The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

This complacent abuse of power, as it seemed to many critics, enraged some of the country’s leading intellectuals, and particularly those who were not closely associated with the Government, or who had failed to secure a seat in the last elections. The democratic parliamentary system which had seemed to combine so well with traditional Somali political institutions, and had begun with such verve and promise, had tamed distinctly sour. The National Assembly was no longer the symbol of free speech and fair play for all citizens.

On the contrary, it had been turned into a sordid marketplace where deputies traded their votes for personal rewards with scant regard for the interests of their constituents. Its members were ferried about in sumptuous limou­sines bearing the magic letters A.N. (Assemblea Nazionale), which the inveterate poor of the capital translated with bitter humor as anna noolahay — ‘I’m all right, Jack’. Where even such enlightened and in­spired politicians as Abdirazaq Haji Husseyn had tried to improve the system and had failed, more drastic remedies seemed the only possible recourse.

In the view of the most disillusioned critics, democracy had lapsed into commercialized anarchy, and strong rule of a new type was desperately needed if the state was to be rescued from its present morass of poverty, insecurity, and inefficiency, and set on the road to progress. Rumors of military intervention were thus inevitably in the air.

The immediate precipitants of the impending coup were, however, entirely unexpected. While the Premier was out of the country traveling abroad, Shirmarke, the President, was assassinated by a policeman on 15 October 1969. The murderer belonged to a lineage which had been persistently ill-treated by the President and sought revenge rather than revolution — or so at least it seems.⁹ Nor was the death of Shirmarke followed immediately by a coup.

The next event in the rapidly un­folding drama was the hasty return to Mogadishu of the Premier to master-mind the National Assembly’s election of a new President who would safeguard his own position. Naturally, a Darod candidate was put forward, in the event an old campaigner whom the Government’s ethics saw as sharing most of the vices of his predecessor. When at their late-night sitting on 20 October the party caucus had reached an agreement to support this man as their official candidate, and it was thus virtually certain that he would be elected by the assembly the following day, those army officers who had been closely watching the situation decided to act.

In the early hours of the morning of 21 October 1969 the army occupied key points throughout the capital, and — with the aid of the police, who seem, however, to have been initially at least somewhat reluctant accomplices — the members of the previous Government and other leading politicians and personalities were rounded up.¹⁰

The National Assembly was closed, political parties were declared illegal, and it was announced that the state would be governed by a Supreme Revolu­tionary Council. Corruption and tribalism would be eliminated, and true justice and democracy restored. While honoring existing treaties, the military regime would support national liberation movements and the struggle for Somali unification. As an earnest of its intentions, and as a symbol of its hopes, the country would henceforth be known as the Somali Democratic Republic.

The membership of the Supreme Revolutionary Council was an­nounced on 1 November; predictably its President turned out to be General Mohammad Siyad Barre, Commander of the Army, who was supported by 54 other officers, listed in descending order of rank from major-general to captain. Of the two initial Vice-Presidents, one was significantly General Korshell, General Abshir’s successor as police commandant. These members of the S.R.C. were to be assisted by a 14-man civilian secretariat of ‘secretaries’ fulfilling much the same function as previous civilian ministers — but without their power. The appointments initially announced were certainly promising, and in­cluded a high proportion of the ablest civil servants.

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