusuf Abdi, ‘The Mini-Republic of Djibouti: Problems and Prospects’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April/June 1978), 35–40. 16. Cf. Cabdalqawi Axmed Yuusuf, ‘Xaq Ahaanshaha Halganka Hubaysan ee Soomaalida Galbeed’, Halgan, Sannad 2aad, Tirsiga 13aad, Nofember 1976, 5–10; and Abdulqawi A. Yusuf, A Legal Analysis of Ethiopia’s Occupation of Western Somalia (Mogadishu, N.P., 1977). See also W. Michael Reisman, ‘The Case of Western Somaliland: An International Legal Perspective’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July/September 1978), 13–22. 17. ‘Ethiopian Reconstruction’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 17, No. 17, August 26, 1966, 6–8, 6 cited. Notes 313

18. Abdi Sheikh-Abdi, ‘The Mini-Republic of Djibouti: Problems and Prospects’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April/June 1978), 61–65. 19. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 90. For an account on how the road to socialism led to cul-de-sac, see Anthony Hughes, ‘Somalia’s Socialist Road’, Africa Report, Vol. 22, No. 2 (March-April 1977), 41–49. 20. Gérard Prunier, ‘Segmentarité et Violence dans l’Espace Somali, 1840–1992’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, Vol. 37, No. 146 (1997), 379–401, 391 cited. 21. ‘Ethiopia/Somalia War: A Long Struggle’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 18, No. 2, 7 Octo- ber 1977, 4–6, 6 cited. 22. Cf. Somali Democratic Republic, The Disastrous Damages of Ethiopian Aggression (Mogadishu: The Ministry of Information and National Guidance, 1978); and Ethiopia, Memo- randum: War Drums on the Horn of Africa – March of Somalia’s Expansionism (Addis Ababa: Berhanena Selam Press, 1977). Ethiopia maintained blaming Arab countries for supporting Siad Barre. See Mohamed A. El-Khawas, ‘Arab Involvement in the Horn of Africa: The Ogaden War’, Journal for Arab and Islamic Studies, Vol. 2, Nos. 3–4 (1981), 567–582. 23. Colin Legum, ‘Ethiopia – Moscow’s Closest Allay in Africa’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 3 (1983/84), 43–45. A good source of the Soviet views on Somalia and Ethiopia is Colin Darch, A Soviet View of Africa: An Annotated Bibliography, On Ethiopia, Somalia an Djibouti (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980). China would later involve itself in the political heat of the Horn, but as much as the U.S. and the Soviets. See Kola Olufemi, ‘Sino-Soviet Rivalry in the Horn of Africa’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 3 (1983/84), 16–24. 24. ‘Third African Department, Soviet Foreign Ministry, Information Report on Somali- Ethiopian Territorial Disputes, 2 February 1977’. Copy on file with the author. Cf. Telegram 1287 From the Embassy in Somalia to the Department of State, September 3, 1975, ‘Sub: Siad’s Somalia: Soviet and US Roles’, National Archives, RG 59, Central Policy Files, 1975. Secret; LIMDIS. Repeated to Addis Ababa, Jidda, Nairobi, Khartoum, Cairo, Moscow, Paris, London, Rome, Dar Es Salaam, Sana, and USUN. Available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve06/d145 (accessed on 1 May 2014). For a carefully-drafted Soviet stance on the Somali-Ethiopian dispute, see ‘Somalia's Territorial Disagreements with Ethiopia and the Position of the USSR (Brief Information Sheet)’, Third African Department, Soviet Foreign Ministry, Information Report on Somali-Ethiopian Territorial Disputes, 2 February 1977. TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 73, d. 1632, ll. 39–44; translated by Mark H. Doctoroff; note revisions to this document added in late May-early June, printed below. Available at: http:// www.banadir.com/77/2.shtml (accessed on 1 May 2014). For a recent thorough examination, see Radoslav Yordanov, ‘Soviet Involvement in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1947–1991’ (unpublished DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford, 2012). 25. Cited in Schlee, ‘Regularity in Chaos’, 255n187. 26. Quoted in ibid. 27. See, for instance, David D. Laitin, ‘United Foreign Policy: Options on the Horn’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April/June 1978), 49–51. 28. Keith Irvine, ‘Storm Clouds Over the African Horn’, Current History , Vol. 58 (March 1970), 142–147. 29. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 30. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 140. 31. Fitzgibbon, The Betrayal of the Somalis, 80. 32. For Ghaddafi, see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 287. 33. ‘Somalia Barre Hangs on’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 24, No. 5, March 2, 1983, 5–7, 4 cited. 34. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 35. Telephone interview with Professor Hassan Mohamed Omar ‘Ookiyo’, 12 April 2014. See also ‘Ethiopia/Somalia War: A Long Struggle’, Africa Confidential, 4–6. 36. Embassy of the US in the Democratic Republic of Somalia, Memorandum of Conversa- tion between Soviet Ambassador to Somalia G.V. Samsonov and Somali President Siad Barre, 23 February 1977. Ambassador of the USSR in the sdr /g. Samsonov. TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 73, d. 1621, ll. 10–14; translation by S. Savranskaya. Available at: http://www.banadir.com/77/ 2.shtml (accessed on 1 May 2014). 314 Notes

37. Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 174. 38. Record of Negotiations between Somali and Soviet Officials in Moscow, 25–29 July 1977 (excerpts). From the journal of Secret. Copy no. 10 L.F. Ilichev 11 August 1977, No. 2148/GS’. Copy on file with the author. 39. ‘Minutes of CPSU CC Politburo Meeting, 9 March 1978 (excerpt) Top Secret Only copy, Working Transcript MEETING OF THE CC CPSU POLITBURO’. Copy on file with the author. 40. Transcript of Meeting between East German leader Erich Honecker and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, East Berlin 3 April 1977 (excerpts)’, Wilson Center, Digital Archive, Internation- al History Declassified. Available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111844 (retrieved on 8 March 2014). 41. Ibid. 42. Interview with Abdi Warsame Isaaq, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/ 2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). For the details of this visit, see F. Stephen Larrabee, Somali-Soviet Relations in the Light of Siad Barre’s Visit to Moscow (New York: Radio Liberty Research, 1977). 43. William R. Keylor, A World of Nations: The International Order Since 1945, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 431. For the switches from the Soviet to the U.S., see Vijay Gupta, ‘The Ethiopia-Somalia Conflict and the Role of the External Powers’, Foreign Affairs Reports (New Delhi), XXVII, No. 3 (March 1978), 39–57; Stephen F. Larrabee, ‘After the Break: Soviet-Somali Relations’, Radio Liberty Research (New York), 1978, 7–11; Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: U.S. Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Robert Kilmer, ‘United States and Soviet Military Aid to Somalia: A Comparative Analysis of Security Assistance’, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama Air Command and Staff College, 1985; and Lawrence Whitten, ‘The Soviet- Cuban Presence in the Horn of Africa’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (London), Vol. 123 (September 1978), 39–45. For the projection of Soviet military strength in Africa in general and the Horn of Africa in particular, see Henry Bienen, ‘Perspectives on Soviet Intervention in Africa’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), 29–42. 44. Memorandum of Conversation between Soviet Ambassador in Ethiopia A.P. Ratanov and Cuban Ambassador in Ethiopia Jose Peres Novoa, 10 February 1977: TOP SECRET, Copy No. 2, From the diary of “30” March 1977. Copy on file with the author. 45. ‘An Interview with Somali Minister of Youth and Sports’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January/March 1979), 7–9, 8 cited. For denunciations on the Cuban role, see Said Yusuf Abdi, ‘Cuba’s Role in Africa: Revolutionary or Reactionary?’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Octo- ber/December 1978), 17–24. In an open letter to Castro, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also appealed to Cubans not to assist Mengistu in perpetuating the long oppressed communities under the Ethiopian State sphere. ‘A Letter to Cubans in Harar’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January/March 1979), 10–14. 46. These six members were: Abdullahi Warsame Nuur, Omar Salaad Elmi, Ahmed Mo- hamed Dhoolayare, Abdirahman Aideed Ahmed, Warsame Ali Farah ‘Juguf’ and Mohamed Mohamoud Dhuunkaal. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 47. Telephone interview with Hussein Saalah Muuse, 14 July 2014. 48. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 49. ‘Go From My Country! Western Somalia and Abyssinian Colonialism’, 44. 50. Interview with Mohamed Siad Barre, BBC World Service. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBiPCCi4i9o (between min. 00:01: – 03:25), accessed on 9 May 2014. 51. Albert L. Weeks, ‘Soviet Geopolitical Momentum’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Janu- ary/March 1979), 42–53, 47 cited. 52. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 53. Raymond L. Thurston, ‘The United States, Somalia and the Crisis in the Horn’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April/June 1978), 11–20. 54. ‘Transcript of Meeting between East German leader Erich Honecker and Cuban leader Fidel Castro’. Notes 315

55. Telephone interview with Engineer Hassan Mohamed Ali ‘Hassan Baseey’, 31 May 2014; and interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. See also Karl Lavrencic, ‘Somalia: Living Without Russia’, Africa: An International Business, Economic and Political Magazine (London), No. 83, July 1978, 40–41. 56. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014; and telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 57. Quoted in ‘The Horn: Somalia calculates anew’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 20, No. 4, February 14, 1979, 3–5, 4 cited. See also ‘Somalia: Barre Treads Softly’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 19, No. 9, April 28, 1978, 3–4. 58. ‘Sharci L. 79 ee 11 Dis. 1977 – Sharciga isu diyaarinta Difaaca Dalka’, Faafinta Rasmi- ga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Sannadka 5aad, Muqdisho, 25.12.1977, L. 3R, 12, 1265–1267. 59. ‘Amar Madaxweynaha J.D.S. Lamb. 1 ee 21 Oktoobar 1980 – ku soo rogid Dalka J.D.S. Xukun deg deg ah’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 29 Oktoobar 1980, L. 2 R 10; and ‘Amar Madaxweynaha J.D.S. Lamb. 2 ee 21 Oktoobar 1980 – laalid Qodobbada Dastuurka iyo Shuruucda aan la socon Karin deg deg ah’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 29 Oktoobar 1980, L. 2 R 10. 60. ‘Soviet Foreign Ministry and CPSU CC International Department, Background Report on the Somali-Ethiopian Conflict, 3 April 1978 Secret, Copy No. 3 Issue 164/3afo IV.03.78’. Copy on file with the author. 61. ‘Horn of Africa: The Two Facets of US Policy’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, October 15th, 1983, No. 101, 1. 62. ‘Somalia Harar Isn’t Everything’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 18, No. 24, December 2, 1977, 2–4. 63. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014; telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. For a well-researched study that justifies Carter’s untenable policies, see Donna R. Jackson, Jimmy Carter and the Horn of Africa: Cold War Policy on Ethiopia and Somalia (Jefferson, N.I.: McFarland and Co., 2007). For the nationalistic dimension and geopolitical influence of this conflict, see Tom J. Farer, War Clouds on the Horn of Africa : A Crisis for Détente (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1976); and Tom J. Farer, War Clouds on the Horn of Africa: The Widening (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1979). 64. CF. Arnoud De Borchgrave, ‘Crossed Wires’, Newsweek, September 26, 1977; James Pringle, ‘State of Siege’, Time, September 26, 1977; David Wood, ‘Ethiopia Goes on the Attack’, Time, February 20, 1978; and David Wood, ‘A Desert Duel Keeps Heating Up’, Time, February 27, 1978. 65. Quoted in David Rawson, ‘Dealing with Disintegration: U.S. Assistance and the Somali State’, in Ahmed I. Samatar (ed.), The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 147–187, 164 cited. 66. ‘Somalia Harar Isn’t Everything’, Africa Confidential, 2. 67. ‘Wafdi Mareykan ah oo booqday Soomaaliya’, Halgan, Sannadkii 2aad, Tirsiyada 17aad & 18aad, Maarso-Abriil 1978, 20. 68. Quoted in Maren, The Road to Hell, 36. 69. ‘Somalia: Western Visit’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, March 20th, 1982, No. 21, 3. 70. ‘Jaalle Siyaad oo booqday Yurubta Galbeed iyo dalal Carbeed’, Halgan, Sannadka 2aad, Tirsiga 20aad, Juunyo 1978, 16–17. 71. TNA, FCO 31/2360, ‘Visit of President Siad Barre of Somalia to UK’, June 1978; TNA, FCO 31/1871, ‘Somalia: Visit to UK by President Siad Barre; meetings with Prime Minister’, June 1978; TNA, FCO 31/2362, ‘Possible Recruitment of Military Support Staff for Somalia’, 1978; TNA, FCO 31/2363, ‘Export License Applications for Arms and Military Equipment to Somalia’, 1978; and TNA, FCO 31/2364, ‘Sale, Supply and Servicing of Arms and Military Equipment to Somalia from UK’, 1978. See also ‘Somalia: Slow Military Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, October 31, 1981, No. 1, 6. 316 Notes

72. ‘Booqashadii Jaalle Siyaad ee Sacuudi Araabiya’, Halgan, Sannadka 1aad, Tirsiga 10aad, Agoosto 1977, 20–21; ‘Jaalle Siyaad oo booqday Masar iyo Sacuudi Areebiya’, Halgan, Sannadka 2aad, Tirsiga 19aad, Maajo 1978, 17; and ‘Anglo-Arab Deal with Somalia’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 18, No. 17, 19 August 1977. 73. Mohamed Nur, ‘It is Impossible to Crush the Eritrean Revolution’, Heegan, Monday, Dec. 1978, 2. 74. Memorandum of Conversation between the Soviet Counsellor-Minister in Ethiopia S. Sinitsin with Political Counsellor of the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia Herbert Malin, 2 February 1977. Copy on file with the author. 75. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014. 76. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 18 June 2014. 77. Dan Connell, ‘New Ethiopian Offensive in the Ogaden’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1980–81), 51–54. 78. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 79. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 80. Ibid. 81. ‘Xeer Was. Gaashaandhigga, L. 5 ee 16 Abr. 1985, Xeer Nidaamiyaha ee Xeerka Ba[x[siga iyo Hub ururinta’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 2 Maajo 1985, L. 5, 311–315. 82. Oral information from Colonel H. S. My translation. 83. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 26. As Colonel Muhiddiin Badar recalled, this point is still emphasised by many Somalis. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014. See similar observation in Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 64–69 and 254–255. However, one former regime civil servant disagreed and discarded the claim. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. 84. Interview with Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Universal Somali TV. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcgfa6KFEZw (between min. 38:51 – 42:010), accessed on 9 March 2014. 85. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014; interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014; interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, Keyd Media. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5Xycjbmry7U (between min. 02:40: – 04:30), accessed on 9 May 2014; interview with General Jama Mohamed Ghalib, Keyd Media. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V9Bg3mhMIbA (between min. 06:08 – 06:30), accessed on 17 April 2014; interview with Mohamed Warsame Ali ‘Kiimiko’, Keyd Media. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=R02mhTcLnCg (between min. 04:44 – 05:01), accessed on 17 April 2014; and interview with Mohamed Aden Sheikh, Keyd Media. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oE-Bbfkub28 (between min. 04:45: – 06:00), accessed on 9 May 2014. 86. Keylor, A World of Nations, 431. 87. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. See also ‘Somalia: A heavy toll’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 21, No. 17, August 13, 1980, 5–6. In a BBC Somali interview, General Ali Samatar insisted that the Somali army death was not more than 5,000. For sympathetic analysis of Somali suffering, see Graham Hancock, ‘Somalia: Wounds of Nationalism that will not Heal’, New African Development Journal, Vol. 11 (1970), 634–635. 88. ‘Somalia: Siad Ready to Resume Moscow Links’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, February 16, 1985, No. 169, 3; ‘Somalia: Secret Mission to Moscow’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 22, 1985, No. 187, 2; ‘Somalia: Back to Normal with Moscow’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, October 18, 1986, No. 252, 2; ‘Somalia: Dialogue Re- sumes with Moscow’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 22, 1986, No. 257, 2; ‘Somalia: Mission to Moscow’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 29, 1986, No. 258, 3; ‘Somalia: Return of the Soviet Union’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, December 13, 1986, No. 260, 1 & 2; ‘Somalia: Negotiations with Moscow’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 27, 1987, No. 288, 3; ‘Somalia: Soviet Official Visits Mogadishu’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 16, 1988, No. 328, 2; and ‘Somalia: Towards Notes 317

Moscow, Tripoli and Havana’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 26, 1989, No. 394, 2. 89. ‘An Interview with Somali Minister of Youth and Sports’, 7–9. 90. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014; and telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014 and 18 June 2014. 91. Oral information from General Abdirahman Warsame Aarre, 11 September 2014. 92. ‘Interview with Ahmed Saleebaan Dafle’, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSARY-PART-2–18OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 93. Interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, Universal Somali TV. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcgfa6KFEZw (between min. 1:22 – 1:23), accessed on 9 March 2014. 94. Statement by Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile-Mariam at the O.A.U meeting, Gabon, July 1977, cited in Laitin, ‘The War in the Ogaden’, 102. 95. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014; telephone interview with Consular Abdi Salaad Ali, 30 August 2014; and telephone interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, 3 August 2014. See also TNA, FCO 31/2616, ‘Internal Political Situation in Somalia’, 1979. 96. ‘Sharci L. 7 ee 19 Febraayo 79, Billadaha Maamuuska Milleriga’, Faafinta Rasmiga Ah, Sannadka 7aad, Muqdisho, 1 Maarso 79, L. 3, 194–199. 97. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 57 ee 12 Maarso 1980 – Dallacaad Saraakiil’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 1 Juun 1980, L. 6, 627–674; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 126 ee 4. Nof. 1980 – Dib u celin iyo Dallacaad’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 30 Nofember 1980, L. 3 r 11, 1109; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 13 ee 29 Dis. 1981 – Dallacaad Saraakiileed’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 20ka Maarso 1982, Lr. IR3, 174. 98. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 15 ee 22 Feb. 1989 – Abuurid Kulliyadda C.Q.Sida ee Jaalle Siyaad’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Maarso 1989, L. 3, 118–120. 99. Roger Petersen, ‘Rationality, Ethnicity, and Military Enlistment’, Social Science Infor- mation, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1989), 563–598. 100. Mariam Arif Gassim, Somalia: Clan vs Nation (Leeds: Hollingworth & Moss, 2002), 81. As Achebe bitterly reminds: ‘The denial of merit is a form of social injustice that can hurt not only the individuals directly concerned but ultimately the entire society [...] it is sufficient to state that whenever merit is set by prejudice of whatever origin, individual citizens as well as the nation itself are victimized’. Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 78. 101. Telephone interview with Ishaaq Nuur Hassan, 13 July 2014. 102. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014. 103. Quoted in Bogumil W. Andrzejewski and Ioan M. Lewis, Somali Poetry: An Introduc- tion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 142. 104. Interview with Mohamed Warsame Ali ‘Kiimiko’, Keyd Media. Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=R02mhTcLnCg (between min. 06:47 – 14:12), accessed on 17 April 2014. 105. ‘Heesihii Halganka Soomaali Galbeed’, available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Zw_Z0UCRk-Y (between min. 00:03 and 03:01), a ccessed on 20 August 2014. 106. ‘Lieutenant General Samantar, Second Man, Says: Soviet Union Has Sold US and I Am Not Red General’, Al-Watan Al-‘Arabi (Paris), May 6–12, 1978. 107. ‘Warqad Murtiyeed ay Wadajir u soo saareen JDS iyo M. Soofiyeeti’, Halgan, Sannad 1aad, Lambar 1, Oktoobar 1976, 49–52. On previous visit, the Soviets noted a sense of ambivalence in Samatar’s ‘unofficial’ visit. See ‘Report from CPSU CC to SED CC, Information about the Visit to the Soviet Union of Somalia Vice President Samantar, late May-early June 1977’. Copy on file with the author. 108. ‘Memorandum of Conversation between Soviet Ambassador to Somalia G.V. Samsonov and Somali President Siad Barre, 23 February 1977 EMBASSY OF THE USSR IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF SOMALIA. From the journal of Secret. Copy No. 2 G.V. SAMSONOV Orig. No. 101 11 March 1977’. Copy on file with the author. 318 Notes

109. Bridges, Safirka, 124. Cf. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. Lr. 54, taariikh 28/8/89, Meel- marin Heshiiska Iskaashi ee xagga Hiddaha iyo Dhaqanka oo dhex-maray JDS iyo Jamhuuriy- adda Carabta ee Liibiya’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Setember 1989, Lr. 9, 506–511; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. Lr. 55, taariikh 28/8/89, Meel-marin Heshiiska Iskaashiga Warfaafineed ee dhex-maray JDS iyo Jamhuuriyadda Carabta Liibiya’, Faafin Ras- mi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Setember 1989, Lr. 9, 504. 110. Telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. See also Laitin, ‘The War in the Ogaden’, 110. For more detailed analysis on the diplomatic failure on the part of the Siad Barre regime, see David Laitin, ‘The Ogaadeen Question and Change in Somali Identity’, in Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (eds.), State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 331–349. 111. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 112. Xuseen Maxamed Aadan, ‘Arrinta Itoobiya’, Halgan, Sannad 1, Tirsiga 5, Maarso 1977, 2–3. 113. Quoted in Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 96. 114. Ibid., 96–97. 115. ‘Wareysi Cabdulahi Yuusuf oo ka hadlaya inqilaabkii sida uu u dhacay’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmnHt-fT7w (between min. 08:13 – 57:00), accessed on 1 July 2014. 116. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014. 117. Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 112–113; and Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 98–99. 118. ‘Wareysi Cabdulahi Yuusuf oo ka hadlaya inqilaabkii sida uu u dhacay’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmnHt-fT7w (between min. 33:09 – 45:55), accessed on 1 July 2014. 119. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. General Ghalib noted that those executed were six, comprising both senior and junior officers in the army. Aroma put the number at 15, seven from the army and eight from the air force. Cf. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 66; and Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 175. 120. Oral information from A. A. G., 30 March 2014. 121. ‘Wareysi Cabdulahi Yuusuf oo ka hadlaya inqilaabkii sida uu u dhacay’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmnHt-fT7w (between min. 27:31 – 32:01), accessed on 1 July 2014. 122. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 18 June 2014. General Galaal put the number at 83. Another witness recounted that 84 were selected for massacre, though one survived. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 123. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 124. Mohamud Uluso, ‘Re: Wareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, Saturday, July 26, 2014. 125. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014; and telephone interview with Colonel Abdiweli Jama Warsame Gorod, 11 June 2014. 126. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014; and telephone interview with Salaad Osman Rooble, 4 June 2014. According to another senior officer, a number of armed women affiliated with Siad Barre by close (sub)clanship – Faduma Ali Nakruma, the well-known female singer, among them – volunteered to guide the front gates of the Avizione headquarters (then the base of the dictator) and began to inspect the cars entering the compound during the day of the coup. Oral information from C. X. C., 9 April 2014. 127. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014. 128. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014. 129. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. 130. Telephone interview with Colonel Ali Hussein Ali ‘Aliyow’, 19 April 2014. 131. ‘Wareysi Cabdulahi Yuusuf oo ka hadlaya inqilaabkii sida uu u dhacay’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmnHt-fT7w (between min. 33:09 – 45:55), accessed on 1 July 2014. Notes 319

