- Title: [SW News] (ION # 942 - 17/03/01)The Return of Siad
Barre's Generals.
- Posted by/on:[AAJ[[28 Mar 2001]
The Return of Siad Barre's Generals.
THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER # 942 - 17/03/01
President Abdi Qassem Salad Hassan, who is anxious to present international donors with an
image of his country as returning to normal, is multiplying the initiatives to reinforce
security in
Mogadishu and has named several generals to the head of its armed forces currently being
reorganized. He has notably named officers who served under the late President Siad Barre,
some of whom fought in the war against the Issaq in the North of the country (later named
Somaliland).
The Somali army's new chief of staff, General Muse Hasan Sheykh, is of the Ogaden/Darod
clan, a close relation to Mohamed Abdulle Hasan (whose nickname is the "mad
mullah") and described as moderate and not overly clanic in his outlook. Formed, like
many officers of his generation, in Modena and Turin, he returned from Italy in 1964 with
the rank of lieutenant and, after serving as military attaché in Rome (in the early
1980s) and military governor of the region of Bay, he was Siad Barre's aide de camp when
the régime collapsed in late 1990. Serving as his deputy will be General Mohamed Abdi
Mohamed, an Abgal/Agonyar (like Ali Mahdi, the warlord who controls the North of
Mogadishu) who was trained in the former Soviet Union after working as a teacher.
Director of the cabinet under defense minister Omar Hagi Masale in the 1980s, then head of
the defense ministry's political direction, General Mohamed Abdi Mohamed became in
February 1990 governor of Middle Shebelle, a region dominated by the Abgal tribe but from
which he was ousted by the forces of the United Somali Congress (USC, which at the time
regrouped all the Hawiye) when Siad Barre was overthrown.
Commanding the army will be Osman Sheykh Ahmed, a Warsengeli/Abgal officer of the same
sub-clan as Abukeer Aadan (the owner of the hotel Ramadhan which houses the Somali
government), who was formed in Cairo before returning to Somalia in 1962, and who replaced
General Morgan after the latter bombed Hargeysa and Burao in June 1988. The commander
of the air force will be Colonel Nur Elmi Addawe, a Mejerten/Darod pilot who commanded the
Baladogle military base near Mogadishu until 1991, while the head of the as-yet-inexistant
navy will be Colonel Muse Said Mohamed, a Mejerten/Darod officer who studied at the former
USSR's naval academy before serving in the naval forces of Siad Barre.
As for the rapid reaction forces, they will be under General Abdi'Aziz Ali Barre, a
Marehan officer reputed for his efficiency and hard-fistedness. Trained by Moscow, he
occupied a similar function under Siad Barre in the 1980s before becoming General Osman
Sheykh's deputy in Burao in 1988. After 1991, he pulled back into the Gedo region from
which he had been driven out by the May 1992 offensive of warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed.
Last but definitely not least is General Mohamed Nur Galal, in charge of disarming the
militias. Another Soviet war academy graduate (1966-1969) who was chief of staff of the
military region of Hiran (capital Beled Weyne) from 1971 to 1972 and minister of public
works from 1975 to 1977, the Ayr/Habr Gedir/Hawiye officer commanded the Dire Dawa sector
(in Ethiopia's Ogaden region, claimed by Somalia) during the war between Somalia and
Ethiopia in 1977-1978, earning a popular following in his country. In 1990, he was
chairman of the Somali parliament's defense commission, and just before Siad Barre was
toppled, he scented what was to come.
Defecting to the side of Ali Mahdi, he coordinated the forces rebelling against the
president, while managing to marginalize General Mohamed Farah Aideed, whose rebel army
were the largest and whose mortal enemy he was to remain until the latter's death in an
August 1996 gun fight.
Mohamed Nur Galal is considered the brains of Salad Hassan's régime, for he is considered
a better tactician, a more practical organizer, and a more astute politician than the
president.
THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER # 942 - 17/03/01
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