Mohamed Siad Barre

The new alliance should strengthen the basis for the offensive planned by the TFG’s new Chief of Staff General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye (a hangover from Mohamed Siad Barre’s government in the 1980s)...

Ever since the Hawiye overthrew the former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991 the main Hawiye clans the Abgal and Habr Gidir have disagreed about which should control the capital...

The Saad elders discussing relations with the Ayr and the SICC include Hassan 'Aydeed' son of General Mohamed Farah Aydeed who finally drove former President Mohamed Siad Barre out of Somalia and defeated the United States in 1993...

If the TFG won control over Lower Shebelli much of the land would be returned to the previous Darod proprietors who acquired it illegally under Siad Barre...

The AU plan to send Sudanese and Ugandans as the forerunners of a 10 000-strong force came to nothing partly because the United Nations Security Council in July refused to relax the arms embargo it had imposed on Somalia in 1992 when fighting followed theprevious year's fall of President Mohamed Siad Barre...

Formed in the late 1980s when the late President Mohamed Siad Barre's regime was collapsing (and the National Islamic Front seized power in Sudan) Al Itihaad joined three extremist strands: graduates of Medina University Saudi Arabia; ex-mujahideen from Afghanistan; and Somali groups like Al Jama al Islamia...

Industry Minister Abdi Mohamed Tarah (Darod/Absame/Ogaden) is the principal Darod in parliament; he was accused of embezzlement when in President Mohamed Siad Barre's reign he was in charge of refugees from the Ogaden...

Few senior Marehan support Abdullahi and many still blame him and his Majertein for the 1991 overthrow of Siad Barre...

The effects of this policy may well be the failure of the peace settlement and a return to armed conflict; it also allows a fragile unity to develop among the anti-Ethiopian factions and undermines pro-Ethiopians such as Abdullahi Yussef Abdullahi Addow (a former Finance Minister and Ambassador to Washington under the late President Mohamed Siad Barre) and even Farah Weheliye Addo `Sindiko' once Mogadishu Mayor (`Sindaco' in Italian)...

This encourages Hargeisa politicians to make inflammatory speeches about independence and to emphasise past massacres `by southerners' rather than by Siad Barre's government (in which Abdullahi Yussef was a security officer till 1991)...

This saw Dahir Riyal Kahin one of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre's political police chiefs win by a margin that would have been familiar to his old boss...

Danforth's deputy Robert Oakley served in President Mohamed Siad Barre's Somalia President Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaïre Pakistan and Vietnam; some in DC think him too ready to speak his mind others think him too Arabist...

In 1991 Moi backed President Mohamed Siad Barre and the militia of his son in law Gen...