132. ‘Siad Barre Give More Details on Coup Attempt’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 0440 GMT, 12 April 1978. The regime claimed that they had known the intentions of Irro and his group. ‘Siad Barre Announces Crushing of Attempted Coup’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1030 GMT, 9 April 1978. 133. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014. Colonel Hoogsade also raised this point. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 134. Telephone interview with Colonel Ali Hussein Ali ‘Aliyow’, 19 April 2014; telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014; and telephone interview with Colo- nel Abdiweli Jama Warsame Gorod, 11 June 2014. 135. ‘Wareysi Cabdulahi Yuusuf oo ka hadlaya inqilaabkii sida uu u dhacay’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmnHt-fT7w (between min. 33:09 – 45:55), accessed on 1 July 2014. 136. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014. 137. Ibid. 138. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014; telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; telephone interview with Colonel Mohamed Hussein Loolow, 8 May 2014; telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. General Abdirahman Warsame ‘Aarre’, one of the most senior army officers in the Northern sector, whom they informed, declined to collaborate. It seems that General Aare sensed the clan project in hand in contrast with Lt Said Abdulle Gorod. Lewis called this coup ‘narrow, parochial initiative’ by Majeerteen officers who ‘alienated members of other groups who shared their feelings of discontent’. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 246. However, many Majeerteen politicians insisted that the coup was not clan project. ‘Interview with Mohamed Abshir Walde’, http://www.voanews.com/Medi- aAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY-PART-3–19OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 139. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014. 140. Ibid. 141. Ibid. 142. Interview with Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye, London, 22 June 2014. 143. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS Lamb. 49 ee Magacaabid Garsoore Dr Saciid Axmed Ke- diye, Maxkamadda C.Q.S.’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Agoosto 1982, L. 2 r 8, 689. 144. ‘Defector Discusses Attempt’, Domestic Service in English, Nairobi, 1600 GMT, 8 May 1978. Maryan Haji Elmi also argued that ‘the war was designed to eliminate [forces from] other clans’. Telephone interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, 30 August 2014. Another senior member of the regime suggested similar observation, but contended that most of those sent to the warfronts were from the Hawiye clan. Telephone interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, 3 August 2014. 145. ‘Mogadiscio Denies Ever Planning to Invade Kenya’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1115 GMT, 9 May 1978. According to Gaas and Loolow, the detainees accused of conducting the coup were subjected to torture in prison and forced the first day of detention to suffer without food for more than 24 hours. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014; and telephone interview with Colonel Mohamed Hussein Loolow, 8 May 2014. 146. ‘Siad Barre May Day Speech’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 0448 GMT, 1 May 1978. 147. Ibid. 148. ‘The Clans of Somalia’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 19, No. 25, December 15, 1978, 4–5, 4 cited. 149. These officers had not been involved in the coup but were arrested due to suspicion. Interview with Colonel Mohamed Haashi, London, 27 April 2014; and oral information from Adan Haji Jaabiri, 29 March 2014. General Aftooye was later released from prison and posted to Paris, as a military attaché. Colonel Ali Haji Jaabiri was transferred from the military and 320 Notes reposted to the Telecommunications and Post Ministry as an advisor to the Minister, Abdullahi Ossoble Siad. Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye, tortured in detention, was also later released. 150. Overall, they consisted of 4 Hawiye, 1 Isaaq and 12 Majeerteen. Their names were: (1) Colonel Mohamed Sheikh Osman ‘Irro’, (2) Major Said Mohamed Jama, (3) Major Ibrahim Mohamoud Hersi, (4) Major Said Jama Nur, (5) Captain Mohamed Ahmed Yusuf Aganeh, (6) Captain Abdisalan Elmi Warsame, (7) Captain Bashiir Abshir Iise, (8) Captain Abdullahi Hassan Nuur, (9) Lieutenant Abdi Osman Ugaas, (10) Lieutenant Abdirahman Ma’allin Ba- shiir, (11) Lieutenant Aadan Warsame Abdullahi, (12) Lieutenant Abdullahi Mohamoud Guu- leed, (13) Lieutenant Said Abdulle Gorod, (14) Lieutenant Abdulwahab Ahmed Haashi, (15) Lt Abdulkadir Geelle Omar, and (16) Sergeant (Sgt) Farah Mohamed Halwo. The seventeenth was Abdulqafaar Warsame Abdulle, the only civilian member, who was civil servant and a close clansman of Irro. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014. See also ‘Executions Carried Out’, Agence France-Presse (AFP), 26 October 1978. Elsewhere, Compagnon incorrectly writes that ‘sixteen of the seventeen plotters executed on October 26, 1978 were Majeerteen’. 151. The most prominent of this group mentioned in the news bulletin of Radio Mogadishu news were: (1) Lt Omar Ahmed Gaas, (2) Lt Hassan Haji Abdi, (3) Lt Abdullahi Ahmed Shire, (4) Lt Abdullahi Mohamoud ‘Wardheere’, (5) Mohamoud Mohamed Afrah, (6) Lt Daher Mo’allin Elmi, (7) Lt Yusuf Ismail Awale, (8) 2nd Lt Mohamoud Rashid Jama, (9) 2nd Lt Mohamoud Sheikh Mohamed ‘Yilgor’, and (10) 2nd Lt Yusuf Madar ‘Egeh’. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014; and ‘Sentences Announced for Coup Conspirators’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1115 GMT, 12 September 1978. 152. Telephone interview with Major Omar Ahmed Gaas, 24 May 2014.

THE CALAMITY OF THE STATE: THE TERROR

1. Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country, 57.

7. THE EXPLOITATION OF CLAN AS POLITICAL RESOURCE

1. Gérard Prunier, ‘Segmentarité et Violence dans l’Espace Somali’, 388. A brief comparisons between Siad Barre and the Sayid in relations of Islam, ideology and clan, was made in this French-written study. 2. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014. 3. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 4. Telephone interview with Engineer Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdi ‘Mashanleyste’, 5 April 2014. 5. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 91. 6. Telephone interview with Colonel Omar Saleebaan, 30 September 2014. 7. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 149. Three years, when the call of clan names were declared illegal, the National Printing Agency published a volume collected for the poems of the Sayid Mohamed Abdule Hassan, many of which the Sayid affronted countless clans. See Sheekh Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Diiwaanka Gabayadii Sayid Maxamad Cabdulle Xasan (Xamar: Wasaaradda Hiddaha iyo Tacliinta Sare, Wakaaladda Madbacadda Qaranka, 1974); and Aw Jaamac Cumar Ciise, Taariikhdii Daraawiishta iyo Sayid Maxamad Cabdulle Xasan, 1895–1921 (Muqdisho: Wasaaradda Hiddaha iyo Tacliinta Sare, Akadeemiyadaha Dhaqanka, 1976). 8. Cited in Axmed, Adduun iyo Taladii, 98. My translation. Notes 321

9. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS, Lamb. 21 taariikh 1 Mar. 1982 – Isku shaandheynta Golaha Wasiirada’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maarso 1982, L. 3r3, 229–333. 10. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 25 ee 15 Febr. 80 – Magacaabid Golaha Dawladda Cusub’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 28 Febraayo 1980, Lr. 4R2, 312–315. On Abdirahman Jama, see ‘Prodigal Brother: Nobody Knows My Name’, Africa Events, Febru- ary 1988, 11–12. For a list of close clan cronies, see Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 17–174; and Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques, Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 2, 844–847. 11. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 15 ee 2 Febraayo 1987, Magacaabidda Xubnaha Golaha Wasiirrada’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 17 Maajo 1987, L. 1 R 5, 284–288; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 3 ee 21 Dis. 1987, Magacaabidda Xubnaha Golaha Wasiirada’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Jannaayo 1988, Lambar 8, 37–40; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 30, taariikh 14.4.1989: Magacaabidda Wasiir- ro-ku-xigeennada’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maajo 1989, L. 1 R 5, 254–255. 12. For the names of these generals compared with others of different clans, see Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 171. 13. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 18 November 1972, n. 179 – Promozione di Ufficiali delle Forze Polizia’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Demo- cratica Somala, Anno IV, Mogadiscio, 12 Dicembre 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al. n. 12, 1510–1511. 14. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. 15. General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 18 June 2014; telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014; and telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. 16. ‘Somalia: Generals on the Move’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 25, No. 10, 9 May 1984, 7–8. 17. ‘Rhetoric or Reality at the U.N.?’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1980), 43–49, 45 cited. 18. Conversations with Colonel Hassan Mohamed Sabriye ‘Gaamuur’ in Minneapolis, MN, August 2008. As a Somali commentator wrote in 1981: ‘In fact, as far as the Somali President is concerned, ability and loyalty are incompatible, more so if a person is not a member of his clan’. ‘Mohamoud Hassan Replies’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1981), 47–49, 48 cited. 19. Quoted in Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 243–244. 20. Adam, From Tyranny to Anarchy, 10 and 86. 21. Telephone interview with Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, 31 July 2014. 22. Ibid. 23. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, 17 Agosto 1975, L. 120 – Dhisid Gobolka Jubada Dhexe’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 27 Agoosto 1975, L. 3 R 8, 601. 24. Quoted in Maren, The Road to Hell, 13. 25. Ibrahim Megag Samatar, ‘The Siad Style’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1981), 36–37, 37 cited. 26. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014. 27. Telephone interview with Ahmed Salaad Kulmiye, 2 June 2014. Ahmed Salaad, a former civil servant, later became a governor in post-Siad Barre ‘transitional’ governments in Somalia. 28. Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration, 111. 29. Oral information from I. H. N., 13 February 2014. 30. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘DARAASAD: Ninba Dahab Lumay si’ u Doondoon: Mushki- ladda Colaadda Soomaaliya Waxaa Tiir-dhexaad u ah Gobollada Jubbooyinka’. Available at: http://www.somalitalk.com/2007/jul/01jul607.html (accessed on 12 March 2014). Kenneth Menkhaus and Kathryn Craven observed entire villages being rooted out after the State expro- priated their lands for exploitative farming. Kenneth Menkhaus and Kathryn Craven, ‘Land Alienation and the Imposition of State Farms in the Lower Jubba Valley’, in Catherine Beste- man and Lee V. Cassanelli (eds.), The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 155–177. 322 Notes

31. ‘Sharci L. 73 ee 21 Oktoobar 1975 – Sharciga Dhulka Beeraha’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 3aad, Muqdisho, 23 Nofembre 1975, L. 2 R. 11, 873–880. 32. Telephone interview with Engineer Yarow Shariif Aadan, 31 May 2014; and telephone interview with Engineer Saalah Sheikh Osman, 14 June 2014. For how Bantu/Jareer community suffered under post- and post-colonial Somalia, see Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Ethnicity, Exclusion and (In)Equality in Somali Setting: The Case of Bantu/Jareer Community’. Paper read as a panellist at the ‘Somali monitories and citizenship’ conference, hosted by Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Univer- sity of London, 22 October 2013. For more detailed studies on the Bantu/Jareer, see Catherine Besteman, ‘Land Tenure, Social Power, and the Legacy of Slavery in Southern Somalia’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Arizona, 1991); Francesca Declich, ‘Il Processo di Formazione dell Identita Culturale delle Populazione Bantu della Somalia Meridionale’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Instituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli, 1992); and Kenneth Menkhaus, ‘Rural Transformation and the Roots of Underdevelopment in Somalia’s Lower Jubba Valley’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1989). For the history of Somali Bantu/Jareer in pre- and post-colonial Somalia, see Mohamed A. Eno, The Bantu-Jareer Somalis: Unearthing Apartheid in the Horn of Africa (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2008). 33. ‘Xeerka Wasaaradda Garsoorka iyo Arr. Diinta, Lr. 29 ee 12 Maajo 1979 ku Wareejin Beeraha Maxaabiista qaarkood’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soo- maaliya, Sannadka 7aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1979, L. 6, 417. 34. ‘Law No. 7 of 30 December 1971 – Prisons Law’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno III., Mogadiscio, 15 Gennaio 1972, Suppl. n. 2 al n.1, 43–71, 51 cited. 35. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 49 taariikh 9 Agoosto 1984, Xeer Nidaamiyaha Xabsiyada Dalka’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 12aad, Muqdisho, 30 Oktoobar 1984, L. 2 R 10, 847–891, 858 cited. 36. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. 37. Lewis, ‘The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup’, 396. Laitin and Samatar called such a clan balancing ‘a standard operating procedure’ and they claim that ‘government jobs necessarily meant representation for any clan’. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 70. In 1980, a knowledgeable Somali resident in Nairobi sent to the Horn of Africa periodical a comprehensive list of 53 individuals who were close to Siad Barre either by clan affiliation or marriage connection occupying higher positions of power in the regime. Ahmed A. Deria, ‘To the Editors’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1980–81), 61–67. 38. As Virginia Luling observed during her fieldwork in Afgooye in the 1980s: ‘Throughout the period of the Republic, the Digil-Mirifle as a whole had been under-represented at the national level. This imbalance grew worse after the "revolution" of October 1969. During the 20 years of Siyad’s rule, as it became ever more obviously dictatorial, positions of power increasingly went to members of his own clan, the (Daarood) Mareexaan or to members of the allied Ogaadeen. (They replaced the Majeerteen who had held the best positions during the Republic; but from the point of view of the Wacdaan and Geledi [the Hawiye and the Digil/ Mirifle clan-groups], it made little odds which Daarood group was dominating them). Those of the Geledi and Wacdaan who could get positions in government, or in state-controlled areas such as the banks or the university, could do it only by Mareexaan favour. The simmering resentment at this felt, especially by the educated, in places like Afgooye fed the hostility to the Siyad regime’. Virginia Luling, Somali Sultanate: The Geledi City-State over 150 years (Lon- don: Haan, 2002), 90. For comprehensive study on the clan composition and how power was dispensed from 1960 up to 1990), especially the Council of Ministries, see Aves Osman Hagi and Abdiwahid Osman Hagi, Clan, Sub-Clan and Regional Representation in the Somali Government Organization 1960–1990: Statistical Data and Findings (Washington, D.C.: N.P., 1998). 39. Interview with Omar Salaad Elmi, London, 13 June 2014; and ‘The Clans of Somalia’, Africa Confidential, 4–5; and ‘Somalia: Opposition Movements Re-Organized’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, 5. For analysis on the MODH, see Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, chapters 3 and 4. For a mention of the MODH power structure, see Adam, From Tyranny to Notes 323

Anarchy, 11 and 86; Ahmed, Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, 107; Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 230; Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty, 178–179; Martin Doornbos and John Markakis, ‘Society and State in Crisis: What Went Wrong in Somalia (Briefing)’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 21, No. 59 (1994), 82–88, 85–86 cited; Hashim, The Fall State, 37 & 102–103; Mohamoud, ‘Status of Human Rights in Somalia’, Horn of Africa, 3–11; Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 140; Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali , 221–223; and Prunier, ‘Segmentarité et Violence dans l’Espace Somali’, 395. Another form of a MODH coalition had also existed from 1960–1969, where the Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan politicians held their fellow Mareehaan’s position, while the latter was excluded, comprising the Majeerteen, the Ogaadeen and the Dhulbahante, especially when Abdirizak Haji Hussein became Prime Minister. 40. Hashim, The Fallen State, xiv and 24. 41. Personal communication with S. O. R; and personal communication with S. A. K. By contrast, in the mid-1960s, the educators of Sierra Leone helped the opposition groups to defeat the government in office, ‘thus making history by effecting the first change of government by democratic elections in sub-saharan Africa’. Abner Cohen, The Politics of Elite Culture: Explo- rations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), xiv. For a critique on how some Somali intellectuals served for Siad Barre, see Hussein A. Bulhan, ‘The Captive Intelligentsia of Somalia’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 3, No. 1 (January-March 1980), 25–37. Lewis noted with somewhat sardonic statement that the term ‘intellectuals’ were merely meant simple group of people equipped with university de- grees. Lewis, Blood and Bone, ii. 42. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS Lambar 27 taariikh 7 Mar. 1982, Magacaabidda Guddoo- miyaha Akadeemiyadda Cilmibaarista, Hiddaha, Suugaanta iyo Dhaqanka’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abriil 1982, L. 4, 251. 43. Adan, ‘Somalia’, 103. 44. Cited in Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 191. Hussein Bulhan, as the only researcher who had been able to have access to Ismail Ali Obokor, was able to draw some reflections from him. When I contacted Ismail over the phone in June 2014, while he was in Dubai, UAE, he declined to be interviewed. 45. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 156. 46. Telephone interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, 3 August 2014; and telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. In his novel Sardines, the novelist Nuruddin Farah described that the Siad Barre regime as a ‘one-tribe dictatorship’. By one-tribe, he obviously meant only the Mareehaan had the real power. See Nuruddin Farah, Sardines (London: Heinemann, 1982). 47. Lewis, Blood and Bone, 165. 48. Cf. ‘Wasaaradda Hawlaha Guud, Waaxda Sahanka iyo Degaanka Magaaleynta – Naado Dhul Jaalle Duulane Rafle Guuleed’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 24 Jan- naayo 1981, L. 2R. 1, 91; and ‘Wasaaradda H. Guud 16 Luulyo 1980, Naado Dhul Jaalle Duulane Rafle Guuleed, L. 738’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 1 Agoosto 1981, L. 8. 1, 1199. 49. ‘Somalia: Military Politics’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 27, No. 22 (1986), 1–2, 2 cited. 50. Compagnon, ‘Political Decay in Somalia’, 12–13n13. For an inadequate list of the MODH generals and colonels of the regime, see Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques, Régula- tion Autoritaire’, Vol. 2, 852–853. 51. Telephone interview with Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, 23 May 2014; telephone interview with Consular Hassan Mohamed Ahmed ‘Hassan Turki’, 24 April 2014; oral information Consular Abdikariin Ibaar Shuuriye, 29 March 2014; and ‘Somalia: Ambassadors Named’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, 29 March, 1986, No. 225, 2. Bulhan provides a data that demonstrates that 86% of the Ambassadors abroad were from the MODH and the Majeerteen combined. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 288. However, the number had increased at the end of the regime. Of all Ambassadors, there was one Hawiye and no Isaaq in 1990. Further- more, Aroma and Bulhan present a detailed data on the appointments of the ministers, ambassadors, generals and other senior civil servants from 1969–1990, which shows unprecedented 324 Notes hegemonic preferential privilege and power to the MODH coalition. Cf. Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, chapter 4; and Bulhan, Politics of Cain, chapter 10. 52. Lewis, Blood and Bone, 185. The new ambassador suddenly notified the Somali Student Association in London that the formation of their association was contrary to ‘the government’s laws and regulations’ (187). The regime’s later ambassadors to the U.S. and East Germany, Mohamoud Haji Nuur and Ahmed Abdi Haashi ‘Hasharo’, were both Dhulbahante. 53. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 297–329 and 299; and Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 78. 54. Laitin, ‘The War in the Ogaden’, 111. For a firsthand account and observation on the injustice and nepotism that characterised the Foreign Ministry, see Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimi- hii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?. 55. Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?, 292–293. 56. Telephone interview with Consular Hassan Mohamed Ahmed ‘Hassan Turki’, 24 April 2014. 57. Telephone interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, 9 July 2014. 58. Personal communication with M. A. J. 59. Bridges, Safirka, 108. On another similar incident involving a Somali woman who had been denied employment with full international staff payment for the British Forestry Agency in Mogadishu, see Qabobe, Somalia, 104. 60. Fadumo Korn with Sabine Eichhorst, Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival, trans. Tobe Levin (New York: The Feminist Press, 2006), 71. Korn maintained to refer to Siad Barre as ‘uncle’ (e.g. 71 and 103), even if the dictator appeared to her ‘a mafioso’ (103). 61. Ibid., 134, 138 and 140. 62. Ibid., 72. After Siad Barre was ousted, her uncle Abdulkadir Aanageel recounted his past tales in an edgy tone implying that Siad Barre was still in power. In Korn’s observations: ‘I visited Uncle Abdulkadir, who was edgy and became aggressive when I asked if he really hadn’t seen it coming. He spoke constantly about the past. He would talk of nothing else. He reinvented it to suit his fantasies. My uncle had lost everything – family, position, wealth. Rebels now lived in his house in Mogadishu. He was a broken man’ (152). 63. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 135. 64. Christopher Clapham has shown a similar trend in Ethiopia under Mengistu. Christopher Clapham, ‘State, Society and Political Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia’, in James Manor (ed.), Rethinking Third World Politics (London: Longman, 1991), 242–266. 65. Ibrahim Megag Samater, ‘Letter of Resignation to President Barre’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1981), 57–58. 66. See Omar, The Road to Zero, 124–125. 67. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 68. Personal communication with the man himself, I. M. 69. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 158. 70. Mohamud Uluso, ‘Re: Wareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, Saturday, July 26, 2014. 71. ‘Somalia: Barre’s Return’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 27, No. 18, 3 September 1986, 6–7, 7 cited. 72. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 66 ee 6 Dis. 1988, Magacaabid La Taliyaha Madaxwey- naha’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Disembar 1988, L. 12, 831. 73. Mohamud Uluso, ‘Re: Wareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, Saturday, July 26, 2014. 74. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 5 April 2014. Cf. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 5 August 1971, No. 186 – Appointment of Brig. Hussein Kulmi[y]e, Brig. General Mohamed Ali Samantar and Colonel Ismail Ali Abok- or as Vice Presidents of the Supreme Revolutionary Council’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repub- blica Democratica Somala, Mogadiscio, Anno II, 10 Agosto 1971, Suppl. n. 1 al. n. 8, 894; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 31 ee 6 Maarso 80 – Magacaabid Madaxweyne Ku xigeennada JDS’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho, 8 Maarso 1980, Lr.3, 337. Ismail Ali Obokor was also appointed a third vice President after Ali Samatar and Hussein Kulmiye. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L 33 ee 28 Abriile 1981. U Magacaabid Jaalle Ismaaciil Cali Notes 325

