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121-584: Mohamed Farrah Hasan Garad ( Somali : Maxamed Faarax Xasan Garaad, 'Caydiid Garaad'  ; Arabic : محمد فرح حسن عيديد ; 15 December 1934 – 1 August 1996), popularly known as General Aidid or Aideed , was a Somali military officer and warlord. Educated in both Rome and Moscow, he first served as a chief in the Italian colonial police force and later as a brigadier general in the Somali National Army . He would eventually become chairman of

242-747: A Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian -language daily newspaper Stella d'Ottobre ("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed to Xiddigta Oktoobar , and began publishing in Somali. The state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1951. Additionally, other state-run public networks like Somaliland National TV , regional public networks such as Puntland TV and Radio and, as well as Eastern Television Network and Horn Cable Television , among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali. Somali

363-656: 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

484-652: A coalition government dominated by the Somali Youth League (SYL) but supported by the two clan-based northern parties, the Somali National League (SNL) and the United Somali Party (USP). Osman's appointment as president was ratified a year later in a national referendum . During the nine-year period of parliamentary democracy that followed Somali independence, freedom of expression was widely regarded as being derived from

605-685: A coalition led by the United States . Forming the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), the alliance was given the task of assuring security until humanitarian efforts were transferred to the UN. Aidid initially publicly opposed the deployment of United Nations forces to Somalia, but eventually relented. He and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali both despised one another. Before being Secretary-General , Boutros Ghali had been an Egyptian diplomat that had supported President Siad Barre against

726-476: A conference in 1991 in Djibouti and recognized as such by the international community . On 24 July 1996, Aidid and his men clashed with the forces of former allies Ali Mahdi Muhammad and Osman Ali Atto . Atto was a former supporter and financier of Aidid, and of the same subclan. Atto is alleged to have masterminded the defeat of Aidid. Aidid suffered a gunshot wound in the ensuing battle. He later died from

847-460: A crisis occurred that left Somalia without a government until the beginning of September. President Osman , who was empowered to propose the candidate for prime minister after an election or the fall of a government, chose Abdirizak Haji Hussein as his nominee instead of the incumbent, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke , who had the endorsement of the SYL party leadership. Shermarke had been prime minister for

968-529: A heart attack on 1 August 1996, either during or after surgery to treat his injuries. During the lead up to the civil war, Aidid's wife Khadiga Gurhan sought asylum in Canada in 1989, taking their four children with her. Local media shortly afterwards alleged that she had returned to Somalia for a five-month stay while still receiving welfare payments. Gurhan admitted in an interview to collecting welfare and having briefly traveled to Somalia in late 1991. However, it

1089-476: A major party only long enough to use its symbol in the election campaign and, if elected, abandoned it for the winning side as soon as the National Assembly met. Thus, by the end of May 1969 the SYL parliamentary cohort had swelled from 73 to 109. In addition, the eleven SNC members had formed a coalition with the SYL, which held 120 of the 123 seats in the National Assembly. A few of these 120 left

1210-603: A militant attitude toward neighboring countries occupying Somali territory. Preoccupation with Greater Somalia shaped the character of the country's newly formed institutions and led to the build-up of the Somali military and, ultimately, to the war with Ethiopia and fighting in the Northern Frontier District in Kenya. By law, the exact size of the National Assembly was not established in order to facilitate

1331-664: A national government. Following the 5 June 1993 attack on the Pakistanis , the SNA —and by extension, Aidid—were blamed for the death of 25 UNOSOM II peacekeepers, causing him to become one of the first "Wanted Men" of the United Nations. After the US-led 12 July 1993 Abdi House raid , which resulted in the death of many eminent members of his Habr Gidr clan, Aidid began deliberately targeting American troops for

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1452-493: A prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work. In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic. The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from

1573-460: A second cabinet list to the National Assembly that included all but one of his earlier nominees. However, the proposed new cabinet contained three additional ministerial positions filled by men chosen to mollify opposition factions. The new cabinet was approved with the support of all but a handful of SYL National Assembly members. Hussein remained in office until the presidential elections of June 1967. The 1967 presidential elections, conducted by

