Mohamed Siad Barre

Mohamed Siad Barre (Gedo, Italian Somalia, October 6, 1919-Lagos, Nigeria, January 2, 1995) was a Somali soldier, politician and dictator who served as president of the Democratic Republic of Somalia by the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party from 1969 to 1991, when it was overthrown. He died on the way to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.

Barre's government was characterized by widespread modernization, nationalization of banks and industry, promotion of cooperative farms, a new writing system for the Somali language, and anti-tribalism.

The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party became Somalia's vanguard party in 1976, and Barre launched the Ogaden War against Ethiopia on a platform of Somali nationalism and pan-Somaliism.

Barre's popularity was highest during the seven months between September 1977 and March 1978, when Barre captured virtually the entire Somali region. It declined from the late 1970s following Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden War, which sparked the Somali rebellion and broke ties with the Soviet Union.

Somalia then allied itself with the Western powers and especially with the United States for the rest of the Cold War, although it maintained its Marxist-Leninist regime and also approached China.

The opposition grew in the 1980s due to his increasingly dictatorial government and the sharp decline of Somalia's economy. In 1991, Barre's government collapsed when the Somali rebellion ousted him from power, leading to the Somali Civil War and forcing him into exile, where he died in Nigeria in 1995 on the way to hospital after suffering a heart attack.

Early years

Mohamed Siad Barre was born at a time when birth records were unknown in Somalia. There has been speculation about the exact year of his birth, which ranges between 1910 and 1921; However, it is generally accepted that he was born to shepherd parents around 1910. His unofficial birthplace is said to have been Las Ga'al, a district of the El-Gab region, currently known as Shilavo (Shilabo) in the Ethiopian Ogaden region and that his official birthplace was the city of Garbahare, which is part of the provincial capital of the Somali region of Gedo.

Son of a nomad, he only completed basic studies. He served in the Somali colonial police (1941-1960) and rose to inspector with the independence of Somalia in 1960. He entered the army in 1969 and achieved, after a coup d'état in which President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke was assassinated, the highest public office, exercising a socialist government.

Revolution of 1969

Taking advantage of the bad situation in which the country found itself, on October 21, 1969, a revolution led by Siad Barre managed to penetrate Mogadishu and overthrow the provisional president Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein.

After the coup, prominent poets created poems to signify and praise the arrival of the revolution. The opinion of Somali women was expressed in the words of one of the most famous Somali poets, Halimo ali Kurtin.

Poem by noted poet Ali Elmi Afyare that expresses the great collective hopes for the future of the country brought about by the progressive revolutionary government.

As camels are highly prized in Somalia, the poet compares freedom to a beloved camel. (Hasheena Maandeeq)

Military Revolutionary Council

The Supreme Revolutionary Council established large-scale public works programs and successfully implemented an urban and rural literacy campaign, which helped dramatically increase the literacy rate.

Barre began a program of nationalization of industry and land, and the new regime's foreign policy emphasized Somalia's traditional and religious ties with the Arab world, eventually joining the Arab League in 1974. That Same year, Barre also served as president of the African Unity (AU), predecessor of the African Union (AU).

In July 1976, Barre's SRC was dissolved and established in its place the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSRS), a one-party government based on scientific socialism and Islamic principles. The PSRS was an attempt to reconcile the official state ideology (Marxism-Leninism) with the official state religion (Islam).

Emphasis was placed on the Muslim principles of social progress, equality and justice, which the government said formed the core of scientific socialism, and its own emphasis on self-reliance, public participation and popular control, as well as direct ownership of the means of production. While the PSRS encouraged private investment on a limited scale, the overall direction of the administration was proclaimed communist.

In 1979 a new constitution was promulgated under which elections were held for a People's Assembly. However, Barre's Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party Politburo continued to govern. In October 1980, the PSRS was dissolved and the Supreme Revolutionary Council was reestablished in its place.

Presidency

The new military junta that came to power after the coup tried to adapt socialism to the needs of Somalia. It was based largely on the Maoist model of the People's Republic of China. He promoted volunteer work in agriculture and the construction of roads and hospitals. Almost all industries, banks and companies were nationalized. Cooperative farms were promoted. The government banned tribalism and stressed loyalty to central authorities.

Barre assumed office as president of Somalia, called "Victorious Leader" (Guulwade) and encouraged the creation of portraits of him in the company of Marx, Engels and Lenin in the streets on public occasions. Barre advocated a form of scientific socialism based on the Quran and Marxism-Leninism, with strong influences from Somali nationalism.

Barre advocated the concept of a Greater Somalia (Soomaaliweyn), which refers to those regions of the Horn of Africa in which ethnic Somalis reside and have historically represented the predominant population. Greater Somalia encompasses Somalia, Djibouti, Ogaden in Ethiopia and the former North Eastern Province of Kenya, regions of the Horn of Africa where Somalis form the majority of the population in some proportion.

A completely new script was introduced for the Somali language. To spread the new language, methods and message of the revolution, secondary schools were closed in 1974 and 25,000 pupils aged 14 to 16 were sent to rural areas to educate their nomadic compatriots. According to former Ethiopian diplomat Mohamed Hassan, the early years of Siad Barre's regime were the most prosperous in the history of Somalia, as education and social conditions improved.

However, Barre's government remained primarily nationalist; The socialism on which he claimed to be based was pragmatic and aimed at accelerating the country's development.

In those years, Somalia was also a victim of the Cold War due to its strategic location at the crossing of the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, a fact that aroused the interest of the two main superpowers of the time: the United States and the Soviet Union. Siad Barre's government initially leaned towards the Soviets, who helped him financially until 1977. The US took advantage of the break with Moscow to support the Barre regime, which was in conflict with neighboring Ethiopia, the latter supported by the USSR and Cuba.

