Dairy of US Ambassador to Somalia 1984.

[Mukulaalow]

Ambassador Peter Bridges a Democrat who was sent to Somalia in 1984 by Pres Reagan admin.This is very insightful and informative

 

 

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0037.101;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mqrg

 

 

I reviewed an honor guard, walked into the most elegant building in Somalia, and met the man who had been running Somalia for fifteen years. He had been born into a nomad family in the ****** when birth records were unknown, but he was probably about seventy. He was tall and thin, with a small square mustache—I thought to myself, Chaplin or Führer?—and he spoke good English to me although I had supposed we would speak Italian.

 

 

Mohamed Siad Barre would tell me that the country was under-populated. We need, he said, more young men for soldiers, to defend ourselves against Ethiopia.

 

 

Siad replied that he deeply admired President Reagan; Somalia was "an allied country" and he hoped for much greater American support. He warned me about what he called Quislings and traitors. There were a lot of them in any country and they spewed out misinformation. When I wanted the facts I should come see him, at any time. He might ask to see me rather late at night; such were his habits.

 

The thought came to me that since our aid program was larger than that of any other country, larger than those of the United Nations and the World Bank, I was in Somali eyes the most important foreigner in that Texas-sized country. I was not sure I liked that thought. We were doing good things in Somalia, on both the civilian and the military side. The defensive weapons we provided would not permit Somalia to invade Ethiopia again, but they helped the Somalis defend themselves against Mengistu's troops and Soviet tanks, a serious threat. Still, I did not like military dictators like Mohamed Siad Barre.

 

 

Everywhere were bars where young men sat all day drinking tea and talking, for want of anything else to do. Yet the average Somali woman, according to the best statistics I could find, still bore seven children.

 

 

After one left behind the whitewashed villas of the wealthy—there were quite a few of these—one could believe that Somalia was as poor as reported. The countryside was arid, with scattered acacias, occasional villages of small huts, and now and then a string of loping camels with one thin boy in charge. Many Somalis were still nomads—over half the nation, it was said—but there were no real statistics. The nomads roamed for hundreds of miles through the bush in small family groups, with their camels, goats, and sheep. Their staple was camel's milk, which could be kept for days in charred containers.

[Mukulaalow]

This is the most shameful though, true but cruel we got used to begging and aid handouts even when we had a central government. (Bilad WAX ISII) Sh1t.

 

Siad Barre's insistence that Somalia needed still more American aid was echoed by every Minister that I called on, and many of their requests were clearly not justified. William Fullerton, the British Ambassador, a canny Arabist with a wife from Brooklyn, told me to read Richard Burton's 1856 account of his first visit to Somalia. Burton said Arabs called Somalia Bilad wa issi, the Land of Give Me Something. The longer you are here, said Bill Fullerton, the more you will think that name is apt. He was right.

[Mukulaalow]

A week later Samantar found the situation less critical; he went off on a long foreign tour. Soon we ascertained that the invaders had not been Ethiopians but Somali dissidents, armed and aided, to be sure, by the Ethiopians.

I think this is the SSDF incursion of Balanbal and Goldogob

[Mukulaalow]

I got well and called on Siad Barre's Second Vice President, Hussein Kulmie Afrah, an older man with a quiet way. He was in government as senior representative of the ****** clans, who lived in the region from Mogadishu north for several hundred miles. The later Mogadishu "warlords," Ali Mahdi and General Mohamed Farah Aydid, were ****** leaders. Kulmie did not accomplish much; perhaps Siad Barre would not let him. But he had good ideas. He thought this sunny, windy country should develop wind and solar power, rather than beg oil cargoes from the Saudis. Villagers should be taught to make adobe bricks, rather than use precious wood. There was an enormous potential for coastal fisheries; small harbors could be built at modest cost, and rough roads to link them with existing roads inland. And the green revolution could come to Somalia, with higher-yielding grains and better animal breeds. This all made sense to me.

I never thought Husein Kulmiye of a sensible man, but it seems he was a man with good vision.

[Mario B]

This explains why Hargeisa is world capital for NGOs, I believe Haiti's capital and maybe Juba, South Sudan come near.

