Mohamed Farrah Hasan Garad ( ; ; 15 December 1934 – 1 August 1996), popularly known as General Aidid or Aideed, was a Somali military officer, diplomat, and warlord.
Biography Educated in Rome and at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, he began his career during the 1950s serving as a police chief in the Italian ruled United Nations trusteeship security forces. Following Somalia's independence in 1960, Aidid became an officer in the Somali National Army. He eventually rose to the rank of Brigadier general and commanded military forces during the 1977–78 Ogaden War and the 1982–83 Border War. From 1984 to 1989, he was the ambassador to India for the Somali Democratic Republic.
In 1989, as the Somali Rebellion against Siad Barre was escalating, Aidid became a major leader within the rebel United Somali Congress (USC), and soon after the rebel faction coalition the Somali National Alliance (SNA). Along with other armed opposition groups in early 1991, he succeeded in toppling Barre's 22 year old regime, leading to the full outbreak of the civil war. Aidid possessed aspirations for presidency of the new Somali government, and sought alliances and unions with other politico-military organizations in order to form a national government.
Following the 5 June 1993 clash that resulted in the death of dozens of UNOSOM II troops, the SNA—and by extension, Aidid—were blamed, causing him to become one of the first wanted men of the United Nations. After the US-led 12 July 1993 Bloody Monday raid, which resulted in the death of many eminent members of his Habr Gidr clan, Aidid began deliberately targeting American troops for the first time. US president Bill Clinton responded by implementing Operation Gothic Serpent, and deploying Delta Force and Task Force Ranger to capture him. The high American casualty rate of the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu on 3–4 October 1993, led UNOSOM to cease its four month long mission. In December 1993, the U.S. Army flew Aidid to Addis Ababa to engage in peace talks.
During a battle in Mogadishu between his militia and the forces of his former ally Osman Ali Atto, Aidid was fatally wounded by a sniper and later died on 2 August 1996.
Early life
Aidid was born in 1934 in Beledweyne, Italian Somaliland. He is from the Habar Gidir subclan of the greater Hawiye clan. During the era of the British Military Administration he moved to Galkayo in the Mudug region to stay with a cousin, a policeman who would teach Aidid to both type and speak in Italian.
Soon after, during the period of the Italian ruled United Nations trusteeship which began in 1950, a young Aidid enlisted in the Corpo di Polizia della Somalia (Police Corps of Somalia) and in 1954 was sent to Italy to be trained at an infantry school in Rome, after which he was appointed to work under several high ranking Somali police officers. In 1958, Aidid would serve as Chief of Police in Banaadir Province, and the following year he returned to Italy to receive further education. He was also a member of the Somali Youth League (SYL), the leading political group advocating for Somalia's independence. According to Aidid, he and other officers debated with Italian administrators who opposed forming a Somali military, arguing the United Nations would provide security for the nation. Aidid argued with Italian UN officials that the Ethiopian Empire posed a serious threat and Somalia needed its own armed forces.
In 1960, Somalia gained independence and Aidid joined the newly formed Somali National Army. He was promoted to lieutenant and became aide-de-camp of Maj. Gen. Daud Abdulle Hirsi, the first commander of the Somali National Army. Aidid first gained combat experience commanding Somali army troops during the escalating border skirmishes against the Ethiopian Imperial Army that preceded the 1964 Ethiopian–Somali War. Requiring more formal training and having been recognized as a highly qualified officer, he was later selected to study advanced post graduate military science at the Frunze Military Academy (Военная академия им. М. В. Фрунзе) in the Soviet Union for three years, an elite institution reserved for the most qualified officers of the Warsaw Pact armies and their allies.
October 1969 Coup d'état and imprisonment In 1969, a few days after the assassination of Somalia's President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, a military junta known as the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC), led by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, would take advantage of the disarray and stage a bloodless coup d'état on the democratically elected Somali government. At the time Aidid was serving as Lieutenant Colonel in the army with 26th Division in Hargeisa. He was also the Head of Operations for the Central and Northern Regions of Somalia. After the assassination, he was relieved of his duties and was recalled to Mogadishu to lead the troops guarding the burial of the deceased President. By November 1969, he had quickly fallen under suspicion by high-ranking members of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, including Barre. Without trial, he was subsequently detained in Mandera Prison along with Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed for nearly six years. Aidid and Yusuf were both widely regarded to be politically ambitious officers, and potential figureheads in a future coup attempt. Aidid claimed that his imprisonment was a result of encouraging President Barre to transfer power over from the Somali military to civilian technocrats.
