How Somalia Works Mimicry and The Making

How Somalia Works: Mimicry and the Making of Mohamed Siad Barre's Regime in
Mogadishu
Author(s): Mohamed Haji Ingiriis
Source: Africa Today, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Fall 2016), pp. 57-83
Published by: Indiana University Press
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To make sense of times
of transition, one has to
understand the historic-
ity of the transformative
changes and continuities.
The extent to which classi-
cal structures and systems
of old or ousted regimes
are resorted hinges—
or impinges—upon the
political players’ desires.
How Somalia Works:
Mimicry and the Making of Mohamed
Siad Barre’s Regime in Mogadishu
Mohamed Haji Ingiriis
Recent literature on Somalia has largely been preoccupied

with the latest developments from the capital, Mogadishu,
yet Somalia in public discourse is not the same as the empiri-
cally nuanced Somalia on the ground. This article examines
how and why the concept of governmentality has become
a peculiar mixture of genuine reform and replication of old
institutions and practices. Casting a new light on the type of
governmentality exercised in Mogadishu, it explores the cos-
mological ways in which political power is articulated, both
visually and physically, and reveals how Mogadishu mimics
the old military regime of General Mohamed Siad Barre to
create a sense of authoritarian rule. Drawing on fieldwork
comprising oral interviews, ethnographic observations, and
primary data (such as government decrees and documents,
oral poems, and television and radio recordings), the article
argues that the lack of real state structures for nearly three
decades memorializes the military regime and makes the
only reference to, and model for, attempts at state reformation
processes, from below and above.
Introduction
A colorful caption in the downtown Mogadishu intersection at the former

Daljirka Dahsoon (the Unknown Soldier) publicizes that “Soomaaliya wey
kuftay, wey kacday, wey kaalin qaaday” (Somalia has fallen down, but it
pulled itself out and rose up).1 This caption reflects the fact that the ruined
capital city of Somalia has, over the past years, been at the center of massive
reconstruction projects initiated by Somali diaspora returnees and the Turk-
ish government. The business sector, whether it is telecommunications or
construction companies, appears booming in a bizarre and bewildering array
of progress. The introduction of Somalia’s first cash machine accepting the
Africa Today Vol. 63, No. 1 • Copyright © The Trustees of Indiana University • DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.63.1.03
Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards by Salaam Somali Bank,
a private financial company owned by a group of Somali and non-Somali
entrepreneurs (BBC News 2014), was at once invigorating and uplifting for a
city ravaged by wrecking wars for decades.2 Nowhere is this progress more
powerfully and better illustrated than in a song performed by government
singers: “Soomaalidu kadeed aragtay, ka baxday, kuftay, kacday, jabtayoo
kabatay” (Somalis have seen suffering, but they pulled themselves out,
africa TODAY 63(1)
after falling down, risen and ruined, but finally recovered).3 Ummu Shariif,
a recently deceased young female Somali singer, historicized such a rise
when she sang: “Dhacdadii la soo maray, dhiiggiyo dhibaatada, dhaawicii
bogsooyoo, wey naga dhammaatoo, dalku waa dhismaayaa” (The retreating
past, with the blood and the problem, now the wound is healing, enough is
enough, the country is building up).4
Long depicted and caricatured in the media as “the most failed state
58
on earth” or “the world’s most quintessential failed state,” Somalia appears

to be emerging from one of the most brutal, prolonged, and protracted vio-
MIMICRY AND THE MAKING OF MOHAMED SIAD BARRE’S REGIME IN MOGADISHU
lent conflicts on the African continent. The Somalia that Mohamed Osman
Omar, a Somali diplomat, once ushered in with his title The Road to Zero,
and that Michael Maren, an American critic, escorted to perdition with
his title The Road to Hell has made a comeback (Maren 1997; Omar 1992;
see also The Economist 2005, 2008). Following the African version of the
developmental state, observers have begun to serenade the new Somalia
with flashing phrases, such as “Somalia works,” “Somalia rising,” “Somalia:
risen from the ashes,” and even “peace with petroleum” (Hammond 2013;
Hauschildt 2015; Hills 2014a; Reitano and Shaw 2013; Roitsch 2014; Yahoo
News 2013). Such descriptions are not confined to the capital: they echo
from outside it. In South Africa, President Jacob Zumba declared that he
was delighted to witness Somalia sending an ambassador to Pretoria—which
itself is a sign of exceptional progress.5 Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi presi-
dent, expressed similar feelings after paying a visit to Mogadishu (Wacaal
Media 2016). These developments provide an arena in which Africa-works
proponents can advance their theories (Chabal and Daloz 1999). If Mogadishu
is rising, in contrast with the past years, it works through a distinct logic:
something has developed individually but nothing institutionally. From the
outside, much improvement has been observed; inside, hardly any can be
seen. Somalia works, but how it works differs exceptionally from the ways
in which Western donors’ conceptualizations have cast state-formation proj-
ects as a set of normative frameworks for genuine governance. Mogadishu
is not moving backward, but the crucial question is not about whether or
why it works, but how it works. Overall, how can contemporary Somalia be
conceptualized and theorized? And what type of governmentality—broadly
defined by Foucault (1984:250) as the “art of government”—is preferable and
pursued in the capital?
The Somalia-rising literature, upon stressing Somalia’s return to the
world, has negated the assumed temporalities and trajectories that have
long dominated any mention of Somalia in the mass media, and it has
disregarded empirical evidence of the state functions on the ground. Behind
the sociopolitical and economic developments lie business-as-usual political
processes of militarizing the state authority. In contemporary Somalia, one
can discover the espousal of distinct state entities from below that rarely
attach themselves to the central government in Mogadishu. Scholars have
addressed the constraints and contradictions of the independent Somaliland
entity in the northwest and the semi-independent entity of Puntland in the
africa TODAY 63(1)

northeast (Dill 2010; Hesse 2010a, 2010b; Hoehne 2009; Johnson and Smaker
2014; Walls 2009). Observers, despite their sharp analyses, have remained
detached from Mogadishu, which has received only a little attention. This is
entirely understandable, as the security of the capital is a major concern, par-
ticularly when Somaliland and Puntland have tended to provide safer spaces
to conduct research. As a result, little is known about the capital. Only most
recently has Alice Hills, while conducting research from Nairobi, produced
59
the only studies of the Mogadishu government. Following the Africa-rising
discourse, Hills highlights the development of “good enough governance”
Mohamed Ha ji Ingiriis
in the capital that had come with police security operations (2013, 2014a,
2014b). Hills’s studies are important, but pursuing one side of the new gov-
ernmentalities in the Somali world or worlds like the police force—as she
has it—leaves aside the complexities and contradictions through which the
state authorities practice politics in the capital. This means that discuss-
ing only the police as an institution without the central government—the
purveyor and the parent of the police—leads to an incomplete reflection, as
the police nuances can hardly be captured without examining individual and
institutional agencies. To her credit, however, Hills acknowledges that her
concentration on the police institution alone presents “an unbalanced pic-
ture of Somalia’s complex and dynamic environment” (2014a:89). The func-
tion of the central government—how its political actors play upon politics,
to say nothing of their agencies and different roles—is an understudied topic,
when it is difficult to grasp Somalia’s political dynamics without understand-
ing Mogadishu, the center of power and politics, upon which most élites and
international aid are concentrated.6
In this article, the Foucauldian concept of governmentality is recon-
ceptualized to develop a new way of understanding political players who run
the federal government in Mogadishu. The article draws attention to invis-
ible important internal political dynamics by emphasizing individual and
institutional agency. It shows how government authorities are shapers and
shakers of the central body politic of a dysfunctional state system. For that
reason, the successes and failures of new developments in the capital largely
depend on the pursuit of policies by the center—which warrants special
attention. To travel empirically into the capital, tour à tour, the article turns
to formal and informal interviews, observatory pistes de réflexion, backed
by ethnographic research and visual anthropological analysis, as well as
utilizing unused primary data, such as government decrees and documents,
poems, and television and radio recordings, to examine the contemporary
state trajectory of Mogadishu. By carefully reading the primary sources, the
article reveals how the government works, both individually and institution-
ally, and sheds new light on the ways in which state authority is articulated,
both visually and physically. The article concludes that collapsed African
states can hardly be reinstated from the debris of the old regimes, especially
when those regimes had contributed to the failure and political problema-
tique. This argument suggests that the structures and legacies left by the
ousted military regime frame the political fields in Somalia. It adds new
africa TODAY 63(1)
empirical and theoretical insights into the studies of failed states, whose
internality and externality have long been debated (on the broader sense of
these debates, see Starr 2013; for the Somali case, see Bradbury 2003; Byrne
2013; Hagmann and Hoehne 2009; Jones 2008).7
The Meaning of Mimicry and Mimesis

