The Siad Barre Era 1969 – 1990

by Writer Team | May 4, 2011 11:46 pm

It was evident from the start that the disfranchisement of the Reewin would continue under the Barre’ regime (1969-1990). For example, eleven of twenty-five embers of the military junta, the Somali Revolutionary Council, Were Darood, and the rest Hawiye, Issaq, and Dir.

The was true of the makeup of the first Central Committee of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist party, formed in 1967. Clans like the Reewin were excluded from participation in the government of their own country. Furthermore, their land Tenure systems were ignored and their property rights violated when many Darood groups were transplanted to the inter-riverine region.

The resettlement scheme of 1973-74 is a good example: Over 100,000 drought-stricken pastoralists were resettled in the Lower Shabelle and Juba valley and Middle Juba valleys. The three sites chosen-Kurtunwarey, Shabelle, Dujuma -are in the most fertile part of the inter-riverine region.

The Co-operative Law No.70 of 1973 and the land law No.73 of 1975 were further attempts to deprive the inter-riverine peoples of their land these laws failed to limit the size of state farms, co-operatives and private-owned companies, so that by the mid-1980s, there was not a single piece of arable land along the two rivers that remained unclaimed by state-sponsored projects.

The laws failed to protect the small farmers from losing titles to their land. The late I.M.Abyan, in his study on the social impact of agricultural development in Somalia, showed how little benefit these projects brought compared to the harm they did.

He reported that most of the small farmlands were taken without compensation framers who resisted trying to protect their land were threatened or imprisoned. The Department of Land Use and Irrigation was very hostile to the inter-riverine farmers and, from the mid-1980s onwards, was the main instrument for the expropriation of their land. Read on more about the land of the people[1].

Source URL: https://www.newsinsider.org/648/the-siad-barre-era-1969-1990/

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