Southland Bureaucrat Is Now Somalian Warlord

In Somalia, he may be a feared warlord.

But back home in the San Gabriel Valley, Hussein Mohammed Aidid was a $9-an-hour municipal clerk, a part-time college student and a corporal in the U.S. Marine Reserve, who as of Wednesday was absent from his Pico Rivera artillery unit.

On Sunday, Aidid, 34, replaced his late father, the notorious strongman Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, as leader of one of Somalia’s dominant warring factions, the United Somali Congress-Somali National Alliance.

The elder Aidid, who died in factional fighting last week, led troops that killed 18 U.S. soldiers in 1993, prompting the United States to withdraw its forces and thwarting the United Nations effort to reconstruct the country.

Before taking on his new responsibilities in battling for control of a nation, the younger Aidid labored in obscurity in West Covina as a junior bureaucrat.

A part-time worker in the city engineering department, Aidid updated city water maps, counted cars in traffic and entered data into the department’s computer system.

West Covina City Engineer Patrick J. Glover said Aidid worked for the department for 10 years and that his military-political ascendancy surprised some of his former colleagues. “There were not many opportunities to show leadership potential [in his city job]. It was made up mostly of mundane assignments,” Glover said.

While working for West Covina, Aidid took civil engineering classes at Cal Poly Pomona.

He also joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1987, last reporting for two weeks of duty at Ft. Sill, Okla., in July 1995. He told superiors he would be leaving the country for 60 days, then failed to report for scheduled duty last September, according to Lance Cpl. Laura Pingree, a Marine Forces Reserve spokeswoman.

That was because Aidid had quit his job and returned to Somalia.

Pingree said she could not comment on Aidid’s status, other than acknowledging that he is still a reservist assigned to B Battery, 1st Battalion of the 14th Marines in Pico Rivera.

Aidid came to the United States as a teenager with his mother, Asli Dhubat, Gen. Aidid’s first wife.

Gen. Aidid fathered six children with Dhubat and four with a second wife who lived on welfare in Toronto, according to Canadian newspaper reports.

The younger Aidid was graduated in 1981 from Covina High School, where he was enrolled as Hussen Farah. He was not active in clubs or sports and does not appear in the school’s yearbooks.

Gen. Aidid bought a house for his ex-wife, Dhubat, and their children in Diamond Bar in 1988. He paid the $196,000 price in full, according to property records.

The family lives quietly in its two-story house on a hilly, winding street.

A woman who answered the door refused to talk to a reporter and replied, “I don’t know,” when asked if she was related to Gen. Aidid.

Abdul Sadat, 47, who lives across the street from the family, said he visited the family to express condolences when he heard of Gen. Aidid’s death, and that they responded politely.

The mundaneness of Aidid’s American life is shared by other Somali warriors. His father’s top foreign policy advisor, Mohamed Hassan Awale, spent three years as a Washington taxi driver.

Although the warlord role is new for Aidid--whose surname in Somali means “he who will not be insulted”--it’s not the first time he has taken up arms in the tiny African country.

Known in the service as Cpl. Hussen Farah, Aidid landed with U.S. Marines in Somalia in December 1992 and served as an interpreter until January 1993.

Later that year, the United Nations Security Council issued an arrest warrant for the senior Aidid, who was given the title of president of Somalia by his supporters. But the general eluded U.N. forces, including elite U.S. Army troops.

When U.N. forces left Somalia in early 1995, Gen. Aidid remained as leader of a faction battling for control of the Horn of Africa nation of 8 million.

News reports on the younger Aidid referred to him as a former Marine, and Aidid said nothing of his failure to report for duty.

Interviewed in Somalia this week, Aidid told Associated Press that he valued his Marine experience, saying: “I’m proud of my background and military discipline. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”