60
The state that is Somalia has been understood against the measurement of
how far it monopolizes force and violence and the degree to which the gov-
ernment matches the military regime. This paves the way for the buildup of
authoritarian political order—a set and seat of centralized authority with the
power to coerce and control the public, basically hegemonic—that evokes
the regime that led Somalia to uncivil wars in the 1990s (Ingiriis 2016a). To
understand Somali authorities on the notion of good governance is to imitate
how government affairs had been undertaken under the military regime.8 As
a result, General Mohamed Siad Barre, who overthrew the civilian demo-
cratic government in October 1969, has an enduring impact on contempo-
rary Somali politics, political brokers, and bystanders alike. Remembered
with relish, his regime stands as a reference to the state-rebuilding projects
in Mogadishu and elsewhere in Somalia where efforts at reconstituting a
state are evaluated to the extent that they draw from the military regime.
Deposed in January 1991 and deceased in exile in January 1995, after ruling
for twenty-one years, Siad Barre’s perennial bequest is such that any step
toward reconstituting the Somali state summons him or his regime through
the lexicon of markaannu dowladda ahayn (when we were the government).
Twenty-five years since he was expelled from the capital, many inveterate
efforts have been made toward returning to the Siadist-style state.
There is in contemporary Somalia a tendency of imitation aimed
at ensuring the personalization and privatization of state power through
mimicry of Siad Barre’s regime. Tordoff argued that the “tendency to imita-
tiveness” was a trend left behind by colonialism (1997:48), but the Somali
case suggests otherwise: an inward mimicry, not outward mimesis derived
from colonialism. Mimicry is articulated through various venues, some of
which are legal and institutional, through visual and radio recordings. While
Bhabha’s concept of mimicry stresses colonial mimesis, twentieth-century
colonial mimicry is replaced by twentieth-first-century postcolonial mime-
sis, at least in Somalia.9 The main difference between the analytical concepts
of mimesis and mimicry “is that the first is an open attempt to imitate, often
as a strategy to cope with uncertainty, while the latter helps to conceal the
real intentions of the actors. Empirically, however, both often are simulta-
neously involved in [the] process of imitation” (Hoehne 2009:254). Though
both concepts have their own limitations, they necessarily provide the neces-
sary reflective toolkit to understand the political intricacies and the modes
and modalities of governance structures. It helps to track the reformation of
a state that takes the form and formulation of the military regime. Indeed,
africa TODAY 63(1)

what the Mogadishu government is interested in is not merely to be seen as
a state, but to be sounded to see itself as a state (Scott 1998).
People and power brokers in Somalia and in diaspora have strong nos-
talgia for the Somali state after many years of protracted conflict because
the past looks wonderful in contrast with the present. Its longevity, to say
nothing of the lack of any state structures for decades, makes the military
regime the only reference to, and model for, attempts at state-reformation
61
processes.10 When things became zero, emerging state authorities take short-
cuts to power, and one of the reasons why the state is not emerging out of
the collapse is mimicking Siad Barre’s regime. Political purgatory slides the
Mogadishu government along the route of the military regime, even though
it was the predatory nature of that regime that had first and foremost led to
the dissolution of the state in the first place (Leeson 2007). To make sense of
times of transitions, one has to understand the historicity of the transforma-
tive changes and continuities. The extent to which classical structures and
systems of old or ousted regimes are resorted hinges—or impinges—upon the
political players’ desires. The point was not to see or be seen as a state, but
to direct the state to the direction of seeing (Scott 1998). The government
leaders emulate Siad Barre’s military state model, mainly in the institutional
aspects of administration and intelligence, to prove that the government is
not a weak authority.11 In this way, they play at more than mimicry in the
intricate political processes by which they endeavor to impose power from
the top.
This article employs Bhabha’s concept of mimicry (1994:85–92) to
explore how political players and the public refer simultaneously to Siad
Barre’s regime. Political economists have analyzed how state memory both
restricts and derestricts state-building projects in Somalia (Leeson 2007,
2014; Leeson and Williamson 2009). Herbst (2014:13) has addressed the
consolidation of power and argued that African leaders had confronted three
sets of fundamental issues when building state power: the cost of develop-
ing domestic power infrastructure, the question of national boundaries, and
the design of the state system. The Mogadishu government has completely
ignored the second and the third, but devotes its energy to achieve the first.
Consolidation of power, which is expected to generate wealth, rather than
rebuilding the national state, has obsessed the Mogadishu government
authorities.12 This is a real reflection of the legacies of the past state poli-
tics into present popular politics in Somalia, and it directly responds to the
concerns of a war economy. Theories of political science and international
relations, as proposed by scholars such as Scott (1998) and Starr (2013), have
not taken this empirical evidence into account when analyzing the political
economy of the post–cold war state-collapse paradigm. It is here where this
article makes its contribution.
The Return of Mohamed Siad Barre to Somali Politics

africa TODAY 63(1)
General Siad Barre ruled Somalia with an iron fist for most of his regime
(1969–1991). Hashim, in her evaluation of Somalia under his regime, shows
that the regime was based on “a monolithic totalitarian structure” (1997:5).
Its dominant philosophy was to master the technology of power so as to
master destiny (for the other way around, see Simons 1997:282). The regime
was ousted in January 1991 while the country descended into fratricidal
wars fought along clan lines. People survived a decade of statelessness
62
(Brons 2001), but some developed new ways of governing themselves (Brad-
bury 2003). On the eve of the millennium, President Ismail Omar Ghelle of
Djibouti took to the podium of the UN General Assembly and appealed to

the world body to bolster his plans of hosting a reconciliation conference
for Somalia. Between April and August 2000, massively attended peace
talks, in which civil-society groups were given a special preference over so-
called warlords, were held in Djibouti. Following a long series discussions,
Abdikassim Salaad Hassan, a long-time Siad Barre minister and loyalist,
was elected president to lead the Transitional National Government, which
lasted from August 2000 until October 2004.13 When Robert B. Oakley, the
respected erstwhile American ambassador to Somalia (1982–1984), visited
the conference in the summer of 2000, he (half)-jokingly wondered: “Where
is Siad?” (cited in Lewis 2002a:293).14 What Oakley sensed was a return of
Siad Barre to Somali politics. Though there was not an actual comeback,
Siad Barre returned to the scene through his protégées, who came to repre-
sent two-thirds of the conference delegates. If a 2005 film about Idi Amin
reminded Ugandans of the comeback of the old dictator to Kampala through
Hollywood’s graphic lenses (The Last King 2006), Siad Barre returned through
familial and friendship ways for the first time in 2000.
Early into the transitional period, Abdikassim Salaad began to behave
like a Siad Barre without power,15 but the vigorous mimicry of the mili-
tary regime began with Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who, arguably
more authoritarian than Siad Barre, replaced Salaad as president to lead
the Transitional Federal Government in October 2004. He came to the
capital in December 2006, having been parachuted in by Ethiopian forces.
He was quick to reinstate former military and police officers, specifically
those hailing from his own (sub)clan, to revive the state security appara-
tus. He soon restored the National Security Service (NSS), one of the most
notorious institutions of the military regime. In August 1990, following
internal and external pressures, Siad Barre dissolved the NSS and the
National Security Court.16 Yusuf’s attempt was to recapture and maintain
power through the newly restored NSS. In January 2009, he was replaced
by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as president of the Transitional Federal
Government. Sheikh Ahmed, who had previously led the Union of Islamic
Courts, but possessed no governmental experience, fell under the influence
of his advisors, who directed him slowly but surely to refer to Siad Barre’s
ghost in matters of managing the new government.17 His advisors, espe-
cially his prime minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, persuaded him
to accept into the cabinet the daughter of General Mohamed Ali Samatar,
africa TODAY 63(1)

