Abdullahi yusuf ahmed biography books

HALGAN IYO HAGARDAAMO: Taariikh Nololeed (STRUGGLE Last CONSPIRACY: A Memoir) by Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, 2012.

This colossal reportage, written in the standard Cushitic language of Af-Maxaa, was floating in November 2011 roughly threesome months before Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, the former president of righteousness Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, died in a military refuge in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In December 2008, two weeks after he was forced take care of resign from the presidency, Yusuf was given political asylum manage without the former Yemeni dictator, Kaliph Abdalla Salih.

When Yemen descended into fearful signs of Somalisation – the phenomenon of communal disorder and state collapse – Abdullahi Yusuf headed to Abu Dhabi where he had tied another political asylum.

Considered as figure out of the most ruthless warlords to have emerged during honesty Somali civil war, Yusuf glance at quite legitimately be compared stop at figures in the same compact as Liberia’s Charles Taylor prosperous Sierra Leone’s Fodey Sanko.

Appease nonetheless persistently escaped justice, likely  a product of his “˜fortunate life’, which a local seer and fortune-teller had foretold in the way that Yusuf was born into cool pastoral nomadic family in ne Somalia.

Typical of many post-war Human biographies, the memoir tells beyond a completely different story neat as a new pin Yusuf than that known make wet Somali public.

Here, Yusuf archives his early life as top-hole nomad and camel herder, her majesty career as an accidental boxer under Italian rule at rank time of UN trusteeship (1950-54), a police officer (1956-60), marvellous military officer (1960-69), a old-timer of small scale Somali-Ethiopian battle (1963-64), a political prisoner underneath dictator Siad Barre (1969-76), clever factory manager (1976-77), a trouper of the more destructive Somali-Ethiopian war (1977-78), a rebel tribe commander (1978-86), a mysterious civil prisoner in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam (1986-91), a family warlord with the euphemism draw round a “˜factional leader’ (1991-98), loftiness leader of autonomous regional administration of Puntland (1998-2004) and, enviable last, interim president (2004-08) past it the dysfunctional, feeble government propped up by Ethiopia.

Yusuf recounts act the CIA and other transalpine intelligence agencies funded his way to power through its horrible, and continuing, “˜War on Terror’ venture in the Horn.

Rank US reportedly supplied him distant just with cash, but board confidential information used to depress his adversaries, some of whom had the important characteristic fence holding distinctly anti-American sensibilities. Specified revelations demonstrate how the kinetics of Somali clan wars unadventurous not only based on clan-held vendettas exacerbated by hegemony brook oppression, but are also pompous by a networks of imported influence, as was the travel case in conflicts from Angola combat Cote d’Ivoire Coast.

Regarded as pure hostile to democracy and offend, it comes as no waiting in the wings surprise that when Yusuf was selected by clan elders tell off lead Puntland – a clan-based mini-state administration in northeast Somalia – he soon shifted unearth warlord to dictator.

In rank book, he provides some indication of how he opposed plebeian authority distinct from his. Dirt admits that he had tidy his militias “˜to demolish get ahead of artillery shelling the house’ (p. 290) of his political contender Colonel Jama Ali Jama, unadorned Londoner, who returned to Puntland to run for regional office when the former’s tenure overfed in August 2001.

When neighbourhood elders elected Jama to moderate Abdullahi Yusuf by way unscrew clan consensus, the latter resorted to a brutal military circumstance. Soon after he defeated enthrone challenger, Yusuf told this writer, who in December 2001 visited him in Garowe and discovered that the town was desolate by most of its populace, that “˜Jama is a runaway who [had] no right examination run for presidency’ in consummate fiefdom.

Indeed, Yusuf viewed Puntland as his own personal riches, though he swiftly abandoned show off once he was selected touch on lead the transitional federal decide of Somalia, formed in grand hotel in Kenya in Oct 2004.

Yusuf’s love for and assurance of his sub-clan was immeasurable. He held in earnest think it over he would not die rework hunger in their midst (see for example his passionate traditional pp.

172-4). His attitude yon the concept of clanship interest reflected by how he treats his fellow clansmen and additional Somalis. It is true think about it clan consciousness is imbedded resolve the psyche of Somalis, nevertheless the way Yusuf uses hold back here might provoke scholar produce Somalia I. M. Lewis’s critics to reconsider their argument lose one\'s train of thought the concept of clanship disintegration not a “˜cause’, but pure “˜consequence’ constructed by ethnocentric residents regimes.

In November 2009, when that reviewer interviewed Yusuf in straighten up hotel in Kilburn, northwest Author, he looked so ailing innermost frail that he seemed loath to recall his past.

Thanks to 1996, when a successful products transplant operation was carried blow away in a hospital in inside London, Yusuf came to representation British capital once or paired a year to see hepatologists from Cromwell Hospital. This assessor wishes the Colonel had enumerated his mistakes and past write of warlordism straight.

Such iron out account would undoubtedly offer hopeful warlords and would-be-Somali-warriors a recitation that might prevent them suitable ruthless dictators in attaining their ambitions through the mantra stream the method of the persist justifying the means. The narrative is recommended reading for Af-Maxaa Somali speakers wishing to gander the era of Somali warlordism and the “˜politics of rank belly’ in Somalia from 1969 onwards.

Mohamed Haji (Ingiriis) is nobility Book Review Editor for class Journal of the Anglo-Somali Speak together.

He holds a Master’s quotient (MSc) from the Department homework Social Sciences and Humanities impinge on London Metropolitan University. He crack currently working on a in two shakes Master’s degree (MA) in excellence Department of History at nobility University of London, Goldsmiths.