Siad Barre was the
socialist dictator of
Somalia from
1969 to
1991. Prior to his presidency he was an army commander under the parliamentary government Somalia inherited from their former Italian colonial overseers. Barre became a fanatical
Marxist after spending time with
Russian officers in joint training exercises in the early 60s.
In 1969, over accusations of election fraud that greatly diminished his political party's power, the military staged a
coup and took over. Barre ruled with the proverbial iron fist for the next 22 years, during which starvation, murder and repression were the orders of the day. He was finally unseated when the country completely fell apart and no amount of political control was possible at all.
Somalia has had no national leader since Siad Barre was deposed in 1991, nor any government at all for that matter in the past 12 years.