Siad Barre’s first deputy.
The presidential election in September 2012, when Hassan Sheikh
Mohamoud won leadership of the Federal Government of Somalia, has
been considered a landmark event in post-Barre Somali statecraft. Hassan
Sheikh’s ascent was seen as a new dawn for Somalia to reestablish a unified
central state; across Somalia and in diaspora, many hailed his election as a
miracle.18 From where he would start his mission, and what kind of institu-
63
tions he would continue or discontinue, were the critical questions being
posed in public discourse. This meant he was initially anticipated to succeed
where others had failed. His promise was to reconfigure state authority and
reconstitute a unified political order, which would depart from the center to
reach the outer regional governments, the so-called peripheries; Somaliland
and Puntland, however, can hardly be considered peripheries, as long as
their authorities consider themselves equal to the center.19 In the language
of international aid donors, Hassan Sheikh’s election ended twelve years of
transitional governments to a permanent government.20 Locally driven but
externally imposed from Nairobi, the government of Somalia was projected
to have passed from transition to permanence: the state, as it has been
designed since then, has been recurring and reemerging. Over the past four
years, UN reports have proclaimed that the so-called permanent government
has achieved massive progress, in contrast with the transitional framework
under which it had operated since 2000.
Given the new permanent paradigm, the shift of the central state
authority toward a federal state structure was set as a paramount priority.
Consolidating institutions have placed a premium on pragmatic approaches
to reestablishing central order. In line with externally imposed state-building
projects, political players and power brokers on the ground began to play the
politics of ministate-building programs, against aid donors’ expectations—
which more often than not runs contrary to local anticipations and experi-
ences regarding the roles of the center and outer regions (Hills 2014a:90).
With manifold interactions and intricacies, what the government is required
to do and what the so-called international community—because the term
itself is vague—demands remain contrastingly different. Torn between the
expectations of his state authority and the requirements of his donors,
Hassan Sheikh sought to consolidate his power in the face of aid donors,
known as partners—conditioning economic assistance for the government’s
ability to reach a number of benchmarks, the hardest of which is to imple-
ment federal state-formation projects consistent with other autonomous or
semiautonomous ministates.
The continuation of a hybrid government accountable to the donors
pressed Hassan Sheikh into parodying himself as a powerful president. To
gain international approval of his government, he mimics Siad Barre to create
the sense of a ruling regime Whenever he would go on a visit and come back,
as with the old guards of the military regime, a long line of well-wishers,
mostly women, known as hooyooyin (mothers), welcomed him and escorted
him from the Aden Adde international airport in Mogadishu to the presiden-
africa TODAY 63(1)
tial palace, guarded by African Union Forces (AMISOM). At the Aden Adde
airport, senior government members, including the president and the prime
minister, would fly on one airplane after another from one foreign capital
city to another to ensure that the government existed, both domestically and
externally. The frequent foreign trips were part of the government’s attempts
to demonstrate its existence as a government in power. Some government
authorities acknowledged that such mimicry in social spaces has tended to
64
put the government in a precarious position. One of the most senior presi-
dential advisors has admitted that “people [in the government] do not know
any other system of a state other than that of Siad Barre.”21
Memory Matters a Lot
While the contemporary political field has profoundly differed from the
previous past, Africa Confidential was correct in describing “a nostalgia”
(2012:1) in the Mogadishu government for the adoption of the military
regime apparatus; however, the description obscures more than it illumi-
nates. Given the gradual reabsorption of the old guard, as well as following
the military regime’s policies, it is indeed more than a question of nostal-
gic evocation. Echoing the military regime’s policy of making Somali the
official government language, the government has announced adopting the
same policy. The policy of making Somali (rather than English or Arabic)
the official government language was first adopted by Siad Barre, who aimed
to replace the country’s Western-educated elites with his Soviet-trained,
undereducated low-ranking military officers (Ingiriis 2016b:86–87); however,
it was only the intention of the government, but also the expectation of the
international community, to prove itself as a functioning authority—some-
thing that pushed the president to behave as a Siad Barre in the making,
even if he lacked the former dictator’s absolute power. The US allegation
against Hassan Sheikh—that he has shown weak leadership—has acceler-
ated even more his mimicry of Siad Barre’s authoritarianism (The Financial
Times 2014). His declaration a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry
visited Mogadishu, on 5 May 2015, that he has been cognizant of what many
Somalis might think of him, mainly that he has become “a new dictator,”
is itself both a caveat and a confession.22 His real intention may not be to
mimic Siad Barre, but to use mimesis to show how he was on the path of
being a powerful leader. The mimicry detaches his government from the
masses, who recall the days of the military regime with mixed, traumatic
feelings (residents in focus groups, Mogadishu, May and September 2015).
Mimicry of the military regime is not something monopolized solely
by the top government authorities. Both the president and the public refer
equally to legislation promulgated during dictatorial rule. One telling exam-
ple was Hassan Sheikh’s reference to law 6, dated 2 December 1980, which
had given absolute power to Siad Barre in appointing the Mogadishu region’s
authorities, allowing him to rule the capital from the Villa Somalia (the
presidential palace).23 Whenever a contentious land dispute would emerge
africa TODAY 63(1)

in Mogadishu courts, the disputants used as legal references the regime’s
official bulletin. In a live Somali talk-show television debate, a Somali caller
advised the government “Maxamed Siyaad Barre inay tusaale ka dhigato
isagoo kale[na] in la helo” (to make Mohamed Siad Barre an example and
embodiment of governance)—basically Siad Barre to be a symbol of the
state.24 A female caller to the government’s television station went even fur-
ther to suggest that, even if Somalia achieved a functioning state, a govern-
65
ment other than Siad Barre’s would not be tasteful for her. After proclaiming
that “dowladdu abtiyaashey bey ahaayeen, Reer Xaaji Masalle baan ahay”
(the former government consisted of my uncles, I’m from the family of Haji
Masalle), she prayed for “tiiyoo kale Allow noogu beddel” (O Allah, grant
us a government like the previous one).25
Vestiges of the authoritarianism of Siad Barre’s regime evaporated, but
their sociopolitical vicissitudes have prevailed in Mogadishu, dominating the
political landscape. This means that, if Barre went away, Siad stayed behind,
similar to the Karl Marx observed by Humphrey (1998). On the political
front, attempts at reconstituting a Siadist-style state would continue, even
when empirical reality indicated that continuation of such attempts would
be futile and flawed. Ethnographic data gathered from Mogadishu suggest
that government authorities have hardly extricated themselves from the
shadows of the military regime, even educationally.26 Preparing a curriculum
for higher education, a government minister has announced that referencing
the “previous curriculum is important” because “our university should be
like the previous university.” By “previous” is always meant the military
regime.27 Avoiding the past to dominate the present has not always been
an easy task—even more so when the impact of the military regime on the
minds of public and political players is constantly recalled. The recent, well-
publicized London welcome party for Deeqa Mohamed Siad, Barre’s youngest
daughter, was an important expression of how far the former president had
made a comeback, not only in minds, but in contemporary social spaces.28
Where in Somalia Is Siad Barre?
Given the functionality and failure of the government, Hassan Sheikh has
neither advanced a new, original political order nor intrinsically built innova-
tive institutions, rather than following in the footsteps of his predecessors
with forceful mimicry of the military regime. Circumscribed and confined to
the capital without much muscle from within, his government has resided
in downtown Mogadishu amid daily suicidal attacks from Al-Shabaab insur-
gents.29 Propped up and protected by the AMISOM forces, his government
does not extend its power even to Halane, the heavily fortified compound of
most of the international community staff in Mogadishu, reflecting its weak
position vis-à-vis external pressures.30 The evident fact that the government
does not fully control the capital contradicts the conventional wisdom in
Africa, which is that if you rule the capital, you rule the country. Aside from
africa TODAY 63(1)
the peripheries, if the government had effectively and efficiently ruled the
capital and provided security, it might have achieved some public semblance
of legitimacy and credibility. Despite its powerlessness, government authori-
ties tend to act in an authoritarian manner to broadcast the scant power
they possess in a form of mimicry. The president’s picture hangs in most
government offices in Mogadishu, as did Barre’s, whose young-looking photo
hooked into the wall of every government building and shop in the country.
66
This type of Siadist-style projection of an all-powerful ruler is adopted at a

ministerial level, but it is something that can be found in other African dic-
tatorships. The appointment of a minister of tourism to a country that James

