Background Information

on

Abdirahman Mohamed (Farole)

12 May 2001

Most of the events cited in my paper, "The Peace Process in Somalia",  regarding the Somali plight are occurrences that I have witnessed, monitored or went through as a victim, or as participant trying to solve the Somali conflict.

During the Mohamed Siyad Barre regime I was prosecuted, lost my job and lived under terror, and grief came to my home twice during the phase-one of the civil war (1978-1990) as two of my relatives (brother-in-laws) were executed by the regime. One was among the 17 military officers executed after the failed coup of 1978, and the other one was among the military officers, who had been rounded up and murdered in Hargeisa city by the regime, when SNM rebel forces attacked it in 1988.

In the post-Siyad regime period of the civil war, in 1991, my family and I were forced to flee our home in Mogadishu and became displaced and refugees. Our belongings were taken and our properties destroyed during the civil war.

I have become actively involved in trying to solve the Somali civil war problems. I was chosen to partake in the first Djibouti conference in 1991 and I was a member of the technical committee who drafted the agreement, and later was appointed as a Minister in the then interim government. I also participated in the 1993 Humanitarian Conference in Addis Ababa as a chairman of the Regional Council of Nogal, established under the auspices of the United Nations Operation for Somalia. In addition to that I participated in upon request the Constitutional Conference for the formation of Puntland in 1998 as a resource person to draft the Provisional Charter. Most recently, I was invited and participated in the second Peace and Reconciliation Conference for Somalia in Djibouti (at Arte) in 2000.