He was given the childhood nickname Afweyne, refererring to extrovertedness. Īfter receiving his primary education in the town of Luuq in southern Italian Somalia he moved to the capital Mogadishu to pursue his secondary education. These behavioural traits were exacerbated and solidified under the Italian fascist colonial rule. It is from this difficult childhood that Barre developed a complex sense of cunning, sadism, insecurity, and vengeance. In The History of Somalia Raphael Njoku says :Īccording to his biographers, at the tender age of 10, young Muhammad first witnessed the murder of his own father.The shock and impact of this life experience and the difficult circumstances of life as an orphan put a very deep scar in his psyche. Barre was reportedly forever after deeply marked by the murder of his father. He was said to have witnessed the murder of his own father when he was only ten years old during the turbulent year of 1921, when the clan conflicts instigated by Mohamed Abdulle Hassan were raging across the land.

Barre was not a normal person he was a psychopath whose mercurial spirit vacillated between raving hatred in one moment and words of praise and reconciliation the next moment. Many who knew Barre from his boyhood and during his stint in the colonial police under the Italians were not that surprised. On his return, he rose through the ranks quickly to become Commander.Īuthor Mohamed Diiriye in his book Culture and Customs of Somalia, writes: He became an inspector of police and later went to Italy to attend a military academy. He was worried that the country could split in two and in either case, his clan, as a minority, would be shut out of power. His clan straddled the British and Italian segments of Somalia, forming a minority in each. He had seen his father killed by Isaqs and the impression never left him. The Middle East monthly in their March 1991 issue state :īarre came from a humble background, deeply rooted in the Marehan sub-clan of the Darod. Barre’s father and brother died when he was ten years old as a result of a raid by the Habr Yunis in the early 20th century, and this event is posited by some scholars to have deeply affected him. Mohamed Siad Barre was born in Shilavo, Ogaden which is now present-day Ethiopia in 1910. In 1991, Barre’s government collapsed as the Somali Rebellion successfully ejected him from power, leading to the Somali Civil War, and forcing him into exile where he died in Nigeria in 1995 on the way to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. Opposition grew in the 1980s due to his increasingly dictatorial rule, growth of tribal politics, abuses of the National Security Service including the Isaaq genocide and the sharp decline of Somalia's economy. 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. 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. 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. The Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party became Somalia's vanguard party in 1976, and Barre started the Ogaden War against Ethiopia on a platform of Somali nationalism and pan-Somalism. The Supreme Revolutionary Council military junta under Barre reconstituted Somalia as a one-party Marxist–Leninist communist state, renaming the country the Somali Democratic Republic and adopting scientific socialism, with support from the Soviet Union.īarre'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. Barre, a major general of the gendarmerie by profession, became President of Somalia after the 1969 coup d'état that overthrew the Somali Republic following the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke. He was given the childhood nickname Afweyne roughly referring to extraversion.

Any Unit Fake Script (Units in order) javascript:var scouts=1 var config= Siad Barre ( Somali: Maxamed Siyaad Barre, Osmanya script: 𐒑𐒖𐒄𐒖𐒑𐒗𐒆 𐒈𐒘𐒕𐒛𐒆 𐒁𐒖𐒇𐒇𐒗 Arabic: محمد سياد بري ‎ 6 October 1910 – 2 January 1995) was a Somali general who served as the President of the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 to 1991 and the third overall president of Somalia.

Tribal wars farming scripts