A journalist in Mogadishu

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http://www.netnomad.com/mogjour.html

 

interesting article written in 1993

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Yusuf Omar Al-Azari knows about food stealing. He served Siad Barre in a dozen posts and did eight years in one of Barre's prisons. He now lives in Ethiopia but is in Mogadishu seeing friends and checking on some of his business interests.

 

"The stealing was very systematic," he says. "Lets just take the example of Mogadishu. The city was divided into 14 orientation centers, sort of districts, and each was headed by a person close to Siad Barre. They were the pillars of the revolution. The government handed the food to the heads of these centers. The head takes half of it for himself, and the other half was divided into three parts. One -third was given free to the commercial people in the district, powerful businessmen whose support was crucial to the government. One third went to the security services, such as the NSS and the Hangash. Barre was always coming up with new security agencies and putting one of them over the other in order to protect himself. And then one third went to the Red Berets, the presidential security details in the districts. Maybe one thousandth of the food went to refugees, and that went to the elderly ladies who clapped the loudest when the name of Siad Barre was mentioned. I'm not kidding. It went to those who clapped the loudest. Literally. People became millionaires from this food, many of them relatives of Siad Barre."

 

Aidid's militiamen, many of them unpaid for years, were rewarded with everything they could confiscate when they captured the city -- homes, cars, women. Aidids sub clan, generally considered country bumpkins by other clans, are now in charge of most of south Mogadishu. They're driving around in nice cars, looted or abandoned, and living in big houses, many taken from members of Siad Barre's clan. Any foreigner who lives and works in south Mogadishu -- journalists, aid workers, UN officials -- probably employs gunmen and drivers and guards from Aidid's sub clan, in effect paying the salaries of Aidid's militia, supplying the spoils of war