1694-602: A secret poll of National Assembly members, pitted former prime minister Shermarke against Osman. Again the central issue was moderation versus militancy on the pan-Somali question. Osman, through Hussein, had stressed priority for internal development. Shermarke, who had served as prime minister when pan-Somalism was at its height, was elected president of the republic. The new president nominated as prime minister Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal , who raised cabinet membership from thirteen to fifteen members and included representatives of every major clan family, as well as some members of

1815-445: A vote of its traditional assembly. After registering, the office seeker then attempted to become the official candidate of a political party. Failing this, he would remain on the ballot as an individual contestant. Voting was by party list, which could make a candidate a one-person party. (This practice explained not only the proliferation of small parties but also the transient nature of party support. ) Many candidates affiliated with

1936-524: Is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and

2057-448: Is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch system. The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C). Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure. Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /ɡ/, /ɢ/, /m/, /n/, /r/ and /l/. The following cannot be geminate: /t/, /k/ and

2178-522: Is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho . Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century. The Somali language is spoken in Somali inhabited areas of Somalia , Djibouti , Ethiopia , Kenya , Yemen and by members of

2299-597: Is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished. Writing systems developed in the twentieth century include the Osmanya , Borama and Kaddare alphabets , which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid , Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare , respectively. Several digital collections of texts in the Somali language have been developed in recent decades. These corpora include Kaydka Af Soomaaliga (KAF), Bangiga Af Soomaaliga,

2420-481: Is rarely pronounced as a velar fricative, Partially the reason why is that it is mostly found in Arabic loanwords. It is pronounced as the phoneme χ when it is an allophone for the letter ⟨q⟩ in syllabic codas. As in A kh ri from A q ri meaning (read). Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent , or it is a tonal language . Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali

2541-584: Is recognized as an official working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Although it is not an official language of Djibouti , it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts, with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards. The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation also broadcasts in the Somali language in its Iftin FM Programmes. The language

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2662-467: Is similar to the stem alternation that typifies Cairene Arabic . Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns. The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g. adiga , "you"). This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example, adna meaning "and you..." (from adi - na ). Clitic pronouns are attached to

2783-718: Is spoken in the Somali territories within North Eastern Kenya , namely Wajir County , Garissa County and Mandera County . The Somali language is regulated by the Regional Somali Language Academy , an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 in Djibouti City by the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. It is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language. As of October 2022, Somali and Oromo are

2904-485: The 26th Division on the Dire Dawa Front. After the war, having served with distinction, Aidid worked as a presidential staffer to Barre before being appointed intelligence minister. 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. Aided

3025-595: The Corpo di Polizia della Somalia (Police Corps of Somalia) and in 1954 he 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. In 1960, Somalia gained independence and Aidid joined

3146-641: The Greater Somalia League (GSL), pro-Arab and militantly pan-Somalist , attracted the support of the SNL and the USP against the SYL, which had adopted a moderate stand before independence. Northern misgivings about being too tightly harnessed to the south were demonstrated by the voting pattern in the June 1961 referendum on the constitution , which was in effect Somalia's first national election. Although

3267-620: The Kenya Colony , Somali representatives from the Northern Frontier District (NFD) demanded that Britain arrange for the region's separation before Kenya was granted independence. The British government appointed a commission to ascertain popular opinion in the NFD on the question. The informal plebiscite demonstrated the overwhelming desire of the region's population, which mainly consisted of Somalis and Oromos , to join

3388-455: The Near East and South Asia (e.g. khiyaar "cucumber" from Persian : خيار khiyār ). Other loan words have also displaced their native synonyms in some dialects (e.g. jabaati "a type of flat bread" from Hindi: चपाती chapāti displacing sabaayad). Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic. As part of a broader governmental effort of linguistic purism in

3509-553: The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, scientist Johann Maria Hildebrandt noted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered." According to the 1974 report for Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents

3630-586: The Shifta War between Somali rebels and the Kenyan police and army . Voice of Somalia radio reportedly influenced the level of guerrilla activity by means of its broadcasts beamed into the NFD. Kenya also accused the Somali government of training the rebels in Somalia, equipping them with Soviet arms, and directing them from Mogadishu. It subsequently signed a mutual defense pact with Ethiopia in 1964, though

