Somalia GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE
Poster in Mogadishu of Mahammad Siad Barre, a revolutionary
leader of Somalia, deposed in 1991
Courtesy Hiram A. Ruiz
Following its defeat of Siad Barre, the Executive Committee
of the USC announced the formation of an interim provisional
government, even though it did not exercise effective authority
over the entire country. The USC chose one of its own members,
Ali Mahdi Mahammad (b. 1939), as provisional president. The
president served as head of state, but the duties and
responsibilities of the office were not defined. For the most
part, the provisional president retained the same powers that had
been stipulated in the constitution of 1979. This included the
authority to appoint a prime minister, and subsequently Mahammad
named Umar Arteh Ghalib to that position on interim basis.
Ghalib's cabinet, called the Provisional Government of National
Unity, initially consisted of twenty-seven full ministers and
eight deputy ministers. The ministerial portfolios included
agriculture, commerce, culture and higher education, defense,
exports, finance, fisheries, health, industry, information,
interior, justice, labor and social affairs, livestock and
forestry, petroleum and minerals, post and telecommunications,
public works and housing, reconstruction and settlement,
transportation, tourism, and youth.
Although the president announced that elections for a
permanent government would be held as soon as security had been
reestablished, rivalries within the USC, as well as opposition to
the interim government in other parts of the country, made the
questions of elections a moot point. Mahammad's most serious
challenger was General Mahammad Faarah Aidid, leader of a USC
faction that supported cooperation with the SNM. Initially, Aidid
contested the authority of the Mogadishu-based USC Executive
Committee to form an interim government without consultation with
other political groups that had opposed the Siad Barre regime.
Relations between the Mahammad and Aidid wings of the USC
continued to deteriorate throughout the spring and summer of
1991. By September, Aidid had established his own rival
government in the southern part of the capital. A series of
clashes between forces loyal to Aidid and those loyal to Mahammad
compelled the latter to retreat to northern Mogadishu.
Mahammad was a member of the Abgaal clan of the Hawiye clanfamily , whereas Aidid was a member of that same clan-family's
Habar Gidir clan. The Abgaal clan comprised nine subclans,
several of which traditionally have been dominant in the
Mogadishu area. Because Abgaal leaders had not become involved in
the struggle against Siad Barre until 1989, other clans tended to
view them as upstarts trying to usurp control of the opposition
movement. This perception was especially strong among the Habar
Gidir clan, whose five subclans lived predominantly in central
Somalia. Some Habar Gidir leaders had joined the SNM as early as
1984, and they had resisted efforts to create a separate Hawiye
force--the USC--between 1987 and 1989. Once the USC was
established, Aidid emerged as leader of the mainly Habar Gidir
faction that maintained an affiliation with the SNM. The Abgaal
and Habar Gidir wings of the USC were clearly distinct by
November 1990 when Aidid, on behalf of this group, signed an
agreement with the SNM and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) to
unify military operations.
Despite their political differences, both Mahammad and Aidid
had long histories of opposition to Siad Barre. A former teacher
and civil servant, Mahdi Mahammad had been elected to the 123-
member National Assembly of the Republic in the March 1969
parliamentary elections. Following the military coup in October
1969, Mahdi Mahammad was arrested along with several other
civilian politicians. He was released after several years in
prison and subsequently became a successful Mogadishu
entrepreneur. During the 1980s, he served as director of a local
UN office. Eventually Mahammad used his wealth to provide crucial
financial support to the USC guerrillas. In May 1990, he was one
of 114 prominent citizens who signed a public manifesto calling
on the government to resign and requesting that Siad Barre
introduce democratic reforms. When Siad Barre began arresting
signatories to the manifesto, Mahammad fled to exile in Italy,
where he worked in the USC's Rome office.
The appointment of Ghalib as provisional prime minister
demonstrated the sensitivity of Mahammad and other USC leaders to
the role of clans in the country's politics. Ghalib belonged to
the important Isaaq clan-family of northern Somalia. Although the
main opposition group in the north, the SNM, was closely
identified with the Isaaqs, Ghalib was not an SNM member. Rather,
his political career had associated him with national government.
From 1969 to 1976, Ghalib had served as Siad Barre's first
foreign minister. He was dismissed after disagreeing with Siad
Barre's increasingly overt policy of supporting the ethnic Somali
insurrection in Ethiopia's Ogaden (Ogaadeen) region. Ghalib was
subsequently arrested, and in 1989, after spending seven years in
prison without charges, he was tried for treason and sentenced to
death. Following protests from various foreign governments, Siad
Barre commuted Ghalib's sentence but kept him under house arrest.
In late January 1991, as his regime was collapsing, Siad Barre
asked Ghalib to form a new government that would negotiate with
the rebels, but the USC military successes forced Siad Barre's
flight from the capital before any transfer of power could be
completed.
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