Ferguson has recently described as “the world’s most dangerous place” (2013)
stands as an extreme facet of mimicry, though successive governments have
never been distracted to appoint such a ministry over the years.
While the president has busied himself in firsthand mimicry, senior
government authorities have pursued a secondhand mimesis. Abdi Farah
Shirdoon “Saa’id,” a respected businessman and his first prime minister (he
has appointed three prime ministers thus far), tried to extend the mimicry
to the outside. He wrote a letter in March 2013 to the US State Department
in support of General Ali Samatar, Siad Barre’s immediate subordinate, who
was accused of crimes against humanity that occurred during the genocide
in the north (present-day Somaliland).31 In the letter, Saa’id even sought to
disregard the court case. Probably, to place himself in a better position while
portraying himself as a more legitimate heir of Siad Barre than his boss,
Saa’id visited Siad Barre’s tomb in Buurdhuubo, southern Somalia, on 31
March 2013. Radio Mogadishu reported that he prayed for the ousted dicta-
tor.32 The president, however, did not allow his prime minister to monopo-
lize Siad Barre’s symbolic memory: speaking in a teleconference with Somali
diaspora intellectuals, he emphasized that he himself had also visited Siad
Barre’s tomb.33 However, the salience of clan identity, a significant feature of
Somali politics, privileged the prime minister. As a clansman of Siad Barre’s,
Saa’id had made his fortunes as a contractor under the military regime. When
he later lost a vote of confidence in the parliament, Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed,
his co-clansman, was appointed in his place. On the same day the new prime
minister was sworn in, a victim of the military regime publicly complained
that Somalia had fallen under the rule of the old regime.34 Abdiweli, like his
predecessor, was a junior member of the military regime.
Following forty days of delay, the new prime minister unveiled his
council of ministers. The time the announcement was made—at 3:00 a.m.
on 17 January 2014—astounded few who were unfamiliar with the historical
continuity. The timing was not coincidental: it matched the exact minute
that Siad Barre had used to announce his cabinets. Perhaps more imitative
was the day of the announcement, a Friday. Siad Barre would mark only two
days to declare his cabinet: Tuesday and Friday. On reflection, the announce-
ment can be referred to a somewhat similar incident, where Siad Barre’s
onetime premier, General Ali Samatar, declared a council of ministers on a
Friday afternoon in February 1990 (Aroma 2005:157; Faarax 1990). The link
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between the past and the present reflects intentional mimicry. Remembering
Siad Barre’s regime, a Somali author asks whether his readers (he supposes
them to be Somalis) cry whenever they recall how “the Somali state and
its army” were “strong” during that time (Axmed 2006:102). Depending on
state actions, the word strong has different meanings to different Somalis by
virtue of contested memories. The way that those brutalized by the military
regime paint it is diametrically opposed to the way that those who benefitted
67
from it put it. When the Somali geographer Abdi Samatar advocates “a strong
state,” what he has in mind is a Siadist state (Samatar 1994:87). This strength
is not what Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, in their observation of the
state consolidation in Africa, meant by “a functionally strong state,” which
asserts “absolute control over society” (1999:21 and 25; Herbst 2014), but it
suggests a similar trend.
In Rwanda, Paul Kagame’s government, and in Ethiopia, Meles
Zenawi’s, had repudiated the reintegration of politicians and soldiers who
had served in the Juvénal Habyarimana regime and in the Mengistu Haile
Mariam regime, respectively, but in Somalia, the remnants of Siad Barre’s
regime are conceived of as technocrats, the only experienced fiduciaries who
could master the business of governing.35 The fact that the current speaker
of parliament is Mohamed Sheikh Osman “Jawaari,” a junior minister under
that regime, is a manifestation of how much the technocrats from the old
regime are valued. His name appeared in the regime’s official bulletin after he
had been appointed by Siad Barre as a member of the revolutionary council in
Banaadir Province.36 As though history is to be rewriting itself again, Ahmed
Abdi Haashi “Hasharo” and Abdirahman Sheikh Iise, two of the most senior
advisers to Hassan Sheikh, had also been members of the military regime.
So were General Shariif Sheekhunaa Maye and General Mohamed Hassan,
the most recent police commissioners under presidents Sheikh Ahmed and
Hassan Sheikh, not to mention General Mohamed Aden Ahmed and his
predecessor, General Daher Aden Elmi “Indha-Qarshe,” commandants of
the army. With mere mimesis, since most of them were schooled under
Siad Barre’s regime, they are considered to be “institutional memory,”
thanks to their former experience of being part of the regime. The town talk
in Mogadishu is that the government’s recent appointment of Ali Abdulle
Guure, a blind politician, to the same political position held during the Siad
Barre regime by another blind politician, Warsame Abdullahi Ali “Warsame
Indhool” (Warsame the blind), was part and parcel of the re-Siadization of
the state. This mimicry has produced a Siadist—a promoter pursuing the
ambitious tendency of the old regime in professing rule by force, rather than
by law—acting hand in hand with Siadism, a set of dictatorial predilections
in seeking and maintaining power on the basis of a Machiavellian philoso-
phy whose advocates are devoid of moral and political legitimacy (Ingiriis
2012:67). This is not something to which the top government authorities
are oblivious.
The main preoccupation of the Mogadishu government has been on
how to craft strong hegemonic security institutions and create a profitable
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political infrastructure based on the same lines, but it has hardly ever dis-
cussed how to reform and reformulate the institutions that had facilitated
oppression. On the occasion of an official visit by Djiboutian President
Geelle, Hassan Sheikh made a positive comment on the National Security
Court (Maxkamadda Badbaadada), a court that sentenced to death many
political opponents of the military regime. The well-publicized visit to the
previous site of the court was a telling example of how the reformation of
68
the military regime’s institutions is a crucial governmental policy. When the

former military regime’s authoritarian tactics are pointed out, government
authorities raise a rhetorical question: “Wax dhaama ma haysaa?” (Do