He was re-elected president in the 1986 presidential elections.

In the 1980s the clans demanded more autonomy, especially the northern regions of the country (which made up the former British Somalia). Barre sent troops to control the independence groups through strong repression without success, because in 1991 rebel militias managed to penetrate Mogadishu, after which he was captured and put an end not only to his government, but also to the integrity of the State itself. Somali, which was dismembered into different sectors controlled by clan leaders and the emergence of new unrecognized republics such as Somaliland, among others. Since that time, the territorial remains of Somalia are controlled by "warlords" grouped into different clans and by the customary law of the clans, leaving the country in a situation of total chaos, without an effective government, and turning the country into a failed State.

Home programs

During the first five years, the Barre government established several cooperative farms and mass production factories, such as mills, sugar cane processing facilities in Jowhar and Afgooye, and a meat processing plant in Kismayo.

Another public project initiated by the government was the Shalanbood sand dune stoppage: starting in 1971, the Barre administration introduced a massive nationwide tree-planting campaign to stop the advance of thousands of acres of dunes of wind-driven sand that threatened to engulf cities, roads and farmland. By 1988, 265 hectares of the projected 336 hectares had been treated, with 39 grassland reserve sites and 36 forest plantation sites established.

Between 1974 and 1975, a major drought known as Abaartii Dabadheer ('The Persistent Drought') occurred in the northern regions of Somalia. The Soviet Union, which at the time maintained strategic relations with the Barre government, airlifted some 90,000 people from the devastated regions of Hobyo and Aynaba.

New settlements of small villages were created in the regions of Jubbada Hoose (Lower Juba) and Jubbada Dhexe (Middle Juba), and these new settlements are known as Danwadaagaha or 'Collective Settlements'. The transplanted families were introduced to farming and fishing, a change from their traditional pastoral lifestyle of herding cattle.

Other such resettlement programs were also introduced as part of Barre's effort to undermine clan solidarity by dispersing nomads away from clan-controlled lands.

Economic programs

As part of Barre's socialist policies, major industries and farms were nationalized, including banks, insurance companies, and oil distribution farms.

The Ogaden War had also substantially weakened the Somali army and military spending had crippled the economy. External debt rose faster than export earnings, and by the end of the decade, Somalia's debt of 4 billion shillings was equivalent to the earnings of seventy-five years of banana exports.

By 1978, exports of manufactured goods were almost nonexistent and, with the loss of support from the Soviet Union, the Barre government signed a structural adjustment agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the early 1970s. 1980.

This included the abolition of some government monopolies and increased public investment. This and a second agreement were canceled in the mid-1980s, as the Somali military refused to accept a proposed 60 percent cut in military spending.

New agreements were signed with the Paris Club, the International Development Association and the IMF during the second half of the 1980s. This ultimately failed to improve the economy which deteriorated rapidly in 1989 and 1990 and resulted in a shortage of basic products throughout the country.

Foreign relations

Control of Somalia was of great interest to both the Soviet Union and the United States due to the country's strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea.

After the Soviets broke up with Somalia in the late 1970s, Barre expelled all Soviet advisers, broke his treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union, and switched his allegiance to the West, announcing this in a televised speech in English.

Somalia also broke all ties with the Eastern Bloc and the Second World (except China and Romania). The United States intervened and until 1989 was a strong supporter of the Barre government, to whom it provided approximately US$100 million a year in economic and military aid, meeting in 1982 with Ronald Reagan to announce the new relationship between the United States and Somalia.

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

On October 17 and 18, 1977, a group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked Lufthansa flight 181 to Mogadishu and held 86 hostages. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Barre negotiated an agreement to allow a GSG 9 counterterrorism unit to enter Mogadishu to free the hostages.

In January 1986, Barre and Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam met in Djibouti to normalize relations between their respective countries. The Ethiopia-Somalia agreement was signed in 1988 and Barre dissolved his clandestine anti-Ethiopian organization, the Western Somali Liberation Front. In return, Barre expected Mengistu to disarm the Somali National Movement (SNM) rebels active on the Ethiopian side of the border; However, this did not materialize as the MNS moved to northern Somalia in response to this agreement.

War with Ethiopia (1977-1988)

In December 1977 Somali troops (with American support) invaded the Ogaden region, which has a majority population of ethnic Somalis. The war begins and Ethiopia (which received Cuban and Soviet support) managed to defeat the Somali troops, after more than a month of intense fighting. In 1982, Siad Barre attempted a new invasion, but failed.

Finally, in 1988, Siad Barre and Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, signed the peace agreement that ended the Ogaden conflict.

Car accident

In May 1986, President Barre suffered serious injuries in a life-threatening car accident near Mogadishu, when the car carrying him crashed into the back of a bus during a severe storm.

He was treated in a hospital in Saudi Arabia for head injuries, broken ribs and shock over a period of one month. Lieutenant General Mohammad Ali Samatar, then vice president, subsequently served as de facto head of state for the following months.

Although Barre managed to recover enough to run as the only presidential candidate for re-election for a seven-year term on December 23, 1986, his poor health and advanced age led to speculation about who would succeed him in power.

Possible contenders included his son-in-law, General Ahmed Suleiman Abdille, who was the interior minister at the time, as well as Barre's vice president, Lieutenant General Samatar.

Exile and death

After the 1991 coup d'état and Siad Barre's imminent departure from the country, Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida offered him asylum in his country. The overthrown leader chose the city of Lagos as his destination, where he lived until his death, which occurred on January 2, 1995.

Decorations

• Order of the Somali Star in First Class.