Conclusion
Who was behind the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke? This article has accumulated evidence that links the Barre coup and the Cold War politics to the assassination. The first published documents of the military regime are both informative and instructive, as they feature collaboration and connivance over who was behind the assassination. In this regard, this article should be seen as an exploration. A future Somali government—perhaps 50 years from now—will probably appoint a public inquiry (say) the National Commission of Inquiry into Abdirashid’s assassination. The fact that the Somali National Archives and most regime documents were destroyed after the overthrow of the Barre regime in 1991 will make any investigation of the assassination very difficult. Without delving into the KGB official documents on Somalia as well as Italian intelligence reports from Mogadishu, nothing can be definitive. The release of these documents may clarify the extent to which Barre, as a Soviet collaborator, was involved in the assassination and what type of assistance he had received from the KGB.
The brief postcolonial civilian democratic administrations ended with mystery and a mixture of political plots punctuated by domestic and external politics. Any call for an inquiry should consider the account given before his death on June 12, 2012, by Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein, the then speaker of the parliament, who replaced Abdirashid as interim president. He said the assassination “was organized,” even though he did not specifically clarify who had organized it.79 The KGB might not have involved itself in Abdirashid’s assassination if he had not supported the 1967 memorandum of understanding with Kenya. It would have been reasonable to surmise, in this case, that the KGB might have targeted Egaal instead. But even if they had targeted Egaal, they would not have obtained a fruitful result. Assassinating the prime minister would not have altered the course of the administration; killing the president most certainly would.
One thing that cannot be easily proven is the external involvement in Barre’s coup, especially the role of the KGB. Yet when the French intelligence authorities in Djibouti contacted the Soviets and inquired about what they were doing in the Mogadishu harbor in December 1969, they were told that the Soviet crew were guiding the fruits of “the revolution”—that is, Barre’s new regime.80
If Somalis are to understand what has become of Somalia since Barre usurped power, they will have to begin on October 15, 1969, the beginning of what Rudolph Rummel would call a “death by government”—which is to say, political violence waged in the name of the state.81 Ostensibly inspiring other violent political plots in the Eastern African region, Abdirashid’s assassination had broader implications with links to the postcolonial African crises. Barely a year later in January 1970, Idi Amin Dada, Barre’s counterpart in the Ugandan army, attempted to assassinate President Obote prior to overthrowing him.82 Illuminating the intricacies and mysteries surrounding Abdirashid’s assassination is important for tracing the genealogies of the contemporary Somali political crisis. The circumstances surrounding his assassination are still present in popular commentaries and public memory but have been kept at bay in academia by an overemphasis on clan agency.
The genealogies of the 1970s and 1980s political violence in Somalia can be connected to this political murder, which culminated in a “security where there is no security.”83 Barre’s rise to power itself was the beginning of the current interminable armed conflicts.84 The assassination provided him and his co-coup makers with the pretext to assert and impose their power in a political vacuum.
This article draws from some sections of Chapter 2 of my recent book, The Suicidal State in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of the Siyad Barre Regime, 1969–1991 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016).
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