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“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
Plato.
“Power was my weakness and my temptation.”
J.K Rowlings, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows.
***
Plato.
“Power was my weakness and my temptation.”
J.K Rowlings, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows.
***
Two incidents intrigued me about Siad Barre, the man and the president. One related to him personally, and the other involved members of his government.
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Barre (Courtesy: The Times, 10/22/1969)
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In the early 1970s, some of the teenagers in my Isku-Raran neighborhood in Mogadishu told me a bizarre story. Because our neighborhood was mostly dark at night and did not have sufficient street lights, boys used to hang out in front of the old Somali Youth League Center which was well lighted. They said that after mid-night on several occasions they had met President Siad Barre driving his old Fiat 125. He would get out of his car and briefly chat with them. Barre, interestingly enough, was not tagged by a gaggle of bodyguards like he would be several years later. This time frame must thus have been either 1970 or 1971 when Barre was popular and hence had no organized opposition groups threatening his regime. The story made no sense to me, and I simply thought these boys were pulling my leg. After all, it was a well-known fact that Siad Barre conducted his official business at night, often summoning government officials and even foreign ambassadors to Villa Somalia. The American Ambassador in Somalia in the 1980s, Peter S. Bridges, actually wrote in his memoir,Safirka: An American Envoy, about Barre’s nocturnal and inconvenient way of doing business.
Barre’s habit of roaming around Mogadishu after midnight gave him the aura of a concerned leader checking on his subjects as they slept. It must have been the perfect picture: A Somali leader being seen as extra vigilant and making sure no harm befell his people. However, there was likely an ulterior motive for Barre’s odd outings in the dark of night.
In our neighborhood, there was a single mother with a daughter very close to my age. The family lived in a house across from old Sidow’s three-story building and a block from the Somali Youth League Center. Sidow, a man of some wealth, and his family occupied the second and third floors of his building, while the first floor was rented by a half-Arab woman named Zeinab, and her daughter and two sons. Zeinab’s husband, ironically, was none other than Barre’s arch nemesis, Yusuf Cismaan Samantar “Bardacad,” Somalia’s renowned communist leader, who spent 18 years of Barre’s 21-year reign in detention.CONTINUED
Barre’s habit of roaming around Mogadishu after midnight gave him the aura of a concerned leader checking on his subjects as they slept. It must have been the perfect picture: A Somali leader being seen as extra vigilant and making sure no harm befell his people. However, there was likely an ulterior motive for Barre’s odd outings in the dark of night.
In our neighborhood, there was a single mother with a daughter very close to my age. The family lived in a house across from old Sidow’s three-story building and a block from the Somali Youth League Center. Sidow, a man of some wealth, and his family occupied the second and third floors of his building, while the first floor was rented by a half-Arab woman named Zeinab, and her daughter and two sons. Zeinab’s husband, ironically, was none other than Barre’s arch nemesis, Yusuf Cismaan Samantar “Bardacad,” Somalia’s renowned communist leader, who spent 18 years of Barre’s 21-year reign in detention.CONTINUED
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