WARSAME DIGITAL MEDIA (WDM)
Critical Analysis, Political Memoir, and Historical Truths
By Ismail H. Warsame
A Youth Caught in the Crossfire of a “Revolution”
In the turbulent year of 1969, I was a third-year student at Banadir Secondary School, Mogadishu—a young mind hungry for knowledge, unaware that my generation was about to be shackled by a regime that mistook silence for loyalty and fear for order. Somalia’s fragile democracy, the product of independence and hope, was abruptly assassinated—literally and politically. Only a week before the coup, President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke had been gunned down in Laascaanood during an official visit. His death became the pretext for the military takeover led by General Mohamed Siyad Barre, whose so-called “Revolution” would soon metastasize into tyranny.
At Banadir, suspicion replaced innocence. A group of students, mostly from Mudug, were rounded up by military authorities, accused of being “anti-revolutionary”—a poisonous label invented to criminalize thought. Among the detainees was a student hailing from Borama, in the Northern Somalia, Abdisalam Omar Hadliye, later to become Somalia’s FGS Foreign Minister. Their “crime”? Belonging to the wrong clan. The revolution’s mask of equality had already begun to slip, revealing its tribal face.
From Moscow’s Cold Winter to Barre’s Hot Fury
I completed high school in 1971 and earned a scholarship to the Soviet Union, where I studied Thermal Power Engineering in Minsk, Byelorussia. Those were intellectually vibrant years; Somalia still had diplomatic warmth with the USSR. But in 1977, when the Ogaden War erupted and the Soviets betrayed Somalia to side with Ethiopia, everything changed overnight. The military junta ordered all Somali students in the USSR to return home immediately.
Defiance was my first act of rebellion. I stayed behind to complete my master’s thesis—fully aware that my decision would place me on the regime’s blacklist. When I finally returned to Mogadishu, I was briefly detained at the airport and interrogated by the infamous Nur Bidaar, the iron-fisted Immigration boss. After checking my records, he waved me off—but not before noting my name.
A week later, I received an official order: report to Halane Military Base for indoctrination training. I didn’t go there. I had not studied engineering to become a tool of propaganda.
An Encounter with Dr. Ali Khalif Galaydh
It was during those uncertain days that I met Dr. Ali Khalif Galaydh, then director of the Juba Sugar Project (JSP)—a massive industrial dream financed by Kuwait and designed to modernize Somalia’s sugar production near Jilib, in Lower Jubba. I introduced myself, stating both my professional qualifications and that we shared distant kinship. He scoffed: “Clan sentiments are outlawed by the Revolution.” I replied sharply: “I am not invoking clan, Dr. Galaydh. I am invoking courtesy.”
Dismissed and humiliated, I left his office—but destiny had other plans. Across the hall sat an English engineer overseeing the project’s technical operations. When I mentioned my degree in thermal-electric power systems, his eyes lit up. Within days, I was flown to Kismayo for an interview and hired as an engineering trainee for the sugar factory under construction.
Soon, I was sent to SNAI Sugar Factory in Jowhar for six months of industrial training. Ironically, when a Kuwaiti delegation toured the facility, proudly showcasing Somalia’s sugar “self-sufficiency,” Galaydh himself spotted me working in the boiler-room. His surprise was palpable. I simply smiled: “I work for you now, Dr. Galaydh.”
After completing the program, I returned to JSP and was later sent to England for advanced training in sugar technology. It was there, in London, that I once again encountered Galaydh—by now a member of Siyad Barre’s People’s Assembly and newly married into the dictator’s Mareexaan clan. Over lunch, he joked:
“Are you thinking of joining Qurmis?” —the regime’s slur for the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF).
“Yes,” I answered calmly. The table fell silent. He never expected an honest reply.
Surveillance, Fear, and the Politics of Birthplaces
Back in Mogadishu, life was suffocating under the regime’s paranoia. During earlier business trips, I stayed at the Shabeelli Hotel, and every check-in required stating one’s place of birth. I always hesitated. My birth certificate said Laascaanood, but my school papers listed Galkayo—a city despised by the regime as a hotbed of “anti-revolutionaries.” Later, I discovered that all hotels were required to submit nightly guest lists to the National Security Service (NSS). Every signature became a potential death sentence.
By 1980, I had made my decision. Enough of fear. Enough of pretense.
I joined the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF)—the first organized resistance against Barre’s dictatorship. It was a moral necessity, not a political choice.
The irony of fate was striking. Only a few years after I had joined the SSDF, Dr. Galaydh himself found it necessary to flee the very regime he once served, with a warrant issued for his arrest. Years later, while accompanying President Abdullahi Yusuf on a routine medical visit to London, I received a call from Dr. Galaydh expressing his desire to meet the President. I immediately arranged the meeting and mentioned it to Mr. Yusuf that Dr. Galaydh and I had previously worked together at the JSP, where he had been my superior and treated me with utmost respect. The whole episode felt surreal—almost like a political joke written by destiny itself.
Epilogue: Truth Against Power
The revolution that promised equality delivered suspicion. The system that claimed to fight tribalism institutionalized it. The “scientific socialism” that claimed to uplift Somalia reduced it to ashes and exile.
My story is not merely personal—it is generational. It belongs to those young Somalis who traded classrooms for trenches, who faced prison instead of promotion, and who learned that in Siyad Barre’s Somalia, intelligence was a liability and loyalty a weapon.
History, however, has a way of avenging truth. The same regime that mocked dissenters as “Qurmis” fell into the dustbin of history. The very men it persecuted built the foundations of Puntland and the Federal Republic of Somalia—a testament that truth, though delayed, is never denied.
WDM COMMENTARY:
Ismail H. Warsame’s untold story is more than autobiography—it is an indictment of a generation betrayed by revolutionary lies. His defiance, intellectual courage, and moral steadfastness represent the conscience of a nation long silenced by fear.
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