3751-587: The Somali Army seized power without encountering armed opposition — essentially a bloodless takeover. The coup was spearheaded by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre , who at the time commanded the army. Alongside Barre, the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) that assumed power after President Sharmarke's assassination, was led by Mohamed Ainanshe Guleid , Mohammad Ali Samatar , Abdullah Mohamed Fadil , and Salaad Gabeyre Kediye ,

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3872-677: The Somali diaspora as a mother tongue. Somali is an official language in both Somalia and Ethiopia , and serves as a national language in Djibouti , it is also a recognised minority language in Kenya . The Somali language is officially written with the Latin alphabet although the Arabic script and several Somali scripts like Osmanya , Kaddare and the Borama script are informally used. Somali

3993-495: The Somali diaspora . It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in Somali majority regions. Somali is the most widely spoken Cushitic language in the region followed by Oromo and Afar . As of 2021, there are approximately 24 million speakers of Somali, spread in Greater Somalia of which around 17 million reside in Somalia. The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of

4114-520: The Soviet Union for three years, an elite institution reserved for the most qualified officers of the Warsaw Pact armies and their allies. 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

4235-527: The Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) declared it the Somali Democratic Republic 's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4 , following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted

4356-638: The United Nations created the Consultative Commission for Integration, an international board headed by UN official Paolo Contini, to guide the gradual merger of the new country's legal systems and institutions and to reconcile the differences between them. (In 1964 the Consultative Commission for Legislation succeeded this body. Composed of Somalis, it took up its predecessor's work under the chairmanship of Mariano. ) But many southerners believed that, because of experience gained under

4477-653: The United Somali Congress (USC), and soon after the Somali National Alliance (SNA). Along with other armed opposition groups, he succeeded in toppling President Siad Barre 's 22 year old regime following the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991. Aidid possessed aspirations for presidency of the new Somali government, and would begin to seek alliances and unions with other politico-military organizations in order to form

4598-472: The armed forces and police . (General Mohamed Abshir Muse , the chief of police, had resigned just before the elections after refusing to permit police vehicles to transport SYL voters to the polls. ) Of these dissatisfied groups, the most significant element was the military, which since 1961 had remained outside politics. It had done so partly because the government had not called upon it for support and partly because, unlike most other African armed forces,

4719-539: 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

4840-631: The British ceded Somali territory to the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II in exchange for his help against raids by Somali clans. Britain included the proviso that the Somali inhabitants would retain their autonomy, but Ethiopia immediately claimed sovereignty over the area. The Somali government refused in particular to acknowledge the validity of the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1954 recognizing Ethiopia's claim to

4961-641: The Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g. Amharic ). However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective. This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Somali uses three focus markers: baa , ayaa and waxa(a) , which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis. Baa and ayaa require

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5082-527: The French expelling thousands of Somalis before the referendum reached the polls. The majority of those who had voted no were Somalis who were strongly in favour of joining a united Somalia, as had been proposed by Mahmoud Harbi , Vice President of the Government Council. Harbi was killed in a plane crash two years later under mysterious circumstances. At the 1961 London talks on the future of

5203-520: The Haud or, in general, the relevance of treaties defining Somali-Ethiopian borders. Somalia's position was based on three points: first, that the treaties disregarded agreements made with Somali actors that had put them under British protection; second, that the Somalis were not consulted on the terms of the treaties and in fact had not been informed of their existence; and third, that such treaties violated

5324-451: The Italian trusteeship, theirs was the better prepared of the two regions for self-government . Northern political, administrative, and commercial elites were reluctant to recognize that they now had to deal with Mogadishu. At independence, the northern region had two functioning political parties: the SNL, representing the Isaaq clan-family that constituted a numerical majority there; and

5445-596: The Italians for police duties) to command their units. The ringleaders urged a separation of north and south. Northern non-commissioned officers arrested the rebels, but discontent in the north persisted. In early 1962, GSL leader Haaji Mahammad Husseen, seeking in part to exploit northern dissatisfaction, attempted to form an amalgamated party, known as the Somali Democratic Union (SDU). It enrolled northern elements, some of which were displeased with

5566-459: The Kenya economy[...] nobody can accuse them of trying to make off with the national wealth". Despite Somali diplomatic activity, the colonial government in Kenya did not act on the commission's findings. British officials believed that the federal format then proposed in the Kenyan constitution would provide a solution through the degree of autonomy it allowed the predominantly Somali region within