you have anything better than them?)—a query that reiterates its answer
by deleting the “do” in the first sentence “wax dhaama lama hayo” (you
have nothing better than them).37 The paradox is that opposition groups
in Mogadishu talk about changing the leaders, not the system (interviews
with political party leaders in Mogadishu, 21 July 2015), like their fellows
in Djibouti (interviews with civil servants in Djibouti, 18 September 2015),
but unlike their counterparts in Ethiopia, who concentrate on changing
the system, not the leaders (interviews with Ethiopian intellectuals, Addis
Ababa, 16 March 2016).
Siadism without Siad: The Siadist State
The good old days of the military regime have been made alive with news
reports and political commentaries on contemporary Somali issues, espe-
cially when the mimicry is regularly recapitulated visually. One important
ethnographic site whereby one can excavate a stronger sense of Siadism is
the nationalistic songs chanted on TV-ga Qaranka (Somali National Televi-
sion [SNTV]) and Raadiyo Muqdisho (Radio Mogadishu). Both the national
television and radio networks open their news music with the same song
of Siad Barre’s regime. Visual evidence from the television shows a stronger
sense of mimicry. Watching SNTV or listening to the radio reveals a repeti-
tion of, and reflection on, the days of the so-called kacaankii barakeysnaa
(the blessed revolution), the presidentially decreed official title of the mili-
tary regime. SNTV constantly features young boys and girls from the age of
seven to fifteen, to whom it gives the epithet ubaxa kacaanka (flowers of the
revolution), a name drawn from the Siadist state.38 SNTV and the radio call
the president madaxweynaha dalka (president of the country), as Siad Barre
had been described. SNTV and the radio work are not different from how
both had worked under the old regime. In “Maxaa noo qabsoomay?” (“What
have we achieved so far?”), SNTV’s weekly commentary, the measurement
of the government is set against the military regime’s achievements.
Songs and speeches follow the same pattern, and poems eulogizing
the president expect something in return, especially in the form of financial
gifts, called ka farxin (make yourself happy). Unlike during the military
regime, poetic composition is sometimes more straightforward than pure
panegyric. Current poets tend to tell the government what to do and from
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where to start. A song composed to praise the government admonishes:
Dowladdey diiradda ka caddee (O government, make your plans clear
and compact).39 Another song ends with a praise: noo ducee madaxweyne,
aanu kuu duceynee (Mr. President, pray for us and we, in turn, pray for
you).40 However, political sycophancy is not solely confined to Mogadishu:
it has spread into other entities, such as Somaliland, Puntland, Southwest,
and Galmudug.41 Not merely in Somalia, sycophancy remains a common
69
phenomenon in many parts of Africa (Keen 2005:71), but what makes it
unique in contemporary Somali politics is how it draws from the military
regime. At a live televised event in Officio Governo, the former government
office in Mogadishu, during the inauguration of Somali independence on 1
July 2015, everyone who came to the podium addressed the president by
reiterating “Mr. President, we have done this and that.”42 The government
ministers and the Mogadishu mayor reiterated that the real speech would
not be theirs, but the president’s. Everyone swiftly stood up when Hassan
Sheikh approached the podium to give a speech in which he exhorted the
audience to give up politics altogether, urging “let us not all be politicians.”43
By urging the public to refrain from politics, the speech told the public not
to oppose his regime.
From time to time, praises for the government are fused with praises
for the old regime. Radio Mogadishu generated controversy when it replayed
the famous song of “Samadiidow dabin baa kuu dhigan lagugu dili doono”
(O reactionaries of peace, a death trap is set for you). The release led one of
the local subclan elders in Mogadishu to complain directly to the president,
as the song evoked the execution, in July 1972, of its son General Salaad
Gabeyre Kediye, along with his two associates, General Mohamed Aynaan-
she Guuleed and Colonel Abdikadir Dheel Abdulle.44 The song had been
played on the same radio station shortly after their execution by a firing
squad to forewarn potential dissenters that conducting any revolt and rebel-
lion would end their lives. A day after, SNTV released an early 1980s speech
by Hassan Abshir Farah, the former Mayor of Mogadishu, who was part of
the execution process, ordering a reposition of the small-scale merchants
of Mogadishu markets and telling them where to sell their commodities.45
The radio station broadcast a news bulletin about an official government
press release reacting to xenophobic attacks routinely perpetrated by black
South Africans against Somali traders. The “black perpetrators” were
reminded of a 1970s speech given by President Siad Barre at the height of
his power, in which he had expressed concerns over the plight of black
people under apartheid.46 Yet the radio, as with the other government-run
media, was silent on how Siad Barre had forged close and covert relations
with the apartheid regime in the early 1980s, at a time when that regime
was under an international embargo (Africa Confidential 1987; Greenfield
1989a, 1989b:66).
The search for doing things as they were done under the old regime
creates suspicion among people and makes the ongoing state reformation
processes more difficult. Considering the inner circle family involvement
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of the state authority, the government has become more Siadist than
Siad Barre’s family. SNTV implies the impression of a political family
tied to state power—note the Swahili political phrase Baba na Mama
(“Father and Mother”)—by recrafting a new version of Siad Barre’s state,
where the president is the father figure and his wife the mother of the
nation.47 For example, SNTV airs news reports of Hassan Sheikh’s two
wives holding women’s gatherings at the presidential palace and visiting
70
places in the capital.48 By contrast, of Siad Barre’s two wives, only Khadija
Mo’allim was seen at the center of power in the Villa Somalia. Because
the mimicry was shadowed by mimesis, SNTV also once showed footage
of the wife of the then Prime Minister, Saa’id Asha Haji Elmi, visiting the
internally displaced people’s camp of Al-Adaala and providing donations
to impoverished people.49
The signs of the state system and structure shared by all post–Siad
Barre government political players are drawn directly from Siad Barre.
During an SNTV interview with Mohamed Omar Dalha, a member of the
current parliament (and previous deputy speaker), Siad Barre’s role was
invoked as usual, not because it was just appreciated, but because the
power of the state was nostalgically asked to return.50 With a background
of a group of soldiers in line, Dalha reflected on how, in his words, “we
were once a powerful country, a powerful nation,” which had become a
failed state.51 The news bulletin began with soldiers (men and women), a
new recruitment for the government military. The phrase used to describe
the parliament was the same one used by Siad Barre’s TV and radio: Golaha
Shacabka (The House of the People).52 The news bulletin featured in its
third pronouncement a press statement by Abdirahman Abdi Hussein
“Guulwade,” the Somali ambassador to Djibouti, one of many of Siad
Barre’s sons-in-law, making a congratulatory statement on the nomination
of a new prime minister. After reminding his audience of the peace and
security that Somalia had once enjoyed, Guulwade remarked that he had
known the appointed prime minister, Abdiweli Sheikh, “for many years,”
calling him “the perfect man for the post” and congratulating the president
for having selected “the right man to the post.”53 Abdiweli, as was Saa’id,
was considered the right man because he was simply a descendant of the
military regime. On administrative terms, nonetheless, both prime min-
isters lacked the technocratic skills desperately required for running the
executive branch of the government.
The Re-Siadization of the Fragile Security Institutions
This section traces how security policies were pursued for the first three
years after September 2012, when the incumbent government came to
power. It particularly tracks the security agencies, such as the intelligence
services. To silence political opponents’ voices, the government reformed
the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), the notorious intel-
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ligence institution, associated with the military regime.54 Until quite
recently, the NISA took orders directly from President Hassan Sheikh
through his distant cousin General Abdirahman Mohamed Tuuryare, a
young Egyptian-educated officer, who is close to the president through
sub-subclan affiliation. This vertical and familial relationship, but other-
wise parsimonious and partly patrimonial ties between the president and
his NISA chief cousin, mimics Siad Barre, whose intelligence chief was
71
General Ahmed Saleebaan Dafle, his son-in-law.55 It underpins profound
distrust and disloyalty among intelligence agents, to the extent that some
within the agency were coopted into collaborating with the insurgents
they were supposed to counter (interviews with NISA officers, Mogadishu,
May and September 2015 and April–June 2016). As with the NSS under the
military regime, NISA was instrumentalized: not only the president, but
other government ministers, even Mogadishu district commissioners, have
been alleged to have used it to detain dissidents or eliminate potential rivals
(interview with NISA officers, Mogadishu, May and September 2015). The
remaking of the government courts has also drawn from Siad Barre’s judicial
structure: the chief judge resides in the middle in an upper seat, while his
assistants sit in lower seats.56
Coercively violent methods and ways of imposing authoritarian order
bear remarkable resemblance to those during the days of the military regime.
For instance, the government allows NISA members to conduct their opera-
tions in a freewheeling manner. By bypassing the parliament—the unelected
institution that elected the president—in conducting extrajudicial arrests,
NISA officers arrest bystanders and parliamentarians in equal measure.57
Extrajudiciary arrests without parliamentary approval go against government
claims that Somalia is principally a democratic country (interviews with
government ministers, Mogadishu, 26 May 2015). This takes out the faces of
a democratic government that hardly exists, albeit placed in a physical form.
Even when the proposed constitution clearly stipulates freedom of speech
as a crucial part of human liberty (The Federal Republic of Somalia 2012),
the attempt at reconstituting a state system mimicking Siad Barre’s mili-
tary regime sets the stage for dictatorship. Ordinary people complain about
NISA’s urban operations as the agency adopts torture to extract information
from detainees in Godka Jilicow, the Jili’ow cave, an underground station
where Siad Barre’s regime would torture political prisoners.58 The laws to
which NISA and the police forces refer, and even the names of operations,
like Heegan (vigilant), are those of the former regime.59 The copy-and-paste
policies are no more pronounced than the security sector, as “intelligence
agencies modelled on the Barre regime’s feared domestic intelligence force”
have been adopted, even though “memories of Barre’s brutal practices . . .
destroy respect for state institutions and centralized security” (Hills 2014a:
95–96, 2014b:4 and 11, 2014c:772–777, 2014d:173).
The life of the former NISA chief illuminates how far government
authorities pursue a rule based on authoritarianism where power is con-
centrated in one hand. In 2013, the first Somali ambassador since 1989
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was accredited to the Court of King James’s. When I met the new ambas-
sador in early May 2014, in a luxurious hotel in Central London, the con-
versation varied from present to past political processes in Somalia. The
performance of the previous governments was evaluated, and soon the
discussion diverted to the insecurity prevailing in Mogadishu, especially
the insurgency preventing the government from ensuring peace there. As if
the only way a political order and security could be realized were to render
72
NISA a strong agency, as it had been during Siad Barre’s regime, the ambas-
sador recounted a meeting he had had with General Dafle, the former intel-
ligence leader and Siad Barre’s son-in-law, in Brussels, where the latter lives
as a refugee. When questioned about the need to meet Dafle, since many
Somalis thought him to have been implicated in crimes against humanity
during the regime (Africa Watch 1990; Bongartz 1991),60 the ambassador
reported that he hoped to obtain “the NSS files” from him. Two months
later, in July 2014, the new ambassador was recalled and appointed head
of NISA, but his impulsive arrest of a member of parliament allied to the
then prime minister—a rival to the president—led the council of ministers
to fire him within two months.61
Conclusion
Admittedly, the conundrum of states in Africa has so perplexed Africanists

