IN MEMORY OF ALI MAHDI MOHAMED, LATE CHAIRMAN OF MANIFESTO/USC-SSA

Ali Mahdi, his popular political name, had a pleasant personality with a smile that contradicts his exploits as a warlord in cleansing Daroods from Mogadishu, following the fall of General Siyaad Barre in January 1991. He didn’t help even to spare the lives of his former colleagues and businessmen acquaintances in his area of influence in North Mogadishu. The ideologue of clan cleansing, however, was General Aideed. Mahdi led the demobilization and disintegration of the remnants of the Somali National Army after the collapse of the Central Government, using Ambassador Omar Arte, his then Prime Minister, in Mahdi’s capacity as Djibouti-sponsored Interim President of Somalia in 1993.

Reflecting on his personal history, he suffered from two political liabilities:

1. He had “Goofka Banadir” mentality and attitude, never travelling across Somalia to develop cross-nation cultural abilities.
2. He suffered from “Kaaraan Syndrome”, Abgaal leaders’ belief in Habargedir military and political supremacy in Mogadishu, as Ali Mahdi saw Somalia in the eyes of people in the Banadir Region, whose residents had suffered immensely from General Aideed’s mass human slaughter in Kaaraan. They had been conditioned to accepting Habargedir superiority, as a result.

As a leader of Mudulood, he had earned the admiration of residents of Kaaraan to withstand General Aideed’s onslaught against Abgaals in North Mogadishu. For four months, four hundred barrels of heavy artillery and mortars were focused on Kaaraan for constant bombardment, reducing it into rubble, and turning its residents into shell-shocked beings.

Ali Mahdi passed away in Nairobi this evening, after declaring in Mogadishu recently that he would return to using his “white gun” again, as a member of the opposition to Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, the man squattering now in Villa Somalia.

Ali Mahdi was mainly to be blamed for the failure of Cairo Somali talks in 1997 as he had sabotaged the so-called Sodare Group in collaboration with Hussein Aided and Egyptian Government, and the reason why Bosaso Conference was aborted before moving it to Arta in Djibouti in the year 2000.

The difference between General Aideed and Ali Mahdi was that the former wanted to grab power by any means necessary and that the end justifies the means, and saw Darood cleansing from Mogadishu as means to that end with mass mobilization of Hawiye against Daroods, while the later didn’t know what he was doing.

Ali Mahdi was accused of entering into treasonous business contracts with Italian Mafia to dump industrial toxic wastes into Somalia’s territorial waters and even in wells on the land.

Both men had died before they were brought to justice. ( photo: courtesy, in the picture are at forefront from left General Aided, Ali Mahdi, Osman Ali Ato and Pilot Abdi Osman).

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