5687-622: The Latin nor Osmanya scripts accommodate this numerical switching. *the commas in the Osmanya number chart are added for clarity Somali Republic The administration lasted until 1969, when the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) seized power in a bloodless coup and renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic . Popular demand compelled the leaders of Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland to proceed with plans for immediate unification . The British government acquiesced to

5808-585: The Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas). Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including Mogadishu . It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somali. The language has five basic vowels . Somali has 22 consonant phonemes . The retroflex plosive /ɖ/ may have an implosive quality for some Somali Bantu speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as

5929-460: The SNA was fragile, as his ability to impose decisions on the organization was limited. A council of elders held decision making power for most significant issues and elections were held that threatened Aidid's chairmanship. In April 1992 the United Nations intervened in Somalia, creating UNOSOM I . United Nations Security Council Resolution 794 was unanimously passed on 3 December 1992, which approved

6050-564: The SYL after the 1964 elections. A more important difference between Shermarke and Egal, other than their past affiliations, was the new prime minister's moderate position on pan-Somali issues and his desire for improved relations with other African countries. In these areas, he was allied with the "modernists" in the government, parliament, and administration who favored redirecting the nation's energies from confrontation with its neighbors to combating social and economic ills. Although many of his domestic policies seemed more in line with those of

6171-491: The SYL after the composition of Egal's cabinet became clear and after the announcement of his program, both of which were bound to displease some who had joined only to be on the winning side. Offered a huge list of candidates, the almost 900,000 voters in 1969 took delight in defeating incumbents. Of the incumbent deputies, 77 out of 123 were not returned (including 8 out of 18 members of the previous cabinet), but these figures did not unequivocally demonstrate dissatisfaction with

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6292-585: The SYL government was a very heterogeneous group with diverging personal and lineage interests. Candidates who had lost seats in the assembly and those who had supported them were frustrated and angry. A number of charges were made of government election fraud , at least some firmly founded. Discontent was exacerbated when the Supreme Court , under its newly appointed president, declined to accept jurisdiction over election petitions, although it had accepted such jurisdiction on an earlier occasion. Neither

6413-588: The Semitic Himyarite and Sabaean languages that were largely spoken in what is modern day Yemen —"there is an extensive and ancient relationship between the people and cultures of both sides of the Red Sea coast" Mire posits. Yet, while many more such ancient inscriptions are yet to be found or analyzed, many have been "bulldozed by developers, as the Ministry of Tourism could not buy the land or stop

6534-528: The Somali National Army had a genuine external mission in which it was supported by all Somalis – that of protecting the borders with Ethiopia and Kenya. On October 15, 1969, while paying a visit to the northern town of Las Anod , Somalia's then President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke was shot dead by one of his own bodyguards. His assassination was quickly followed by a military coup d'état on October 21, 1969 (the day after his funeral), in which

6655-668: The Somali Web Corpus (soWaC), a Somali read-speech corpus, Asaas (Beginning in Somali) and a Web-Based Somali Language Model and text Corpus called Wargeys (Newspaper in Somali). For all numbers between 11 kow iyo toban and 99 sagaashal iyo sagaal , it is equally correct to switch the placement of the numbers, although larger numbers is some dialects prefer to place the 10s numeral first. For example 25 may both be written as labaatan iyo shan and shan iyo labaatan (lit. Twenty and Five & Five and Twenty). Although neither

6776-525: The Somali language, the past few decades have seen a push in Somalia toward replacement of loanwords in general with their Somali equivalents or neologisms . To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and use of English and Italian terms. Archaeological excavations and research in Somalia uncovered ancient inscriptions in a distinct writing system . In an 1878 report to

6897-465: The Somali military to civilian technocrats. 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

7018-530: The Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g. aamiin for "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g. kubbad-da , "ball"). Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985,

7139-409: The Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic. Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet , officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of

7260-436: The State of Somaliland unified with the Trust Territory of Somaliland, forming the Somali Republic. The legislature appointed the speaker of SOMALIA ACT OF UNION Hagi Bashir Ismail Yousuf as First President of the Somali National Assembly. The same day Aden Abdullah Osman Daar become President of the Somali Republic; Daar in turn at 22 July 1960 appointed Abdirashid Ali Shermarke as the first prime minister. Shermarke formed

