Siad Barre (6 October 1919-2 January 1995) was President of the Somali Democratic Republic from 21 October 1969 to 26 January 1991, succeeding Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein and preceding Ali Mahdi Muhammad. Siad Barre led a socialist government that was affiliated with the Eastern Bloc until 1977, when the Soviet Union and Cuba supported Ethiopia against Somalia; he became a pro-United States dictator afterwards. In 1991, he was overthrown by the armed opposition, with the USA refusing to help him after the Cold War's end.
Biography[]
Barre in 1970
Siad Barre was born on 6 October 1919 in Shilabo, Ogaden, Abyssinia to a family of Muslim Somalis. Siad served in the Italian colonial police and then the British police after the capture of Italian Somaliland by the British Army during World War II, and he would be trained in the Carabineri of Italy after the war's end. Upon Somali independence in 1960, Siad Barre became Vice-Commander of the Somali National Army, and he became a Marxist during joint training exercises with Soviet officers. In 1969, after the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, Siad Barre led a military coup d'etat and became the leader of a socialist and nationalist state. Siad became the center of a cult of personality, and he founded a socialist ideology that combined Marxism and the Quran. In 1974, the Somali Democratic Republic joined the Arab League, and Siad began to suppress the clan system and institute the Latin alphabet as the official script of Somalia.
A Siad Barre mural
In 1978, Siad made a break with the Eastern Bloc when the USSR and Cuba opposed his nationalist war against Ethiopia, a fellow communist state. Siad allied with the United States, which gave him support during the war to liberate his home region from Ethiopia. However, the war would end in a Somali defeat in 1978, and Siad Barre executed several government officials who were believed to be planning a coup against Siad. During the 1980s, dissent would mount against the socialist government, and the end of the Cold War in 1989 led to the end of the USA's support for Siad. In January 1991, Siad fled Mogadishu as armed opposition movements took over Somalia. He twice failed to retake Mogadishu with the armed forces of his Marehan clan, and he fled to Kenya and then to Nigeria. Siad died in Lagos, Nigeria in 1995.