Obokar Madaxweyne Ku-xigeenka 3aad ee JDS’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muq- disho, 1 Juunyo 1981, Lr. 6, 887. 75. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS L. 25 ee 15 Feb. 80 – Magacaabid Golaha Dawladda Cusub’, Faafinta Rasmiga Ah, Sannadka 8aad, Muqdisho 28 Febraayo 1980, Lr. 4R2, 312–315; and ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS, Lamb. 21 taariikh 1 Mar. 1982 – Isku shaandheynta Golaha Wasiirada’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maarso 1982, L. 3r3, 229–333. 76. Telephone interview with Hussein Mohamed Siad ‘Hussein Aato’, 31 May 2014. 77. Mohamud Uluso, ‘Re: Wareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, Saturday, July 26, 2014. 78. Bridges, Safirka, 84. 79. Telephone interview with Mohamed Ali Nuur, 15 June 2014. 80. Samatar, ‘The Siad Style’, 37. 81. See Joorj Orwel, Beerta Xayawaanka, waxa tarjumay M. Y. Cartan (Qaahira: Al-Ah- ram, 1979). Brons offered perhaps one of the most vivid descriptions of the regime power dispensation: ‘Members of Isaq, Hawiye, and Darod sub-clans were to be found in the inner circle of political power. Conditio sine qua non for occupying a high political office was absolute personal loyalty to the head of state rather than a particular clan allegiance. However, this did not imply that an impartial citizen or socialist identity had replaced clan identity. Indeed, in spite of proclamations on the day of the coup d’état in 1969, there was never any genuine attempt to eradicate clanism. It was rather that political clan balancing, as it had been known from earlier times, was used by the Siyad Barre government during its first years in power’. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 178. 82. ‘Somalia: Djibouti Gives Military Aid’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 25, 1988, No. 338, 3. 83. ‘Somalia Sacks Top Adviser over Human Rights Issue’, Liberty: Magazine of the Soma- li National Movement, No. 3, Summer 1987, 9–10, 10 cited. Greenfield was an adviser to the regime. After falling out with Siad Barre in 1986, he began writing scathing criticism on the extent of kleptocracy and mass human rights violations. Scurrilous as he never before, he continued his revelation on the whereabouts of Siad Barre after his fall until the latter was expelled from his clan territory by his rival General Aideed in April 1992. Greenfield continued to work with post-Siad Barre government of Ali Mahdi Mohamed. See Richard Greenfield, The Regime of Former President Major General Mohamed Siad Barre and the Destruction of the Nation’s Fauna and that of the Neighbouring Nations (Mogadishu: Prime Minister’s Office, 1991). For Greenfield’s earlier support of Siad Barre, see Richard Greenfield, ‘The Ogaden – Province or Colony?’, West Africa (London), part I and part II, Nos. 3142 and 3143, September 26 and October 3 (1977), 1965–1968 & 2017–2019. For a brief account on the relationship between Greenfield and the Siad Barre regime, see the memoir by former Siad Barre consular to London, see Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?, 276–277. 84. ‘Somalia Sacks Top Adviser over Human Rights Issue’, 9. 85. Quoted in Bridges, Safirka, 107. 86. Hashim, The Fallen State, 6. 87. Personal communication with M. A. Y. 88. Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?, 191–194. 89. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 44. For a vivid account – one observed by insider – on how many Somali women were drawn into sexual trade by senior and mid-level military officers as well as regime ministers, see Ruhela, Mohamed Farah Aidid, 67–68. 90. Mohamoud Siad Togane, ‘A Candid Interview with Dr Ali Khaleef Galaydh’, www.togane.org. (accessed 10 February 2013). Also available: http://saraarnews.com/?p=8584 (accessed on 24 July 2014). Bulhan noted that Siad Barre used sex ‘to control and humiliate subordinates’. Bulhan, Politics of Cain, 206. In her ethnographic study on southern Somalia, Besteman observed a regime official in the town of Luuq who local inhabitants joked for stealing not only their belongings and properties, but also their wives. Besteman, Unraveling Somalia, 193. 91. Laitin and Samatar erroneously wrote that Addow was a son-in-law of Siad Barre. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 97. However, Addow’s political manoeuvring was in contrast with his cousin Professor Ibrahim Hassan Addow who published a series 326 Notes of publications pertaining to the appalling condition of the Siad Barre regime’s human rights record. 92. ‘Dawladda Hoose Muq. 24.1.85, Naado Dhul Jaalle Maykal Maxamed Sh. Cusmaan, L. 558’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 25ka Agoosto 1986, L. 1 r 8, 618; and ‘Dawladda Hoose Muq. 24.1.85, Naado Dhul Jaalle Maykal Maxamed Sh. Cusmaan, L. 559’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 25ka Agoosto 1986, L. 1 r 8, 619. 93. Benjamin Kwakye, The Clothes of Nakedness (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1998). 94. Oral information from A. W. A., 27 May 2014. 95. There were of course several Hawiye and Isaaq handpicked panegyrics and sycophants in the regime, men like Abdullahi Ahmed Addow, a Habar Gidir; Ahmed Mohamud Farah, an Isaaq; Omar Arte Ghalib, an Isaaq; Abdirahman Guulwade, a Sheekhaal; Abdikassim Salaad, a Habar Gidir/Eyr; Abdisalam Sheikh Hussein, a Digil/Dabarre; Ismail Ali Obokor, an Isaaq/ Habar Je’lo; Mohamed Sheikh Osman, a Murusade; Abdullahi Ossoble Siad, a Hawaadle; and Abukar Suulaleey, an Abgaal. 96. Bridges, Safirka, 174. 97. Interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, London, 1 August 2014. For specifically how Ab- dullahi Warsame and Mohamed Sheikh Osman was pitted against each other was evidenced in the official regime bulletin. See ‘Xeer Sharci Lamb. 4 ee 15 Ago. 1985, Wax ka bedelidda Sharciga Nidaamka Dhismaha Dawladda’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 18ka Sept. 1985, L. 1 R 9, 654–656; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS lambar 31, taariikh 15 Agoosto 1985, Magacaabid Wasiirro’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 18ka Sept. 1985, L. 1 R 9, 657. In a cabinet reshuffle in 1988, both ministers of the finance and monetary were merged and Abdirahman Jama Barre was appointed the minister, with his clansman Yusuf Ali Nuur as his deputy. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 3 ee 21 Dis. 1987, Magacaabidda Xubnaha Golaha Wasiirada’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Jannaayo 1988, Lambar 8, 37–388; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 29, taariikh 11.4.1989: Magacaabidda Wasiirrada Xukuumadda JDS’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maajo 1989, L. 1 R 5, 251–253. 98. Interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, London, 1 August 2014. 99. Dinaw Mengistu, Children of the Revolution (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007). 100. Stefano Malatesta, ‘Interview with Mohamed Siyaad Barre’, La Repubblicca, 19 April 1988, 10. It is worth noting that ‘Scoundrel’ is a term prominently used by colonial authorities and travellers to decry the ‘unruly’, ‘stubborn’ and ‘anarchic’ Somalis. Cf. Peel, Somaliland: Being An Account of Two Expeditions into the Far Interior, 158 and 184. 101. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k_d29_JyeQ (between min. 00:06 – 03:03), accessed on 27 May 2014. 102. Lewis, Blood and Bone, 186. 103. Cited in Aroma, Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya, 157. 104. ‘Interview with Col. Ahmed S. Abdulle’, 54. 105. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu, ‘Subj: Northern Minister Deplores Current Situation’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1985/02/85NOFORNMOGADI- SHU1643.html (accessed on 25 April 2014). 106. Quoted in Hashim, The Fallen State, 103 and 120n220. 107. Personal communication with B. H. M. According to B. H. M., Hussein Kulmiye described Siad Barre, whom he knew him in a very early age, as ‘abeeso’ (a snake in the grass). The U.S. Ambassador, who had ambivalent attitudes toward the regime, recalled that he found a fellow companion in Kulmiye within the Siad Barre regime because of his private criticisms of international aid poured into the regime. Bridges, Safirka, 84. Kulmiye’s position was similar to that held by General Mohamed Farah Aideed. See Brig. Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, ‘Foreign Aid for the Somali Nation’s Development: A Challenge to Our Integrity and Future’, in the Mohammed Farah Aidid and Dr. Satya Pal Ruhela (eds.), The Preferred Future Development in Somalia (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1993), 243–254. 108. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 162. Notes 327 8. THE FAMILY AFFAIR AND THE ABSENCE OF ESCAPE

1. James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006). For a more detailed study on the collapse of Somali economy because of perilous policies of the regime, see Jamil Abdalla Mubarak, From Bad Policy to Chaos in Somalia: How an Economy Fell Apart (London: Praeger, 1996). For a brief but sharp political history, see Qassim, ‘The Collapse of the Somali Banking System’, 177–195. 2. One Italian writer, Pietro Petrucci, who was part and parcel of the Siad Barre’s family during its halcyon days, detailed in his memoir surprising accounts of what he described ‘Affaire di Famiglia’ (The Family Affair). Pietro Petrucci, Mogadiscio (Torino: Nuova Eri, 1993). He continued his accounts about what he again described ‘a Mafia-type family’. Pietro Petrucci, ‘A Family Affair’, Liberty: Magazine of the Somali National Movement, No. 2 (Au- tumn 1986), part I, 6–8, 6 cited. The earlier connection between the Siad Barre family and Petrucci was facilitated by none other than Mohamed Aden Sheikh, a former senior Minister and Siad Barre’s clansman. Mohamed Aden, a personal friend of Petrucci, had strong relations with Italian diplomats, writers and communist activists. When Mohamed Aden was arrested in 1982, Petrucci openly opposed to the regime. 3. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Somalia: From Finest to Failed State’, part III, http:// www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-rise-of-dictatorship-in-Somalia/-/979182/ 1019576/-/tujl4q/-/index.html (accessed on 24 May 2014), with some modification. Apart from Siad Barre, who was the main leader, Faarax charged ‘four gangs’ who made him powerful, such men as Ali Samatar, Hussein Kulmiye, Dafle and Ahmed Mohamoud Farah. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 27. Lewis’s is less detailed but more broad than Faarax by going even further as to label regime’s influential group as ‘Gang of Five’. For him, these consisted of the immediate family (including Mama Khadija and son Maslah as well as Abdirahman Jama Barre) and close clansmen of Siad Barre, such as Warsame Abdullahi ‘Warsame Indhool’ and Abdulkadir Haji Masalle. For details, see Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali , 224–225. In this thinly revised version in 2002, Lewis had devoted a whole chapter to describing the nature of the Siad Barre’s dictatorial reign and noting the idiosyncratic roles of the ‘Gang of Five’. See also Samuel M. Makinda, ‘Politics and Clan Rivalry in Somalia’, Australian Journal of Politi- cal Science, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1991), 111–126. 4. One of Faduma’s former staff had this to say: ‘When I started my employment at the Department of Research and Economic Statistics at the Central Bank, Mogadishu, I found that one of the two vice managers of the department was Faduma, the daughter of Siad Barre, the military ruler of Somalia who had callously reigned over this hapless country for over twenty one years, by dint of pre-emptive emergency decrees. I think his coldness and devilish psyche was bequeathed to the woman or perhaps she was intentionally trained to be cold and heartless. When this woman was around every member of staff had to be wary. Apart from the fact that she herself could be secretly spying, making use of unlimited powers, on the whole bank, she had bodyguards who could be seen lounging about at the door of her room with a sinister gaze and menacing scrutiny’. Qabobe, Somalia, 125. 5. General Mohamoud Geelle was ‘one of the worst in the Siad Barre regime’, as described by Martin Hill, the Amnesty International director for Somalia. Telephone interview with Martin Hill, 6 June 2014. 6. Baba na Mama is a term adopted in Kenya during the regime of Daniel arap Moi. For more details, see Jennifer A. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya: From “Harambee” to Nyayo” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 7. Bayart, The State in Africa, 91. A former Minister pointed out that ‘Siad Barre was Head of State, Government, Secretary General of Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP), Commander in Chief of all security forces: Police, Military, Custodial Corps, National Security Services, Pioneers (Guulwadayaasha), Custodial Corps, and National Security Court (Maxka- madda Badbaadada). His close relatives and confidants like Mohamud Ghelle Yusuf, Mo- hamed Ali Samater, Maslax Mohamed Siad, Dafleh, Abdulkadir Haji, Abdurahman Jama and 328 Notes others were heads of all the security institutions and important [State] departments’. Mohamud Uluso, ‘Re: Wareysi’, Email to Mohamed Ingiriis, Saturday, July 26, 2014. 8. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 319fn1. 9. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 31. My translation. 10. ‘Somalia's Sad War Within’, The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, January 8, 1991. 11. ‘Somalia: After Barre’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 27, No. 12, 4 June 1986, 1–2, 1 cited. See also ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Hurt in Car Crash’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, 31 May, 1986, No. 234, 3. 12. Nuruddin Farah, Close Sesame (London: Allison & Busby, 1983). 13. ‘Somalia: Barre’s Return’, Africa Confidential, 7. Months before the car accident, there was a talk of serious dilemma in the Siad Barre’s inner circle. See Mohamoud M. Abdi, ‘Barre’s Predicament’, Africa Now, February 1986, 47–48. 14. ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Improves After Crash’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 14, 1986, No. 236, 4. 15. Quoted in ‘Somalia: Party Role Increases’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 23, 1986, No. 244, 4. Abdikassim Salaad also made a somewhat similar observation. Telephone interview with Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, 23 July 2014. 16. ‘Somalia: Family Manoeuvres’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, September 6, 1986, No. 246, 4. See also Pietro Petrucci, ‘A Family Affair’, 6–8. 17. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 34. 18. ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Holds Back’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 29, 1986, No. 258, 4; and ‘Somalia: Two Women’s War’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 11, 1987, No. 290, 3. For a witness account of one regime insider on Mama Khadija’s unrestrained power, see Abdullahi Dool, Failed States: When Governance Goes Wrong! (London: Horn Heritage, 1998), 140–141. 19. Alison Liebhafsky Des Forges, Defeat Is The Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931, trans. David Newbury (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). 20. ‘Poaching: The Somali Connection’, The Weekly Review, February 24, 1989. 21. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS Lambar 61 taariikh 28.10.82–Meel marinta heshiiska ku saabsan dhowritaanka Duurjoogta Goosha’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 30 Oktoobar 1982, Lr. 3 r 10, 997. 22. ‘Somalia: Who Rules?’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 12, 1986, No. 240, 4. Also Richard Greenfield, ‘Succession Struggle in Somalia’, New African, April 1987, 9–13. 23. ‘Somalia: After Barre’, Africa Confidential, 2. 24. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 11 ee 12 Jan. 1989–Magacaabidda Madaxda Ciidamma- da Xoogga Dalka Soomaaliyeed’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 26 Feberaayo 1989, L. 2 R 2, 87. This decree legalised the appointment of General Maslah as the Commander of the Military; General Mohamed Nuur Dhuudhi as the Commander of the Air Forces; Admi- ral Said Mariino as the Commander of the Navy; and General Siad Da’ud Gudaal as the Commander of the Air Defence Forces. General Maslah was finally declared the Commandant of the Xoogga Dalka (Armed Forces). ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 18 ee 28ka Maarso 1989: Magacaabid Taliyaha Xoogga Dalka Soomaaliyeed’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maarso 1989, L. 1 R 3, 155. See also ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 17 ee 28ka Maarso 1989: Dib u habaynta Qaab Dhismeedka Wasaaradda Gaashaandhigga’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maarso 1989, L. 1 R 3, 153–154. 25. ‘Somalia: Siad Returns to Mogadishu’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 28, 1986, No. 238, 5. 26. ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Attacks Vice President’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 30, 1986, No. 245, 1. See also ‘Somalia: Samatar Loses Defence Post’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 7, 1987, No. 268, 3. 27. ‘The Long Reshuffle: Change Spells Defeat for Constitutionalists’, Africa Events, Feb- ruary 1988, 10. 28. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS lambar 33 ee 19 Nov. 1986–Xaddidaada maalinta Codbix- inta doorashada Madaxweynaha JDS’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 15 Dis. 1986, L. R 12, 780; and ‘Xeer lambar 18, taariikh 26 Noof. 1986–Xadidaadda Goobaha Cod- bixinta Doorashada Madaxweynaha’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 28. Dis. Notes 329

1986, L. 2 R 12, 789–842. See also ‘Xeer Guddoomiyaha Guddiga Dhexe ee Doorashada, Lam. 1 ee 12 Dis. 1986’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1 Jan. 1987, Lr. 1, 18–19. 29. Cited in Aroma, Tiirka Colaadda, 75. 30. ‘Sharci L. 6 ee 20 Maajo 1979, Dastuurka Jamhuuriyadda Dimuqraadiga Soomaaliy- eed’, Faafinta Rasmiga ah ee Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Sannadka 7aad, Muqdisho, 26 Maajo 1979, L. 3R5. The bulletin does not feature the pages of this document. Cf. ‘Sharci L. 13 ee 4 Maarso 1989, Wax ka beddelka Dastuurka Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqaraadi- ga Soomaaliya’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maarso 1989, L. 1 R 3, 149–152. See also Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, Dhismaha Golayaasha Shacbiga Deegaanka (Muqdisho: Wasaaradda Warfaafinta & Hannuuninta Dadweynaha, 1982). See also Ahmed Rajab, ‘Somalia: New Constitution, Old Powers’, New African (London), No. 146, October 1979, 59–60. For the only discussion available on this constitution, see Martin R. Ganzglass, ‘Somali Democratic Republic’, in Albert P. Blaustein and Gisberg H. Flanz (eds.), Constitution of the Countries of the World (New York: Oceana Publications, 1979), 1–28. 31. Sheikh-Abdi, ‘Ideology and Leadership in Today’s Somalia’, Northeast African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1980–81) and Vol. 3, No. 1 (1981), 141–151, 142 cited. 32. For a brief account on Lawaahe, see Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?, 173–175. 33. Cited in Xabbaddii Dunida Gilgishey: Aaden-Low & Dhacdadii Walwaal, Iskudubarid- ka iyo Tifaftiridda by Shukri Aaden Shire (London: Kasmo Publishing, 2013), 144. 34. Cited in ibid., 34. 35. Telephone interview with Ali Haashi Dhoorre, 3 August 2014; and telephone interview with Engineer Osman Jama Ali ‘Kalluun’, 5 June 2014. 36. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 1, 472. 37. Cf. ‘Somalia: Coup d’état Attempt’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, May 8th, 1982, No. 28, 2; and ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Promotes his Son’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 4, 1987, No. 289, 4. 38. Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid, 115. 39. Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 91. 40. Telephone interview with Consular Hassan Turki, 7 April 2014; oral information from H. W. A., 19 April 2014; and ‘Somalia: Diplomats Defect’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, March 9, 1985, No. 172, 7. 41. ‘Somali Diplomat Defects’, New African, November 1988. 42. Telephone interview with Engineer Osman Jama Ali ‘Kalluun’, 5 June 2014. 43. Telephone interview with Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, 23 May 2014. 44. Telephone Interview with Mohamed Ali Kamoole, 4 February 2014. My translation. 45. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS lambar 33, taariikh 21.4.1989: Xadeynta xilalka Wasiirrada Madaxtooyada JDS’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1989, L. 6, 290–291; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS lambar 34, taariikh 21.4.1989: Magacaabid Wasiir Madaxtooyo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1989, L. 6, 292. 46. ‘Xeerka Madaxweynaha JDS Lambar 26, taariikh 7 Maar. 1982–Magacaabidda Lata- liyayaalka Wasaaradda Qorshaynta Qaranka’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 10aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abriil 1982, L. 4, 250. 47. Abdirizak Haji Hussein, ‘Letter of Resignation to President Barre’, Horn of Africa, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1981), 52–55. 48. ‘Somalia: Air Force Officers Desert’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 28, 1987, No. 271, 4; and ‘Chiesto asilo all’Onu “Non vogliamo uccidere la nostra gente”: disertano 4 tenenti Somali’, L’Unita, Venerdi, 25 Marzo 1988. 49. ‘Somali Defectors Foiled’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 2 (March 15, 1989), 9175. 50. ‘The Asylum Case: No, That Was a Poor Show’, The Weekly Review (Nairobi), Friday, February 24, 1989; ‘Somalis Bungle Defection Bid’, The Guardian (London), Wednesday, February 8, 1989; and ‘Asylum for Footballers’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 4 (May 15, 1989), 9175. 51. ‘Somalia: Amnesty Number Three’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, 3. 330 Notes

52. ‘Somalia: Amnesty International Campaign’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 27th, 1982, No. 57, 3. 53. ‘Warning by Amnesty International’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Septem- ber 24, 1988, No. 349, 5. Cf. ‘AI Pleads For Prisoners’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, October 19, 1985, No. 202, 5. See also Amnesty International, ‘Legal Concern/Fear of Torture’, AFR 52/07/88, London, UK; Amnesty International, ‘Legal Concern/Fear of Torture or Ill[-]treatment’, AFR 52/10/88, London, UK; Amnesty International, ‘Fear of Torture/Legal Concern’, AFR 52/19/88, London, UK; Amnesty International, ‘Fear of Torture/Legal Con- cern’, AFR 52/20/88, London, UK; Amnesty International, ‘Somalia: Torture’, AFR 52/11/88, London, UK; Amnesty International, ‘Amnesty International Condemns Torture in Somalia’, AFR 52/21/88; and Amnesty International, ‘Fear of Torture/Legal Concern’, AFR 52/01/89, 19 January 1989, London, UK. Copy on file with the author. 54. Jimmy Carter, Letter to H.E. Mohamed Siad Barre, 29 January 1988. Copies on file with the author. 55. Richard Greenfield, ‘What Price: Political Prisoners?’, Africa Report, January-February 1988, 4–7. 56. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977). 57. Cited in Anne Walmsley, ‘Nuruddin Farah and Somalia’, Index on Censorship, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1981), 17–19, 17 cited. This report was preceded by a study on human rights in Somalia published in 1980. Mohamoud, ‘Status of Human Rights in Somalia’, 10–13. See also I. M. Lewis, ‘Acute Crisis in Somalia’, RAIN, No. 43 (Apr., 1981), 10–13. 58. In his political memoir, General Aideed noted that he suffered from blood pressure while in prison. See Ruhela, Mohamed Farah Aidid, 55–63. 59. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 38. 60. Ibid. 61. ‘Wareysi ay BBC Soomaali la yeelatay Sheekh Maxamed Macalin sanadkii 1994’, http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuZz2J-8Hro (between min. 00:33–02:00), accessed on 1 July 2014. For the extreme brutal conditions of prisoners, see National Academy of Sciences (Com- mittee on Human Rights), Scientists and Human Rights in Somalia: Report on a Delegation (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988). One other former prisoner mentioned that he suffered from chronic diseases while in prison in the mid-1970s. Telephone interview with C. T., 26 May 2014. 62. Philip Smith, ‘U.S. Educated Architect Alleges Somali Torture: Prisoner’s Treason Trial to Start Tuesday’, The Washington Post, Monday, February 1, 1988, 8. Cf. Victoria Brittain, ‘Systematic Torture in Somalia, says Amnesty’, The Guardian (London), Wednesday, Septem- ber 21, 1988; and Richard Dowden, ‘Amnesty Reports on “Torture” in Somalia’, The Indepen- dent, Wednesday, 21 September 1988. 63. ‘Somalia: SNM Liberates Prisoners’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, January 15th, 1983, No. 64, 6. 64. ‘Somalia: 801 Prisoners Released’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, December 17th, 1983, No. 110, 6. 65. ‘Somalia: Party Congress’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 15, 1986, No. 256, 5. 66. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 42. My translation. 67. Interview with Mohamed Baashe, Somali Channel TV. Available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy5IbdeAp-8 (between min. 22:54–28:43), accessed on 25 April 2014. The U.S. Ambassador to Somalia, Peter Bridges, also observed that many prisoners in these prisons were taken to work on regime-owned farms. Bridges, Safirka, 143. Chris Cassidy, an American relief worker who worked for various aid organisations, saw in Southern Somalia ‘what looked to be about fifty Somali men, prisoners, stripped naked but for a cloth around their waists, hammering rocks in the brutal sun, black bodies shining on a field of rolling white sand’. Cited in Maren, The Road to Hell, 33. 68. ‘Somalia: SNM Springs Jail Inmates’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 6, 1987, No. 285, 6. See also Somali National Movement, ‘Press Release: An Appeal to Stop Notes 331

