Hassan Barise Proves the More Trustworthy Chronicler of the Somali Civil War

[Deeq A.]

Hassan Barise proves to be a more reliable chronicler of the Somali Civil War.

Mogadishu (PP Commentary)  — Abdi Farah Said (aka Juha), the Interior Minister of Puntland State of Somalia, last week interviewed Hassan Barise, a former BBC Somali Service  journalist who lived in Mogadishu during the 1990s when the capital city was divided into South and North. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, a Somali historian pursuing a doctorate in history at the University of Oxford, took issue with Barise over historical facts about events and personalities.

This article, in turn, takes Ingiriis to task for using flawed historical methods to challenge Barise. Ingiriis said that Barise claimed to have founded Shabelle Press, the first free newspaper not aligned with a Somali government. Barise was discussing post-1990 Somalia, not pre-1991 Somalia. Shabelle Press was a cyclostyled newspaper, a rival to Dalka, the mouthpiece of the United Somali Congress-installed government, printed at the State Printing Agency.    

In May 1991, Shabelle Press interviewed General Aidid in Kismaayo, where he claimed to have detained Mohamed Abshir Muse, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Interim Government of Somalia, who was in Kismaayo for a peace-making mission before USC forces captured the coastal district. General Aidid outlandishly claimed that Mohamed Abshir Muse was commanding SSDF units in Kismayo. The Interim Government relieved General Aidid of his duties as USC Commander. Barise said that in 1996 Harun Maruf, then a BBC Somali Service stringer, was granted access to General Aidid, who had been spruced up but kept in bed to give the impression that he had not been injured in a firefight in southern Mogadishu. At the time a correspondent for a major news agency, Barise claimed he broke the story when General Aidid was unexpectedly wounded after an anti-aircraft gun was fired at a fiefdom in southern Mogadishu that he was inspecting.

M. H. Ingiriis forgets that journalists write the first draft of history.

Ingiriis criticised Barise for claiming that Somali government forces were not responsible for the murder of Haji Muse Boor and Haji Haji Weheliye. Ingiriis argued that there “is an intellectual consensus that the Somali government was behind the murder” of the two political leaders. He said that USC was using M1 Carbine rifles. USC forces were using Heckler & Koch G3 rifles used by the Somali police forces, Ak-47, light mortars and Bazookas. USC fitted the G3 with a bomb (known in Mogadishu as bambo faal), which, in urban warfare, was more effective than the AK-47 used by the Somali army after the war erupted in Mogadishu on 30 December 1990. Ingiriis’s main source on this incident is a book by Ahmed Jila’ow, the former senior commander of Godka, the former National Security Service detention centre and torture cells. Why is President Mohamed Siyad Barre’s My Country and My People, his collected speeches, less reliable than Jila’ow’s autobiography on the Somali “revolution”? Is Jilaow more quotable than President Mohamed Siad Barre?

War erupted in Mogadishu in Huriwaa and Kaaraan districts at 15:00 on 30/12/1990. By 18:00, USC forces were controlling the Ali Kamin restaurant area, not far from the Laba-dhagax neighbourhood of Wardhiigley (now known as Warta Nabadda). Barise uses the factually appropriate term kacdoon (uprising) to refer to the eruption of the conflict in Mogadishu on Sunday 30 December 1990, but Ingiriis said that the kacdoon began outside Mogadishu long ago, when senior Somali army officers defected from the army to join USC forces, then based in Ethiopia. Barise’s case is backed by both history and language.

Ingiriis said that the late  lawyer and human rights  defender Ismail Jumale Osoble was not a member of USC. The late Jama Mohamed Ghalib, in his memoirs The Cost of Dictatorship, commended the role Jumale played in the formation of an armed opposition force with supporters in Mogadishu: “As Siad Barre’s regime degenerated, early in 1988 a caucus of Mogadishu Clan elders had been established secretly in Mogadishu, as any such organization had to be in those days. Under the chairmanship of the late Dr Ismail Jumale, it started to organize and orientate, both in and outside the country, in order to prepare the Mogadishu Clan sub-clans for an uprising and subsequent power bid.”

Juha unwittingly acknowledges SSDF’s controversial alliance with communist Ethiopia.

This version is corroborated by Sheikh Ali Wajis, who told Ha Noolaato that he had met Osoble, who was “working on the creation of USC”. Barise said that Osoble took over the chairmanship of USC after the death of Ali Wardhiigley. Since no public statement on this change of leadership was reported, it is possible that Osoble had been given an unannounced senior leadership role in USC.

Juha Pleads Guilty to “Treason”

During the interview, Barise accused Somali oppsotion forces of seeking help from Ethiopia, a country then at war with Somalia. “They committed treason,” Barise said. Juha, who was visibly shaken by the comment, interjected to say: “Rag ciil cadaab ka dooray” (“Man prefers ending up in hellfire to nursing resentment”). Juha did not express an interest  that he was a member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front that fought alongside Ethiopian forces in 1982 when Ethiopia claimed to have annexed Galdogob and Balanbale. The late SSDF Chairman, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, was the only person who dared to meet Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and ask why Ethiopia’s flag was hoisted on Balanbale and Galmudug. He was arrested in 1985, one year after the Ethiopian army massacred SSDF units in a military camp. Survivors fled to Somalia. Many of them were absorbed into the Somali army; some began to lead a civilian life. By asserting that clan resentment was the principal motive for opposing Somalia’s military regime, Juha effectively accepted the accusation that the SSDF, an anti-communist front, had committed treason by relying on communist Ethiopia in the early 1980s.

More than twenty years ago, Ingiriis wrote a paper on the Manifesto Group, a group of influential Somalis who wrote an open letter to President Mohamed Siyad Barre calling for a peaceful transfer of power before civil war engulfed Somalia. Manifesto signatories such as the late Ali Mahdi Mohamed, Mohamed Si’iid ‘Iyow Gentleman and Mire Olad were members of the USC central committee whose names were read out on Radio Mogadishu’s news bulletin on 28 January 1991. Jumale was a Manifesto signatory as well. This is an understudied aspect of the Manifesto Group.

It was condescending of Ingiriis to describe Hassan Barise as a talented and untrained journalist. He forgets that journalists write the first draft of history.

Barise comes across as a historian able to distinguish between facts he is sharing and his biases. He proves to be a more trustworthy chronicler of the Somali Civil War.

© Puntland Post, 2025

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