Reviewed by Liban Ahmad

Book: Out of Mogadishu
Author: Yusuf Mohamed Haid
Paperback: 166 pages

During the first two weeks of 1991 Somalis eagerly awaited the overthrow of the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siyad Barre. Throughout 1990, Mogadishu was notorious for night-time robberies and assassinations. I remember former BBC Somali Service stringer in Mogadishu, Saeed Bakar Mukhtar, file reports on the operations of United Somali Congress forces (aka Jabhadda ), whose militias were only 30 KM from the capital.

USC forces poured into Mogadishu on 30 December 1990 and by mid-day controlled two-fifth of Mogadishu districts. People who fled areas under USC forces had felt traumatised not only by the war situation, but they worried about what USC forces would do once it got rid of a hated military dictatorship. That worry would have been misplaced had USC been a multi-clan, armed opposition group.

Yusuf Mohamed Haid wrote his reminiscences of the civil war between December 30, 1990, and 16 January 1991. As one of the residents of the African Village in Hodan district, Mr. Haid decided to flee Mogadishu with his family mid-January 1991.

Haid was a senior official of the Ministry of Information and National Guidance when the civil war- already raging in other parts of Somalia- spread to Mogadishu. He was a veteran broadcaster, short story writer and curriculum developer. He was, along with Professor Ali Jimale Ahmed of the City University of New York, a member of a committee tasked to write a hagiography of President Mohamed Siyad Barre. His closeness to the regime did not stop Haid from writing about his experience of living in the ‘revolution’ for two decades. He recounts his childhood in northern Somalia; how he, thanks to his hardworking and wise mother, ended up first in Burao, a northern metropolis, and then in Mogadishu; why the military regime metamorphosed into a military dictatorship that brooked no dissent and subjected critics and those related to them by clan genealogy to human rights violations ranging from arrests and demotions to extrajudicial killings.

Haid realised the regime’s days were numbered when top loyalists of the regime attended a meeting of Haid’s clansmen and asked for help to mobilise these latter to fight for a regime that no longer even fully controlled Wardhiigley district, where the presidency was located. Haid shared those tidbits with readers not to justify the witch-hunt and clan-based pogroms to which USC militias resorted as they forced Mohamed Siyad Barre to flee to his hometown in the Buurdhuubo district of the Gedo region on 26 January 1991.

Despite the personal tragedies that befell Haid, he does not blame a particular clan for the murder of his brother and nephew in Mogadishu by the USC militias. Neither the regime leaders nor the armed opposition group’s commanders and political leaders had ruled out a vendetta against innocent people. The collective leadership failure which Haid brings to our attention is still haunting Somalia. Hence the dependency of the Somali Federal Government on fifteen thousand African peacekeeping forces.

The book contains a few factual errors caused by Haid’s decision to select some names for inclusion in the book. Mohamed Hawadle Madar (deceased) was the Prime Minister of Somalia whereas his brother, Hassan Hawadle Madar ‘the long-serving managing director of the Somali Petroleum Agency’ who, according to Haid, along with some ‘notable Isaq clan members of Siad Bare’s regime were secretly coordinating the USC and SNM militia groups’. If Haid chose not to mention people from his clan at the meeting in Booliqaran (national loot) who were sent to recruit foot soldiers for the dying regime, why did he decide to include the name of someone on the basis of hearsay? This shows that aspects of a memoir, like memory itself, can become selective and sometimes unreliable.

Like many people who felt that life in Mogadishu would be unbearable following massacres and expulsions in districts under USC, Haid decided to leave Mogadishu for good. What happened the first two weeks were a precursor to USC policies after it took over Mogadishu. Haid’s book deserves a wider readership. It is an interesting personal account of the first two weeks of the Somali civil war.
Liban Ahmad
Email:libahm@icloud.com