Garowe (PP) — Abdi Farah Said ( aka Juha) Cabdi Faarax Siciid, the former Somali Federal Minister for Interior, has apologised for his choice of words in a sentence in his Somali language memoirs Qab iyo Quursi (Ego and Belittling).
Mr Said told the BBC Somali Service that a paragraph in his book on the Somali region of Ethiopia and the 1977 war does not reflect his position politically. Said had read out the preceding paragraph to give his words a context. In the paragraph he likened his experience of joining an armed opposition front and tribulations to a ship whose crew was unable to solve a technical fault that could make the ship sink.
The controversial sentence that drew ire of many Somali readers describes the Somali region of Ethiopia as “a semi-desert over which the two brotherly nations of Ethiopia and Somalia should not have fought. The civil war initiated by my clan resulted from the defeat of Somalia.” Juha was a member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front based in Ethiopia before the overthrow of the Derg regime led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Juha said corrections “will be made to the second edition of the book” to remove the sentence that caused the literary uproar.
© Puntland Post, 2020