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In 1977, I saw something odd in the Hamarweyne District of Mogadishu. I saw a tall man riding a horse. For one thing, the rider was not a policeman. Then, after I looked at him closely, I realized it was none other than Omar Arteh Ghalib, the deposed foreign minister of Somalia. One pedestrian made a casual comment that Omar Arteh must have been depressed to be riding a horse in the center of the capital. Later, I found out that the horse was a gift from the people of the Nugaal region. Incidentally, Omar was the headmaster of an elementary school there in the 1950s.
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Omar Arte Ghalib
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From 1969 to 1976, Omar Arteh was the foreign minister. It was not strange when President Siad Barre decided to remove him from that position. The dictatorial system of Somalia did not make room for a foreign minister, or any other capable official for that matter, to be effective or powerful. Omar knew that he was merely a performer, perhaps, a facilitator, an implementer of Barre’s policies. All the hoopla that Omar Arteh was the man behind Somalia’s opening to the Arab world and to the country becoming a member of the Arab League is preposterous. Omar may have flattered and cajoled some Arab kings here and there, but he knew perfectly well that he was Siad Barre’s messenger. Moreover, the Arab governments were eager to have Somalia as a member of the league.
A case in point, when King Faisal of Saudi Arabia sent a special envoy, Shaikh Mohamed Mohamoud Al-Sawaf, to Barre in the early 1970s to lure the latter away from the Soviet orbit, Omar Arteh, according to a BBC interview with Mohamed Nur “Garyare” (then the director of religion in the ministry of religion and justice), was too timid to articulate the Arab king’s message before Siad Barre, and he instead pleaded with “Garyare” to deliver the bold message. Omar Arteh did not want to rock the boat or appear to be an official favoring special relations with Saudi Arabia. Barre, in that meeting with the Saudi Arabian envoy, was blunt and rejected King Faisal’s overtures. Only a few years later, Barre would grovel under the feet of Arab sheikhs, but that was not the time.Continued
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