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This brave senior Somali officer spoke out against the tyrannical regime of dictator Farmaajo on Sunday. Maxamed Maxamuud Sahal Cawaale 'Shiddo' is his name. He is a Colonel in the Custodial Guards in Mogadishu. I phoned him as rumours spread that he was detained from his house.
Colonel Shiddo denied the troubling rumours and told me that he is safe & sound, but has stated that he has now been warned not to speak out again. Nonetheless, he is very confident to speak against oppression as he sees it. He has long been famous for telling the truth to power.
Colonel Shiddo told me he joined the Somali Armed Forces in 1974 as a very young man off from school. This was the time when many high school students could not wait for joining the army. Following a one-year local training, he said he went to Russia for military academy in 1975.
Unfortunately, after a year, while he was learning long-range missiles SAM-3, he was forced to return home, as a consequence of the souring relations between the Siad Barre regime and the Soviet Union due to the Horn politics of the 1977 war with Ethiopia's Mengistu Hailemariam.
After the aborted coup of 9 April 1978, where dictator Barre was nearly deposed, Col Shiddo was among many of those young junior Somali officers erroneously accused of orchestrating the attempted coup. He fled to Kenya to save himself from the wrath and reprisal of Barre regime.
Col Shiddo lived for a while in East and Central Africa and worked there as a local trader, shuttling between Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Zaire and Uganda. After Siad Barre declared amnesty on the radio in 1984, some exiled Somalis accepted and he was among those who returned home.
During the height of the Civil War, Col Shiddo stayed in Somalia. He told me he has never participated in the war. He became a trader again in the 1990s. He is a local man and at no time did it come to his mind that he must leave his homeland and emigrate to 'foreign countries'.
Col Shiddo told me he is also a poet by (sideline) profession. With a beautiful voice, he chanted and sang for me one of his famous vivid poems advocating unity among the Somali public. The song says: 'Soomaalidu waa walaal / Waa wiil iyo waalidkiis / Weynaha ayaa ku mahadsan'.
The Colonel says 'aniga waxaa la ii tababaray inaan difaaco dadka iyo dalka, u gargaaro dadka masaakiinta ah, u naxariisto, wanaajiyo, cuqdad aanan qofna u qaadin, dadka waa nabad geliyey iyaguna waa i nabad geliyeen waagii dagaalka, wax xabad ah naguma dhicin aniga & reerkeyga'.
My assessment is that Colonel Shiddo has an unprecedented experience to contribute to peace and stability in Somalia and appeared to me an invisible leader who got no chance to better articulate himself in a more decision-making role in the current regime (or previous regimes).
Drawing upon my longitudinal research into contemporary southern Somalia, my conclusion is that people like Col Shiddo are persona non grata for leading Somalia. Yet unless and until people like him come to power, Somalia will remain as it is now - the most failed state on earth.
