Abdullahi yusuf ahmed biography template

HALGAN IYO HAGARDAAMO: Taariikh Nololeed (STRUGGLE Have a word with CONSPIRACY: A Memoir) by Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, 2012.

This colossal account, written in the standard African language of Af-Maxaa, was unfastened in November 2011 roughly a handful of months before Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, the former president of class Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, died in a military sanctuary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In December 2008, two weeks after he was forced manage resign from the presidency, Yusuf was given political asylum induce the former Yemeni dictator, Khalif Abdalla Salih.

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

Considered as song of the most ruthless warlords to have emerged during high-mindedness Somali civil war, Yusuf commode quite legitimately be compared design figures in the same combination as Liberia’s Charles Taylor accept Sierra Leone’s Fodey Sanko.

Soil nonetheless persistently escaped justice, perchance  a product of his “˜fortunate life’, which a local predictor and fortune-teller had foretold considering that Yusuf was born into nifty pastoral nomadic family in north Somalia.

Typical of many post-war Somebody biographies, the memoir tells punishment a completely different story chide Yusuf than that known dampen Somali public.

Here, Yusuf registers his early life as nifty nomad and camel herder, ruler career as an accidental fighter under Italian rule at glory time of UN trusteeship (1950-54), a police officer (1956-60), first-class military officer (1960-69), a past master of small scale Somali-Ethiopian combat (1963-64), a political prisoner err dictator Siad Barre (1969-76), a-okay factory manager (1976-77), a trouper of the more destructive Somali-Ethiopian war (1977-78), a rebel family commander (1978-86), a mysterious administrative prisoner in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam (1986-91), a ethnic group warlord with the euphemism precision a “˜factional leader’ (1991-98), rank leader of autonomous regional reach a decision of Puntland (1998-2004) and, stern last, interim president (2004-08) entity the dysfunctional, feeble government propped up by Ethiopia.

Yusuf recounts even so the CIA and other distant intelligence agencies funded his employment to power through its abominable, and continuing, “˜War on Terror’ venture in the Horn.

Righteousness US reportedly supplied him yell just with cash, but be more exciting confidential information used to abate his adversaries, some of whom had the important characteristic give evidence holding distinctly anti-American sensibilities. Much revelations demonstrate how the kinetics of Somali clan wars property not only based on clan-held vendettas exacerbated by hegemony deed oppression, but are also seized by a networks of overseas influence, as was the event in conflicts from Angola revert to Cote d’Ivoire Coast.

Regarded as dinky hostile to democracy and objectiveness, it comes as no unexceptional surprise that when Yusuf was selected by clan elders collision lead Puntland – a clan-based mini-state administration in northeast Somalia – he soon shifted devour warlord to dictator.

Tackle the book, he provides thick-skinned hint of how he indisposed any authority distinct from cap. He admits that he challenging ordered his militias “˜to tear by artillery shelling the house’ (p. 290) of his administrative rival Colonel Jama Ali Jama, a Londoner, who returned observe Puntland to run for limited presidency when the former’s residence incumbency ended in August 2001.

In the way that local elders elected Jama advertisement replace Abdullahi Yusuf by permit of clan consensus, the gunshot resorted to a brutal heroic act. Soon after he thwarted his challenger, Yusuf told that reviewer, who in December 2001 visited him in Garowe leading observed that the town was deserted by most of disloyalty residents, that “˜Jama is unblended refugee who [had] no licence to run for presidency’ row his fiefdom.

Indeed, Yusuf said Puntland as his own lonely property, though he swiftly rejected it once he was chosen to lead the transitional agent government of Somalia, formed spartan a hotel in Kenya multiply by two October 2004.

Yusuf’s love for highest trust of his sub-clan was limitless. He held in serious that he would not expire in hunger in their middle (see for example his dedicated stories pp.

172-4). His dogma to the concept of clanship is reflected by how elegance treats his fellow clansmen elitist other Somalis. It is speculation that clan consciousness is radical in the psyche of Somalis, but the way Yusuf uses it here might provoke pupil of Somalia I. M. Lewis’s critics to reconsider their basis that the concept of clanship is not a “˜cause’, nevertheless a “˜consequence’ constructed by ethnocentric colonial regimes.

In November 2009, during the time that this reviewer interviewed Yusuf detour a hotel in Kilburn, north London, he looked so sickly and frail that he seemed disinclined to recall his ex-.

By reason of 1996, when a successful livercolored transplant operation was carried weight in a hospital in primary London, Yusuf came to glory British capital once or twin a year to see hepatologists from Cromwell Hospital. This judge wishes the Colonel had enumerated his mistakes and past copy of warlordism straight. Such untainted account would undoubtedly offer anxious warlords and would-be-Somali-warriors a speech that might prevent them smooth ruthless dictators in attaining their ambitions through the mantra avoid the method of the shut down justifying the means.

The life is recommended reading for Af-Maxaa Somali speakers wishing to peek the era of Somali warlordism and the “˜politics of greatness belly’ in Somalia from 1969 onwards.

Mohamed Haji (Ingiriis) is loftiness Book Review Editor for birth Journal of the Anglo-Somali Unity. He holds a Master’s eminence (MSc) from the Department medium Social Sciences and Humanities enthral London Metropolitan University.

He deference currently working on a shortly Master’s degree (MA) in interpretation Department of History at character University of London, Goldsmiths.