Judicial Murder and To Release All Political Prisoners in Somalia’, U.K. Office, 1988. Copy on file with the author. 69. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 38 ee 14 Luulyo 1988: Billad Dahab Hawlkarnimo oo lagu maamuusay Jaalle Marxuum G/Sare Axmed Aadan Cabdi oo ka tirsan NSSta’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 17ka Agoosto 1988, L. 1 R 8, 591. 70. ‘Somalia: Showdown in the North’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 29, No. 15, 29 July 1988, 1–3. See also Ruth Sinai, ‘Somali Premier Heckled as He Accuses Ethiopia of Arming Rebels’, The Associated Press, 3 February 1989. 71. Cited in ‘Somalia: Reaction to Joint Kenyan-Ethiopian Communiqué’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 5th, 1983, No. 67, 2. 72. Anthony Shaw, ‘Barre’s Balancing Act’, Africa Report, November/December 1985, 26–29; ‘Somalia: Towards an Ogaden Pact’, Africa Confidential, 27, No. 5, 26 February 1986, 6–7; and ‘Truce in the Horn: Barre, Mengistu Mend Fences’, African Concord, 19 April 1988. 73. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 9 ee 7 Abr. 1986, Meel-marin Heshiiska Ururka Abaara- ha iyo Horumarinta ee Dawladaha Afrikada Bari’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muq- disho, 3da Maajo 1986, L. 5, 317–318. 74. For his side, Siad Barre nominated Mohamed Haashi Egaal, his close clansman, a man without formal qualifications, to head the Somali delegation. Mohamed Haashi was among several Mareehaan politicians who lobbied for immediate rapprochement with Ethiopia to isolate the armed opposition groups. Both Dool and Qabobe described his erratic behaviours and change of principles. Cf. Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?, 128–130; and Qabobe, Somalia, 75. Similarly, Abdullahi Mohamed Maah, a deputy Minister in the cabinet, another Mareehaan, also represented Siad Barre in the joint Somali- Ethiopian committee. ‘Somalia- Ethiopian Joint Commission’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 12 (January 15, 1990): 9510. Maah and his deputy Qaybe, a Dhulbahante, were appointed by Siad Barre to lead a special committee supervising prisoners swap. ‘Xeer Madax- weynaha JDS, L. 36 ee 30 Ju[u]n 1988, Magacaabid Guddi loo xilsaaray Maxaabiista la kala hayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 20ka Luulyo 1988, L. 1 R 7, 534. 75. ‘Somalia: Gives Up the Ogaden’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, May 28, 1988, No. 334, 2. See also Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 145; Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed, 69 & 113; Makinda, ‘Politics and Clan Rivalry in Somalia’, 119–120; and Omar, The Road to Zero, 187. One former ambassador of the Siad Barre critical to the deal penned down his opinion in Africa Events. See Mohamed Said Samantar, ‘Talks Respite to Survive’, Africa Events, September 1986, 27–29; and Mohamed Said Samantar, ‘A Fool’s Game? “If Your Enemy Surrenders, It Means He Cannot Kill You”’, Africa Events, June/July 1988. Cf. ‘Somal- ia: Pamphlets Attack Peace Accord’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, May 21, 1988, No. 333, 5. ‘The ONLF’s position towards the Mogadishu Agreement’, KAAH, A Periodical Journal of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, Issue No 111, July 1988, 17–18; ‘It is impossible to Disdain People’s Memory, Mr President’, KAAH, A Periodical Journal of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, Issue No 111, July 1988, 15–17. 76. ‘Somalia: Tango in the Ogaden’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 27, No. 11, 21 May 1986, 3–5, 4 cited. 77. ‘Somalia: Ethiopian Aid to Armed Opposition?’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, Nov. 17, 1990, No. 454, 2. 78. ‘Somali National Movement’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWosiLB6YNg (between min. 02:35–05:15), accessed on 20 May 2014. For a similar reflection from a former SNM senior officer, see Boobe Yuusuf Ducaale, Dhaxal-Reeb Horaad (Addis Ababa: Flamin- go Printing Press, 2007). 79. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. 80. Gérard Prunier, ‘A Candid View of the Somali National Movement’, Horn of Africa, Vol., 13–14, No. 3–4 and 1–2 (January 1990), 107–120, 108 & 115 cited. 81. Ibid., 110. 82. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Somali Insurgency: Ethi- opian Complicity?’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1988/07/88MOGADI- SHU8032.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 332 Notes

83. ‘Somalia: Improvement in Regional Relations’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 13th, 1983, No. 92, 2. 84. ‘Kenya/Somalia–Ambivalent Neighbourliness: A Series of Events Militates against Strenuous Mutual Efforts to Warm Up Relations’, The Weekly Review, February 17, 1989. 85. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS., lambar 13 taariikh 3 Abriile 1985, Meelmarinta Heshiiska dhexmaray JDS iyo [J]amhuuriyadda Kenya kuna saabsan dhiirrigelinta iyo horumarinta Dalx- iiska’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Abriile 1985, L. 2 R 4, 282–283; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 16 ee 20 Abr. 1985, Meel-marin Heshiis Dhaqameed oo dhexmaray JDS iyo Jamhuuriyadda Kenya’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maajo 1985, L. 1 r 5, 329–330; and ‘Sharci L. 14 ee 16 Juun 1985, Oggolaansho Heshiis Ganacsi oo dhexmaray J.D.S. iyo Jamhuuriyadda Kenya’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 2 Luulyo 1985, L. 7, 415. See also ‘Somalia/Kenya: Economic Cooperation Pro- moted’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 28th, 1984, No. 142, 1; ‘Somalia/Kenya Border Pact Signed’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, September 8, 1984, No. 159, 2; and ‘So- malia/Kenya: Talks Continue’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, December 1st, 1984, No. 158, 2. 86. ‘Somalia: Somalis Expelled from Egypt’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Sep- tember 10, 1988, No. 347, 4. 87. ‘Somalia: Reactions to the Wajir Massacre’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 21st, 1984, No. 128, 6; and ‘Wagalla Massacre: Raila Odinga Orders Kenya Probe’, BBC Africa News, 15 February 2011. For the history of the Wagalla massacre, Salah Abdi Sheikh, Blood on the Runway: The Wagalla Massacre of 1984 (Nairobi: Northern Publishing House, 2007). For a less detailed study describing the human rights violations committed, see Hashi Mohammed, ‘Wagalla Massacre: Human Rights Abuses against Minorities in East Africa and its Consequences’ (unpublished Masters dissertation, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2009).

9. THE TURNING POINTS AND THE ENDING POINT

1. Ahmed Delhi, ‘Expatriate Opposition Leader on Historical Bases’, Afrique Contempo- raine, Vol. 154, No. 2 (1990), 54–59. In April 1983, Ambassador Ga’aliye called for all opposition groups to unite against the regime. See also ‘M. S. Samatar’s Appeal’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 23rd, 1983, No. 78, 6. 2. Cited in Delhi, ‘Expatriate Opposition Leader on Historical Bases’, 54–59. 3. The whole letter written in Somali can be found in Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 110–114. Ironically, Faarax did not critique this letter (drafted by his clansmen) as he would in the manifesto letter of May 1990 (see esp. 125–127). 4. ‘Somalia: Siad’s grip Slackens’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 2, 26 January 1990, 2–3, 3 cited. See also ‘Somalia: End of Marehan Solidarity’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, 3; ‘Somalia: Marehan Ultimatum’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 10, 1989, No. 386, 1 & 3; ‘Somalia: Effervescence’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 24, 1989, No. 388, 1 & 4; ‘Support for Barre Declines as Somali Civil War Intensifies’, Africa Report, September-October 1989; and ‘Somalia: One Year of Civil War in the North’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 3, 1989, No. 385, 6. 5. ‘Kaaliyaha Xoghayaha Guud ee X.H.K.S. oo Xilkii kala Wareegay’, Xiddigta Oktoobar, Khamiis, 22ka Febraayo 1990, 1 and 8. 6. Personal communication with Abukar Afjirib. 7. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. See also ‘Somalia: An- other Samanter Government’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, January 27, 1990, No. 415, 4; and ‘Somalia: New Government Men’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Febru- ary 24, 1990, No. 419, 2. 8. Bernhard Helander, ‘Somalia’, in David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg (eds.), Islam Outside the Arab World (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), 39–55, 42 cited. Notes 333

9. Jemery Garron, ‘Dodging Sharks in a Sleeping City’, The Daily Telegraph, Friday, July 3, 1983, A13. 10. Quoted in Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 38. 11. ‘Somalia: No to Multi-Party System’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 8, 1989, No. 390, 5. 12. Bayart, The State in Africa, 88. 13. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 108. Cf. ‘Somalia: Overture or Final Manoeuvres?’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 1st, 1989, No. 389, 3. 14. ‘Somali Democratic Republic: Constitutional Review Committee’, Africa Research Bul- letin, Vol. 26, No. 11 (December 15, 1989): 9481–9482. 15. Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia, 131. 16. See Uthman Mirghani, ‘Interview with President Mohamed Siyaad Barre’, Al-Tadamun, 30 May 1987, 8–11; and ‘President Siyaad Ready to Meet with Opposition’, Al-Ahram, 13 November 1989, 8. 17. Cf. ‘President Prepared to Hand over Power’, Mogadishu Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1715 GMT, 12 April 1990; ‘President Siyaad Appeals to Rebels, Cites Elections’, Mogadishu Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1715 GMT, 16 May 1990; ‘Siyaad Ready for Talks with Dissidents’, Mogadishu Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1700 GMT, 5 June 1990. 18. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 59. 19. Delhi, ‘Expatriate Opposition Leader on Historical Bases’, 54–59. 20. Ibid. 21. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmg4CeYkhyw (between min. 00:00–07:54), accessed on 27 May 2014. See also Amiin, Diiwaanka Hilin Hayaan, 129–130. Both the poet (Amiin) who composed and the singer (Saado Ali) who chanted the song with her voice were detained by the regime forces. 22. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 31 ee 2 Maajo 1989: Kordhinta Mushaharada iyo gun- nooyinka ee Madaxda Sare ee Bankiyada Soomaaliyeed’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maajo 1989, L. 1 R 5, 256. See also ‘Somalia: Barre’s Whitewashing Flop–The President’s Efforts to Give his Regime a More Liberal Image has Failed to Take A Trick’, African Concord, 18–24 February 1989; ‘Somali Democratic Republic: Civil Strive Hits Economy’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 10 (November 30, 1989), 9736; ‘Somali Democratic Republic: Massive Debt Burden’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 10 (No- vember 30, 1989), 9737; and ‘Somali Democratic Republic: Food Import Rules Relaxed’, Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 10 (November 30, 1989), 9737. 23. ‘Xeer Sharci L. 4 ee 8 Abr. 1989: Kordhinta Canshuurta ruqsadda iyo cusbooneysiinta’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 2da Juunyo 1989, L. 7, 349; ‘Xeer Sharci L. 7 ee 8 Abr. 1989: Dib u habeyn canshuurta Diiwaangelinta’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 2da Juunyo 1989, L. 7, 353; ‘Xeer Sharci lambar 9, aariikh 8.4.1989: Wax ka beddelidda canshuurta dhoofidda’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 2da Juunyo 1989, L. 7, 356; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 46 ee 29 Juun 1989: Kordhinta Qiimaha Iibsashada Taargada: Baabuurta, Mootooyinka iyo Xaashiyaha iyo buugaagta daabacan ee Xafiiska Diiwaangelinta Gaadiidka Dadweynaha oo baabuurta loo isticmaalo (Targhe automo- bi e stampati el PRA)’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Agoosto 1989, L. 8, 423–424. 24. ‘Sharci Lambar 7, Tr. 26 Jan. 1989–Oggolaansho Bankiyo Gaar Ahaaneed’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 15ka Feberaayo 1989, L. 1 R 2, 70. See also ‘Sharci Xeer lambar 6, taariikh 1da Agoosto 1988: Bankiyada gaarka ah ee Dalka JDS’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 28ka Agoosto 1988, L. 2 R 8, 624–625. 25. Somali Democratic Government, Performance of the Somali Economy, 1988 (Mogadi- shu: The Ministry of National Planning and Jubba Valley Development, 1988); and Somali Democratic Government, Somalia in Figures (Mogadishu: The Ministry of National Planning and Jubba Valley Development, 1989). The illusion that growth was matching with the conflict ravaging Somalia was a perception shared by the World Bank authorities in the wider African countries. The World Bank, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth’, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1989. Cf. Vali Jamal, ‘Somalia: Economics for An Unconven- 334 Notes tional Economy–Rural Employment Policy Research Programme’, World Employment Pro- gramme Research, International Labour Organisation, 1988; Vali Jamal, ‘Somalia: Understand- ing an Unconventional Economy’, Development and Change, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1988), 203–265; Vali Jamal, ‘Somalia: Survival in a “Doomed” Economy’, International Labour Review, Vol. 127, No. 6 (1988), 783–812. See also ‘Somalia: A Fragmented Country’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, August 26, 1989, No. 394, 3; and ‘Somalia: Confused Situation Persists’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 11, 1989, No. 405, 7. 26. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 27. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: November 11 Meeting with Foreign Minister’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/11/90MOGADI- SHU9903.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 28. Dambudzo Marechara, The House of Hunger (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1993 [1978]). 29. Telephone interview with Ambassador Mohamed Ahmed Aalim, 23 May 2014. By this time, Siad Barre fell the category of many African ‘Presidents for life’ acknowledged by Daniel Cordell: ‘In the 1980s and 1990s people in many countries again set out to limit or overthrow dictatorial rule. “Presidents for life” looted national resources for their personal advantage and politicized differences between ethnic communities in order to remain in power. In some places, conflict led to failed states where violence undermined the national community. In other countries and regions, local people turned to local institutions in order to maintain social and economic life’. Dennis D. Cordell, ‘Introduction: People and History in Modern Africa’, in Dennis D. Cordell (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Africa (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 1–9, 3 cited. 30. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 116. 31. ‘Madaxweynaha oo ugu yeeray Dadka Soomaaliyeed ee Dibadda ku nool ee Caasi- garoobay inay ku soo laabtaan dalkooda’, Xiddigta Oktoobar, Axad, 18-ka Febraayo 1990, 1 and 8. See also ‘Somalia: Siad Barre Invites Opponents to Return’, The Indian Ocean Newslet- ter, Saturday, March 3, 1990, No. 420, 6. It was this time when the first waves and influx of Somali refugees were seen from Botswana to Brunei and beyond. See Ingiriis, ‘Somalia: From Finest to Failed State’, part III; and ‘Somalia: Refugees in France’, The Indian Ocean Newslet- ter, Saturday, September 23, 1989, No. 398, 2. In 2001, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has described Somalia ‘one of the fastest and largest forced population movements ever recorded in Africa’. UNDP, Human Development Report: 2001 Somalia (Nai- robi: United Nations Development Programme, 2001), 58. 32. Faarax reached the number at a million. Even though his figures seem inflated, almost two decades later the UN reports refer the Somalis who had fled from the war to the ‘missing million’. Cf. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 115; Sally Healy and Hassan Sheikh, Somalia’s Missing Million: The Somali Diaspora and its Role in Development 2009 (Nairobi: UNDP, 2009). 33. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 117. My translation. 34. ‘Somalia: A Country without a Government’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 10, 1990, No. 417, 6. 35. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, 161. See also ‘Bloody Somal- ia’, The Nation, 25 June, 1988; Richard Greenfield, ‘An Embattled Barre’, Africa Report, May/ June 1987, 65–69; and Robert M. Press, ‘Africa Watch Report Sounds Alarm on Somalia’, Christian Science Monitor, 18 January, 1990, 5. However, the prediction of the collapse was in place since the early 1980s. ‘Document: Somalia on the Brink of Civil War’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1983), 41–42. For the appeal of diplomatic mediation on the State terror wreak- ing havoc on the society, see Ibrahim H. Addou, ‘To the Editors’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 75–76, 75 cited. 36. Zainab M. Jama, ‘Silent Voices: The Role of Somali Women’s Poetry in Social and Political Life’, Oral Tradition, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1994), 185–202, 192 cited. 37. ‘The Transfer of Power in Somalia’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 35–52. 38. Manifesto, ‘Bayaanka Muqdisho ee Koowaad’, 15 May 1990. Copy on file with the author. See also Somali Elders, ‘An Open Letter to President Mohamed Siyad Barre’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XII, Nos. 1–2 (1990), 109–124; and ‘Somalia: Dissent’, Africa Confidential, Vol. Notes 335

31, No. 12, 15 June 1990, 8. For more detailed analysis, see Ingiriis, ‘The Making of the 1990 Somali Manifesto’, 63–94. 39. For Ethiopia, see Clapham, ‘State, Society and Political Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia’, 264. 40. A lengthy series open letters to Siad Barre had begun in 1982, with suggestions of transfer of power to civilian rule. Famous names among those who signed these letters were the Somali scholars Ibrahim Hassan Addow and Hussein Abdullahi Bulhan as well as Abdirizak Haji Hussein, Ahmed Siilaanyo and Mohamed Warsame Ali ‘Kiimiko’. Cf. ‘The Transfer of Power in Somalia’, 35–52; ‘An Open Letter to Major-General Mohamed Siyad Barre, President of Somalia’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 52–54; ‘An Open Letter to all Ministers, Undersecretaries, Members of the Central Committee (CC) of the Somali Revolutionary So- cialist Party (SRSP) and of the People’s Assembly (PA) in Muqdisho, Somalia’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 54–56; and ‘An Open Letter to all Somali Diplomats’, Horn of Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1982), 56–61. 41. Telephone interview with Hassan Dhimbil Warsame, 16 April 2014. 42. Ingiriis, ‘The Making of the 1990 Manifesto’, 63. 43. ‘Somali Manifesto I, Subject: Recommendation Aimed at Bringing About National Reconciliation and Salvation’. Copy on file with the author. 44. Telephone interview with Ahmed Mohamed Darmaan (no. 46), 2 July 2011. The only Mareehaan, Bashiir Yarow, a businessman, had refused to add his name to the manifesto. Thus, there was no single signatory from Siad Barre’s immediate clan. Telephone interview with Maryan Hussein Mohamed ‘Awreeye’, 6 April 2014. For incomprehensive list of their clan affiliations, see Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 2, 855–860. 45. Telephone interview with Hassan Dhimbil Warsame, 16 April 2014. For the public anger, see Neil Henry, ‘Somalia Orders Trial for Signers of Rights Letter’, The Washington Post, 18 June 1990. 46. Telephone interview with Asha-Kiin Farah Dualeh, 11 July 2014; and telephone interview with Martin Hill, 6 June 2014. Maria Bongartz, who had interviewed him weeks before his mysterious death, calls him the prime initiator of the Manifesto. Maria Bongartz, The Civil War in Somalia: Its Genesis and Dynamics (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1991), 5. See also ‘Somalia Seen from Afar’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida, 3. For similar voices from the core Manifesto elders corroborating on this point, see Ingiriis, ‘The Making of the 1990 Manifesto’, 63–94. Also personal communication with Haji Mohamed Abdulle Furre (no. 79). Compagnon incorrectly assumes that this Habar Gidir/Saleebaan elder was a Mejeerteen. Compagnon, ‘Ressources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 2, 859. 47. Telephone interview with Maryan Hussein Mohamed ‘Awreeye’, 6 April 2014. There were also plans to include women in the manifesto. According to Asha-Kiin Farah Dualeh, who was then working as a lawyer in Mogadishu, Ismail informed her about the making of the manifesto. However, she opined that she was fortunate enough that her name was not added, because it would become difficult for her to later defend the signatories. Telephone interview with Asha-Kiin Farah Dualeh, 11 July 2014. 48. Telephone interview with Martin Hill, 6 June 2014. 49. Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?, 21. 50. Cited in Hussein M. Adam, ‘Political Islam in Somali History’, in Markus V. Hoehne and Virginia Luling (eds.), 119–135, 127–128 cited. 51. ‘I.O.N’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, April 25, 1987, No. 279, 6. 52. ‘Somalia: President Put into Question’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 25th, 1983, No. 87, 1. 53. ‘An Approach to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), June 1990, 16. 54. ‘Somalia: Inglorious 21st’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 21, 26 October 1990, 8. 55. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 119 & 124. 56. ‘Warqaddii Cigaal Qoray 1990kii’, Xog-Ogaal, Thursday 29 September 2011, A6. 57. Ibid. 58. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 41 ee 14 Nof. 1985, Magacaabid Guddiga Ku Meel Gaarka ee Rugta Ganacsiga’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, 30ka November 336 Notes

