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Editors Note: This is part 3 of a 4 part series. This piece is bold and shows one can write scholarly, while at the same time showing that the intelligentsia has responsibility in the struggle for national unity. Additionally, it shows that fending off from potential dictators is a matter of national responsibility. Professor Said's campaign against the late Caydid seems to have carried the massage to its targeted audience. Drafted while general Aydiid was still alive, this section can now only be addressed to his shadow which, no doubt, still stalks what is left of Somalia's soul and surely haunts the dusty streets of south Mogadishu . A case can be made that Aydiid was the right man to take over turbulent Somalia at that critical juncture of Siad Barre's fall. Here is the bill of particulars that constitutes Aydiid's case: first, he resisted Barre's dictatorship; whether his resistance was motivated by personal frustration for failing to receive his fair share of the loot of the Somali treasury, as some claim, is beside the point. The fact is that he opposed Mr. Barre, a most dangerous undertaking and was consequently flung in prison where he languished for more than four years along with other fallen officers. The strictures of solitary confinement must have proved too much for the formerly roving nomad, for all accounts say that the incarceration traumatized the general, driving him to bouts of dementia and hysteria by turns. In one deranged outburst, he was seen nibbling on a bar of washing soap like a delicious piece of cake. Unquestionably, the man suffered badly. It may be objected that he suffered all right, but he did so for greed and ambition, the twin curses of nearly all so-called Somali "big men" and that his conspiracies caused him to run foul of his old patron saint, Siad Barre, who, no longer being able to abide Aydiid's incessant plotting, finally had had enough and proceeded to consign him to the tender environs of confinement. To fault Aydiid thus is to indulge in selective judgement. What Somali leader-type was ever punished for purely altruistic interest in behalf of Somalia , except perhaps that mild-mannered mystic, General Mohammed Abshir? Second, Aydiid roughed up the Daarood, a most salutary undertaking. After years of dominating the political scene, the Daarood had grown arrogant and it was time to put the fear of God into them. Aydiid's savaging of them had done just that. But his tragedy was that he did not stop there; imbued with a congenital bloody nature, he went on to bloody the Hawiye, his own kin, even more savagely. Aydiid in fact brutalized all and everyone who crossed his path. What his mind was too simple to understand was that brute force alone seldom provides the answer to all human problems, least of all political problems; that in the pursuit of power, force can be useful only as an extension of diplomacy. Even so, the Daarood must have been sobered to respectful attention by Aydiid's clobbering. Third, Aydiid inherited almost the entire armory of the national military, including state-of-the-art weaponry, and therefore was the only warlord possessing enough fire power to break the back of the Somalis and to bend them to his will. Just take a look at the other warlords--they are either weaklings or unacceptable. Abdullahi Yusuf, the only other warlord with as forceful a personality, and as ruthless and blood-thirsty, as Aydiid, would have been too far away in the northeast; Morgan would have been too far away from the center of action too, and in any case unacceptable as the author of the infamous "Letter of Death;" Osman Ato is a spoiled civilian boy grown rich from the loot of the national physical plant; Ali Mahdi is too weak and feckless to rule unruly Somalis. Clearly Aydiid was the man of the hour. Somali heads needed bending if the anarchy and bloodbath that ensued were to be avoided. If Aydiid seized power, he'd probably have imposed a brutal regime that would have made Siad Barre's look like a sunny outing, but it is a proven law of human society that tyranny with stability is infinitely superior to liberty with anarchy. Nothing grows in anarchy, least of all a nation's soul. Fourth, Aydiid fought and sacrificed for the pursuit of power more than the rest of the lot put together. His passion was power and nothing else mattered to him, for in his personal conduct and private life, he was the most temperate of Somalis. While those others who could afford vice lapsed into sickening heights of debauchery, he neither smoked, nor drank, nor drugged; he did not even chew khat, an incredible abstention for an urban Somali of means. His only pleasure vice was women, and in this he exhibited a marked bias for Majeerteen women, whatever Freud would have made of this. In the various confrontations, alternately, with