Mohammed Siad Barre (; ; ; 6 October 1919 – 2 January 1995) was a Somali military officer, politician, and revolutionary who served as the third president of Somalia from 21 October 1969 to 26 January 1991.
Barre, the commander of the Somali National Army, became president of Somalia after the 1969 coup d'état that overthrew the Somali Republic following the assassination of President Abdirashid Shermarke. The Supreme Revolutionary Council military junta under Barre reconstituted Somalia as a one-party Marxist–Leninist communist state, renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic and adopted scientific socialism. Barre spoke three languages, English, Somali and Italian.
Barre's early rule was characterised by attempts at widespread modernization, nationalization of banks and industry, promotion of cooperative farms, a new writing system for the Somali language, and anti-tribalism. In 1976, the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party became the country's vanguard party. The following year Barre launched the Ogaden War against Ethiopia's Derg regime, supporting the Western Somali Liberation Front on a platform of Somali nationalism and pan-Somalism. Barre's popularity was highest during the seven months between September 1977 and March 1978 when Barre captured virtually the entirety of the Somali region. It declined from the late-1970s following Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden War, triggering the Somali Rebellion and severing ties with the Soviet Union. Somalia then allied itself with the Western powers and especially the United States for the remainder of the Cold War, although it maintained its Marxist–Leninist regime and also drew close to China.
Opposition grew in the 1980s and in 1991, Barre's government collapsed as the Somali Rebellion successfully ejected him from power, leading to the Somali Civil War and a massive power vacuum in its wake. Barre was forced into exile in Nigeria, where he died in 1995 on the way to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.
Early years Mohamed Siad Barre was born at a time when birth records were unknown in Somalia. Speculations have been cast upon his exact birth year ranging from 1909 to 1921; nevertheless, it is generally agreed that he was born to pastoral parents. His unofficial birthplace is said to be in Las Ga'al, which is a district of the El-Gab region, presently known as Shilabo in the Ogaden Region of Ethiopia. His official birthplace is recorded to be the city of Garbahare, which is a part of the provincial capital of the Gedo region of Somalia. Mohammed was born to a Marehan father and Ogaden mother of the greater Darod clan. The colonial powers prevented ethnic Somalis born outside the two protectorates (Italian and British) from conscribing into their respective territorial forces. By concealing his unofficial birthplace like many others, it enabled him to be eligible for the Italian colonial police force and military in Somalia.
He was given the childhood nickname Barre, referring to extrovertedness.Tyndall, Christopher R. "Mogadiscio's Unenlightened Pilgrim: Farah's “Links,” Dante's “Inferno,” and the Somali Civil War." comparative literature studies 57.2 (2020): 235-264. In 1941, Mohammed, aged twenty, joined the police force which was then under the authority of the British military, who occupied it since the initiation of World War II hostilities. Mohammed's career in the police force led him to the capital city, Mogadishu, to pursue his education both in the public and private sectors. In the 1940s he completed secondary school education. By 1950, when the British transferred their administration to Italy, Mohammed Siad had achieved the highest rank possible for an indigenous, that of chief police inspector. MIT professor Irving Kaplan writes that the Somali Gendarmerie successfully disarmed and brought a number of pro-Italian guerrilla groups under control.
Role in anti Italian SYL riots in Mogadishu British colonial officials documented extensive SYL membership within the Somali Gendarmerie, with Lieutenant Colonel Thorne reporting that approximately 60% of the force belonged to the SYL. Other British officials similarly noted that the majority of Somali civil servants serving under the British administration were SYL members. This overlap between the security forces and the party would prove decisive during the 1948 Mogadishu riots.The BMA favored the employment of SYL members in both the civil service and the gendarmerie, and by 1948 the party’s identification with the BMA had become so close that holding an SYL party card was practically a prerequisite for government employment.
Tensions came to a head following the arrival of a United Nations fact-finding mission, when the SYL organised a large rally intended to demonstrate popular support for Somali independence. In response, Italian residents staged an unauthorised counter-demonstration, dispatching truckloads of pro-Italian supporters who drove into crowds of SYL demonstrators.