1985, L. 1 R 10, 748. See also ‘Somalia: Ex-Premier to Head Liberalisation Committee’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 30, 1985, No. 208, 7. 59. ‘Somalia: Siad’s grip Slackens’, Africa Confidential, 3. 60. As the civil war reached Mogadishu and exploded in full-blown on 30 December 1990, Egaal again issued concrete proposal to hand over power to Hussein Kulmiye and Mohamed Hawaadle to remain Prime Minister. See ‘Egal at Last’, Hope, 25 January 1991. 61. Bridges, Safirka, 135. Unfortunately, Abyan was killed once the uprising that expelled Siad Barre from Mogadishu had erupted. Ambassador Bridges was sceptical of whether Siad Barre ‘eventually found out what Abyan was up to and had him killed’ (209). 62. Daniel Compagnon, ‘Political Decay in Somalia: From Personal Rule to Warlordism’, Refuge, Vol. 12, No. 5 (November-December 1992), 8–13, 10 cited. 63. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Discussion with Manifesto Signers’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/12/90MOGADISHU11003.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 64. Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 130. See also ‘Somalia: Provisional Government Manifesto’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 2, 1990, No. 433, 5; ‘Somalia: Siad Barre’s Reaction to the CNRS Manifesto’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 9, 1990, No. 434, 5; and ‘Somalia: Manifesto Number Two’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 14, 1990, No. 439, 6. 65. Quoted in Faarax, Xeebtii Geerida, 130. The author does not give the actual reference of the newspaper–i.e. the date and the number. General Ali Samatar also called the manifesto signatories ‘criminals’. ‘Somalia: Manifestly More Intricate’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 16, 1990, No. 435, 1 & 4, 1 cited. 66. ‘Somalia Arrests Critics of President’, The Los Angeles Times, Thursday, June 14, 1990. 67. Sica, Operazione Somalia, 42–43. When viewed from the external dimension, the content of the Manifesto was not dissimilar from that produced by the Mouvement de Redresse- ment National (MORENA) in Gabon sent to President El Hadj Omar Bongo in 1981, even though it failed to address to Italy directly as a stake holder of Siad Barre’s regime. Having fully understood that without France, Bongo would not have been able to maintain power, MORENA went directly to the French Ambassador to Libreville. They wrote: ‘We are asking France to help us in the search for an effective solution. We need to change the leadership in order to change the regime. That is why we are coming to you, Mr. Ambassador, to help us find solutions to rectify the catastrophic situation into which Bongo and his men have plunged Gabon. You cannot ignore this disaster, and you cannot stand back, because you, France, like us Gabon, have true and important stakes in this country. Together we can and must find solutions, and we will be pleased when we come up with one’. Mouvement de Redressement National, ‘Gabon: Livre Blanc. 1981’, cited in Bayart, The State in Africa, 199. From the authoritative voice of one French scholar provides further illustration of the French attachment with African dictators: ‘Those men [French] knew their jobs, and they knew Africa’. Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), 338. 68. Telephone interview with Asha-Kiin Farah Dualeh, 11 July 2014. The lawyer recalled no particular intimidation during the course of the court deliberations. 69. ‘The BBC Somali Service’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), October 1990, 10–12. 70. ‘Somalia: Delegation Visits Saudi Arabia’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Nov. 10, 1990, No. 453, 2. 71. ‘Somalia: Diplomatic Manoeuvres for Negotiations’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Sat- urday, Oct. 13, 1990, No. 449, 2. 72. ‘Pointer–Somalia: Money for Arms’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 25, 21 December 1990, 8. A year before Osman Aanageel, in addition to his position as vice deputy Police Commissioner, was appointed as the presidential advisor for security issues. ‘Xeer Madaxwey- naha J.D.S. L. 35 ee 26 Maajo 1989: Magacaabid La Taliye’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1989, L. 6, 293–294. 73. ‘Pointer–Somalia: Money for Arms’, Africa Confidential, 8. 74. ‘Somalia: Leak’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 14, 1990, No. 426, 4. Notes 337

75. ‘Somalia: Minor Dispute with Rome’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, June 30, 1990, No. 437, 2. 76. ‘Somalia: Death in Mogadishu Stadium’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 14, 1990, No. 439, 6. 77. ‘Somalia: President Flops in Hargeisa’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, April 9, 1988, No. 327, 4. 78. ‘Somalia: Violent Demonstration in Mogadishu’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, Oct. 27, 1990, No. 451, 4. 79. ‘Somalia: Diplomatic Hubbub in Rome and Washington’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, July 21, 1990, No. 440, 2. 80. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 81. ‘Somalia: Bitter-sweet Contacts with Paris’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, May 26, 1990, No. 432, 2. 82. Omar, The Road to Zero, 155. See also ‘Somalia: The Bomb Attacks in Mogadishu’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, Sept. 15, 1990, No. 445, 6. 83. ‘The Mayor of Mogadishu’, The Economist, 47. 84. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Somalis Unduly Gloomy Over New Cabinet’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/02/90MOGADI- SHU1773.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). See also ‘Somalia: Musical Chairs’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, September 8, 1990, No. 444, 1. 85. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Somalis Unduly Gloomy Over New Cabinet’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/02/90MOGADI- SHU1773.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 86. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Biographic Reporting: Abdirahman Abdulle Osman’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/11/90MOGADI- SHU9970.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 87. ‘The Mayor of Mogadishu’, 47. 88. ‘Somalia: President Siad Barre’s “Refuge”’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, September 22, 1990, No. 446, 4. 89. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdiweli Jama Warsame Gorod, 11 June 2014. 90. Omar, The Road to Zero, 201. 91. The poet who composed the poem was unknown. Oral information from Abdikariim Ali Kaar, 12 June 2014. 92. A video clip revealing this incident titled ‘The Execution of former Liberian President Samuel K. Doe’ is available in the YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaLSzjfyUiA (between min. 0:00 and 5:47), accessed on 11 February 2014. There is another clip showing the violent execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wUM1nQeGTXc (between min. 4:51–6:27), accessed on 26 March 2014. 93. Bayart, The State in Africa, 145. 94. Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (Oxford: James Currey, 1992), 245–246. 95. Ibid., 246.

10. THE OUTBREAK OF THE UPRISING

1. ‘Somalia: Mogadishu in the Throes of Anarchy’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, December 15, 1990, No. 458, 5. 2. Cited in cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Security Decree Calls Parts of Constitution into Question’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/12/ 90MOGADISHU10556.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 3. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: Constitution Drafter Disil- lusioned’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/12/90MOGADISHU10969.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 338 Notes

4. ‘Interior Minister Denounces Violence’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1900 GMT, 24 December 1990. 5. ‘Interior Minister Abdiqassim Denounces Violence’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1900 GMT, 24 December 1990. 6. ‘Interior Minister Abdiqassim Denounces Violence’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1900 GMT, 24 December 1990. 7. Cable from US Embassy in Mogadishu to Washington, ‘Sub: December 27, 1990 Meet- ing with President Siad Barre’. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cable/1990/12/90MOGADI- SHU11295.html (accessed on 31 August 2014). 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Telephone interview with Ali Said Hassan, 31 May 2014. The commanders of the uprising before Aideed joined were General Mohamed Nuur Galaal and General Mohamed Sheikh Osman (Neero). Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 56. Cf. Bruce Nelan, ‘A Very Private War’, Time, January 14, 1991, 25. 11. ‘Aydid has not been part of USC structure’, London BBC World Service in English, 1830 GMT 28 Jan 1991. 12. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 57. 13. Ibid., 57–58. 14. Ghalib, Somali Phoenix, 144. Also interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 15. General Falco emphasised that the USC did not possess at the time such a heavy artillery to shell from one neighbourhood to another. Telephone interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, 19 June 2014. 16. Compagnon makes further erroneous note, when he incorrectly catalogues that Fuje was a colonel in the army. He was from the pre-Siad Barre police, instead. Compagnon, ‘Res- sources Politiques , Régulation Autoritaire’, Vol. 2, 858. 17. ‘ TOP SECRET - Keydmedia History Clips - Sulux, Manifesto iyo Dagaaladii Sokeeye ee Somalia ’. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7wIBQml2CY (between min 02:40 – 04:00), accessed on 25 June 2014. 18. Mustahiil was the border town that General Aideed, Abdirahman Tuur and Jees reached the agreement to wage united military attack to the regime. Interview with Mohamed Farah Jimale, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY- PART-3–19OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 2014). 19. ‘Somalia: Where Do We Go From Here’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 32, No. 3, 8 Febru- ary 1991, 2. 20. Daniel Compagnon, ‘Somali Armed Movements: The Interplay of Political Entrepren- eurship and Clan-Based Factions’, in Christopher Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), 73–90, 78 cited. 21. James K. Bishop, ‘Escape from Mogadishu’, Foreign Service Journal, March 1991, 26–31. One U.S. soldier was also injured. For more detailed report, see also James K. Bishop, ‘Escape from Mogadishu in 1991’, in Joseph G. Sullivan (ed.), Embassies Under Siege (Wash- ington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1995), 149–166. 22. ‘U.S. to Remove All Americans From Somalia’, The Los Angeles Times, Thursday, January 3, 1991. 23. Maren, The Road to Hell, 188. 24. Bishop, ‘Escape from Mogadishu’, 27–28. 25. See ibid., 28 & 29. 26. Ibid., 26. 27. Ibid., 28. 28. Ibid., 30. 29. Andrews, ‘Reconstructing a Shattered Somalia’, 47. 30. Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 37. 31. ‘Siyaad Says He Will Relinquish Power for Peace’, Domestic Service in Somali, Radio Mogadishu, 1700 GMT, 23 January 1991. Over the course of the four-week fighting, bodies lay unburied in the streets. On the main road intersecting 30th Street and Al-Baraka neighbour- Notes 339 hood, I saw three dead soldiers in front of the Al-Baraka Hotel while fleeing the war with my mother. Few days after Siad Barre was ousted, I saw an old dead man with balding in front of the Defence Ministry and again another in the right side of the Ministry. All of them seemed to have been killed. Whether they were killed in a combat or targeted as their clan identity is a matter of which I was not aware. 32. Warsame, Taxanihii Taariikhda Soomaaliyeed, 153. 33. Anderson, ‘The Gardner of Villa Somalia’. For how Siad Barre fled from the Villa Somalia during this night, see Mohamoud M. Afrah, Target: Villa Somalia – An Eyewitness Account of Mogadishu’s Fall to the U.S.C. Guerrillas (Karachi: Naseem, 1991); and Maryan Arif Gassem, Hostages: The People Who Kidnapped Themselves (Nairobi: Central Graphics Service, 1994), chapter IV. 34. Scott Petterson, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda (Lon- don: Routledge, 2001), 15. 35. Available: ‘last interview of Siad Barre’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oilgkZqstBg (between min. 00:17 – 06:15), accessed on 18 August 2014. 36. ‘More Tears for Somalia’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), Summer 1991, 2–5, 2 cited. Amidst such an anarchy, the statues of Ahmed Gurey and Mohamed Abdulle Hassan were melted down. 37. Cited in Geshekter and Warsama, ‘An Introduction to Humour and Jokes in Somali Culture’, 145. 38. In the first pages of their important books, many Somali scholars began to pay tribute to family members they lost in the war. See, for instance, Ahmed, Daybreak is Near; xv; and Mukhtar, Historical Dictionary of Somalia, the second blank page. Mohamoud Afrah also dedicated one of his diaries to his son Abdullahi, who was killed in the bombardment of Siad Barre forces on Mogadishu before their fall. M. M. Afrah, The Somali Tragedy (Mombasa, Kenya: Mohamed Printers, 1994), 4. The former minister, Mohamed Sheikh Osman, also mentioned the death of his son in an interview with a journalist. See Maren, The Road to Hell, 177. Said Samatar also wrote that ‘the seemingly senseless cataclysm in Somalia produced tens of thousands of casualties (including my brother, Ahmed Samatar, who was robbed and shot dead in ‘Eel Barde and my aged mother who died from traumatic dislocation as a refugee)’. Said Samatar, ‘Ahmed Haile: A Friend Physically Wounded, but Spiritually Resilient’, Horn of Africa , Vol. 3 & 4, No. 1&2 (July-Sept., Oct.-Dec., 1990 – Jan.-Mar., April-June, 1991), 138–139, 138 cited. 39. ‘Missing Persons: The BBC Somali Service’s Response’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), Spring 1992, 8. See also Codad Ka Yimid Soomaaliya – Voices From Somalia (London: Minority Rights Group, 1991). Both the USC and the remnants of the regime tried to manipulate the BBC to air claims and counter- claims. Dorothy Grenfell Williams, ‘The BBC Somali Service in Times of Crisis’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), February 1991, 21. 40. Telephone interview with Saida Ali Ahmed Hayle, 15 June 2014. See also Dima Zalati- mo, ‘Fall of Barre Government Welcomed by Somalis in Washington, D.C.’, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 10 (March 1991), 24. 41. Hashim, The Fallen State, 118. This was a question I should have asked when I met Jees a decade ago in Kenya during the Somali peace conference in Eldoret in 2002 and later in Mbagathi in 2003. Whatever the truth was, Jees’s inaction – as well as the SPM’s stoppage of the Mogadishu water supply from Afgooye – caused anger among the USC fighters who attacked his forces, forcing him to join his clansmen in Kismaayo. 42. ‘Keydmedia Exclusive: Ali Said Hassan Interview with Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess – 1992’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yIIchzF0vs (between min. 01:46 – 02:05), accessed on 4 August 2014. 43. A video footage showing the capture of Kismaayo by General Aideed is available at: ‘Somalia's Civil War: A Bloody Border - Near Kismayo 1992’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=AM1KrfN0m7w (between min. 00:03 – 04:01), accessed on 8 August 2014. 44. For the legendary story behind the saying, see Khaalid Cali-Guul Warsame, Haad Geed Waayey (Stockholm, Sweden: Scansom, 2010). 45. Quoted in Warsame, Taxanihii Taariikhda Soomaaliyeed, 93. 340 Notes

46. ‘Banyan: The Burmese Road to Ruin’, The Economist, August 13th, 2009, pra. 4. 47. Interview with Ahmed Haji Elmi Guure ‘Ahmedey’, Cardiff, UK, 19 September 2014. 48. Oral information from S. S. A., 2 February 2014. 49. Ibid. 50. Interview with Colonel Said Ahmed Kediye, London, 22 June 2014. Abdi Said Hersi has since lived in Italy. 51. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, 1993), 2. For interesting account of the role of the states in communal conflicts, with a focus on the whole Horn of Africa, Somalia of course included, see John Markakis, ‘Ethnic Conflict & the State in the Horn of Africa’, in Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis (eds.), Ethnicity & Conflict in the Horn of Africa (London: James Currey, 1994), 217–237. 52. Bader, Le Sang et le sait; and van Notten, The Law of the Somalis. For specific example, see ‘Some News of the North-East of Somalia (the Majeerteen)’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), Spring 1993, 16–17. 53. Cf. Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa; Hanley, Warriors ; C. M. De Vecchi, Orizon- ti d’Impero: Cinque Anni in Somalia (Milan: Mondadori, 1935); and Walsh, Under the Flag and Somali Coast Stories. For analysis with a similar perspective, see Prunier, ‘Segmentarité et Violence’, 379–401. 54. Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa. 55. ‘British Somaliland and Its Tribes’, document issued by the Military Government of British Somaliland, January 1945, 1. General Reference Collection C.S.C. 164/4, British Li- brary. 56. Bethany Ann Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, ‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths’, European Journal of Population , Vol. 21, Nos. 2–3 (2005), 145–166. 159 cited. 57. For a sweeping study that culled insights from the Italian archival sources, see Hess, Italian Colonialism in Somalia. 58. Interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, telephone, 19 June 2014; interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, telephone, 18 June 2014; interview with Colonel Ab- diweli Jama Warsame Gorod, telephone, 11 June 2014; interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, telephone, 31 July 2014. 59. Chris Allen, ‘Warfare, Endemic Violence and State Collapse in Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 26, No. 81 (1999), 367–384, 381 cited. 60. Firew Kebede Tiba, ‘The Mengistu Genocide Trial in Ethiopia’, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2007), 513–528. 61. Africa Watch Committee, Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991). For more detailed examination, see Edmond J. Keller, Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People’s Republic (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998). From the perspectives of Ethiopians themselves, see Tola Babile, To Kill a Generation: The Red Terror in Ethiopia (Washington, D.C.: Free Ethiopia Press, 1989); Wolde-Giorgis Dawit, Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia (Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 19890; and Gebru Tareke, ‘The Red Terror in Ethiopia: A Historical Aberration’, Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2008), 183–206. 62. Interview with Professor Omar Mohamed Addow, telephone, 9 July 2014; interview with Maryan Hussein Mohamed ‘Awreeye’, telephone, 6 April 2014; interview with Maryan Haji Elmi, telephone, 30 August 2014; interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, telephone, 19 June 2014; ‘Warqaddii Cigaal Qoray 1990kii’, Xog-Ogaal, Thursday 29 Septem- ber 2011, A6. 63. ‘Situation of Human Rights in Somalia, UN Document, E/CN.4/2000/110, 26 January 2000. Copy on file with the author. 64. Abdirahman A. Sabriye, ‘Somalia’s Present Crisis & A Possible Way Out’, in The Role of the United Nations in Somalia: Present Crisis & Possible Solutions (Proceedings of a Conference held at the Westin Hotel, Ottawa, from August 13–14 1993), 87–91, 89 cited. 65. Abdi Mohamed Kusow, ‘The Genesis of the Somali Civil War: A New Perspective’, Northeast African Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1994), 31–46, 1 cited. Notes 341

66. Virginia Luling, ‘Come Back Somalia? Questioning a Collapsed State’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1997), 287–302, 293 cited. 67. Elmi, Understanding the Somali Conflagration, 11. 68. Roger Dean, ‘Rethinking the Civil War in Sudan’, Civil Wars, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2000), 71–91; and Douglas Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (Oxford: James Currey, 2003). 69. Bessel, ‘Hatred after War’, 197. 70. Branch, Defeating Maw Mau, Creating Kenya, 15. 71. Interview with Abdullahi Mohamed Geeddi, London, UK, 29 March 2014. 72. This was also the case in the Liberian armed conflict. See Quentin Outram, ‘It’s Termi- nal Either Way: An Analysis of Armed Conflict in Liberia, 1989–1996’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 24, No. 73 (1997), 355–371. 73. Siegfried Groth, Nambia – The Wall of Silence: The Dark Days of the Liberation Struggle (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag, 1995). 74. AbdouMaliq Simone, ‘On the Worlding of African Cities’, African Studies Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2001), 14–41, 25 cited. 75. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2006). See also Christopher Crammer, Civil War Is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (London: C. Hurst, 2006); and Paul Collier, ‘Doing Well out of War: An Economic Prospective’, in Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (eds.), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 91–111. 76. For how Somalia’s economy thrived without a state better off than the Siad Barre regime, see Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after State Collapse: Chaos or Improvement?’ Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organisation, Vol. 67, No. ¾ (2008), 657–670; Peter D. Little, Somalia: Economy Without State (Oxford: James Currey, 2003); Peter T. Leeson, ‘Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse’, Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2007), 687–710; Jamil Mubarak, ‘The “Hidden Hand” Behind the Resilience of the Stateless Economy of Somalia’, World Develop- ment, Vol. 25, No. 12 (December 1997), 2027–2041; and Christian Webersik, ‘Mogadishu: an Economy without a State’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 8 (2006), 1463–1480. For institutional and security context, see Alice Hills, ‘Somalia Works: Police Development as State Building’, African Affairs, Vol. 113, No. 450 (2014), 88–107; and David K. Leonard and Mohamed S. Samatar, ‘What Does the Somali Experience Teach Us about the Social Contract and the State?’, Development and Change, Vol. 42, No. 2 (2011), 559–584. For broader African context, see Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey 1999). Cf. Mary J. Fox, ‘Somalia Divided: The African Cerberus (Considerations on Political Culture)’, Civil Wars, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1999), 1–34. For wider perspective, see Robert Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Devel- opment (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). 77. For empirical analysis focusing on the Somali health sector, see Debarati Guha-Sapir and Ruwan Ratnayake, ‘Consequences of Ongoing Civil Conflict in Somalia: Evidence for Public Health Responses’, PloS Medicine, Vol. 6, No. 8 (2009), 1–5. For similar settings, see Matthew S. Openshaw, ‘The Health Consequences of Armed Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Much Do Conflict Intensity and Proximity Matter’, African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review, Vol. 2. No. 1 (Spring 2012), 1–30. 78. Interview with Yoonis Ali Nuur, London, 27 May 2014. 79. Cf. ‘Ibraahim Meygaag Samatar.flv’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TiqIr_2Cu8 (between min. 07:17 – 08:08), accessed on 1 July 2014. Cf. ‘Somalia: The SNM Foresees Possible North-South Split in the Country’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 2nd, 1983, No. 70, 5. 80. ‘Somalia: Dim Future for the SNM’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, 5. See also ‘SNM Denies Secession’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, November 23, 1985, No. 207, 6. 81. ‘Somalia: New Opposition Movement Formed’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Satur- day, May 24, 1986, No. 233, 3. 342 Notes 11. THE REALITY AND REALIGNMENT OF 1991

1. Ioan M. Lewis, ‘Making History in Somalia: Humanitarian Intervention in a Stateless Society’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XV, No. 1,2,3,4 (Dec., 1997), 8–29, 13 cited. Similarly, another outside observer argues that the ‘United Somali Congress (USC)-organized-and-armed vigi- lantes systematically carried out an undiscriminating massacre of anyone who was identified as Darod’. Ali A. Abdi, ‘Somalia and Sahnoun: Review of Somalia: The Missed Opportunities’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XV, No. 1,2,3,4 (Dec., 1997), 148–153, 151 cited. In another piece, he also argued the ‘USC supporters massacred anyone who was a Darod by birth’ (Emphasis his). He goes on to stress about the ‘organized killing by the marauding USC militia’. And next page he writes that the war was a ‘mass scale tribal killing’. Ali A. Abdi, ‘The Rise and Fall of Somali Nationalism from Traditional Society to Fragile “Nationhood” to Post-State’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XV, No. 1,2,3,4 (Dec., 1997), 34–80, 59 and 60 cited. 2. Interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, telephone, 19 June 2014; and interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, telephone, 20 April and 18 June 2014. 3. Jutta Bakonyi, ‘Moral Economies of Mass Violence: Somalia 1988–1991’, Civil Wars, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2009), 434–454, 444 cited. The fact was that the Mogadishu masses were ‘composed of a broad range of different actors, stemming from different social groups and different clan-families. Beside armed gangs and bandits, deserting members of the security services, armed and unarmed neighbourhood groups, and individuals also joined the emerging crowds in different parts of the city. Most of these groups had some internal structures and rules. There was, however, no overall organisation of the upheaval, neither during the crowd’s formation nor with respect to their target selection’ (ibid.). 4. Sidney Tarrow, ‘Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of Contention’, Social Science History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1993), 281–307. 5. Catherine Besteman, ‘Primordialist Blinders: A Reply to I. M. Lewis’, Cultural Anthro- pology, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1998), 109–120; 111 cited. As the distinguished historian of Somali society Lee Cassanelli observed that the whole war was ‘about power and legitimacy, about which leader from which clan had the right to head a reconstituted Somali state. And like all civil wars, it provided the occasion for some individuals and groups to redress past grievances to humiliate old enemies’. Lee Cassanelli, ‘Explaining the Somali Crisis,” in Catherine Beste- man and Lee V. Cassanelli (eds.), The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War behind the War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 13–26, 14 cited. See also Bernhard Helander, ‘The Decline of Clanship in Somalia’, Somalia News Update, October 1992. 6. Author’s notes, Mogadishu, 1991–2002. 7. ‘Somalia: A Fight to the Death?’, Leaving Civilians at the Mercy of Terror and Starva- tion’, News from Africa Watch, February 13, 1992, 10. One of the arms sellers told a journalist that he ‘sold weapons indiscriminately to anyone who had the money, even immature teenag- ers’. Sunni Muhammad Khalid, ‘Searching for the “Star of Mogadishu”’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XVI, No. 1,2,3,4 (Dec., 1998), 52–95, 60. As Ibrahim Abdullah et al. also observed in Sierra Leone: ‘Some of the kids I spoke with during my fieldwork kept telling me that handling a gun empowered them–it made them feel somebody’. Abdullah, Ibrahim, Yusuf Bangura, C. Blake, Lansana Gberie, L. Johnson, K. Kallon, S. Kemokai, Patrick K. Muana, Ishmail Rashid and Alfred Zack-Williams (1997), ‘Lumpen Youth Culture and Political Violence: Sierra Leoneans Debate the RUF and the Civil War’, African Development, Vol. 22, No. 3 & 4 (1997), 171–216, 183 cited. 8. Cited in Marc Michaelson, ‘Somalia: The Painful Road to Reconciliation’, Africa To- day, Vol. 40, No. 2 (1993), 53–73, 60 cited. Another despaired elder told a fact-finding mission visiting Mogadishu that when someone gave children money to buy sweets, they were more likely to spend it on testing a gun in the market or, worse, buying a bullet from the main open air weapons market of Suuqa Huriwaa (sky shooter). A Report by the Inter-NGO for Somalia (UK) on a Visit to Southern Somalia, Mogadishu and Kismayo, 13th–24 July 1991, 17. 9. ‘Somalia: A Fight to the Death?’, 10. Notes 343

