Tag: Siad Barre

Between 1981 and 1991, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal...

In my recent article about Somali-Weyn and Islam-Weyn, I examined how these two ideologies, rooted in ethnonationalism and belief orientation, have been politicized in...

By Michael Rubin On June 30, 2025, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi Irro arrived in Qatar to meet Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani,...

May Allah Almighty rest in peace, the funeral was held today in Hargeisa for the late journalist Madar Abdi Ahmed, who passed away yesterday...

Somaliland was amongst the seventeen African countries that attained their independence in 1960, “The Year of Africa.” A former Italian colony, Somalia merged on...

The independence of British  Somaliland (north) came into being on 26 June 1960. Five days later, Italian Somaliland (south) attained independence. Both north and south merged for irredentism agenda – to unify five different Somali regions under one ethnic umbrella. The merger of the two territories faced legal obstruction. Both sides signed no identical unifying law. Italian Somaliland never passed an act of union drafted by British Somaliland. Instead, it passed a different act named Atto di Unione, which was substantially different from British Somaliland's original marriage act. According to Rajagopal and Carrol (1992), the act of union law did not have legal validity in southern Somalia, and the subsequent but different passed Atto de Unione was legally insufficient. Therefore, the declaration of independence was legally invalid.

His name is Mohamed Abdullahi-Farmajo, born in 1962 in Mogadishu. He was one of the few fortunate youths, not by virtue of merit, but by his clan affiliation. His uncle was the former dictator of Somalia, Mohamed Siad Barre.