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Mohamed Siad Barre (Somali: Maxamed Siyaad Barre) (1919 – January 2, 1995) was the Head of State of Somalia from 1969 to 1991. Prior to his presidency he was army commander under the democratic government of Somalia which had been in place since independence in June 1960. During his rule, he styled himself Jaalle Siyaad (Comrade Siad).
Early life Barre was born near Shilabo, Ethiopia, although he later claimed to have been born in Garbahaarreey in order to qualify for the Italian colonial police force. Before he joined the police force, Barre had been an orphaned shepherd. He had no formal education, but studied hard and attended some military courses in Italy. He became the Vice Commander of Somalia's Army when the country gained independence from Italy in 1960. Barre became an advocate of Soviet style Marxist government after spending time with Soviet officers in joint training exercises in the early 1960s. Head of state In 1969, during the power vacuum following the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, the military staged a coup on October 21, 1969 (the day after Shermarke's funeral), and took over. Barre was to rule for the next twenty-two years. He attempted to develop a personality cult; large posters of him were common in the capital Mogadishu during his reign, many of which can still be seen today. One of the earliest deeds of his regime was to introduce the Somali language as the education delivery language. All education in government schools had to be conducted in Somali. This was a major disaster to the educational achievement of the young nation as Somali was neither a scientific language nor a commercial language. The latin alphabet was selected as the means to convey the language. Siad Barre also championed the concept of a greater Somalia which aimed to unite Djibouti, the Ogaden (region of Ethiopia) and the Somali region of Kenya under a so called greater Somalia. This ideology led to the disastrous war with Ethiopia which resulted in countless deaths and refugees in both countries. During the Cold War, control of Somalia was of great interest to the Soviet Union and the United States due to its strategic location at the entrance to the Red Sea. Barre's government was initially supported by the Soviet Union, but lost Soviet support in 1977 over Somali efforts to annex the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. He subsequently expelled all Soviet advisors, tore up his friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, and switched his allegiance to the West. The United States stepped in, and until 1989 was a strong supporter of the Barre government, providing approximately US$100 million per year in economic and military aid. Siad Barre played an important role in 17 October and 18 October, 1977 when a Red Army Faction group hijacked Lufthansa flight 181 to Mogadishu. All 86 hostages were held by a Red Army Faction group in the hijacked plane in Mogadishu, Somalia. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Siad Barre negotiated about letting a GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit into Mogadishu to free the hostages. Barre was also one of the most brutal African dictators of his time. Thousands of people disappeared into his regime's jails, where torture for political prisoners was institutionalised. Barre's support was heavily based on clan affiliation and in playing clans against one another. In the late 1980s, rival factional groups began to make substantial territorial gains, especially in the northern Somaliland region. Barre launched an intense counter-insurgency campaign. According to a 1990 report by Africa Watch, an affiliate of Human Rights Watch, fifty to sixty thousand people were killed in the fighting in between 1988 and 1990. Barre was finally unseated on the evening of 26 January 1991. He was succeeded by Ali Mahdi Muhammad until November 1991, but Ali Mahdi's government never managed to exert political or military control over most of the country. Death After leaving Mogadishu in January 1991, Barre temporarily remained in the southwestern region of the country controlled by his son-in-law Mohamed Said Hersi. He twice attempted to retake Mogadishu, but in May 1992, he was overwhelmed by General Muhammed Farrah Aidid's army, and went into exile. He initially moved to Nairobi, but opposition groups there protested his presence and support by the Kenyan government, so he moved to Nigeria only two weeks later. He died on January 2, 1995 in Lagos, Nigeria from a heart attack in Nigeria and and his remains were buried in Garbahaarreey in Somalia. As of 2006, Somalia has had no real national leader nor any effective national government since Siad Barre was deposed. Notes See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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