10. This point is inspired by Anonymous ‘The Persistence of War in Africa’, in Alex de Waal (ed.), Who Fights? Who Cares? War and Humanitarian Action in Africa, foreword by President Paul Kagame (Trenton, N.J., 2000), 1–34, 2 cited. 11. For Sierra Leone, see Keen, Conflict & Collision; and Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest. 12. Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, ‘The Plight of the Agro-Pastoral Society of Somalia’, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 70, No. (1996), 543–553, 543 cited. Lee Cassanelli also concluded that ‘this “war” for rural resources will continue even when and if Somalia’s contending factions reach a political settlement, because such resources represent the economic future for whichever regime or regimes emerge victories’. Cassanelli, ‘Explaining the Somali Crisis’, ix. 13. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014; interview with General Osman Haji Omar ‘Falco’, telephone, 19 June 2014; interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, telephone, 20 April and 18 June 2014; interview with Ali Mahdi Mohamed, telephone, 15 June 2014. 14. Bernhard Helander, ‘The Hubeer in the Land of Plenty: Land, Labor, and Vulnerability Among a Southern Somali Clan’, in Catherine Besteman and Lee V. Cassanelli (eds.), The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 47–69, 63 cited. 15. Eugenia W. Herbt, Twilight of the Zambezi: Late Colonialism in Central Africa (New York, 2002), xvii. 16. In an attempt to situate her narrative within the ever-growing literature on genocide studies, Lidwien Kapteijns seems to be left to wonder whether or not the ‘clan cleansing’ was organised. Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 132 & 136. 17. A Report the Inter-NGO for Somalia (UK) on a Visit to Southern Somalia, 16. 18. Abdi Samatar, ‘Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Conven- tion’, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4 (1992), 625–641, 637 cited. 19. Available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I- 1021-English.pdf (retrieved on 16 November 2014). 20. Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), 237. 21. It should be noted that these were not the only Hawiye clans involved in the uprising. 22. Quoted in Bakonyi, ‘Moral Economies of Mass Violence’, 44; also interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April and 18 June 2014. 23. For a set of competing clan hostilities during the clanised wars, see Schlee, ‘Regularity in Chaos’, 251–280. 24. Human Rights Watch, Somalia: No Mercy in Mogadishu (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 4. 25. Compagnon, ‘Political Decay in Somalia’, 9. 26. For a survey of the concepts of greed and grievance, see Mats Berdal, ‘Beyond Greed and Grievance–and not too soon...’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 31 (2005): 687–698. For a comparative analysis, see Charlie Cater, ‘Rethinking the Critical Cases of Africa’, in Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman (eds.), The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 19–47. For a thoughtful critique on such a paradigm, see Syed Mansoob Murshed, Explaining Civil War: A Rational Choice Approach (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2010). For political dynamics of civil strife, cf. Adam Lockyer, ‘The Dynamics of Warfare in Civil War’, Civil Wars, Vol. 12, No. 1–2 (2010): 91–116; and Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘Contemporary War: Ethnic Conflict, Resource Conflict or Something Else’, Civil Wars, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2000), 92–116. 27. The (central) areas Ali Mahdi traversed were inhabited by the Habar Gidir/Saleebaan whose elders hid him and then managed him to cross the border. Telephone interview with Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, 31 July 2014. 28. Personal communication with General Osmar Haji Omar ‘Falco’. 29. Telephone interview with Ahmed Mohamed Weheliye ‘Ahmed Hiji’, 29 August 2014. 30. Quoted in Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 59fn3. See also ‘USC’s Aydid [sic] Not to Recognize Interim Government’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Service, London, 1709 GMT, 344 Notes

31 January 1991. Cf. ‘Somalia Gets New Interim President’, The Associated Press (AP), January 29, 1991. 31. ‘Senior SNM Member Comments’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Service, London, 1709 GMT, 30 January 1991. Barely two months later, when asked, in his turn, that the SNM did not recognise him as Prime Minister, Omar Arte refuted that he was the man who created the SNM itself. ‘PM Arteh Ghalib: I am the SNM, I Created It in 1964’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Service, 1709 GMT, 21 March 1991. 32. ‘SSDF Official Reacts’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Service, London, 1709 GMT, 31 January 1991. See also ‘Hassan A. Mireh: We Do Not Recognize the Existence of a Govern- ment in Somalia’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tuesday, 02 April 1991. 33. ‘National Movement Leader Interviewed on Situation’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Saturday, 9 February, 1991. 34. Axmed M. Silyano (sic), ‘A Proposal to the Somali National Movement on a Frame- work for a Transitional Government in Somalia’, London, March 1991, 3. A copy on file with the author. 35. Ibid., 7. 36. Ibid., 3. 37. Bayart, The State in Africa, 219. 38. ‘MOGADISHU: Rival Rebels Meet’, The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, February 26, 1991. 39. Available at: ‘Keydmedia Exclusive: USC & SNM - General Aidid and members of the Isaaq Clan’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85qpdCprvo (between min. 00:25–24:14), accessed on 4 August 2014. 40. ‘Provisional President Ali Mahdi Interviewed’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Wednesday, 03 April 1991. 41. ‘General Aidid Interviewed on Mogadishu Plight’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Ser- vice, London, 1705 GMT, 7 January 1992. 42. ‘Dowladii USC 1991’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCHpPqOWvRg (between min. 00:03 and 03:01), accessed on 29 December 2014. 43. Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid, 169. 44. Telephone interview with Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, 3 Sep- tember 2014. 45. Telephone interview with Ahmed Mohamed Weheliye ‘Ahmed Hiji’, 29 August 2014. 46. Omar, The Road to Zero, 205. 47. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 48. Cassanelli, ‘Explaining the Somali Crisis’, 24. 49. Herfried Münkler, The New Wars, translated by Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), esp. chapter 2. See also a similar observation by Charles Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in Catherine Besteman (ed.), Violence: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2002), 35–60. 50. Telephone interview with Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, 3 September 2014. 51. ‘Sharci L. 13 ee 4 Maarso 1989, Wax ka beddelka Dastuurka Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqa- raadiga Soomaaliya’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maarso 1989, L. 1 R 3, 149–152, 149 cited. 52. Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 138. 53. Peter Biles, ‘Somalia, Starting from Scratch’, Africa Report, Vol. 36, No. 3 (May-June 1991), 55–59. 54. Quoted in Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 7. 55. Andrew Linke and Clionardh Raleigh, ‘State and Stateless Violence in Somalia’, African Geographical Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2011), 47–66, 62 cited. 56. Amrik Heyer, “‘Nowadays They Can Even Kill You for That Which They Feel Is Theirs’: Gender and Production of Ethnic Identity in Kikuyu-Speaking Central Kenya’, in Vigdis Broch-Due (ed.), Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post-Colonial Africa (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 41–59. 57. Mustahiil on the Ethiopian side of the Somali border was the place that General Aideed marked his struggle against the Siad Barre regime. Notes 345

58. Mitchel Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999); Lloyd A. Fallers, The Social Anthropology of the Nation-State (Chicago: Aldine, 1971); Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Ap- proaches and Their Critics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 1 (1991)77–96; Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, ‘Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Govern- ment’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 2 (1992), 172–205; and Michael Taussig, The Magic of the State (New York: Routledge, 1996). 59. James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 1998). 60. Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘Contemporary War: Ethnic Conflict, Resource Conflict or Some- thing Else?’, Civil Wars , Vol. 3, No. 1 (2000), 92–116, 108 cited. 61. Telephone interview with General Elmi Sahal Ali, 23 June 2014. See also ‘Somalia: Power Struggle’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, February 2, 1991, No. 464, 1. 62. Keith Richburg, ‘Peace Effort in Somalia Meets Initial Failure’, The Washington Post, Saturday, 4 January 1992. 63. Telephone interview with Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, 3 Sep- tember 2014. 64. Unclassified E10 US Document, Confidential, ‘Proprietary Information’. Available at: http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/somalia/exploring_e10.pdf (accessed on 5 Sep- tember 2014). The fact that there were other foreign personalities, such as the Italian Giancarlo Morrochino with their foreign private companies operating clandestinely in Mogadishu created suspicion among the ordinary people. 65. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 110. 66. Ibid., 98. My translation. For somewhat relevant phenomenon in Sierra Leone, see William Reno, ‘Understanding Criminality in West African Conflicts’, International Peace- keeping, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2009), 47–61. 67. ‘Report of the Conference’, cited in Kusow, ‘The Genesis of the Somali Civil War’, 42. 68. See Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?, 32–34. For a report describing traditional clan leaders acted as a government authority, see John Burges, ‘Courting Somalia’s Clan Elders: System Represents Sole Government’, The Washington Post, 28 March 1993, A30. Many Hawiye intellectuals too sought to reconcile the two leaders, such as Eng. Mohamed Hussein Addow, Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, Mohamed Abdi Arush, Hassan Pilote, Abdi Osman Adan ‘Abdi Delboon’, Ahmed Muumin Warfaa, Hassan Diiriye Afrah, Nuur Weheliye, Nurta Haji Hassan, Maryam Ariif, Faduma Ahmed Barahow and Istarliin Abdi Arush. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. 69. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014. Other accounts suggest that the election occurred on 4 July 1991. 70. Achille Mbembe, ‘On Politics as a Form of Expenditure’, in Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 299–335. 71. Cf. Dool, Soomaaliya: Arrimihii Dibadda, Burburka Maxay Ku lahayd?; and Cabdulla- hi Dool, Soomaaliya: Maxay Kala Tirsaneysaa Maryooley? (London: Horn Heritage, 1995); and Omar, The Road to Zero. 72. Telephone interview with Ali Mahdi Mohamed, 15 June 2014. 73. Telephone interview with General Mohamed Nuur Galaal, 20 April 2014. 74. Telephone interview with Ali Mahdi Mohamed, 15 June 2014. 75. ‘Somalia: Power Struggle in Embassies’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, March 16, 1991, No. 470, 5. 76. ‘Somalia: Fragile Agreement’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 32, No. 21, 25 October 1991, 5–6, 6 cited. See ‘Somalia: A Chaos Spreads to the North’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 33, No. 7, 3 April 1992, 1–2. Aideed maintained his close contact with the SNM, even after The Somali- land Republic was declared in the North on 18 May 1991. Video footages recorded on 6 July 1991 show him meeting with the SNM representatives in Mogadishu. Available at: ‘Keydme- dia Exclusive: USC & SNM - General Aidid and members of the Isaaq Clan’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85qpdCprvo (between min. 00:25–24:14), accessed on 4 August 2014. 346 Notes

77. ‘More Tears for Somalia’, Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska iyo Soomaalida (Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society), Summer 1991, 2–5. 78. ‘Prime Minister on Domestic Conditions, Ties’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Wednesday, 20 March 1991. See also ‘Report on Al-Akhbar Interview with Ghalib’, Mena (Egyptian News Agency), Tuesday, 09 April 1991; ‘Arteh Ghalib: I Repeat here to the Whole World that Instability in Somalia is a Mere Rumor’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Monday, 18 November 1991; and ‘Ghalib Terms Issues behind Fighting “Minor”’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tuesday, 3 December 1991. See also ‘Abdullahi Sh. Ismail: The Present Government is a National Government’, Al- Sharq Al-Awsat, Saturday, 16 March 1991; and ‘Report on Al-Akhbar Interview with Ghalib’, Mena (Egyptian News Agency), Tuesday, 09 April 1991. Cf. ‘Ali Mahdi Holds News Confer- ence in Mogadishu’, Radio Mogadishu, 1700 GMT, 20 August 1991; and ‘Ali Mahdi on Rival Fighting in Mogadishu’, Focus on Africa, BBC World Service, London, 1515 GMT, 13 Sep- tember 1991. Cf. also Peter Grier, ‘Dire Straits in Somalia: Clan Warfare drives People out of Capital City, Stymies Relief Effort’, The Christian Science Monitor, Wednesday, 8 January 1992; and Jane Perlez, ‘Factional Fighting in Somalia Terrorizes and Ruins Capital’, The New York Times, Sunday, December 8, 1991. 79. For the so-called air blockade, see Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?, 37. 80. Other accounts say between 6 and 9 September. 81. ‘Somalia: The War of Mogadishu’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, 23 Novem- ber, 1991, No. 503, 3; Peter Biles, ‘Somalia: Diary of Destruction’, BBC Focus on Africa, Vol. 3, No. 4 (October-December 1991): 24–26; Jane Perlez, ‘Somali Capital a Grisly Battlefield as Civilians Die in Clan Warfare’ The New York Times, Sunday, November 29, 1991, A12; and Jane Perlez, ‘Factional Fighting in Somalia Terrorizes and Ruins the Capital’, The New York Times, Tuesday, December 8, 1991, A1 & A22. Afrah, the only representative of an international news organisation, provides a crucial diary about this war. See Afrah, Mogadishu. For scholarly analysis drawn from fieldwork, see Roland Marchal, ‘La Guerre à Mogadiscio’, Politique Africaine, No. 46 (June 1992), 120–125. 82. Rakiya Omaar, ‘Somalia: At War with Itself’, Current History, Vol. 91, No. 565 (May 1992), 230–234. See also Jane Perlez, ‘Somalia Self-Destructs, And the World Looks On’, The New York Times, Sunday, December 29, 1991. For detailed descriptions of those events, see Africa Watch Committee, A Flight to the Death? (New York: Africa Watch, 1992); and Africa Watch, No Mercy in Mogadishu: The Human Cost of the Conflict and the Struggle for Relief (Washington, DC: Africa Watch, 1992). 83. The Sa’ad, the Eyr, the Saleebaan and the Saruur are the four sub-clans of the Habar Gidir clan of the Hawiye clan-group. 84. Interview with Mohamed Goodah Barre, London, 6 July 2014; and telephone interview with Ahmed Mohamed Weheliye ‘Ahmed Hiji’, 29 August 2014. Marchal also reported that some Hawaadle members supported Ali Mahdi. Marchal, ‘La Guerre à Mogadiscio’, 124. 85. Telephone interview with Colonel Abdi Hussein Faahiye ‘Hoogsade’, 31 July 2014. Their infighting allowed the USC fighters to withdraw from Kismaayo in June 1991, thus allowing General Morgan to reoccupy the town and creep into all the way down to Brava. 86. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 154. 87. A Report the Inter-NGO for Somalia (UK) on a Visit to Southern Somalia, 16. 88. Luling, ‘Come Back Somalia?’, 299. 89. Timo Antero Kivimäki, ‘Explaining Violence in Somalia’, a study based on a project commissioned by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, CTS-Conflict Transformation Service, Helsin- ki & Copenhagen, 2001, 25. 90. Andrews, ‘Reconstructing a Shattered Somalia’, 47. Ambassador Oakley observed that all post-Siad Barre faction leaders ‘proved adept at promoting the impression that they were receiving foreign backing’. Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 60. 91. Ibid., 15. Cf. Robert B. Oakley, ‘Imposing Values: The US ambassador who negotiated temporary security among warning clans and starving refugees in 1993 in Somalia argues for caution in exporting our values to other countries’, World View, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1995), 13–19. 92. Ronald Marchal, ‘Warlordism and Terrorism: How to Obscure an Already Confusing Crisis?: The Case of Somalia’, International Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 6 (2007), 1091–1106, 1092 cited. Notes 347

93. ‘General Aidid Interviewed on Mogadishu Plight’. For contrasting view, see ‘Omar Ghalib Urges Dialogue between Warring Parties’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Sunday, 8 November 1991. 94. Telephone interview with Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, 31 July 2014. Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’ and Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf agreed with Abdi Dheere on this point. Telephone interview with Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, 3 September 2014; and telephone interview with Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, 3 September 2014. 95. Telephone interview with Abdi Farah Jama ‘Abdi Dheere’, 31 July 2014. 96. As James Jonah, special UN envoy tasked to end the war between Ali Mahdi and Aideed, confessed: ‘These clan conflicts to me are just incomprehensible’. Quoted in Petterson, Me Against My Brother, 34. 97. Cited in Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 19. 98. ‘Darajo iyo Xil yaa mudan.flv’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKPZOVQ4c6w (between min. 00:14–04:12), accessed on 30 August 2014. My translation. 99. Halima Ismail, ‘Report on Hiraab Peace Conference held in Mogadishu, 13–16 January 1994. Copy on file with the author. Cf. Economist Intelligence Unit Country Report Somalia, 1st quarter 1994, 34. 100. Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 13. The American diplomats further observed that ‘Aideed, still basking in Siad Barre’s defeat, was absolutely convinced of the rightness of his claim to lead Somalia, and believed he could handily defeat Ali Mahdi within weeks’ (19). 101. Ibid., 13. 102. Ibid., 57. 103. Ibid., 56. 104. ‘Seven Point Agreement Signed by Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed’, December 11, 1992, in the appendix B of ibid., 183. 105. Tom Clancy with General Zinni and Tony Kolts, Battle Ready (New York: G. P. Put- nam’s Sons, 2004), 260. 106. Author’s notes, Oxford, December 2014 . 107. ‘Keydmedia History Clips - General M. Farrah Aidid with Yoweri Museveni & Amb. Sahnoun–1992’, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwpYbNqNYkk (between min 22:00–22:20), accessed on 5 August 2014; ‘General M. Farrah Aidid & Ambassador M. Sah- noun Speaking to the Somalis–1992’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjT_6WpBApQ (between min 00:17–18:57), accessed on 5 August 2014. 108. Roland Marchal, email to Mohamed Ingiriis, 13 January 2015. See also Drysdale, What- ever Happened to Somalia?, chapters 2 & 3; Tom Farer, ‘From Warlord to Peacelord? Like it or Not, the West Needs to Enlist Aideed–or Face Disaster’, The Washington Post, Sunday, September 12, 1993; and Harold Marcus, ‘President Aidid’s Somalia’, A Report, Michigan State Press, 1995. Available at: http://www.h-net.org/~africa/confrpt/marcus.html (accessed on 9 January 2015). 109. Luling, ‘Come Back Somalia?’, 299. 110. Author’s notes, Brussels, March 2004. 111. As Said Samatar had earlier admitted: ‘I believe I am entitled to claim a small part in the turning of American public opinion against [Aideed]’. Said S. Samatar, ‘Somalia: Africa’s Problem Child’, Horn of Africa, Vol. XV, No. 1,2,3,4 (1997), 110–137, 129 cited. 112. Mohamed Farah Aidid and Dr Satya Pal Ruhela (eds.), The Preferred Future Develop- ment in Somalia; Mohamed Farah Aideed, ‘My Struggle: An Exclusive Account for the Week- ly Review as Told to Ambassador Hussein Ali Dualeh’, reprinted in Hussein Ali Dualeh, From Barre to Aideed : Somalia: The Agony of a Nation, 168–181; and Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid. 113. ‘Radio Address by Mohamed Farah Aideed (excerpts)’, March 10, 1994, in the appendix G of Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope, 211. As the U.S. diplomats admitted, Aideed had ‘genuinely strong nationalist feelings’ (ibid., 19). 114. ‘Somalia: Time to Take Shock’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 33, No. 8, 17 April 1992, 4–5. While Aideed’s balloon was ‘still inflating’, Generals Morgan and Gabyow were in Kenya, 348 Notes soliciting funds for arming their clan refugees in Kenya. See ‘Somalia: Balloon Goes Up’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 33, No. 10, 22 May 1992, 8. 115. Quoted in ‘Somalia: General Aydeed Contests New Government’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter, Saturday, 19th October, 1991, No. 498, 4. 116. The form and formulation of General Aideed’s cabinet of ministers was not different from Siad Barre’s. For the list of this cabinet, see ‘Xasuus Golahii Dowladii Salbalaar’, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lTwRAcO_XU (between min. 04:30–13:30), accessed on 4 Au- gust 2014. See also Beeldeeq, 16 June 1995; Qaran, 16 June 1995 and Xog-Ogaal, 16 June 1995. Before forming his government, he met with the former President Aden Adde. ‘Caydiid oo la kulmay Madaxweynihii Hore Aadan Cabdulle Cusmaan’, Himilo, Xirmo I, Tirsi 1, Jannaayo 1995, 3. See also ‘Caydiid oo lagu yaabo inuu isku magacaabo Madaxweyne’, Himi- lo, Xirmo I, Tirsi 1, Jannaayo 1995, 3. 117. Aideed, ‘My Struggle’, 168–181; and Aidid and Ruhela, The Preferred Future Develop- ment in Somalia; and Ruhela, Mohammed Farah Aidid. 118. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxkJ7ac6Mag (between min. 0:20 and 3:37), accessed on 11 February 2014. 119. ‘Keydmedia History Clips - Jen. Caydiid "Midkaan Xabad idinku soo ridin Ha Taabani- na! Soo Dhaweeya!"’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUCpFagnXc (between min. 0:20 –9:07), accessed on 30 April 2014. 120. Ibid., (between min. 00:25–01:41). 121. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYEwtPyoyQ (between min. 0:1 –2:23), accessed on 30 April 2014. My translation. By contrast, another video clip on the YouTube shows Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf declaring an all-out-war between the Hawiye and the Daarood soon after an interim government was formed in Arta, Djibouti, in August 2000, stating that ‘the Hawiye were now prepared for war [against the government formed in Arta, led by none other than a Hawiye President]’. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=C0ri6N5WXi0 (between min. 00:01:–00:27), accessed on 9 May 2014. The exploitation of Hawiye division worked well with Abdullahi Yusuf who later succeeded to have been selected as Transitional Federal President in a Nairobi hotel in October 2014. Instead of citing directly from the available documents from the USC, Kapteijns blames those belonging to the Hawiye from which the USC draw support for clan cleansing. Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing. Heavily opinionated, Kapteijns discards and denounces Hawiye people’s grievances against Daarood people. Strangely, she includes the 1980s in the period of nationalist sentiments, when the reality was to the contrary. See Lidwien Kapteijns, ‘Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960–90’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 50 (2009), 101–122. 122. Available at: ‘Subkane.flv’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l17qeaEIX8k (between min. 03:49–04:37), accessed on 9 September 2014. Similarly, Said Samatar, his long-term polemicist had accused Aideed of harrying not only the Daarood but also the Hawiye. He ‘roughed up the Daarood, a most salutary undertaking. After years of dominating the political scene, the Daarood had grown arrogant and it was time to put the fear of God into them. [His] savaging of them had done just that. But his tragedy was that he did not stop there; imbued with a congenital bloody nature, he went on to bloody the Hawiye, his own kin, even more savagely. [He] in fact brutalized all and everyone who crossed his path’. Samatar, ‘Somalia: Africa’s Problem Child’, 125–126. 123. Oral information from A. M. A. 124. Conversation with Ambassador Daher Yusuf Aw-Mohamoud. I visited the late Ambas- sador Daher in the Netherlands in the spring of 2006 and stayed with him for a couple of days in the small Dutch town of Leeuwarden in late April 2006. However, General Aideed also received Ambassador Ga’aliye, a Mareehaan, in Mogadishu. For the reflections of Ga’aliye’s trip to Mogadishu, see ‘Qaybta Waraysiga’, Himilo, Xirmo I, Tirsi 1, Jannaayo 1995, 28–29. 125. Telephone interview with Colonel Muhiddiin Mo’allim Osman ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, 7 July 2014; telephone interview with Mohamed Sheikh Mohamoud Guuleed ‘Ga’madheere’, 3 September 2014; and telephone interview with Sheikh Ali Haji Yusuf, 3 September 2014. 126. Compagnon insists that Aideed ‘would have been as bad as a president as Siad Barre [as well as] his former associate Abdullahi Yusuf, whose record both as a SSDF leader and later as Notes 349 a transition[al] president [was] appalling’. Personal communication with Daniel Compagnon, 24 January 2014. 127. ‘ Keydmedia History Clips - General M. Farrah Aidid with Yoweri Museveni & Amb. Sahnoun–1992 ’. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwpYbNqNYkk (between min 22:00–22:20), accessed on 5 August 2014. 128. Ibid. 129. Caddow, Somalia: Gelbiskii Geerida, 258. 130. Helio Belik, ‘Angola and the Fragmentation of the Post-Colonial African State’, in R. Brian Ferguson, The State, Identity and Violence: Political Disintegration in the Post-Cold War World (London: Routledge, 2003), 243–260. For analogy between Somali and Angolan armed conflicts, see Jutta Bakonyi & Kirsti Stuvøy, ‘Violence & Social Order beyond the State: Somalia & Angola’, Review of African Political Economy Vol. 32, No. 104–105 (2005), 359–382.