7381-419: The Supreme Revolutionary Council, including Barre. Without trial, he was subsequently detained in Mandhera 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

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7502-400: 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

7623-421: The USC in the late 80s and early 90s. In January 1993, Special Representative of the UN in Somalia, Ismat Kittani , requested the Aidid come to the Addis Abba Peace Conference set to be held in March. Aidid subsequently declared himself President of Somalia in June 1995. However, his declaration received no international recognition, as his rival Ali Mahdi Muhammad had already been elected interim president at

7744-420: The USP, supported largely by the Dir and the Daarood . In a unified Somalia, however, the Isaaq were a small minority, whereas the northern Daarood joined members of their clan-family from the south in the SYL. The Dir, having few kinsmen in the south, were pulled on the one hand by traditional ties to the Hawiye and on the other hand by common regional sympathies to the Isaaq. The southern opposition party,

7865-410: 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 ). 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

7986-431: The allegations also concluded that she had obtained her landing papers through normal legal processes. Hussein Mohamed Farrah , son of General Aidid, emigrated to the United States when he was 17 years old. Staying 16 years in the country, he eventually became a naturalized citizen and later a United States Marine who served in Somalia. Two days after his father's death, the Somali National Alliance declared Farrah as

8107-451: The apparent split in the SYL, it continued to attract recruits from other parties. In the first three months after the election, seventeen members of the parliamentary opposition resigned from their parties to join the SYL. Osman ignored the results of the vote and again nominated Hussein as prime minister. After intraparty negotiation, which included the reinstatement of four party officials expelled for voting against him, Hussein presented

8228-433: The banner of the Somali Liberation Army) to push the last remnants of Barres troops out of southern Somalia into Kenya on June 16, 1992 would lead to the formation of the political union known as the Somali National Alliance. This absorption of different political organizations was critical to Aidid’s approach to taking the presidency. As leader of the Somali National Alliance, Aidid, with presidential aspirations, expressed

8349-464: 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

8470-543: The colonial period. Most of these lexical borrowings come from English and Italian and are used to describe modern concepts (e.g. telefishen-ka , "the television"; raadia-ha , "the radio"). There are 300 loan words from Italian, such as garawati for "tie" (from Italian cravatta ), dimuqraadi from democratico (democratic), mikroskoob from microscopio , and so on. Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms from Persian , Urdu and Hindi that were acquired through historical trade with communities in

8591-399: 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

8712-490: The country three truly national political parties and further served to blur north–south differences. The most important political issue in post-independence Somali politics was the unification of all areas traditionally inhabited by ethnic Somalis into one country – a concept identified as Greater Somalia ( Soomaaliweyn ) (see also Somali nationalism ). Politicians assumed that this issue dominated popular opinion and that any government would fall if it did not demonstrate

8833-639: The country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti. Following the start of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s, the Somali-speaking diaspora increased in size, with newer Somali speech communities forming in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe. Constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia . Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when

8954-444: The country's internal economic and social problems. Although Hussein had supported militant pan-Somalism, he was portrayed as willing to accept the continued sovereignty of Ethiopia and Kenya over Somali areas. The proposed cabinet failed to be affirmed by a margin of two votes. Seven National Assembly members, including Shermarke, abstained, while forty-eight members of the SYL voted for Hussein and thirty-three opposed him. Despite

9075-475: 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

9196-534: The destruction". Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad's writing . According to Bogumił Andrzejewski , this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems ( qasidas ), recitations and chants. Among these texts are

9317-471: The draft was overwhelmingly approved in the south, it was supported by less than 50 percent of the northern electorate. Dissatisfaction at the distribution of power among the clan families and between the two regions boiled over in December 1961, when a group of British-trained junior army officers in the north rebelled in reaction to the posting of higher ranking southern officers (who had been trained by

9438-402: The earliest written attestation of Somali. Much more recently, Somali archaeologist Sada Mire has published ancient inscriptions found throughout Somaliland . As much for much of Somali linguistic history the language was not widely used for literature, Dr. Mire's publications however prove that writing as a technology was not foreign nor scarce in the region. These piece of writing are from