that the slightest hint of progress is deftly popularized as a model, or more
superficially, a miracle (Cook and Sarkin 2011; Dorr, Lund, and Roxburgh
2010). Nowhere in Africa has there been—nor is it more graphic—a corpus
of a miracle than the new Somalia. Current developments in Mogadishu
suggest progress; recent academic and public discourse has discussed sup-
posedly miraculous developments there. The evolution of the new state
reconfigurations has been amplified to emphasize that the Somali state has
moved onto a new track after “a dream team” encompassing a new cadre of
political actors rose to lead the federal government in Mogadishu. Politics in
Africa, nevertheless, straddles suffering and smiling (Chabal 2009). In Soma-
lia, more suffering than smiling has been visible. Critical to the smiling are
pressing issues that occupy center stage. While business is booming, mostly
run by diaspora people close to the government, ordinary people’s conditions
are dire, and many live under a constant security threat.62 Killings in broad
daylight and robbery at night, coupled with attacks on civilians, are constant
in the capital. At dusk, many neighborhoods are ruled by Al-Shabaab.63
With a focus on the central government in Mogadishu, this article
has provided a fresh perspective by proposing that it is premature to see a
miracle that has yet to come. To achieve the benchmarks put in place by the
international community, the government mimics the authoritarian institu-
tions of Siad Barre’s regime. Even the state reformation processes currently
underway in Somalia have sought to reinstate a Siadist-style state, basically
a one-man state. Observers writing about state reformation in Somalia have
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rarely noticed the current government’s preoccupation with the military
regime (e.g., Hammond 2013). Exploring the metaphysics of state power and
politics in the emergence of authoritarianism in Mogadishu, the article has
revealed that the design of the state put in place in Mogadishu has drawn
profoundly from mimicry of Siad Barre’s regime. Empirically, the article has
provided oral and visual evidence, as well as ethnographic observations, of
mimicry and mimesis in the remaking of the military regime. The evidence
73
presented counters the concentration of colonial continuation so inherent in
the mimicry literature. The era when African leaders imitated colonialism
to consolidate power is long gone by. Today, they either imitate or maintain
the institutions that served their predecessors well. Siad Barre’s model of the
state shapes the ways in which the state was built in the past or is to be built
in the future. Imitation to authoritarianism is seen as the only measure of
how the government can broadcast power and consolidate territorial rule;
however, what is desirable as a form of state differs from what is practical
in terms of state apparatus.
The question is not, then, why the Mogadishu government mimics the
military regime to broadcast its power, but why Siad Barre’s regime still mat-
ters, when it ended so long ago. One among many answers is that both the
public and political players have no memory of any other authority than the
military regime. Scholars have observed elsewhere in Africa how the insti-
tutions and instruments used in the past could be replicated only when the
imitative leaders consider them expedient and useful. To use an African anal-
ogy: if the mimicry of the Mobutuist state as it was inherited from Mobutu
Sese Seko led to the failure and lack of functionality of the Congo DR state
until recently (Segatti 2015), in Somalia, mimesis of Siad Barre is assumed
to be the only path leading to right and real state reformation. This recalling
of political remembrance and institutional mimicry is mostly an overlooked
phenomenon in the existing literature, while the structure and system of
state power as a whole remain underresearched. The international com-
munity’s insistence that the current state system in Somalia be maintained
also warrants further research. Superficially, the Somali presidents after Siad
Barre have sought to be the type of African leader identified by Sandbrook
three decades ago: “The strongman, usually the president, occupies the
center of political life. Front and center stage[,] he is the central force around
which all else revolves. Not only the ceremonial head of state, the president
is also the chief political, military[,] and cultural figure; head of government,
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of the governing party (if there
is one)[,] and even chancellor of the local university” (Sandbrook 1985:90).
I. M. Lewis, the leading Somalia anthropologist, acknowledged nearly
fifteen years ago that Somalia will be under the shadow of Siad Barre’s ghost
for many years to come (2002b). But some Somalis did wrong in assum-
ing that Somalia would never fall back to the Somalia of Siad Barre. In the
words of one Somali elder: “It was, in any case, obvious that Somalia’s old
highly centralized political set-up [sic], which led to Siyad Barre’s highly
personalized savage regime, was finished[,] dead” (Duhul 2012:128). The
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elder seems a bit pessimistic in assuming that the military regime perished.
This may be true physically on the outside, but it is not politically and
psychologically relevant inside Somalia. Foucault himself believed that, in
politics, “there is in fact no such thing as a return” (1984:250); however, one
must not lose sight of the different impulses in the contemporary political
settings, whereby the old military regime is now on the verge of a partial, if
not perfect, return. The contemporary reality in Somalia contradicts Ahmed
74
Samatar’s observation in the 1990s that “few Somalis [would] regret the
shattering of the post-colonial state—particularly in its militaristic guise”
(Samatar 2001:21). In a recent interview on a local radio station, Abdi Hoosh

Ashkir, who made his wealth during the military regime, lamented that
“every Somali wants to become either Siad Barre or Hoosh.”64 Similar obser-
vations have been echoed by Ali Khalif Galayr, a former Siad Barre minister,
who stresses that “the unfortunate doom the Somalis are enduring from the
collapse onwards, including all the past transitional governments, is that
everyone sees Mohamed Siad Barre as his model.”65 What one may draw
from such reflective observations is exceptional obsession and insistence in
emulating the military regime.
Siad Barre remains in the memory of many Somalis, and how the
people judge him is that the worst came after him. On 8 March 2016, I met
a Somali elder in a Somali Internet café in the north London neighborhood
of Enfield, watching YouTube videos of speeches by Siad Barre. When I asked
how he found the former president, his response was expressive: cid kama
dambeyn, nin buu ahaa (we found no one better than him): ostensibly, Siad
Barre was not the preferable choice, but no one better had come to the Villa
Somalia. This deep impression affects how Africans demand their national
states to look like. On my way back from the John F. Kennedy library of the
Addis Ababa University to Intercontinental Addis on 18 March 2016, my taxi
driver was describing past Ethiopian leaders from Menelik to Meles, when
I interrupted him to ask whom he preferred: the current rulers in Ethiopia
or the Derg regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. He insisted “Mengistu.” It is
perhaps only in Congo and few other places in Africa that the former military
dictators would hardly receive such evocative feelings. But nowhere is as
desperate as Somalia. People I met in Mogadishu do not realize that, as long
as Siad Barre’s imitators are attempting to (re)conquer state power, it would
be difficult for Somalia to achieve a functioning and legitimate authority.66
The memory (or mimicry) of the military regime is one of the reasons why
the Mogadishu government works in ways that are unconducive to the real-
ity on the ground. Indeed, the main reason why a legitimate state remains
unachievable in Mogadishu can be found in the Siadization of state institu-
tions. Unless and until the government changes course and stops pursuing
the former military regime’s power through mimicry and mimesis, a unified
central state with legitimate acceptance in the eyes of the public will never
emerge.
africa TODAY 63(1)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research for this article was partly supported by the African Leadership Centre, King’s College,
London. The article was first presented as a paper at the Faculty of Political Science and Inter-
national Relations, Addis Ababa University, on 23 March 2016. I am grateful to the lecturers and
graduate students of the university for their feedback. I thank three anonymous readers of this
75
journal for their encouraging comments and helpful suggestions.
NOTES
1. Personal observations, Mogadishu, May 20, 2015, and May 6, 2016.

