Ahmed Haji Dualeh

Ahmed Haji Dualeh Abdalla; 1928 – January 8, 2020), was an independence activist, politician, and diplomat from Somalia.

Early life and education

Ahmed Haji Dualeh was born in Burao, British Somaliland, in 1928.

In 1948, Dualeh and three colleagues won competitive scholarships to Hantoub College in Khartoum, Sudan. After four years of study, he continued on scholarship to England, enrolling at the University of Keele in northern England. In the summer of 1956 he graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Economics — making him, according to contemporaneous accounts, the first university graduate from Somaliland.

Career in British Somaliland

Upon returning to Somaliland in 1956, Dualeh was appointed as an Assistant District Commissioner — the highest post available to a Somali in the colonial administration. After colonial authorities discovered his clandestine involvement in the Somali liberation movement, he was transferred to Las Anod (Laascaanood), the capital of the eastern Sool region.

Following a physical confrontation with a British district commissioner over the latter's treatment of local nomadic populations, Dualeh was recalled to Hargeisa under armed escort, facing a charge of sedition. He evaded arrest by crossing the border into Ethiopia, where Emperor Haile Selassie granted him political asylum and offered him a senior post at the Ethiopian Ministry of the Interior.

Independence movement

After roughly four years in exile, Dualeh returned to Somaliland in early 1959.

The Somaliland Protectorate Constitutional Conference, London, May 1960 in which it was decided that 26 June would be the day of Independence, and so signed on 12 May 1960. Somaliland Delegation: Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, Ahmed Haji Dualeh, Ali Garad Jama and Haji Ibrahim Nur. From the Colonial Office: Ian Macleod, Douglas Hall, 14th Baronet, H. C. F. Wilks (Secretary)

Somaliland declared its independence on June 26, 1960, and was recognized by 35 countries, including all permanent members of the UN Security Council. Five days later, Somaliland united with Italian Somalia (which declared independence on July 1, 1960) to form the Somali Republic.

As minister, Dualeh introduced sweeping reforms to Somali agriculture. He dismantled the feudal land system in the south by which Italian settlers and influential Somali politicians had monopolized the profitable banana export trade to Italy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Somalia) held a formal memorial ceremony in Mogadishu on January 12, 2020. Somalia's Foreign Minister Amb. Ahmed Isse Awad described him as a "brilliant diplomat" who was "one of the four Somali freedom fighters who united the northern region with the south after their independence from the British and Italian colonialists."

The President of Somaliland, Muse Bihi Abdi, also sent condolences to the nation and the family.