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Somalia National Security Service
Shortly after Siad Barre seized power, the Soviet Committee
of State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti--KGB)
helped Somalia form the National Security Service (NSS). This
organization, which operated outside normal bureaucratic
channels, developed into an instrument of domestic surveillance,
with powers of arrest and investigation. The NSS monitored the
professional and private activities of civil servants and
military personnel, and played a role in the promotion and
demotion of government officials. As the number of insurgent
movements proliferated in the late 1980s, the NSS increased its
activities against dissidents, rebel sympathizers, and other
government opponents
(see Human Rights
, this ch.). Until the
downfall of Siad Barre's regime, the NSS remained an elite
organization staffed by men from the SNA and the police force who
had been chosen for their loyalty to the president.
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