CONCLUSION

1. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 352. 2. Keylor, A World of Nations, 67 (below the caption of Monnet’s picture). 3. As Brons put it, ‘[t]he Greater Somali[a] idea of the state, which gave ideological backing to Darod dominance, was presented as representing the one voice of the Somali nation’. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State, 168. 4. Urdoh, Al-Yoom, 7 September 1967, 20. 5. Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 89. 6. Abdi Samatar and A. I. Samatar, ‘The Material Roots of the Suspended African State: Arguments from Somalia’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1987), 669–690, 680 cited. 7. Abdi Ismail Samatar, An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Development (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1999), 191. In Samatar’s view, the petit bourgeois democracy was replaced by ‘a petit bourgeois dictatorship’. So for him, the 1969 coup was intervention necessarily needed. Samatar, The State and Rural Trans- formation, 112. Retrospectively, the criticism toward the so-called Somali petite bourgeoisie began in 1965, with the publication of a scathing article in Dalka newspaper. ‘A Letter to Our Bourgeoisie’, Dalka, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1st September 1965), 7–8. For a critique on the flawed assumption of ‘petty bourgeoisie’, see Adam, From Tyranny to Anarchy, 36–37. 8. Bayart, The State in Africa. 9. Henrick Vigh, ‘Critical States and Cocaine Connections’, in Mats Utas (eds.), African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks (London: Zed Books, 2012), 137–157, 144 cited. 10. Meredeth Turshen, ‘Women’s War Stories’, in Meredeth Turshen & Clotilde Twagiram- ariya (eds.), What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (London: Zed Books, 1998), 1–26, 9 cited. 11. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 19, 101 and 145. Some armed movements later transformed themselves into clan belongings such as the SSDF or into religious movements such as Al Shabaab or new in-between such as the Dervishes. 12. Bayart, The State in Africa. 13. Cited in John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods, and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. 5th edition (London: Longman, 2010), 170. 14. Quoted in Gwyn Prins, ‘Oral History’, in Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Histor- ical Writing, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 120–156, 127 cited. 15. Ahmed, Daybreak is Near, 128. 16. Telephone interview with A. W., 3 August 2014. 17. Interview with Ahmed Saleebaan Dafle, http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSSARY-PART-4–20OCT09.mp3 (accessed on 5 September 350 Notes

2014). Cf. George James, ‘Somalia’s Overthrown Dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, Is Dead’, The New York Times, January 3, 1995. 18. Moira Farrow, ‘Welfare Warlords’, The New Republic, November 22, 10. 19. ‘Ex-Somali PM Samantar ordered to pay torture damages’, BBC World Service, 29 August 2012. 20. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘Somalia: Clans and the State’, March 2, 2012. Available at: http://africanarguments.org/2012/03/02/don%E2%80%99t-force-statehood-on-somalia- %E2%80%93-a-response-to-richard-dowden-by-mohamed-haji-ingiriis/ (accessed on 20 Au- gust 2014), pra. 10. 21. Richard Greenfield, ‘Siad Barre’s Sad Legacy’, Africa Report, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 1991), 13–18. 22. See, for example, ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 5 September, 1971, World Bank Credit Project–Appointment of Officers to (i) Project Unit (ii) School Design Unit’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno II, Mogadiscio, 26 Maggio 1971, Suppl. n. 7 al. n. 5, 1176; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 20 Agoosto 1974, L. 93–Magacaabid Agaasimayaal Waaxyood’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 2aad, Muqdisho, Tr. 1 Settembre 1974, L. 9, 433–434; and ‘Xeer Madaxweyna- ha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 16 Dishembre 1974, L. 142–Magacaabid Golaha Kacaanka ee Gobolka Banaadir’, Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika Somaliya, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, 28 Dishembre 1974, L. 2 R. 12, 601–554. 23. ‘Decree of the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, 4 November 1972, n. 170–Sugar price structure’, Bollettino Ufficiale della Repubblica Democratica Somala, Anno IV, Mogadiscio, 2 Dicembre 1972, N. 12, 1342–1343; ‘Xeer Dowladeed Guddoomiyaha Gola- ha Sare ee Kacaanka, 15 Settembre 1973, L. 93–Beddelaad iyo kordhin sharci ku Saabsan Daawada xoolaha lam. 28, Taar. 15–2-1973’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sanadka I, Muqdisho, 29 Settembre 1973, L. 18, 308; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 8 Maajo 1974, L. 47–Kirada Cusub ee baabuurta xammuulka’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sanadka 2aad, Muqdi- sho, 1 Juunyo 1974, L. 6, 260–261; ‘Sharci L. 14 taariikh 22 Jen. 1981: Urogid Sharci–Xeerka Sharci lambar 35 ee 13ka Disemer 1980, kuna saabsan dib u habeynta sicirka sonkorta’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 28 Feberaayo 1981, L. 3 R. 2, 284; ‘Sharci L. 29 ee 25 Abriile 1981, U rogid Sharci rasmi ah ee Xeer Sharci lamb. 2 ee 31 Maarso 1981, kuna saabsan baabi’inta Wakaaladda Ganacsiga Dharka iyo Maacuunta’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, San- nadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maajo 1981, L. 3 R. 5, 811; and ‘Sharci L. 30 ee 25 Abriile 1981, U rogid Sharci rasmi ah ee Xeer Sharci lamb. 3 ee 31 Maarso 1981, kuna saabsan baabi’inta Wakaaladda Horumarinta Xoolaha’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maajo 1981, L. 3 R. 5, 812; ‘Amarka Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 12 ee 13 Maajo 1981–Laalid dacwooy- inka ijaarka guryaha ganacsiga’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Maajo 1981, L. 3 R. 5, 856; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 38 ee 16 Maajo 1981–Khidmadda Ujuurad- da Iidhehyada lagu qoro Wargeysyada’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Luulyo 1981, L. 3R.7, 1144–1145; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 40 ee 16 Maajo 1981–Wax ku Tacriifada Teleefonada’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Luulyo 1981, L. 3R.7, 1148–1154; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 44 ee 30 Jun. 1981–Kordhin Qiimaha Sigaar- ka Galayr iyo Tarraqa’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 30 Luulyo 1981, L. 3R.7, 1164; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 51 ee 19 Luulyo 81–Qiimaha Sigaarka’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 9aad, Muqdisho, 25 Oktoobar 1981, L. 2R.10, 1571; ‘Sharci Lambar 3 taariikh 5 Maarso 1983–Sharci ku saabsan Bullaacadaha iyo Dhuumaha Biyaha qaada’, Faafin- ta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 11aad, Muqdisho, 1 Abr. 1983, L. 4, 186–194; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 9 ee 8 Feb. 1988, Qaybta Dalxiiska Huteelada Was. Warfaafinta H. Dadweynaha’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Maarso 1988, L. 3, 155–156; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 48/bis ee 1da Sept. 1981, Hab Maamulka iyo Qaybinta Dhulka G/ Banaadir’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Sept. 1988, L. 9, 662–671; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 62 ee 29 Nof. 1988, Lahaanshaha Warshad Cusub’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Disembar 1988, L. 12, 826. 24. ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 13 ee 14 Abriil 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 17 Maajo 1987, L. 1 R 5, 282; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 36 ee 30 Okt,. 1986, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Notes 351

Muqdisho, 30ka Disember 1986, Lr. 3 R 12, 857; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 37 ee 30 Okt,. 1986, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 14aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Disember 1986, Lr. 3 R 12, 858; ‘Xeer Madaxweyne J.D.S. L. 3 ee 15 Jan. 1987, Tariifada Khidmada Nootaayada’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1da Feb. 1987, Lr. 2, 80–84; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 8 ee 20 Jen. 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1da Abriile. 1987, Lambar 4, 227; ‘Xeer Madaxweyna- ha JDS, L. 21 ee 30 Maajo 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 20 Juun 1987, Lambar 1 R 6, 368; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 38 ee 27 Agoosto 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1da Sept. 1987, L. 9, 775–776; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 41 ee 19 Sept. 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 1 Oktoobar 1987, L. 10, 784; ‘Xeer Madax- weyne JDS, L. 50 ee 5 Dis. 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 15aad, Muqdisho, 28ka Disembar 1987, L. 2 R 12, 995; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 24 ee 8 Dis. 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 15ka Abriile 1988, Lr. 1 R 4, 270; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S., L. 27 ee 12 Jan 1988, magacaabid Nootaayo Hargeysa’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 2da Maajo 1988, L. 5, 335; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 28 ee 18.5.88, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1988, L. 6, 412; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 50 ee 20 Agoosto 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 25ka Sept. 1988, L. 1 r 9, 694; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 51 ee 17 Luulyo 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 25ka Sept. 1988, L. 1 r 9, 695;‘Xeer Madaxwey- naha JDS, L. 52 ee 15 Agoosto 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 25ka Sept. 1988, L. 1 r 9, 696; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 61 ee 3 Okt. 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Disembar 1988, L. 12, 800; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 63 ee 30 Nof. 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 20ka Disembar 1988, L. 1 r 12, 828; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 64 ee 21 Nof. 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, San- nadka 16aad, Muqdisho, 1da Disembar 1988, L. 12, 827; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 5 26 Dis. 1988, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 18ka Jannaayo 1989, L. 1 R 1, 29; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 13 ee 27 Dis. 1989: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 26 Feberaayo 1989, L. 2 R 2, 89; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha J.D.S. L. 16 ee 12 Feb. 1989–Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Maarso 1989, L. 3, 121; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 20 ee 4 Maarso 1989: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maarso 1989, L. 1 R 3, 159; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 31/bis ee 3 Maajo 1989: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Maajo 1989, L. 1 R 5, 257; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lambar 31/bis ee 3 Maajo 1989: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Juunyo 1989, L. 6, 289; ‘Xeer Madaxwey- naha J.D.S. L. 56 [ee] 22 Ago. 1989: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 15ka Sept. 1989, L. 1 R 9, 511; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS L. 58 ee 9 Sept. 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1989, L. 10, 600; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 59 ee 12 Sept. 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1989, L. 10, 601; ‘Xeer Madax- weynaha JDS, L. 60 ee 9 Agoos. 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1989, L. 10, 602; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 61 ee 17 Sept. 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo Jaalle Dr Xasan Abuukar Isgow’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Oktoobar 1989, L. 10, 602; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, Lr. 62 ee 17 Sept. 1989, Oggolaansho Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 25-ka Okt. 1989, L. 1 R 10, 653; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS L. 74 ee 8 15.11. 89: Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 1da Disembar 1989, L. 12, 750; ‘Xeer Madax- weynaha JDS. L. 41 ee 25 Maajo 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Luulyo 1989, L. 1 R 7, 382; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 42 ee 5 Juun 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Luul- yo 1989, L. 1 R 7, 383; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 43 ee 17 Juun 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Luulyo 1989, L. 1 R 7, 384; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 44 ee 25 Juun 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, 352 Notes

Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Luulyo 1989, L. 1 R 7, 385; ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 50 1 Agoosto 1989, Magacaabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Agoosto 1989, L. 1R8, 456; and ‘Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS. L. 51 28 Dis. 1988, Maga- caabid Nootaayo’, Faafin Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 17aad, Muqdisho, 30ka Agoosto 1989, L. 1R8, 456. 25. Quoted in Elmi, Understanding the Somali Conflagration, 148n14. My translation. 26. Cited in Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2005). Subject Index

Laas Aanood, 49, 53 Laanta Buuro, 198–199 Addis Ababa, 40, 264 Family Affair, 189, 191, 193, 327n2; The Censorship, 3, 94 1986 car crash, 192 Chaos, 221, 230, 237, 241, 242, 243, 244, Afgooye, 100, 231 247 Africa, 17, 24, 25, 29, 31, 32, 39, 51, 83, The CIA, 40, 47, 51, 79, 146 147, 152, 156, 175, 186, 197, 231, 235, Criminal Investigations Bureau (CID), 238, 260, 267, 271 133, 161, 198 Horn of Africa, 37, 40, 41, 44, 137, 147, Clan, 8, 169, 171, 180, 190; Clanity, 35, 148, 155, 234, 267 74, 268, 269; Clannism, 35, 91, 130, Ajuuraan, 172 142, 155, 167, 180, 238, 268, 285n30; Alula, 198 Clanklatura, 171; Clanocide, 199, 204, Anarchy, 213, 221, 222, 235, 237, 241, 237, 258; Clanocracy, 35, 268; Clan 243, 247, 252; Anarcho-clannism, 245 affiliation, 171; Clan-based regions, Land appropriation, 173 171, 173; Clan burial, 168, 169; Clan Arms, 40, 41, 44, 47, 221 Cataclysms, 234, 235, 237, 255, 262; Army, 39, 40, 42, 47, 66, 73, 78, 80, 170, Clan clientelism, 174; Clan conflicts, 176, 204, 208, 253, 285n32, 316n87 58, 159, 230, 234, 235, 270; Clan Asmara, 40 confrontations, 272; Clan connection, Authoritarianism, 93 157; Clan cronyism, 129, 181; Clan Awdal, 172 corruption, 50, 72, 130, 131, 132, 133; Clan cronies, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, Baardheere, 231 135; Clan differentiation, 179; Clan Banaadir, 172 domination, 174, 241, 269; Clan effigy, The Central Bank, 208; The Commercial 168; Clan favouritism, 154–155, 169, and Savings Bank, 208 170, 171; Clan massacres, 234; Clan The World Bank, 208 nepotism, 44, 50, 154, 168, 169, 179, Beledweyne, 172 184, 187–188; Clan patronage, 174; Berbera, 149, 295n79 Clan politics, 74, 189, 247, 249, 273; Buro’, 53, 89, 221, 238, 246 Clan promotion, 155, 171; Clan Buurdhuubo, 231 reprisals, 209, 230, 232, 233, 234, 237,

353 354 Subject Index

242, 243, 244, 250, 263, 264; Clan 231, 261, 311n4; Ogaadeen/Makaahiil/ revenges, 11, 46, 272 Guma’adle, 26; Ogaadeen refugees, Cataclysmic collapse, 207; Complete 172 collapse, 209; Complete cataclysm, 210 Dabadheer, 87 Colonialism, 3, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 234, Defections, 187, 196, 217 279n23; Corpo Zaptie Coloniale, 27; Presidential decrees, 95, 96, 102, 105, 106, Carabinieri, 26; Polizia dell’Africa 138, 181, 199, 248 Italiana, 27 Dhuusamareeb, 177 British colonialism, 21, 235 Clano-military dictatorship, 31 Italian colonialism, 21, 235; Italian fascist Dir, 74, 172, 185, 237, 262; Gadabiirsi, rule, 174, 235, 281n45 172 Communism, 87, 142; Scientific Siyadism, Dirirdhabe, 150 85; Scientific socialism, 85, 88, 89, Disorder, 209, 214 142; Soviet-Style Party, 90 Djibouti, 38, 139, 141, 183, 192, 196, 199, The coup, 48, 50, 59, 60, 65, 66, 69, 71, 77, 252; Djibouti Conference, 252–254 127; The coup d’état, 50, 60, 70, 76; Doolow, 158 1961 attempted coup, 68, 238; 1978 attempted coup, 157–163; 1982 The collapse of economy, 207; Political attempted coup, 195; 1987 attempted economy, 208, 238 coup, 195 Eelbuur, 217 The Banaadir regional court, 214 Egalitarianism, 33–34 The Kangaro court, 184; Draconian courts, Egypt, 148, 149, 221 214 Embezzlement, 207; Refugee The National Security Court, 95, 101, 103, embezzlement, 134 107, 111, 191, 212, 214 Eritrea, 40, 79, 149, 200 The Roundabout court, 95 Ethiopia, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 89, 139, The Supreme court, 95 142, 144, 152, 156, 178, 197, 200, 210, Land Cruiser, 207 235, 244, 247 Cuba, 144–145, 148, 151–152 Baydhabo Famine, 243 Daarood, 46, 59, 74, 77, 105, 157, 169, 171, 185, 213, 231, 232, 234, 237, 244, Galgaduud, 209 250, 252, 261, 263; Majeerteen/ Garbahaarey, 232 Daarood, 46, 49, 51, 89, 102, 125, 157, Garowe, 177 159, 161, 162, 163, 171, 172, 177, 178, Gedo, 172, 232, 233, 242, 261 187, 196, 214, 242, 248, 269, 285n42, Jasiira Genocide, 215, 216 307n41; Ali Saleebaan, 49; Iise Ghana, 186 Mohamoud sub-clan, 125, 172; Gouvernementalité, 1, 8, 26, 33, 60, 245, Mohamoud Saleebaan, 46, 48, 49, 161; 267 Omar Mohamoud sub-clan, 46, 93, 157, Opposition groups, 206, 231, 273; Armed 172; Osman Mohamoud sub-clan, 46, groups, 207, 208, 209, 212, 235, 245, 49; Mareehaan/Daarood, 59, 142, 157, 247, 250, 252, 254, 259, 265; Manifesto 159–160, 161–162, 169, 172, 175, Call, 209, 245; The Manifesto Group, 175–177, 177, 190, 192–193, 194, 195, 212, 225, 245, 246, 250; Mustahiil 196, 199, 203, 232, 237, 242, 250, 262, Group, 225 264; Reer Diini, 204; Dhulbahante/ Daarood, 175, 176, 177, 178, 190, 238; Hawiye, 66, 74, 105, 158, 159, 161, 169, Ogaadeen/Daarood, 139, 142, 157, 172, 172, 179, 182, 185, 186, 188, 201, 210, 175, 176–177, 178, 184, 190, 195, 200, 214, 215, 222, 229, 232, 236, 237, 244, Subject Index 355

