Warsan_Star_Muslimah wrote:FAH1223 wrote:Warsan, Siad Barre has nothing to do with the topic and Alluring didn't bring him up.
Alluring, did mention Said Barre (aun) and not him being corrupt individual, but I have hard time believing this.
If he was not directly hoarding the money, then others in his government were, and as the President he should have been aware of that, and did something.
Alluring wrote:He stole from the Somali people to buy that home and those cars, but what did you expect? People talk nonsense about President Siad Barre (AUN), but did he ever steal from his people? The answer is NO. When will Somali men, have some self respect? A nation of corrupt individuals, who are infused by self interest.
Fah,
Truly your argument of his many achievements are duly noted, but for me a person gets a black mark for solely being a dictator. Somalia was a democracy!!!! The Coup sent us back to those days of geel fighting, except now the stakes are higher the fight is over who is to rule Somalia.
Babygirl- wrote:Ruunta aan idin sheego! Somali (especialy men) waa wada Uncivilized TUUUUUUUUG!!
Only Babygirl or one of the girls can lead Somalis.
Babygirl for president.
Salaam
Oh, I didn't read her post throughly
Warsan, abaayo you must understand history. Yes, Somalia was a "democracy" and yes, Aden Cadde was the first African leader to concede peacefully to an election, but Somalia in the 60s was a much more uneven society than the society that transformed in the 70s.
Gov't officials in the 60s used government cars as taxis, there was no development, education was not open to every somali, they squabbled over the language script...
Siad brought solutions to all of that. You have to look at history objectively and history favors Siad Barre in the 1970s esp leading to the Ogaden War time. He was a hero for saving the Somali nation from self destruction of bribes, clan corruptions, ect...
Somalia in the 60s was not the only African country going through the squabbles over how to progress.
If you ever read a novel called "The Beautiful ones are not yet born"... it describes Ghana in the same period and they were going through the same things....
Siad from 1969-1979 despite the Ogaden War loss, was a leader who transformed Somalis
I mean, we had the African Union in Xamar in 1974....all the Africans came... they were shocked that we had SOMALIS....FLYING the planes...not Americans, not Brits, not Italians or other Europeans. All those campaigns were the "Action" the other Africans preached in their countries that they couldn't get done.
Dr. Abdi Sheikh Abdi, who was a vehement anti-Siad writer, could not deny its achievements as he mentions in his work, Ideology and Leadership in Somalia,
"It can hardly be denied that Somalia under its present leadership has achieved some impressive results. This is most apparent to someone, like myself, who had been out of the country for many years. A good number of ambitious projects have been started, and in part completed, under the military Government, including the rehabilitation and resettling of nomads who had lost their flocks during the 1974-5 Deba-Dhere drought. These destitute former herdsmen have been settled in farming and fishing co-operatives between the two perennial rivers of south-western Somalia. Other projects include the north-south tarmac highway, built with Chinese technical help, which connects the two main regions of the Somali Republic and thus has both economic and political roles to play. Other projects undertaken by the Barre regime, though less successful, have instilled a co-operative spirit and a work-ethic that had been woefully lacking in the Somalia of the 1960s. The germ of this new spirit is most discernable in the numerous revolutionary youth centres that have been established in recent years. I recall having been very moved by one of the songs sun by orphan girls who had known no other home but such a centre, and no other parent but the state:
It is a time of pleasant suprises
When one journeys from a place of drought and desolation
to one of plenty and prosperity
There was a time
When I did not know my lineage
Now I have a father in [President] Siyaad.
A mother in the October Revolution
The flag is my uncle,
The land my grandfather,
The soil my grandmother
David Laitin writes:
“His first task was to eliminate what he called ‘tribalism’, but which might be better be described as clan solidarity. An intricate clan system pervades the Somali social structure, and this had been the basis of party formation, political recruitment, and coalition-building in modern Somalia. Past attempts to rid the country of tribalism in the civilian period met with failure. The inevitable first question that Somalis asked of one another they met was, ‘What is your clan?’. When this was considered anathema to the purpose of a modern state, Somalis began to ask in a true musug masag fashion, ‘What is your ex-clan?’. Mohamed Siad Barre outlawed this question with a vengeance. Informers reported those who asked the clan identification question, and they were jailed. Further, and more important, Mohamed Siad’s first cabinet was clearly chosen on merit and not by ascriptive critera. The military has also stopped inter-clan warfare in the bush, and has coerced the nomads their disputed to the central Government. On a more symbolic level, and independently arriving at a Parsonian insight, Mohamed Siad has also repeated a number of times, ‘Whom do you know? Is changed to: What do you know?’, and this incantation has become part of a popular street song”
The 80s, especially the mid to late was when the corruptions and nepotism began and intensify... I'd say people in his govt stole...sure, its no secret... they killed their own people, they tried to form a clan hierarchy for power, ect, ect... stuff people want to do in Somalia now...all the warlords aimed for that goal...the supreme power in government and do what happened in the 80s.... not what happened in the 70s...
The coup saved Somalia for a good decade and got Somalis to progress and come together... almost freeing our brothers from Ethiopian occupation, hindsight is 20/20...
If people only look at the bad of the man, then we don't have anything fond of our country to look back to besides Independence and the struggle for it. The highest time of the Somali people in the last century was that decade. Because we did things our neighbors couldn't do, we were on the right track. Nothing was perfect, but it was progress....progress that should have been extended into the 80s but was held back because the old man became a shell of his former self.
He made costly mistakes and blunders towards the end, but no one can deny him of being a wadani... and he never stole money from the Somali people...he died with nothing.