2. YouTube, “Rageh Omaar’s Report from Mogadishu: Much Hope to Be Found on the Streets
of Mogadishu.”
3. Somali National Television, “Kooxda Deegaan heesta kacday Kuftay (official video) 2013”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n1kPOzyQ44).
4. “Umu Shariif Hees cusub Muqdisho” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcJxVK_0yho),
between 00:41–01:23 and 02:24–03:47). My translation.
5. As Zumba stated: “I am profoundly proud to announce that we have an ambassador of Somalia
who is here with us today. . . . Somalia has been without a government for more than twenty
years . . . and now they are on the road to recovery, and we will assist whichever way we
can” (“Warkii Somali National TV,” Somali National Television, January 30, 2013, https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=zk-fzxAP9og).
6. One exception is the recent detailed empirical study by Ingiriis (2015).
7. “Attempts to revive the failed state in Somalia without addressing the causes of that failure
have proven again and again to be [a] recipe for failure. That the error has been repeated so
often since 1991 is an indictment both of the myopic Somali political leadership and of the
uninspired international mediation in the Somali crisis” (Menkhaus 2007:363).
8. For how Siad Barre’s regime had ruled, see Ingiriis 2016a.
9. This type of mimicry is not necessarily what Fourie calls “unreflective imitation” (2014:540).
10. To its credit, the Somaliland Supreme Court has used more than twice the 1960s laws promul-
gated by the democratic civilian government and prevented itself from using Siad Barre’s laws.
11. NISA IN BRIEF: Responsibilities, Security Situations, Terrorism Incidents in 2014–15, Capabilities &
Requirement (document produced by the intelligence agency), June 8, 2015.
12. Interviews with civil-society groups, Mogadishu, May and September 2015.
13. In the last government of Siad Barre, Abdikassim Salaad was a deputy prime minister and
Minister of the Interior. External pressures, mostly stemming from Ethiopia, kept his new
government from consolidating power beyond his palace in Mogadishu (Smith 2000). For
insightful analysis and observation, see Anonymous 2002.
14. In November 2001, the new government sent a team of elderly artists from the old regime
to Djibouti to attend the annual African festival. One foreign diplomat had to ask the Somali
deputy minister of information, who led the team, whether there was no new young artist in
the country. Personal observation, November 15, 2001.
15. The exclusion of the governments of presidents Ali Mahdi Mohamed (1991–1993) and
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Mohamed Farah Aideed (1995–1996) does not imply that the mimicry began under Abdikas-
sim Salaad; it can be traced to Aideed’s era also. After he was elected to the presidency at the
Arta reconciliation conference in Djibouti, I traveled with Abdikassim Salaad in March 2002
during his tours in Dhuusamareeb, Eelbuur, Aabudwaak, Adaado, Guri’eel, and Matabaan in
Galgaduud and Hiiraan regions in central Somalia. Over the course of these trips, he would
entertain us at night with stories of traveling with Siad Barre inside Somalia.
16. This was one of the demands of the elders who wrote a petition to Siad Barre to resign.
76
Manifesto, “Bayaanka Muqdisho ee Koowaad,” May 15, 1990, in possession of the author. For a
detailed study, see Ingiriis 2012. See also Horn of Africa 1990; Africa Confidential 1990a, 1990b;
Kaplan 2010:93.
17. Personal observations and conversations with Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, London, March
2010, and Oxford, February–March 2015.
18. “Xafladii soo dhaweynta Madaxweynaha Somalia, Gothenbrug [sic], Sweden” (https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip5z0B9h9C4); “Fanaaniinta London oo wacdaro ka dhigay Xafla-
dii Madaxweynaha” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grkee2FTw6I;) “[X]aflada madax-
weynaha pr, xassan sh. maxamud toronto canada” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=aXRh60yOiO0).
19. On Somaliland and Puntland, see Hoehne 2009; Johnson and Smaker 2014.
20. “Delivering Somalia’s New Deal Compact: Ministerial High Level Partnership Forum, Copen-
hagen, 19–20 November 2014”; “Opening Remarks, High Level Partnership Forum, Monday
10 November 2014,” in possession of the author. Radio Mogadisho [sic], “SOMALIA: President
Mohamud addresses speech to SNA in Defense ministry base in Mogadishu,” October 27, 2014
(http://www.radiomuqdisho.net/somalia-president-mohamud-addresses-speech-to-sna-in
-defense-ministry-base-in-mogadishu/).
21. Interview, presidential adviser, Mogadishu, July 12, 2015.
22. Caasimadda, “Madaxweyne Xasan ‘Aniga kaligii taliye ma ahi,’ ” May 6, 2015.
23. The Federal Republic of Somalia, “Xeer Madaxweyne, Lr. 13, Magacaabid Ku/Xigeennada Gud-
doomiyaha Gobalka Banaadir iyo Xoghayaha Guud ee Gobalka,” October 3, 2014. Compare
“Jamhuuriyadda Soomaaliya, Xafiiska Madaxweynaha, Xeerka Madaxweynaha, J. S. Lr. 280,
taariikh,” July 23, 2012, “Abuuris Gobol, Madaxweynaha J. S. Shariif Sheekh Axmed”; Faafinta
Rasmiga ah, Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliya, “Xeer Madaxweyne JDS L. 24 ee 8
Dis. 1987, Magacaabid Nootaayo,” Sannadka 16aad, Muqdisho, April 15, 1988, Lr. 1 R4, 270,
in possession of author.
24. Somali SAT Television, “Taariikhda Dawladdii Ziyaad Barre Sababihii Riday” (https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=v1szNdhePl0). My translation.
25. Observations on SNTV in December 2013–April 2015. Currently, a website dedicated to Siad
Barre is available at http://www.jaallesiyaad.com/.
26. Somali National Television, “shuruucdii iyo qaanuunkii ay hore u lahaan jirtay Jaamacadda
Ummadda Soomaaliyeed” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbEb3IHEAXg).
27. My observations, Mogadishu, August 5, 2015.
28. YouTube, “Jaalle Siyaad Barre oo loo xiisay” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2H
_oGAYSEs). On my way to Mogadishu via Turkey on May 17, 2015, I met Suuban Mohamed Siad
Barre, another daughter of Siad Barre, traveling to Mogadishu for the first time. Since her father
was ousted in 1991, she said she had not returned to Mogadishu. Her visit showed that Siad
Barre’s family had found a place wherein their father was cherished and seen as a father figure.
29. On the evolution of Al-Shabaab, see Hansen 2013.
africa TODAY 63(1)

30. Local reactions to these forces echo Chris Dietrich’s conceptualization of military forces as a
profitable business (2001).
31. “Jamhuuriyadda Soomaaliya, Xukuumadda Federaaliga ee Soomaaliya, Xafiiska Ra’iisul Wasaa-
raha, Ref: OPM/00128/13, 26.02.2013,” Letter to The Honorable John Forbes Kerry, United
States Secretary of State. See also BBC News 2012; Roberts 2013: 23–30.
32. Radio Muqdisho, “R/wasaaraha oo booqday Qabriga Madaxweynihii hore ee dalka Marxuum
Maxamed Siyaad” (http://radiomuqdisho.net/archives/rwasaaraha-oo-booqday-qabriga
77
-madaxweynihii-hore-ee-dalka-marxuum-maxamed-siyaad/).
33. Talo iyo Tusaale, “The Vision 2016 Conference Call Conversation with the President,” May 9,
2015. Somali National Television, ‘Xasan Sheekh oo Siyaad Barre u soo duceeyay’ (https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=2WR-4JbKixg).
34. Abdulkadir Abukar Spinato, “Dalka Soomaaliya oo mar kale u gacan galay Taliskii Kelitaliska
ahee la riday 1991kii,” Warsheekh, December 21, 2013.
35. Interviews with members of parliament, Mogadishu, Somalia, July–August 2015.
36. Faafin Rasmi ah ee Jamhuriyadda Dimuqradika [sic] Somaliya, “Xeer Madaxweynaha Golaha
Sare ee Kacaanka, Tr. 16 Dishembre 1974, L. 142—Magacaabid Golaha Kacaanka ee Gobolka
Banaadir,” Sanadka 2aad, Muqdisho, December 28, 1974, L. 2 R. 12, 601–554.
37. Interviews with various government officials, Mogadishu, Somalia, May–September 2015.
Compare interview with Ahmed Saleebaan Dafle (http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2
/somali/2009_10/40TH-ANNIVERSSARY-PART-4-20OCT09.mp3); interview with Mohamed
Ali Samatar (http://www.voanews.com/MediaAssets2/somali/2009_10/40th-ANNIVERSARY
-PART-1-18OCT09.mp3).
38. Somali National Television, “Hees Wadani UBAXA DEGMADA WADA JIR IYO HEESTA
MUQDISHO)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UCLJhBsLc0).
39. Somali National Television, “Kooxda Deegaan Heesta Maro Naga Dilaacday Official Wadani
Song” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDSHONjo7A4). My translation.
40. Somali National Television, “HEESTA BAARCAD KOOXDA DEEGAAN OFFICAIL VEDIO 2014”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgiEaRiB7HY). My translation. For a song praising and
praying for a newly appointed prime minister, see Somali National Television, “HEES LOO
QAADAY RWASAARAHA CUSUB ABDIWELI LIVE MOGADISHU” (https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=v4SOQEly7cY). A song praising the president’s wife was recently released and
posted on YouTube: “FOWSIYA FANKA FANAANAD QARAN HEES CUSUB MAAMA SAHRA OFFI-
CIAL HD 2016 BY DJABKOOW DY” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLKuqVrxVwI&index
=27&list=PLRdzUkX6qvu98xqchjxy2Wvj6SV0Y1Ohl).
41. YouTube, “Abdi qaboojiye (Siilaanyo allow nooda hana daadaheey)” (https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=4Rnf08jO2Qk); “Hoos ka daawo xafladii sanadguuradii koowaad ee ka soo
wareegatay markii xilka madaxtinimo ee Puntland loo doortay Cabdiweli Gaas” (http://
allsanaag.com/index.php/43-war-soomaali-ah/5017-sanad-guuradii-kowaad).
42. Personal observations in Officio Governo (government office), June 30, 2015.
43. Personal observations in Officio Governo (government office), June 30, 2015.
44. Warsaxan, “Beelweynta Hawiye oo Madaxweyne Xasan u gudbisay dacwad ka dhana heesta
Samadiidow iyo Dagaal [laga] cabsi qabo inuu curto,” January 13, 2014. For the execution of
Aynaanshe, Gabeyre, and Dheel, see Ingiriis 2016b.
45. Personal observations on SNTV on January 12, 2014.
46. Radio Muqdisho, “Xukuumadda Soomaaliya Oo Ka Hadashay Dhibaatada Dadka Soomaaliyeed
Ay Kala Kulmaan South Africa,” April 18, 2015 (http://www.radiomuqdisho.net/xukuumadda
africa TODAY 63(1)
-soomaaliya-oo-ka-hadashay-dhibaatada-dadka-soomaaliyeed-ay-kala-kulmaan-south
-africa/).
47. Baba na Mama is a term adopted in Kenya during Daniel arap Moi’s regime (Widner 1993).
48. Personal observations on SNTV, January 2013–January 2014.
49. Somali National Television, “WARKII SOMALI NATIONAL TV 30 JAN 2013” (https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=zk-fzxAP9og).
50. Personal observations on SNTV in January 2014.
78