As violence escalated, Gendarmerie officers many of described as SYL members, did not remain neutral. Officers were seen firing on members of the pro-Italian Conferenza party, and fought alongside the SYL against Italian and pro-Italian demonstrators. The riots ultimately left 54 Italians and 14 pro-Italian supporters dead, the latter killed while attempting to shield the Italian demonstrators. In the aftermath, Italian officials held the Somali Gendarmerie directly responsible for the Italian killings.The Somali Gendarmerie, which was supposed to secure public order, in many cases joined the rioters. Captain A. T. Bevan of the British South African Police, at that time serving in Mogadishu, reported that he saw a Gendarmerie askari ‘carrying a rifle and stopping to fire every now and again at a group of Conferenza supporters.In 1952, he and several of his colleagues, including Hussein Kulmiye Afrah, Liiq-Liiqato, Shegow and Daud Abdulle, attended a military academy in Italy where he chiefly studied politics and administration. Between 1950 and 1960, Mohammed Siad heavily pursued studies in languages, ultimately mastering Italian, English and Swahili. After finishing his course he was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. In 1955, a year after completing his course in Rome he was awarded he position of police chief and subsequently assigned to the capital city, Mogadishu. By 1958 he reached the rank of major whilst being the head of the security forces, including the executive director of the Italian police. He also eventually became vice-commander of the Somali Army when the country gained its independence in 1960 as the Somali Republic.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Rise to power
Decline of the civilian government 1960-1969
In 1959 elections was held to decide the first post independence Somali government. The election was however rigged against the Greater Somalia League party, which was an anti-Italian SYL splinter group. The CIA verified the rigging and cast doubt whether the 1960s Somali government was truly a representative of its people.The rigging, if given wide public attention is likely to create adverse world opinion and raise serious doubts whether Somali Government is representative of people.By the early 1960s, the Somali parliamentary system had begun to deteriorate visibly. In 1963, fighting broke out among members of parliament, and an assassination attempt was made against the governor of Galkayo the same year. A US Peace Corps volunteer serving in Somalia during this period recounted regular armed clashes between rival factions, including one incident in which ten people were killed and a separate three-hour shootout in Baidoa.
Corruption within the civilian government became increasingly difficult to conceal. By some accounts, the administration spent nearly five times the annual agriculture budget on land rovers to rig elections, a level of graft that was compared to New York’s notorious Tweed Ring of the 19th century and Capone. The government also earned a reputation for squandering foreign aid; one report described it as a “graveyard of aid schemes,” while the Los Angeles times noted that Somalia remained as impoverished as it had been at independence in 1960.
President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke acknowledged and could not ignore the scale of the problem, publicly attributing the country’s drought crises in part to the conduct of corrupt Somali MPs. General Siad Barre, then head of the armed forces, was similarly critical of the civilian government’s trajectory, telling The Times that its growing dependence on foreign aid was humiliating and fundamentally at odds with the goal of national self-reliance.We cannot go hat in hand in search of funds because that will be humiliating and contrary to the principle of self-reliance to which the nation is committed. [...] The only sensible solution to the deficit problem is to tighten our belts and cut down on luxuries.In 1968, then Prime Minister Egal attributed Somalia’s inability to respond to the ongoing drought to an empty national treasury, a claim he made in an interview with The New York Times. Contemporary accounts, however, attribute the depletion of state treasury funds in large part to Egal's own use of government money to secure parliamentary support ahead of the 1969 elections.
Egal, meanwhile, was later found to have distributed embezzled state funds to American nationals, including John Bainbridge, who was arrested and expelled from Somalia following the 1969 revolution. Egal himself was alleged to have embezzled approximately 3 million Somali shillings, equivalent to roughly $26 million today.
On the night of the coup, Egal was in the United States, where he had reportedly spent stolen government funds gambling Roulette in Las Vegas casinos. Prior to this, he had attended a cocktail party in Beverly Hills celebrating a Hollywood production filmed in Somalia starring William Holden. Following the assassination of President Abdirashid, Somali officials struggled to reach the Prime Minister; in the ensuing effort to locate him, the US-Somali Educated Embassy reportedly contacted the FBI for assistance.
Assassination of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke’s earlier election campaign had been substantially funded by the Soviet Union and other communist states, and as Prime Minister he had been the first Somali leader to extend diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China.
Concerned by this trajectory and by the broader prospect of a Soviet-aligned Greater Somalia, the CIA began infiltrating Somali government ministries during the 1960s as part of a wider pattern of Cold War covert action across the continent. Former National security staffer, Roger Morris writes that up to $200,000, were directed toward pro-Western Somali politicians in an effort to reshape the country’s foreign policy alignment, with covert support said to have facilitated Mohamed Ibrahim Egal's rise within the ruling Somali Youth League ahead of the 1967 elections.
Once in office, Egal moved to curtail the influence of the Soviet-trained SNA, dismissing thousands of its personnel, while correspondingly strengthening the American-trained Somali police force as a counterweight. This realignment contributed to friction between Egal and President Shermarke; rumors circulated that the two men were no longer on good terms, a rift that widened further when Egal attempted to transform Somalia into a one-party state on 3 October 1969.