9559-546: The federal system. This solution did not diminish Somali demands for unification, however, and the modicum of federalism disappeared after Kenya's post-colonial government opted instead for a centralized constitution in 1964. Led by the Northern Province People's Progressive Party (NPPPP), Somalis in the NFD vigorously sought union with their kin in the Somali Republic to the north. In response,

9680-446: The first time. 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. Warlord General Farah Aidid died on 1 August 1996, during tribal war between his militias and the tribal militias of Warlord Osman Aato. Aidid

9801-441: The flap [ɽ] . Some speakers produce /ħ/ with epiglottal trilling as / ʜ / in retrospect. /q/ is often epiglottalized . The letter ⟨dh⟩ is a retroflex flap when it is pronounced intervocalically, hence becoming the phoneme ( ɽ ): for example, Qu r aanjo (Ant) from Qu dh aanjo; But however, more often than not is the pronunciation of ɽ to the unretained-retroflex ɾ . The letter ⟨kh⟩

9922-400: The focused element to occur preverbally, while waxa(a) may be used following the verb. Somali loanwords can be divided into those derived from other Afroasiatic languages (mainly Arabic), and those of Indo-European extraction (mainly Italian). Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary. This is a legacy of

10043-532: The force of Somali nationalist public opinion and agreed to terminate its rule of British Somaliland in 1960 in time for the protectorate to merge with the Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland ) on the independence date already fixed by the UN commission. In April 1960, leaders of the two territories met in Mogadishu and agreed to form a unitary state . An elected president

10164-532: The four previous years, and Osman decided that new leadership might be able to introduce fresh ideas for solving national problems. In drawing up a Council of Ministers for presentation to the National Assembly, the nominee for prime minister chose candidates on the basis of ability and without regard to place of origin. But Hussein's choices strained intraparty relations and broke the unwritten rules that there be clan and regional balance. For instance, only two members of Shermarke's cabinet were to be retained, and

10285-471: The fricatives. Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. [j] and [ʔ], are therefore inserted. Somali is an agglutinative language, and also shows properties of inflection . Affixes mark many grammatical meanings, including aspect, tense and case. Somali has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation. This general pattern

10406-612: The goal of using the SNA as a base for working toward forming a national reconciliation government and claimed to also be aiming for an eventual multi-party democracy. To this end Aidid required and sought political agreements with the only two remaining major factions, the Somali National Movement (SNM) and Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), to leave his main rival Ali Mahdi Mohamed isolated in an enclave in North Mogadishu. Aidid's grip on power in

10527-482: The government. Statistically, they were nearly identical with the results of the 1964 election, and, given the profusion of parties and the system of proportional representation, a clear sense of public opinion could not be obtained solely on the basis of the election results. The fact that a single party—the SYL—dominated the field implied neither stability nor solidarity. Anthropologist Ioan M. Lewis has noted that

10648-524: The inclusion of representatives of the contested areas after unification. The national flag also featured a five-pointed star, whose points represented areas claimed as part of the Somali nation: the former Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland, the Ogaden , French Somaliland , and the Northern Frontier District . Moreover, the preamble to the constitution approved in 1961 included the statement, "The Somali Republic promotes by legal and peaceful means,

10769-458: The mediation of Sudan , acting under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Under the terms of the cease-fire, a joint commission was formed to examine the causes of frontier incidents, and a demilitarized zone ten to fifteen kilometers wide was established on either side of the border. At least temporarily, further military confrontations were prevented. A referendum

10890-459: The municipal elections in 1958. Suffrage later spread to the former British Somaliland in May 1963, when the territorial assembly voted it in at a margin of 52 to 42. Politics was a national past-time, with the populace keeping abreast of political developments through radio . Political engagement often exceeded that in many Western democracies . Although unified as a single nation at independence,

11011-489: The new Kenyan government enacted a number of repressive measures designed to frustrate their efforts. Among these was the practice of mislabeling the Somali rebels' ethnically based claims as shifta ("bandit") activity, cordoning off of the NFD as a "scheduled" area, confiscating or slaughtering Somali livestock, sponsoring ethnic cleansing campaigns against the region's inhabitants, and setting up large "protected villages" or concentration camps . These policies culminated in

