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Oct. 1, 2005

Son of Aideed

He’s the son of Somalia’s most infamous warlord, a naturalized American citizen and a former U.S. Marine - now a member of the Somali interim government. Will his past give America another chance in Somalia?

By Kevin Sites, Thu Sep 29, 9:13 PM ETEmail Story IM Story
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Today Hussein Mohamed Aideed will celebrate Shabna, a Somali ceremony of remembrance, at the tomb of his father. As he prepares to leave his palatial home in southern Mogadishu, he is surrounded by young men with guns.

But he is used to that.

Aideed was, after all, a U.S. Marine for nine years. He served in the Gulf War and even in Somalia in the early ‘90s during the ill-fated multinational famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope.

“My unit had already left Somalia,” he tells me, “before the fighting began.”

The son of Somalia’s most notorious warlord and one-time American nemesis, Mohamed Farah Aideed, Hussein came to America with his mother as a political refugee when he was 14. His father, who was chief of Somali intelligence at the time, had been thrown in jail by the country’s dictator Siad Barre, who suspected Mohammed of plotting to overthrow him.

Hussein took to the U.S., settling with his family in Southern California. He made friends easily, ate ice cream, studied martial arts, went to dances and attended school. In 1987 he enlisted in the Marines and became a U.S. citizen four years later. Fellow Marines recalled him as being fun and outgoing in past profiles.

“It was natural for me to join the Marines,” he says. “Through my father I had been around the military all my life. I’m very comfortable with it.”

Hussein was tapped in 1993 for the initial phase of Operation Restore Hope, as the only Marine in the region who spoke Somali. At the time he was known as simply Hussein Farah (his grandfather’s last name).

He was open about his family connections and, with the permission of his commanding officer, even met with his father on several occasions.

After his tour with Marine Reserves ended, he took a job as an urban planning engineer in the city of West Covina, Calif. He married and was ready to settle into suburban life.

But all of that changed at the end of the summer in 1996. His father was killed in a gunbattle with forces connected to Osman Hassan Ali Atto, leader of a breakaway faction of Aideed’s own clan.

“When I was a boy,” Hussein says, “I made a promise to my father to serve the people of Somalia in whatever way I could. When he died, it was time to honor that promise.”

Hussein returned to both Somalia and the practice of using his father’s name. And just a few days after his father’s death, the Habr Gedir clan chose him to be president of the republic that his father had declared in 1995. But it was never recognized internationally.

For Hussein Farah Aideed, the transition from Californian urban planner to president of the “Somali Republic” was a trip through the rabbit hole. Now that he has emerged on the other side, he is a changed man, according to American friends.

I ask him about his divided loyalties. How did he feel when he was watching the footage of his native countrymen, from his own clan, dragging the dead body of a soldier from his adopted nation through the streets during the Battle of Mogadishu?

“It was the most difficult thing I have ever experienced in my life,” he says, “and every year I’ve worked to reconcile this part.”

But that’s much different from the rhetoric he used when he first returned to Somalia in 1996: At a gathering in a local stadium, Hussein called the Battle of Mogadishu a “gloomy day for the aggressors” and “a victorious day for the Somalis.

“Hussein also vigorously defends his father’s actions against the multinational force at the time — even though his father’s militia was responsible for holding up deliveries of famine relief supplies to starving people and sometimes robbed the shipments. Men under his command also attacked United Nations forces, killing 24 Pakistani peacekeepers — an act that prompted U.S. efforts to capture him and to put a $25,000 bounty on his head.

“My father was not responsible for those deaths,” Hussein says. “These were his men, but they acted without his orders.”

Hussein prefers to focus on the present. As Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior for the crisis-addled interim government, he sees himself as a peacemaker between the interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, and the Mogadishu warlords that make up his own Cabinet.

Much of the dispute focuses on Yusuf’s decision to temporarily base the new government outside of Mogadishu, which he says is not safe. His Cabinet members are threatening war. Hussein says he’s not backing either faction and is working toward a peaceful resolution, but insiders say he’s putting his bets and his militia muscle behind the president.

Some also question how much Hussein really matters in the equation. Because of his American background he faces criticism and challenges within his own clan. He says he responds by explaining the concept of American values to fellow Somalis.

“My values in some ways are U.S. values,” he says. “A nation of immigrants in less than 200 years becomes better than Europe, better than China, better than Russia, better than Africa, better than any country. A nation who allowed people who have been abused in different countries to come together and form in Philadelphia a constitution and making the machine to survive and become a superpower.”

This fickle but enduring connection to the U.S. has some wondering whether Hussein Farah Aideed will be the man in the new government that could at the very least create a second chance, backdoor channel for future American influence in Somalia.

At the Shabna ceremony on family land, Hussein and other clansmen pay homage, singing and dancing a traditional prayer of remembrance around the white ceramic tile crypt of his late father. Afterward, the men sit on the ground under a shade tree and eat large dark chunks of camel meat and rice from communal platters with their hands.

Hussein seems circumspect. This Somali turned American Marine turned East African warlord perhaps wonders what his father would do in this situation, as both a personal and national political crisis brew simultaneously.