The new version of Mobutu Sese Seko
The competition and contestation of rival clans over who had the right to replace the assassinated president were bound to stir up armed clan conflict. The whole governmental system on which the state institutions were founded was on the verge of failure, and the country was heading toward economic and political breakdown.70 The corrupted democracy led to what Mabel Berezin called “an empty symbolic space” wherein a tyrannical, totalitarian, and terroristic regime formed itself easily unchallenged to fill the void.71 Barre, acting behind the scenes, conversed with other army officers and used the same language of Abdirashid’s assassin, stating that Egaal had sold out the cause of Somalis in Kenya by pursuing a new policy of détente.72 So Barre argued for a sudden and swift overthrow of the government in 1968, a year before Abdirashiid’s assassination. Barre’s political maneuvring was unequivocal. A diehard supporter of the Abdirizak’s government, he once threatened those who voted against its approval in the parliament in 1964 with dire consequences. When Abdirizak’s government lost the first vote of confidence in the parliament, Barre warned Egaal, then an opposition leader, that the army would react if the bickering political players did not stop blocking the government in the parliament.73
Barre’s coup was also possibly precipitated by the fact that Abdirashid and Egaal were intending to reduce the military budget. When Egaal suggested in 1968 sending Barre to the Soviet Union for military training, the plan was noticeably overshadowed by contemporary clan advocacy. Barre deployed clan elders who convinced both Abdirashid and Egaal to leave their son alone. Before Egaal’s proposal materialized, it was averted by the clanistic reasoning put forward by Majeerteen political players and brokers who insisted that since a Daarood commissioner of the police had previously been discharged, they would never tolerate another Daarood being humiliated under their authority. One of those political players was Daher Haji Osman “Dhagaweyne,” Abdirashid’s cousin. Mothered by a Mareehaan, Barre’s clan, Dhagaweyne persuaded Abdirashid not to dismiss the army commandant.74 Barre was also successful in convincing his clan leaders that, if he was to vacate the position, he would have to leave the army in the hands of rival clansmen, as his deputies, General Mohamed Aynaanshe Guuleed, an Isaaq/Habar Yoonis, and General Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed “Liiqliiqato,” a Hawiye/Sheekhaal, came from rival clan-groups.
Barre had his own covert plans. He would become and prove to be a tiger who ate those who had groomed him. Upon the aftermath of the March 1969 election, he was promoted to major-general, following a recommendation from the interior minister. This allowed him to fish inside the army as well as party politics, which by this time were structured on either clan or personalist basis. Barre owed his accomplishment of waging the successful overthrow of the administration to the irregularities of the election. But the fraud and falsification of the election, as well as the subsequent assassination of the president, did not trigger the takeover. Rather, it provided the justification for carrying out the coup, because Barre found a unique public validation to complete his coup plot. The virtual demise of democratic rule at Abdirashiid and Egaal’s hands led people to envisage a coup.75 Rumors were prevalent in the capital that a military takeover was in the offing. Barre took advantage of such a chaotic situation and created politico-military networks. Utilizing his army position, he shrewdly built underground support for his plans, such as forming a military section for singers and traditional poets. Singers with folklore bands were mobilized from inside the army in order to voice the masses’ grievances against the administration. One of the most well-known songs claimed that the army was the only institution safe from corruption and nepotism. The song, aired on Radio Mogadishu a few months before the coup, was sung by a male and a female singer.
The male singer:
The refuter of [clan] genealogies
Who knows no nepotism
Who sees the nation as equal
That being the soldier Who is oblivious of it?
The female singer:
The defender of the land
The unbendable one as a force
The never-defeated debater That being the soldier
Who is oblivious of it?76
If the male singer used abstract words, the female singer reinforced it with vigor and figurative language. Within a week of Abdirashid’s assassination came the coup. Into the confusion stepped Barre and his soldiers. The democracy was scrapped and the civilian government was brought down, replaced by a autocratic kleptocracy. Before the civilian committee of president’s assassination concluded their findings, the coup instigators took charge. The public and the press were silenced about the assassination case. Many Somalis welcomed the coup and saw it as a new beginning for Somalia. Whatever the case, the coup was far from bloodless as claimed by the military junta. On the contrary, the military regime came and ended with violence.
Many opposition political players, such as Abdulkadir Mohamed Aden “Zoppo” and Abdirizak Haji Hussein, were quick in supporting the coup. Zoppo, another close friend of Barre’s and of Abdirizak’s, later confided to the U.S. ambassador in Mogadishu that he financed the coup.77 Standing accused of orchestrating a high-profile assassination together, the rumeur publique (public rumor)—as Daniel Compagnon put it—was established that linked Barre and Zoppo to the assassination of Kamaaluddiin Saalah in 1957.78 No stranger to assassinations, Barre was the commander of the police in the Banaadir province of Mogadishu when the Egyptian diplomat was stabbed to death. Hours before his assassination, Saalah’s police guard was withdrawn. While the traces of the assassination were cleared, the assassin Wiilow Sheikh Abdirahman Dheere was himself assassinated in prison during the night of Somali independence celebrations on July 1, 1960, as he was about to be released the following morning for a presidential pardon.
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