Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud


Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud, known by his nickname Silanyo, was a Somaliland politician who served as the President of Somaliland from 2010 to 2017. During the 1980s, he served as the Chairman of the Somali National Movement.
Silanyo was a long-time member of the former Somali Republic and later the Somali Democratic Republic central government.
He held several key positions, including serving as Minister of Commerce of the Somali Republic.
Standing as an opposition candidate, he was elected as President of Somaliland in Somaliland's 2010 presidential election.

Background

Early life

Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud was born in 1938 in the Mid Eastern town of Burco, situated in what was then the former British Somaliland protectorate. Nicknamed "Silanyo", he hailed from the Adan Madobe sub-division of the Habar Jeclo clan of Isaaq clan-family. Mohamoud is the third child of six. His father was a merchant marine; so the family lived a half-nomadic, half-settled lifestyle. He was the only child in the family to attend a formal education, fostered by an uncle who was a strong influence on his early life. His brothers followed their father's footsteps as merchant marines. He was Muslim.

Education

Between 1946 and 1957, Mohamoud studied at schools in Sheikh, Somaliland and Amud, where he completed his secondary levels.
Upon graduation, he moved to England to pursue higher studies. From 1958 to 1960, Mohamoud enrolled in London University and obtained an advanced General Certificate of Education. He then studied at University of Manchester, where he earned both a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree in Economics.

Personal life and death

He met his wife, Amina-Weris Sh. Mohamed, in the late 1960s. Like him, she completed her education as a registered nurse and midwife in England. They married in Mogadishu in 1968.
Mohamoud died in Hargeisa, Somaliland on 13 November 2024, at the age of 86.

Political career

General

In a professional capacity, between 1965 and 1969, Mohamoud served as an official at the Ministry of Planning and Coordination in Mogadishu during Somalia's early civilian administration. He was also the national Minister of Planning and Coordination, Minister of Commerce, and the Chairman of the National Economic Board in the succeeding socialist government. Although a member of Siad Barre's cabinet for many years, he was believed to not be involved in any acts of violence and embezzlement. Therefore, allowing him to satisfy both the government and opposition at the time, paving way for his chairmanship of the Somali National Movement.
From 1984 to 1990, Mohamoud was the Chairman of the Somali National Movement, serving as the liberation group's longest-serving chairman.
Between 1993 and 1997, Mohamoud was a member of the House of Representatives of Somaliland. He also worked as the Somaliland Minister of Finance from 1997 to 1999, in which position he initiated a program of fiscal reform. Between 1999 and 2000, Mohamoud served as Somaliland's Minister of Planning and Coordination, a position from which he resigned in 2001.

Prominent seminars, symposia, conferences

During his years of public service, Mohamoud participated in a broad array of forums relating to a variety of developmental aspects of the world. He utilizing training programs under the patronage of United Nations, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa ), as well as benefiting from a Leadership Grant organized by the African-American Institute that related to developmental fields, including visits to various regional state and federal governmental bodies throughout the United States.
;Conferences attended
;Leader of Somalian delegation

1982–1984: Chairman of Somali National Movement (SNM), UK Branch

During the earlier years of the SNM, Mohamoud established offices and organized SNM committees throughout Europe, North America, and the Arab World to raise international awareness of the liberation movement and the brutality of Somalia's Siyad Barre regime against its own people through presentations to international human rights groups, the press media, various European government bodies, including the British Parliament and the European Inter-Parliamentary Union, and relevant organizations in the Arab and Islamic world.
To further accomplish this, Mohamoud embarked on a program of recruitment of important personalities and groups in southern Somalia to join the SNM movement—a 1982 through 1991 Somali liberation faction founded and led predominantly by Isaaq members to protect the national interests of the Somalilanders against the oppressive Siyad Barre regime. Having successfully toppled the Siyad Barre regime in 1991, the SNM had been pivotal in reconstituting the Republic of Somaliland that on 1 July 1960, united with Somalia. Presently, Somaliland is a sovereign democratic country, but is internationally recognized as an autonomous region of Somalia.

1984–1990: Chairman of Somali National Movement (SNM)

During the following years Mohamoud would become the SNM's longest-serving Chairman, in command throughout the most tumultuous, expansive, and decisive period of the liberation movement. In 1984, the SNM was in its infancy, having been established only two years earlier. The struggle was nebulous. This period was being steered through its most trying times. Its most momentous events occurred in October 1984 with the first major, simultaneous, and coordinated invasion of the SNM troops into the mountainous regions of Somaliland and its major expansion of SNM fronts in the southern and northwest regions of Awdal and the Northwest.
With tensions rising, a 1986 accord negotiated in Jabuuti between the Siyad Barre regime of Somalia and Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia to end the support of the respective rebellions against their regimes had for all intent and purposes entailed the dismemberment the SNM. Having lost its Ethiopian sanctuary, as a consequence of this agreement, in May 1988, the SNM waged a historically daring invasion on Togdheer and Northwest regions of Somaliland. With this secretly and meticulously planned attack—a shocking surprise to both Siyad Barre and Mingeste Haile Miriam regimes – SNM fighters easily took Burao and Hargeisa cities. Although the SNM was finally pushed out of the two cities, the lightning attack proved to be the deathblow of the Siyad Barre regime. The result being the peaceful transfer of power, in a spirit of unity, at the 1990 SNM Congress – a lasting peace that survives today.

1990–1996: Re-establishing Somaliland's sovereignty

While attending the Congress of Somaliland, Mohamoud acted as a key player in re-establishing Somaliland's sovereignty as an independent state. In 1992, he initiated, and then organized, the famous Forum for Peace that generated a cease-fire agreement between the warring parties in the so-called Xarbal Aqnaam War in the port city Berbera and its environs. From 1993 through 1996, he would act as a Member of Somaliland House of Representatives. During this time, in 1996, he initiated a reconciliation movement that brought about an end to the internal conflict at Beer – 18 miles southeast of Burao, where a formal agreement of cessation of hostilities and an exchange of prisoners would be finalized.

1997–1999: Minister of Finance

In 1997, Mohamoud had change roles, becoming the Minister of Finance for Somaliland devising and implementing a viable solution to stem out the runaway inflation threatening the economy of Somaliland. Further, shifting focus to the military, he sought to resolve the vexing problem of rationed supplies to the armed forces and begun to initiate a program for fiscal reform.

1999–2000: Minister of Planning and Coordination

Changing roles once more, Mohamoud began to act as the Minister of Planning and Coordination for Somaliland, working to establish mechanisms for the coordination of aid programs between the government and foreign-aid donors. He initiated the formulation of a three-year development plan, organized a first of its kind and well-attended international conference on aid for Somaliland held in Hargeisa, attended and addressed the Somalia Aid Coordination Body in Nairobi, Kenya – as the first-ever Somaliland Government Minister to do so, and lead a Somaliland government delegation that met with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund representatives in Nairobi, Kenya.

2000–2002: Mediator and various other roles

During the period of working with Somaliland's 2nd president, President Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, Mohamoud played important and decisive roles as a mediator in preventing crisis with respect to incidents relating to the relationship between Djibouti and Somaliland, Somaliland and Ethiopia, SNM veterans and the Egal administration, and between the Somaliland House of Representatives and the Egal government. He would spend, however, a period overseas, delivering speeches and addressing communities of the Somaliland diaspora in Europe and the United States raising awareness on the achievements and developments of the county. Upon his return to Somaliland he immediately mounted a campaign toward the resolution of a looming national crisis between the Egal administration and its political opponents, a crisis which came close to starting afresh a new round of internal conflict.