the Daarood, the Abgaal, the Murursade, the Hawaadle, and,most brazenly, with the Americans--Aydiid showed surpassing military resourcefulness and incomparable personal courage. He was indeed a brilliant combat man. But therein lay his strength as well as his tragedy. Militarily, Aydiid was on the order of genius but, politically, he was on the scale of a jackass. Autistic of mind and congested of spirit, he could not perceive the subtle complexity and clumsiness and maddening craziness of human existence; he tried to solve political obstacles requiring political solutions with a hammer. He forgot--or never learned--that the use of force in governance is to achieve a political objective, and that arms avail nothing in themselves, especially when counter-balanced against other arms. This was fatally brought home to him when the Abgaal, who had been repeatedly harried by him, finally resolved to fight back. Still, Aydiid's valor was supreme, in marked contrast to the cowardly Barre who panicked and fled at the first sign of trouble. By contrast, Aydiid would be mortally wounded in action while charging at the head of his men. In short, Aydiid was, tragically for Somalia , what the Somalis call a macangag , which may be translated as "asininely stubborn." Here, a vignette related by a number of Somali informants serves to illustrate the point: according to these, when a couple of years back, Aydiid the father invited Aydiid the son to Mogadishu to start him up as his viceroy, the young Aydiid's mother begged him not to return to Somalia and revisit anew on that unhappy country his father's brutal ravishings. She is reported to have added: "Your father's macangag ness is such that if he takes a fancy to anything, he must have it or he would wreak havoc on all and everything that is even remotely related to the object of his desire." "Once," the lady is reported to have explained, "he took a liking to my shawl, and commenced to grab on its hem. No pushing, shoving or pleading could break his grip. I had to reach for a knife and cut up the shawl in half in order to break loose from him." 6 Unless this be apocryphal, the American Rangers can appreciate posthumously what they were up against in Aydiid. A fearful macangag indeed. If so, why would I wish him so ardently on Somalia ? Partly on the reasoning that a jackal nation deserves a jackal leader. The wildly fractious Somalia of the 1990s needed a human pit bull to bury its teeth in every Somali neck in order to terrorize them into submission. Partly also because I feel a twinge of remorse over the fact that I had a hand in Aydiid's being cheated out of his prize. The story of my close call with the General has been too widely covered by press and TV to require a full-blown recounting. Briefly, I accompanied, as an interpreter and field expert, an ABC TV crew led by Nightline's legendary anchor man, Ted Koppel, to cover the landing of the American marines. Five days later the General ordered me out of town under threat of death. Why he declared war on me remains something of a puzzle to this day, for up to that point I was thoroughly of goodwill towards him and in fact was rooting for him. I was seduced by his dash, pluck and portly flamboyance, his impeccable suits and flashy teeth, even his cold, reptilian eyes. Having no understanding of his motive for ejecting me, I can only resort to conjecturing: did he conceive that I was part of another machiavellian Daarood plot to snatch power from his grasp? Did he, unable to appreciate the separation of press and government, believe that I was the advance man for another American scheme designed to foist a U.S.-favored Somali clique on power? Whatever his motivation, instead of attempting to coopt me as a service intellectual (and I might have obliged), he chose to create a state of war. But war can be fought on different fronts, and my front lay in the direction of information-processing. Upon return to the U.S., I at once commenced to launch a spirited, sustained denunciatory campaign against him, blasting him, in reasoned terms I hope, in virtually every major American newspaper and magazine as well as on the principal TV networks. I also went frequently to Washington to speak at State Department policy briefings on Somalia and to lobby key congressional committees where I did my best to paint an unflattering picture of him. To suggest that the result was electrifying would be to draw attention to my own inflated ego. But if Thomas Jefferson was right in opining that the "pen is mightier than the sword" in a literate society, I believe I am entitled to claim a small part in the turning of American public opinion against him.
Said Samatar New Jersey 6. Interview with Mohamuud S. Togane at the Robert Treat Hotel, Newark , April 12, 1997 . part 3 of a 4 parts series
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