11132-469: The new president, although he too was not internationally recognized. Somali language Somali ( / s ə ˈ m ɑː l i , s oʊ -/ sə- MAH -lee, soh- ; Latin script: Af Soomaali ; Wadaad : اف صومالِ ‎; Osmanya : 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 [af soːmaːli] ) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken primarily in Greater Somalia , and by

11253-486: 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 . Requiring more formal training, Aidid, having been recognized as a highly qualified officer, was selected to study advanced post graduate military science at the Frunze Military Academy (Военная академия им. М. В. Фрунзе) in

11374-554: The newly formed Somali Republic . A 1962 editorial in The Observer , Britain's oldest Sunday newspaper, concurrently noted that "by every criterion, the Kenya Somalis have a right to choose their own future[...] they differ from other Kenyans not just tribally but in almost every way[...] they are Hamitic, have different customs, a different religion (Islam), and they inhabit a desert which contributes little or nothing to

11495-519: The northern SNL representatives in the coalition government. Hussein's attempt failed. In May 1962, however, Egal and another northern SNL minister resigned from the cabinet and took many SNL followers with them into a new party, the Somali National Congress (SNC), which won widespread northern support. The new party also gained support in the south when it was joined by an SYL faction composed predominantly of Hawiye. This move gave

11616-403: The number of posts in northern hands was to be increased from two to five. The SYL's governing Central Committee and its parliamentary groups became split. Hussein had been a party member since 1944 and had participated in the two previous Shermarke cabinets. His primary appeal was to younger and more educated party members. Several political leaders who had been left out of the cabinet joined

11737-444: The only Cushitic languages available on Google Translate . The Somali languages are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern Somali , Benadir and Maay . Northern Somali forms the basis for Standard Somali. It is spoken by the majority of the Somali population with its speech area stretching from Djibouti , and the Somali Region of Ethiopia to the Northern Frontier District . This widespread modern distribution

11858-453: The plural of the masculine noun dibi ("bull") is formed by converting it into feminine dibi . Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo. Somali is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language. It is largely head final , with postpositions and with obliques preceding verbs. These are common features of

11979-423: The preservation of traditional structures of self-governance, Italian colonialism in the south resulted in the erosion of traditional forms of political organization and centralized colonial administration" Police, taxes, and the exchange rates of their respective currencies also differed. Their educated elites had divergent interests, and economic contacts between the two regions were virtually nonexistent. In 1960

12100-436: The president nor the prime minister seemed particularly concerned about official corruption and nepotism . Although these practices were conceivably normal in a society based on kinship, some were bitter over their prevalence in the National Assembly, where it seemed that deputies ignored their constituents in trading votes for personal gain. Among those most dissatisfied with the government were intellectuals and members of

12221-588: The previous administration, Egal continued to hold the confidence of both Shermarke and the National Assembly during the eighteen months preceding the March 1969 national elections . The March 1969 elections were the first to combine voting for municipal and National Assembly posts. Sixty-four parties contested the elections. Only the SYL, however, presented candidates in every election district, in many cases without opposition. Eight other parties presented lists of candidates for national offices in most districts. Of

12342-745: The reconstruction of the Somali state. Aidid's wing of the USC would morph into the Somalia National Alliance (SNA) or USC/SNA. During the spring and summer of 1992, Former President Siad Barres army attempted to retake Mogadishu , but successful joint defence and counterattack by Aidid's USC wing, the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) , the Somali Southern National Movement (SSNM) and Somali Democratic Movement (SDM) (all united under

12463-444: The remaining fifty-five parties, only twenty-four gained representation in the assembly, but all of these were disbanded almost immediately when their fifty members joined the SYL. Both the plethora of parties and the defection to the majority party were typical of Somali parliamentary elections. To register for elective office, a candidate merely needed either the support of 500 voters or the sponsorship of his clan, expressed through

12584-410: 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. Both Ali Mahdi and Aidid claimed to lead national unity governments, and each vied to lead

12705-513: The republic had the opportunity to decide for themselves what their status would be. In 1948, under pressure from their World War II allies and to the dismay of the Somalis, the British "returned" the Haud (an important Somali grazing area that was presumably 'protected' by British treaties with the Somalis in 1884 and 1886) and the Ogaden to Ethiopia, based on a treaty they signed in 1897 in which