[Mukulaalow]

.....Marco Panella, ......He shamed the country, and Parliament appropriated over two billion dollars for additional foreign aid. It was decided to spend most of this on Italy's former colonies. About a billion dollars was allocated for projects in Somalia. Other Italian parties got involved. The Radicals were outside the governing coalition; the Christian Democrats and the Socialists ran it. Christian Democratic interests would handle aid projects in Ethiopia; the Socialists, whose leader Bettino Craxi was Prime Minister, would work Somalia.

only fractions of this money ever came to Somalia as the rest was stolen by Craxi's mafia and he would later die in exile in Tunisia as he was wanted in Italy.

[Mukulaalow]

This became a dirty scene. Italian firms linked to the Socialists got the Somalia contracts, working through the Italy-Somalia Chamber of Commerce headed by Craxi's brother-in-law Paolo Pillitteri.

A quarter of a billion dollars was spent on an unnecessary road in northern Somalia.

Many more millions went to renovate a useless pharmaceutical plant, several large fishing boats that never went to sea, and a fertilizer plant which never produced a bag of fertilizer. A former Somali Minister testified later in Italy that ten percent of the money had gone into the pockets of Siad Barre's family and cronies. [1]

He is wrong here, that road is the Garowe-Bosaso Road, that seems to be one of the few productive projects which saved post war Somalia and boosted Puntland's economy.

[Mukulaalow]

Mohamed Siad Barre died in exile in Nigeria in January 1995. He was a ruthless man who deserves much blame for Somalia's sad fate. The civil war that dethroned him was a reaction against his latter-day rule, when he had surrounded himself with cronies and guards from his clan, the *******. He had excluded effective participation by other groups of clans, ignoring the democratic traditions of Somali pastoral society; his regime had become increasingly corrupt. Yet one must give him his due. Few leaders anywhere would have had the courage to expel thousands of Soviet advisers, many of them enmeshed in Somalia's police and military, as Siad did in 1978. Nor was he always the corrupt and cruel dictator of the years when I knew him. After the 1969 coup Somalia was run by a kind of coalition between Siad's military junta and a group of civilian professionals, which enjoyed considerable popular support.

Here he is balancing Siyad Barre's pros and cons, a balance you never see on SOL.

[Mukulaalow]

Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, who had been Prime Minister when Siad seized power in 1969, and who had spent most of the years since then as a prisoner. At one point Siad had released Egal and sent him as Ambassador to India. But, Egal told me, he was soon called back from New Delhi on consultation, and jailed again. Apparently Siad's Soviet advisers had "whispered in his ear" that Egal was plotting against him in New Delhi. Today, Mohamed Ibrahim Egal is President of the Somaliland Republic which, unrecognized by other governments, controls the northwestern parts of what used to be a single Somalia.

Here is the bit which will cheer the Landers.

[Mukulaalow]

In October 1984 Siad Barre had ordered an amnesty to celebrate fifteen years in power, and it put a lot of thieves back on the street. Beyond this, Somalis could be hard to get along with. It was not that they were puritanical Muslims; they were Muslims but few were puritanical. More important was a kind of ruthlessness which perhaps resulted from their harsh environment. The greatest Western scholar on Somalia listed, among Somali attributes, deeply-ingrained suspicion and open contempt for others. [

[Mukulaalow]

...........Mogadishu was different. I held periodic community meetings, and invited small groups of Americans to our house Thursday evenings after the Mogadishu work week ended. The sun would already be low in the sky, falling toward the western ridge in the city beyond us. As it fell its heat decreased; the monsoon blew cooler. At six came sunset, and soon we saw the sky turning dark eastward over the ocean, until the line between sea and sky was invisible and the bright stars came out. Who would want to be anywhere else? Too bad the feeling did not last.

aaaaah, my beloved Muqdisho

[Mukulaalow]

Drought and famine would someday return to Somalia. I hoped that before that happened the Somalis might start resolving their country's basic problems, more environmental and political than anything else. It was a faint hope.

wise words.

[Faarax-Brawn]

 

I was hoping to see some dairy cattle of the US ambassador somewhere in Balcad or Afgoye-L0L

 

But alas all i see is the diary of another western diplomat..talking about an African dictator. Oh the hypocrisy of it all. On one hand "he hates brutal dictators:" but he is giving that same brutal dictator arms and aid. Whatever

[raula]

^^^lol..same here when i read the title.

[Jacaylbaro]

Mario B;802528 wrote:

This explains why Hargeisa is world capital for NGOs, I believe Haiti's capital and maybe Juba, South Sudan come near.

Surveyed by who ??