52. The current constitution of Somalia calls it “The Parliament” (The Federal Republic of Somalia
2012).
54. “Somalia’s Intel Agency Celebrates 46th Anniversary,” AMISOM Media Monitoring, January 11,
2016.
55. For a detailed examination on how General Dafle and his intelligence agency acted during
Siad Barre’s regime, see Ingiriis 2016b: chapter 9.
56. “Maxkamada G/Banaadir oo dib u dhigtay Kiiska Wariyeyaal maanta Maxkamadda la
horkeenay,” Warfidiye (http://www.warfidiye.net/news56790.html).
57. Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya, Xukuumadda Soomaaliya, Xafiiska Ra’iisul Wasaa-
raha, ‘Ujeeddo: Wareegto (Dhawritaanka Xasaanadda Xildhibaanada & Golaha Wasiirada)’,
December 2, 2016.
58. “Hey’adda NISA oo war saxaafadeed ka soo saaray weerarkii maanta,” Radio Muqdisho,
(http://www.radiomuqdisho.net/taliyaha-nisa-oo-warsaxaafadeed-ka-soo-saaray-qaraxii
-maantasawirro/); “Ciidanka Nabadsugidda dowladda Somalia oo hawada ka saaray Radio
Risala,” Hiiraan Online, January 3, 2015 (http://www.hiiraan.com/news/2015/jan/wararka
_maanta3-89604.htm). The so-called regional federal states also follow the government’s
mimicry in this sense. “Dikreeto uu soo saaray M/weyne Cabdi Qaybdiid Oo lagu magacaabay
[T]aliska Nabadsugida,” Hobyo Radio (http://www.hobyoradio.com/7,29,20134.html). Compare
“Xeer Madaxweynaha JDS, L. 22 ee 25 Maajo 1985, Billad Maar ah oo Waddannimo ah oo lagu
maamuusay Jaalleyaasha Cali Maxamed Nuur NSSta, Cabdi Isaaq Cali NSSta iyo Injineerka
Nuur Aw Yuusuf,” Faafinta Rasmi Ah, Sannadka 13aad, Muqdisho, January 1, 1985, L. 6, 336.
59. Author’s observations with the police forces in Mogadishu, July 2015. Hills (2014a) also
observed an emulation of Siad Barre’s regime by security institutions.
60. “Dacwad la xiriirta Gumaadkii Axmed Saleebaan Dafle uu u geystay Ummadda Soomaaliyeed,
Jaaliyadda Soomaaliyeed ee Belgium, 1998–2005,” in author’s possession.
61. Somali National Television, “Golaha Wasiirrada oo xilkii ka qaaday Agaasimaha Hay’adda
Nabadsugidda” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN5tU-4wiqM).
62. Human Rights Watch, “Somalia: Forced Evictions of Displaced People, Tens of Thousands at Risk
in Capital” (press release), April 20, 2015. Compare AJ+, “Beyond the Massive Security Wall in
Somalia” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp21BsW_93k).
63. AMISOM Daily Media Monitoring, “Somali Islamists Kill Government Official, Bomb AU Convoy,”
May 6, 2015; AMISOM Daily Media Monitoring, “42 Bullet Proof Cars Missing From Somali
Government Offices,” April 22, 2015.
64. Available at http://www.toosiye.com/xoosh-oo-waraysi-qalddan-lala-soo-raadsaday-iyadoo
-ujeeddooyin-gurracan-laga-leeyahay/.
65. Universal TV, “Cali Khaliif Galleydh oo ka hadlay Somaliland iyo Khaatumo” (https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=RjJcxo1–u8w).
africa TODAY 63(1)

66. Interviews with Mogadishu residents, Mogadishu, May–September 2015, and April–June 2016.
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MOHAMED HAJI INGIRIIS is a Somali scholar currently completing a doc-

torate at the University of Oxford. He is a research associate at the African
Leadership Centre, King’s College, London. His book, The Suicidal State
in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of the Siad Barre Regime, 1969–1991, was
released in March 2016 by the University Press of America. His research
ranges widely and invokes the disciplines of anthropology, history, and polit-
ical science. He has written on cultural, historical, intellectual, legal, mari-
time, political, and social aspects of Somali society. He locates his work at
the intersection of state systems and structures that shape societal changes.
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How Somalia Works: Mimicry and the Making of Mohamed Siad Barre's Regime in

Recent literature on Somalia has largely been preoccupied

A colorful caption in the downtown Mogadishu intersection at the former

on earth” or “the world’s most quintessential failed state,” Somalia appears

africa TODAY 63(1)

The Meaning of Mimicry and Mimesis

africa TODAY 63(1)

The Return of Mohamed Siad Barre to Somali Politics

Djibouti took to the podium of the UN General Assembly and appealed to

africa TODAY 63(1)

any other system of a state other than that of Siad Barre.”21

Memory Matters a Lot

africa TODAY 63(1)

Where in Somalia Is Siad Barre?

This type of Siadist-style projection of an all-powerful ruler is adopted at a

tatorships. The appointment of a minister of tourism to a country that James

africa TODAY 63(1)

the military regime’s institutions is a crucial governmental policy. When the

authorities raise a rhetorical question: “Wax dhaama ma haysaa?” (Do

Siadism without Siad: The Siadist State

africa TODAY 63(1)

africa TODAY 63(1)

Admittedly, the conundrum of states in Africa has so perplexed Africanists

africa TODAY 63(1)

(Samatar 2001:21). In a recent interview on a local radio station, Abdi Hoosh

africa TODAY 63(1)

1. Personal observations, Mogadishu, May 20, 2015, and May 6, 2016.

africa TODAY 63(1)

51. Personal observations on SNTV in January 2014.

africa TODAY 63(1)

Greenfield, Richard. 1989a. Barre’s Unholy Alliances. Africa Report 66.

africa TODAY 63(1)

MOHAMED HAJI INGIRIIS is a Somali scholar currently completing a doc-

Research in African Literatures,

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

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