Return to military service
Aidid was eventually released in October 1975, and he returned to service in the Somali National Army to take part in the 1977-1978 Ogaden War against Ethiopia. During the war, he was promoted to brigadier general and became an aide-de-camp to President Mohammed Siad Barre. Headquartered in Hargeisa, Brig Gen Aidid and Maj Gen Gallel would command the 26th Division on the Dire Dawa Front. In one of the final Somali offensive actions of the war, SNA brigades under Aidid's command attacked Ethiopian forces holding the strategic Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway in March 1978, aiming to delay and divert the enemy as the rest of the army withdrew. His forces seized a significant section of the rail line, destroyed parts of it, and held their positions for as long as it was tenable. According to Aidid, several Soviet Armed Forces military experts embedded with the Ethiopian/Cuban army—who had previously worked with him in Somalia—shifted their focus from the withdrawing SNA to his brigades upon recognizing his presence on the Dire Dawa front.
Following the Ogaden War, having served with distinction, Aidid worked as a presidential staffer to Barre before being appointed intelligence minister. He was highly critical of how Barre handled the SNA withdrawal from the Ogaden and later charged that the president failed "[to] give promotions or medals to those who fought heroically". Aidid claimed this and other issues caused resentment in the armed forces. Under pressure from President Barre, Aidid gave a written guarantee in 1978 that Col Abdullahi Yusuf would not attempt a coup d'eat. Yusuf would go on to break the pledge in a failed coup attempt and escaped to Ethiopia. Aidid was left stranded but was rescued by a high ranking ally in the regime, and was consequently saved from any punishment.
During the 1982 war with Ethiopia, Aidid, serving under General Yusuf Ahmed Salhan, was a top Somali National Army commander, leading the defense of central Somalia's border regions against Ethiopian military offensives.
Somali Rebellion and Civil War
In 1979, Barre had appointed Aidid to parliament, but in 1984, after perceiving him as a potential rival, sent him away to India by making Aidid the ambassador for Somalia.
He would use his time in the country to frequently attend lectures at the University of Delhi and, with the aid of Indian lecturers at the University of Delhi, completed three books (A Vision of Somalia, The Preferred Future Development in Somalia, and Somalia from the Dawn of Human Civilization to Today).
United Somali Congress By the late 1980s, Barre's regime had become increasingly unpopular. The State took an increasingly hard line, and insurgencies, encouraged by Ethiopia's communist Derg administration, sprang up across the country. Being a member of the Hawiye clan, a high ranking government official and an experienced soldier, Aidid was deemed a natural choice for helping lead the military campaign for the United Somali Congress against the regime, and he was soon persuaded to leave New Delhi and return to Somalia.
Aidid defected from the embassy to India in 1989 and then left the country to join the growing opposition against the Barre regime. Following his defection, he had received an invitation from Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile-Mariam, who would go on to give Aidid permission to create and run a USC military operation from Ethiopian soil. From base camps near the Somali-Ethiopian border, he began directing the final military offensive of the newly formed United Somali Congress to seize Mogadishu and topple the regime.
The USC was at that time split into three factions: USC-Rome, USC-Mogadishu, later followed by USC-Ethiopia; as neither the first two former locations were a suitable launching pad to topple the Barre regime. Ali Mahdi Mohamed, an influential member of the congress who would later become Aidid's prime rival, opposed Aidid's involvement in the USC and supported the Rome faction of the Congress, who also resented Aidid. The first serious signs of fractures within the USC came in June 1990, when Mahdi and the USC-Rome faction rejected the election of Aidid to chairman of the USC, disputing the validity of the vote. That same month Aidid would go on to form a military alliance with the northern Somali National Movement (SNM) and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM). In October 1990, the SNM, SPM and USC would sign an agreement to hold no peace talks until the complete and total overthrow of the Barre regime. They further agreed to form a provisional government following Barres removal, and then to hold elections.
By November 1990, the news of Gen. Aidid's USC forces overrunning President Siad Barres 21st army in the Mudug, Galgudud and Hiran regions convinced many that a war in Mogadishu was imminent, leading the civilian population of the city to begin rapidly arming itself. This, combined with actions of other rebel organizations, eventually led to the full outbreak of the Somali civil war, the gradual breakup of the Somali Armed Forces, and the toppling of the Barre regime in Mogadishu on 26 January 1991. Following the power vacuum left by the fall of Barre, the situation in Somalia began to rapidly spiral out of control, and rebel factions subsequently began to fight for control of the remnants of the Somali state. Most notably, the split between the two main factions of the United Somali Congress (USC), led by Aidid and his rival Ali Mahdi, would result in serious fighting and vast swathes of Mogadishu would consequently destroyed as both factions attempted to exert control over the city.Library Information and Research Service, The Middle East: Abstracts and Index, Volume 2, (Library Information and Research Service: 1999), p. 327.
Both Ali Mahdi and Aidid claimed to lead national unity governments, and each vied to lead the reconstruction of the Somali state.
Somali National Alliance