“As bitter as it is, what we are experiencing is a good effort to achieve true democracy in Somalia,” Ali said after listening to his relative explain their country’s history.

Somalia’s records were largely destroyed in the civil war, so young people usually learn their history from the oral narratives of the older generation.

“It is senseless to remove a system of guaranteeing security to replace it with worse, unending violence,” Osman noted, recalling the unrest in the country.

It began in 1969 when 25 army officers led by the late Brigadier General Mohamed Siad Barre overthrew a democratically elected government. A year later, they declared scientific socialism as their guiding philosophy.

Those tolerant of the military coup were considered simply “kacaan” (revolutionaries), while those who opposed or opposed it were labeled “kacaan-diid” (anti-revolutionaries) or reactionaries.

The coup came nine years after Somalia’s independence from Britain and Italy. Many people felt that democracy was working quite well, with the country holding three general elections and two presidential elections, all by universal suffrage.

Since then, Somalia has failed to hold such one-person, one-vote elections.

Army officers held the Horn of Africa country in an iron grip. They started by abolishing the constitution, imprisoning then Prime Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, his entire Cabinet, and abolished the legislative assembly and the leadership of the judiciary.

Barre purged any vestiges of democracy by imprisoning even the first president of the republic, widely regarded as the father of the nation, Aden Abdulle Osman, better known as Aden Adde (Mogadishu’s main airport is named after him), as well as the president of then. of Parliament Sheikh Mukhtar Mohamed Hussein.

Those who staged the coup claimed that they could not tolerate election fraud, corruption, nepotism and all other sociopolitical ills.

Governing by decree, the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) under Barre immediately promulgated regulations that dictated the death penalty for counterrevolutionary activities, economic sabotage, financial embezzlement, and other described crimes.

Mogadishu has suddenly become the safest capital in Africa.

Within a year, the struggle to regain democracy emerged, with some members of the SRC resenting the dictatorial nature of the new government.

Senior SRC members General Salad Gabayre, General Mohamed Ainanshe and Colonel Abdulkadir Dhel were found guilty and imprisoned for conspiracy against the revolution and executed in 1972.

This eroded all the acts against the junta’s decision. Fear overcame most people.

A good number of projects have been implemented, including writing the Somali language using the Latin alphabet, rural development campaigns, and massive infrastructure reconstruction such as inner city and cross roads, sports complexes, ports, airports, and the industrial complex.

Education was targeted, making primary school compulsory and free.

The choice was limited to either complying with a dictatorial system that controlled every aspect of life, including media, communication, faith and even the social side, the most important being the almost 100% security guarantee.

Those who valued freedom of association and expression kept a low profile for a decade. But then it exploded with one armed rebellion after another.

The Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) and the Somali National Movement (SN) first emerged to fight the pseudo-socialist regime with programs to restore democracy in Somalia.

Later, other rebel groups such as the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) and the United Somali Congress (USC) were formed.

But since the rebel groups were made up of individuals associated with different clans, the whole rebellion took an ugly turn, marred by clan rivalry.

In January 1991, the totalitarian rule of Siad Barre was defeated. But instead of uniting his enemies, he exacerbated the crisis.

Instead, they fragmented the country into fiefdoms, even paving the way for the proliferation of radical Islamists, leading to the emergence of groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) affiliates.

The reality in Somalia today is that instead of a unified country under dictatorial rule, the pro-democracy rebellion has created a federal government, five federal member states and a unilaterally declared Republic of Somaliland.

Those who, like Mohamed Osman, value peace and quiet remember the days of the junta with nostalgia. Those who support democracy as the most ideal for a nation are disturbed by the present situation but never appreciate dictatorship.

“No sane person can accept dictatorship,” said Abdalla Saney, an engineer in Mogadishu who survived a huge explosion orchestrated by religious extremists.