248, 250, 252, 258, 272; Abgaal/ Forced Labour, 89 Hawiye, 48, 89, 99, 102, 105, 182, 186, The Family Law, 32, 107–109 187, 217, 229, 255, 258, 259, 263; Libya, 78 Abgaal/Da’ud, 204; Abgaal/Wa’aysle, Luuq, 232 103, 161; Dagoodiye/Hawiye, 201; Gaalje’el/Hawiye, 100, 262; Habar Mag-paying (diya), 167 Gidir/Hawiye, 89, 99, 105, 159, 163, Mandheera, 198, 199, 232 196, 217, 229, 255, 258, 259, 262, 263; Wagalla Massacre, 201 Habar Gidir/Eyr sub-clan, 93, 161, 255, Foreign Mercenaries, 214 258; Habar Gidir/Sa’ad sub-clan, 58, Digil/Mirifle, 74, 173, 174, 236, 237, 248, 159, 255, 258; Habar Gidir/Saleebaan 252, 262 sub-clan, 161, 237, 255, 258; Habar Mogadishu, 28, 34, 42, 53, 54, 57, 78, 79, Gidir/Saruur sub-clan, 255; Hawaadle/ 82, 86, 108, 121, 123, 128, 145, 148, Hawiye, 163, 232, 255, 258, 262; 151, 159, 160, 162, 172, 178, 179, 188, Murusade/Hawiye, 57, 89, 163, 179, 197, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 214, 226, 255, 258, 289n96; Sheekhaal/Hawiye, 230, 231, 237, 242, 245, 246, 248, 250, 59, 186, 196, 262; Hiraab conference, 251, 256, 258, 262, 264; Mogadishu 259 uprising, 211, 221, 222, 224, 225, 243; Hiilweyne, 224 Mayor of Mogadishu, 215; Mogadishu Hiiraan, 172, 209, 258 soccer stadium, 215; Konis Stadium, Hiiraan Online, 55 168 Digfeer Hospital, 120, 123 Radio Mogadishu, 57, 59, 73, 80, 82, 89, 122, 138, 141, 156, 159, 162, 181, 187, IDPs, 221 192, 222–223, 225, 229, 320n151 The IMF, 208, 256 Moscow, 28, 42, 77, 79, 142, 143, 156, 267 Isaaq, 51, 66, 67, 74, 99, 102, 161, 163, Sheikh Abdulqadir Mosque, 108, 113 169, 172, 182, 185, 187, 188, 196, 204, Mudug, 209 214, 234, 236, 237, 238, 248, 252, 254; Mustahiil, 258 Isaaq/Habar Yoonis, 59; Isaaq/Habar Awal, 182, 216, 245; Habar Awal/Iise The NFD, 80 Muuse, 45; Isaaq uprising, 197 Nigeria, 5 Islam, 87, 107, 109, 111, 167, 205 Nomenklatura, 171 Italy, 42, 133, 245; Italian diplomats, 226, Jiiro Norway, 209 228; Italian embassy, 206 The National Security Service (NSS), 93, 96, 97, 98, 113, 114, 179, 198, 212, Jalalaqsi, 172, 198 214, 299n25 Bantu/Jareer, 89, 173, 237, 262 Nugaal, 172 Jigjiga, 158 Labaatan Jirow, 198–199 Black October, 2 Hotel Juba, 87 Xiddigta Oktoobar, 78, 119, 209, 213 Middle Jubba, 209 The Execution of Junta, 99, 107 Presidential Palace, 94, 95, 96, 101, 120, 159, 160, 191, 192, 195, 216, 229, 232; Kampala, 264 Villa Somalia, 89, 120, 181, 192, 216, Kenya, 38, 42, 59, 147, 162, 178, 193, 196, 217, 221, 224, 225, 227, 229 197, 250, 252 Political patronage, 177 The KGB, 45, 47, 51, 79, 83, 96, 146, 267 Cult of Personality, 119, 122, 123, 124, Kismaayo, 78, 229, 262 125 Coup Poems, 60, 70, 71 356 Subject Index

The Ending Points, 203 The Somali Salvation Front (SSF), 189 The Turning Points, 203 Maka Al-Mukaramah Street, 54, 256 MODH Policy, 174, 175, 176, 178, 180, African Studies, 3, 18, 19 184, 185–186, 187, 188, 190; MODH Somali State, 1, 3, 24, 212, 214, 238, 246; coalition, 175, 176, 177, 178, 184, 193, State Collapse, 210, 211, 212, 217, 249; 200 State failure, 4, 249; Failed State, 126, Prebendalism, 177, 184 271; Clanisation of the State, 8, 169, Political prisoners, 126, 127, 197, 198 171, 180, 190, 269; Cannibalised State, Predatory power, 93, 179, 187 17, 268; Cannibalisation, 8, 268; Criminalised State, 167, 250, 268; State Laas Qorey, 78 terror, 8, 59, 113, 114, 189, 194, 212, 235, 238, 271; Post-Siad Barre State, Isku Raran, 89 173; Siadist State, 129, 229, 271 The Somali Republic, 1 Power struggle, 160, 258 Rwanda, 191, 193, 235, 250, 261 Somali Studies, 3, 6, 17, 184 Sudan, 21, 26, 78 Seychelles, 129 Western support, 41 Sierra Leone, 9, 26, 131, 242, 323n41 Suppression, 97, 105, 217 Lower Shabelle, 172, 209 Middle Shabelle, 172 Freedom of Thought, 128, 237; Freedom of The Execution of sheikhs, 32, 107, 112, Speech, 94, 128, 237 114 Totalitarianism, 31, 33, 59, 88, 93, 94, 95, Self-help Schemes, 87; Forced farming, 99, 114, 272; The Backbreakers,; The 173 Burners, 97; Guulwadeyaal, 98 Shiilaabo, 26, 137, 169 BBC Somali, 73, 128, 187, 196, 206, 230, Uganda, 197, 264–265 238, 253, 316n87; BBC Focus on The UK, 149, 196, 243 Africa, 246, 256; BBC World Service, The UN, 170, 184, 258; UNDP, 188; 224 UNHCR, 134, 135, 197, 310n85 VOA Somali, 104, 271 The United Somali Congress (USC), 200, The Greater Somalia, 38, 39, 50, 80, 137, 201, 215, 216, 217, 222, 223, 224, 225, 200, 267 226, 229, 231, 237, 238, 241, 245, 246, Somaliland, 238, 246, 247, 268 247, 252, 254, 256, 258, 260, 261, 263, Governo Somalo, 39 265; The USC Leadership, 241, 250 The Somali Democratic Front (SDM), 225, The Soviet Union, 39, 40, 41, 44, 50, 58, 261 77, 80, 81, 82, 98, 102, 142, 143, 146, The Somali National Front (SNF), 261 151, 152, 171, 214, 267; Soviet The Somali National Movement (SNM), embassy, 227 184, 189, 197, 199, 200–201, 212, 215, The U.S., 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 58, 76, 82, 231, 238, 246, 247, 248, 252, 254, 265 143, 146, 179, 196, 197, 210, 213, 215, The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party 224, 228; U.S. embassy, 179, 188, 201, (SRSP), 206, 270 208, 216, 222, 226, 227, 228, 256; U.S. The Somali Patriotic Front (SPM), 200, diplomats, 226, 256, 259; USAID, 179, 215, 231, 238, 248, 254 227, 299n25, 310n85 The Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), 189, 199, 200, 224, 225, 238, Human rights violations, 126, 127, 128, 246, 247, 252 159, 235, 271, 308n48; Africa Watch, The Southern Somali National Movement 242; The Human Rights Watch, 244 (SSNM), 261 Subject Index 357

Political violence, 114, 169, 177, 230, 235, The Cold War, 49, 52, 56, 75, 146; The 244, 270; Personal violence, 230; 1977 war, 137–163; WSLF, 139 Private violence, 230; Violence in the Warsheikh, 198 capital, 215, 237 Washington, 148–149, 201, 214, 215, 223, 256, 267 Waajid, 198 Wadaad xume, 113 Yemen, 148, 183 Civil war, 173, 204, 237, 259; Clan war, South Yemen, 144, 152 173; Clanised wars, 173, 227, 230, 236, 237, 243, 245, 264, 270, 272 Zimbabwe, 69, 208

Name Index

Aanageel, General Osman Ahmed Afrah, Mohamed Qanyare, 258 Hussein, 204, 214, 336n72 ‘Aftooje’, General Abukar Mohamed Aarre, General Abdirahman Warsame, Liban, 163, 319n149 152, 319n138 Afrah, General Hussein Kulmiye, 83, 159, ‘Aato’, Osman Hassan Ali, 252, 258 182, 188, 193, 326n107, 336n60 ‘Sheikh Abba’, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Ahmed, Abdirahman Aideed, 156 Ahmed Sheikh Mohamoud, 264 Ahmed, Ali Jimale, 57, 121, 256, 307n47 Abdi, Dr Hawa, 107, 123, 131, 132 Ahmed, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, 51, 56, Abdi, Sheikh Omar Faaruuq Haji, 108 68, 127, 157, 158, 160, 162, 171, 230, Abtidoon, Ali Kulane, 99 261, 307n41 Abdikariin, Osman Saalah, 156 Ahmed, Sheikh Abdulkani Sheikh, 113 Abdulle, Lt Colonel Abdikadir Dheel, 32, Aideed, General Mohamed Farah, 43, 49, 59, 67, 99, 103, 111, 187 68, 127, 195, 223, 225, 231, 242, 244, Abubakar, Colonel Abdirizak Mohamed, 245, 247, 248, 249, 250, 252–265, 121 291n14, 326n107, 330n58 Abyan, Ibrahim Mohamoud, 175, 213 Aliyow, Colonel Mohamed Nuur, 262 ‘Aden Adde’, Aden Abdulle Osman, 39, Amiin, Abdi Muhumad, 71, 307n47 40, 43, 45, 47, 66, 67, 80, 127, 210, Arbow, Mohamed Ramadaan, 262 212, 249, 252, 267, 283n10, 286n46, Aroma, Cabdulqaadir, 6, 11 288n80 Aseyr, Colonel Mohamoud, 161 Addow, Ambassador Abdullahi Ahmed, Ashkir, Abdi Hoosh, 134, 191, 309n79 82, 96, 186, 286n44 Aweys, Sheikh Hassan Daher, 114, 123, Addow, Ibrahim Hassan, 114, 325n91 232 Addow, General Nuur, 104 Aw-Diini, Haashi Nuurre, 105 Addow, Professor Omar Mohamed, 67, 126, 155, 160, 178 ‘Baarqab’, Colonel Mohamed Nuur Addow, General Ahmed Jili’ow, 151, 191, Mohamed Osman, 101 198, 252, 265 ‘Muhiddiin Badar’, Colonel Muhiddiim Aden, Amina Haji, 175 Mo’allim Osman, 158, 160, 316n83 Aden, General Mohamed, 177 Barre, General Abdiaziz Ali, 261 Aden, Omar Haashi, 252

359 360 Name Index

Barre, Abdirahman Jama, 156, 169, 170, Dhoodaan, Abdullahi Mo’allim, 197 184, 185, 190, 193, 201, 214, 225 Dhoorre, Ali Haashi, 186 Barre, Abdullahi Mohamed Siad, 169, 190 Dhuhul, Yusuf Jama Ali, 55, 128, 267 Barre, Ali Mohamed Siad, 271 ‘Dhurwaa’, Mohamoud Geelle Elmi, 93, Barre, Anab Mohamed Siad, 191 105 Barre, Ayaanle Mohamed Siad, 190 Dhuule, Farah Wa’ays, 168 Barre, Colonel Shire Mohamed Siad, 177 Doe, Samuel, 215, 217 Barre, Diiriye Mohamed Siad, 191, 233 ‘Doonyaale’, Colonel Ibrahim Rooble Barre, Faduma Mohamed Siad, 191, 229 Warfaa, 69, 101, 211, 231 Barre, General Maslah Mohamed Siad, 9, Dualeh, Ambassador Hussein ‘Awil’ Ali, 186, 190, 192, 195, 205 34, 69, 81, 158, 169, 196 Barre, Hassan Mohamed Siad, 191 Barre, Hawa Mohamed Siad, 191 Egaal, Mohamed Haji Ibrahim, 45, 49, 54, Barre, Haweeya Mohamed Siad, 232 57, 58, 59, 66, 75, 80, 81, 127, 212, Barre, Mohamed Goodah, 181, 205, 208, 252, 253, 254, 290n105 215 Eli, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhiddiin, 262 Besteman, Catherine, 17, 242 Elmi, Afyare Abdi, 237, 306n24 Biihi, Faduma Isaaq, 254 Elmi, Maryan Haji, 66, 110 Bishop, James Keough, 223, 226 Elmi, Mustafe Sheikh, 259 ‘Bood’, Hussein Haji Mohamed, 211, 224, Elmi, Omar Salaad, 156, 168, 172 225, 265 Bootaan, Ahmed Ashkir, 206 Faadil, General Abdalla Mohamed, 100 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 158 Faarax, Cabdulqaadir Shire, 6, 11, 307n45, Brezhnev, Leonid, 145 309n79 Bridges, Ambassador Peter, 156, 179, 182, ‘Falco’, General Osman Haji Omar, 67, 91, 186, 213, 226 101, 170, 225, 338n15 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 148 Farah, Ahmed Mohamoud, 156, 182 ‘Buubaa’, Ismail Mohamoud Hurre, 246 Farah, Nuruddin, 123, 192, 323n46

Carter, Jimmy, 197 ‘Saleebaan Gaal’, Saleebaan Mohamoud Ceaușescu, Nicolae, 191 Aden, 196, 248 Costanzo, Christopher, 179 ‘Gaamuur’, Colonel Hassan Mohamed Craxi, Bettino, 199 Sabriye, 101, 171, 307n41 Crigler, Ambassador Trusten Frank, 201, Gaani, General Mohamed Haashi, 169, 216, 226 177, 191, 225, 261 ‘Ga’aliye’, Ambassador Mohamed Said ‘Dafle’, General Ahmed Suleyman Samatar, 168, 169, 194, 203, 207, Abdalle, 73, 96, 97, 100, 124, 127, 156, 331n75 159, 161, 175, 187, 190, 192, 204, 214, ‘Ga’madheere’, Mohamed Sheikh 260, 271, 276n14, 290n4 Mohamoud Guuleed, 248, 252 Dalfa’, Muriidi Haji, 186 ‘Ga’magooye’, General Mohamed Farah, Darmaan, Ambassador Ahmed Mohamed, 177 256 Gaboose, Dr Mohamed Abdi, 124, 196 ‘Yusuf Dheeg’, Ambassador Yusuf Hassan ‘Gabyow’, General Aden Abdulle Nur, 176 Ibrahim, 196 Gabyow, Mohamoud Sheikh, 99 Dheere, Mohamed, 259 ‘Gadhle’, Ibrahim Sheikh Saleebaan, 169 Dhi’is, General Abdirahman Khalif, 177 Galaal, General Mohamed Nuur, 69, 83, ‘Dholodholo’, Abdulkadir Haashi Egaal, 96, 102, 150, 224, 243, 253, 256, 259, 105 265, 338n10 Name Index 361

‘Garyare’, Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Nur, ‘Hoogsade’, Colonel Abdi Hussein 113 Faahiye, 102, 151, 152, 201 Gassim, Mariam Arif, 155 Hussein, Abdirizak Haji, 44, 54, 55, 59, 60, ‘Gentleman’, Mohamed Said Iyow, 211, 66, 127, 196, 252, 285n28, 286n46 225 Hussein, Abdisalaam Sheikh, 160 Ghalib, General Jama Mohamed, 132, 225 Ghalib, Omar Arte, 179, 225, 245, 254, Iise, Ambassador Daher Yusuf Aw- 298n1 Mohamoud Mohamed, 264 ‘Farah Gololeey’, Farah, Mohamed, Ali, 1, ‘Iriiri’, General Ahmed Sahal Ali, 160, 273 253, 256 Good, Jama Rabiile, 156 ‘Irro’, Colonel Mohamed Sheikh Osman, Gorod, Colonel Abdiweli Jama Abdulle, 157, 158, 160, 162 217 Isaaq, Colonel Abdi Warsame, 67, 68, 111, Gorod, Lieutenant Said Abdulle, 159, 163 145, 262, 276n14 Greenfield, Richard, 184, 197, 325n83 Ismail, General Ismail Ahmed, 182 Gurhan, Sheikh Nuur Baaruud, 114 ‘Omar Istarliin’, Omar Hassan Mohamoud, Guuleed, Colonel Mohamed Mohamoud, 105 150 Guuleed, General Bile Rafle, 176 Jaabiri, Colonel Ali Haji, 163, 319n149 Guuleed, Major General Mohamed Jama, Garaad Abdiqani Garaad, 238 Aynaanshe, 32, 59, 67, 99, 103, 107, Jama, General Ahmed, 204 111, 187, 281n50, 291n7 Jeelle, Colonel Osman Mohamed, 73, 100, Guuleed, Sheikh Mohamed, 191 104, 276n14, 286n49 ‘Guulwade’, Abdirahman Abdi Hussein, Jees, Colonel Ahmed Omar, 231, 261, 263, 98, 204, 211, 229 338n18 Jees, Colonel Mohamed Omar, 73, 122, Haamud, Mohamed Ali, 248 176, 192, 201 Haashi, Dalaayad Haji, 190, 193 Jengeli, Ahmed Jama Abdulle, 208 Haashi, General Abdi Haji, 186, 191 Haashi, General Abdinasir Haji, 177, 191, ‘Kaah’, Ibrahim Sheikh Ahmed, 256 195, 215 ‘Kadare’, Hussein Sheikh Ahmed, 259 Haashi, General Ali Mataan, 74, 104, 170 ‘Mama Khadija’, Khadija Mo’allim, 190, Haayoow, Mohamed Ga’al, 24, 29–30 192, 193 ‘Hadraawi’, Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, Kagame, Paul, 265 127, 131, 273 ‘Osman Kalluun’, Osman Jama Ali, 196 Harbi, General Mohamed Jama, 102 Kassim, Hussein Abdulkadir, 125, 196 Hassan, Abdikassim Salaad, 90, 110, 112, Kediye, Colonel Said Ahmed, 161, 233 142, 145, 156, 188, 201, 222, 225, 229, Kediye, General Salaad Gabeyre, 32, 66, 259 67, 68, 74, 99, 101, 103, 106, 107, 111, Hassan, General Hussein, 177 170, 187, 291n12, 319n149 Hassan, Sheikh Mohamed Mo’allim, 108, ‘Kiimiko’, Ambassador Mohamed 110, 113, 198 Warsame Ali, 155, 196 Hersi, Abdiaziz Nur, 54, 213 ‘King Kong’, Abdullahi Boqor Muuse, 172 Hersi, General Da’ud Abdulle, 28, 40, 43, ‘Koongo’, Abdullahi Aden Ahmed, 87 73, 80, 171, 268, 281n50 Korn, Faduma, 179–180 Hersi, Ugaas Omar Ugaas, 233 Kusow, Abdi Mohamed, 236, 280n30 ‘Hiirane’, General Mohamed Hussein Kuukaay, General Aden Abdulle Du’aleh, Da’ud, 171, 177 176 362 Name Index

Le’eg, Colonel Mohamoud Elmi Bowdo, Obokor, General Ismail Ali, 66, 67, 94, 133 121, 159, 175 Lewis, I. M., 4, 35 Olow, Sheikh Nuruddin Ali, 53, 288n69, ‘Liiqliiqato’, General Mohamed Ibrahim 288n72 Ahmed, 59, 68, 186, 259, 281n50 Omar, Ambassador Mohamed Osman, Loolow, Colonel Mohamed Hussein, 161 129, 181, 215, 217, 248 ‘Aden Low’, Aden Shire Jama, 56, 194 Omar, Imaam Mohamoud Imaam, 259 Luling, Virginia, 236, 260 ‘Said Orfano’, Said Yusuf Ismail, 49, 52, 53, 55, 288n69 Maalin, Haashi Weheliye, 211, 225 Osman, Muuse Boqor, 57–58, 211, 225, Madar, Mohamed Hawaadle, 216, 225, 289n101 336n60 Osman, General Mohamed Sheikh, 53, Mariam, Colonel Mengistu Haile, 137, 104, 186, 256 138, 139, 141, 145, 148, 152, 169, 191, Osman, Qaawane, Ahmed Abdulle, 242 199, 201, 206, 210, 235, 244 Ossoble, Ismail Jimale, 58, 127, 206, 211, Masalle, Colonel Abdulkadir Haji, 74, 103, 245, 258 111, 130, 169, 204 Masalle, General Omar Haji, 130, 156, ‘Qaybe’, Ambassador Ahmed Mohamed 160, 194, 195, 261 Aden, 177, 184 Mataan, Hussein, 221 Qoomaal, Mohamed Ahmed, 30 ‘Matukade’, General Abdullahi Mohamed Qoorsheel, General Jama Ali, 48, 65, 76, Hassan, 161, 213, 286n44 99 Mire, Hassan Ali, 246 ‘Qoorweyne’, General Ahmed Mohamed Mo’allim, Colonel Osman Maye, 112, 158 Adde, 74, 99, 288n75 Mohamed, Ali Mahdi, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 254–265 ‘Abuu Raas’, Yusuf Ibrahim Ali, 125 Mohamed, Nicolino, 245, 262 Rooble, Ugaas Khaliif Ugaas, 233 Mohamed, Abdullahi Iise, 100 Mohamoud, Abdullahi Iiise, 39, 41, 58, Shaati’adde, Sheikh Abdullahi, 259 127, 174 Salhaan, General Yusuf Ahmed, 158 ‘Morgan’, General Mohamed Said Hersi, Samatar, General Jama Aw-Muuse, 104 130, 160, 177, 190, 214, 227, 229, 233 Samatar, General Mohamed Ali, 68, 100, Mukhtar, Mohamed Haji, 242 104, 113, 125, 145, 156, 158, 159, 160, Mursal, Sheikh Ahmed, 229 192, 193, 205, 216, 271, 276n14, Muse Mohamoud Sheikh Ahmed, 74, 94 291n12, 307n41, 316n87 Museveni, Yoweri, 264 Samatar, Ibrahim Meygaag, 172, 180, 182, ‘Adde Muuse’, Colonel Mohamoud Muuse 196 Hersi, 104 Samatar, Said, 260 Muuse, General Mohamed Abshir, 47, 52, Shadoor, Abdullahi Geedi, 104 211, 269, 281n50, 285n40–285n42, Shadoor, Ali Geedi, 99, 258 286n45 Shandiille, Mohamed Ali, 99 Muuse, General Mohamed Jibriil, 96 Sharee’o, General Mohamed Nuur, 242 Muuse, Hussein Saalah, 113, 145 Sharmarke, Abdirashid Ali, 7, 39, 40, 43, 45, 48, 49, 54, 55, 58, 65, 81, 253, 267, (Neero), General Mohamed Sheikh 284n21, 286n46 Osman, 265, 338n10 Sheikh, General Muuse Hassan, 177 Nuur, Mohamed Ali, 97, 174, 182 Sheikh, Mohamed Aden, 74, 108, 123, Nuur, Abdullahi Warsame, 186, 197 138, 169, 175, 176, 194, 327n2 Shiddo, Hussein Ali, 253, 258, 265 Name Index 363

Shuqul, General Hussein, 177 Tuuryare, Professor Mohamoud Ali, 206, Siad, Abdullahi Ossoble, 186, 319n149 256 Siad, Sheikh Mo’allim Nuur Mohamed, 262 Urdoh, Mohamed Jama, 286n45 Sica, Mario, 214 ‘Siilaanyo’, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud, Wadaadiid, Hassan Mohamed, 99, 196 54, 188, 196, 201, 238, 246 ‘Wardhigley’, Ali Mohamed Ossoble, 235 ‘Subkane’, Ahmed Dhaqane Hassan, 263 Warsame, Abdi Tahliil, 70 Suulaleey, General Abukar, 104 Warsame, Ali Khaliif Galayr, 185, 186, Suuleey, Sheikh Ibrahim, 110 187, 196 Warsame, Hassan Dhimbil, 210 ‘Tarey’, Colonel Elmi Nuur Tarambi Hersi, 101, 120 ‘Yamyam’, Abdulkadir Hersi Siad, 94, 242 Tarrah, Abdi Mohamed, 134, 135, 310n85 Yusuf, General Mohamoud Geelle, 95, 97, Tima’adde, Abdullahi Sultaan, 22, 29 103, 111, 158, 161, 191 ‘Tuur’, Ambassador Abdirahman Ahmed Ali, 196, 338n18 Zenawi, Meles, 264 ‘Zoppo’, Abdulkadir Mohamed Aden, 60