12826-499: The rival Somali National Congress. In August 1967, the National Assembly confirmed his appointment without serious opposition. Although the new prime minister had supported Shermarke in the presidential election, he was a northerner and had led a 1962 defection of the northern SNL assembly members from the government. He had also been closely involved in the founding of the SNC but, with many other northern members of that group, had rejoined

12947-513: The seats, occurred in November 1963. These were followed in March 1964 by the country's first post-independence national elections . Again the SYL triumphed, winning 69 out of 123 parliamentary seats. The party's true margin of victory was even greater, as the fifty-four seats won by the opposition were divided among a number of small parties. After the 1964 National Assembly election in March,

13068-525: The self-determination principle. This prompted an unsuccessful bid by Britain in 1956 to buy back the Somali lands that it had turned over. Hostilities grew steadily, eventually involving small-scale actions between the Somali National Army and Imperial Ethiopian Armed Forces along the border. In February 1964, armed conflict erupted on the Somali-Ethiopian frontier, and Ethiopian aircraft raided targets in Somalia. The confrontation ended in April through

13189-472: The south and the north were, from an institutional perspective, two separate countries. Italy and the United Kingdom had left the two with separate administrative, legal, and education systems in which affairs were conducted according to different procedures and in different languages. Janina Dill, an associate professor of U.S. Foreign Policy, states: "While British rule in the north allowed for

13310-557: The state. The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal , B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p , v and z . There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop , which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonant digraphs : DH, KH and SH. Tone

13431-485: The supporters of Shermarke to form an opposition group within the party. As a result, the Hussein faction sought support among non-SYL members of the National Assembly. Although the disagreements primarily involved personal or group political ambitions, the debate leading to the initial vote of confidence centered on the issue of Greater Somalia . Both Osman and prime minister-designate Hussein wanted to give priority to

13552-503: The traditional right of every man to be heard. The national ideal professed by Somalis was one of political and legal equality in which historical Somali values and acquired Western practices appeared to coincide. Politics was viewed as a realm not limited to one profession, clan , or class, but open to all male members of society. The role of women, however, was more limited. Women had voted in Italian Somaliland since

13673-482: The treaty had little effect as cross-border flow of materiel from Somalia to the guerrillas continued. In October 1967, the Somali government and Kenyan authorities signed a Memorandum of Understanding (the Arusha Memorandum) that resulted in an official ceasefire, though regional security did not prevail until 1969. Countrywide municipal elections, in which the Somali Youth League won 74 percent of

13794-401: The union of the territories." The constitution also provided that all ethnic Somalis, no matter where they resided, were citizens of the republic. The Somalis did not claim sovereignty over adjacent territories, but rather demanded that Somalis living in them be granted the right to self-determination . Somali leaders asserted that they would be satisfied only when their fellow Somalis outside

13915-408: The verb and do not take nominal morphology. Somali marks clusivity in the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such as Rendille and Dhaasanac. As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized by polarity of gender , whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite gender agreement of their singular forms. For example,

14036-566: 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

14157-665: 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 UN trusteeship , a young Aidid enlisted in

14278-422: Was held in neighboring Djibouti (then known as French Somaliland ) in 1958, on the eve of Somalia's independence in 1960, to decide whether or not to join the Somali Republic or to remain with France. The referendum turned out in favour of a continued association with France, largely due to a combined yes vote by the sizable Afar ethnic group and resident Europeans. There was also widespread vote rigging , with

14399-464: Was later brought to light that she had been granted landed immigrant status in June 1991, thereby making her a legal resident of Canada. Additionally, Aidid's rival, President Barre, had been overthrown in January of that year. This altogether ensured that Gurhan's five-month trip would not have undermined her initial 1989 claim of refugee status. An official probe by Canadian immigration officials into

14520-459: Was left stranded but was rescued by a high ranking ally in the regime, and was consequently saved from any punishment. In 1979, Barre 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

14641-538: Was to be head of state. Full executive powers would be held by a prime minister answerable to an elected National Assembly of 123 members representing the two territories. Accordingly, British Somaliland united as scheduled with the Trust Territory of Somaliland to establish the Somali Republic. On June 26, 1960, British Somaliland gained independence from Britain as the State of Somaliland . On July 1, 1960,

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