Somalia Mourns a Stalwart of the Bench: Abdullahi Dahir Bare, 1940–2024
In a city that has seen far too many funerals, Mogadishu paused on Wednesday night to honor a man who spent a lifetime in service to the law. The Office of the Attorney General confirmed the passing of Abdullahi Dahir Bare, a former attorney general and one of the country’s earliest judges. He was 84.
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In a statement, current Attorney General Sulayman Mohamed extended condolences to Bare’s family and to a public that knew him as a steady presence through Somalia’s most turbulent decades. He prayed that the late jurist be granted mercy and a place in Paradise, and for his loved ones to be blessed with patience and faith.
A Judge Through Eras of Upheaval
Born in 1940 in Luuq, a district along the banks of the Juba River in the Gedo region, Bare grew up knowing that Somalia was building a nation. Independence arrived in 1960; modern courts and civil institutions were still being sketched onto the map. When Bare joined the bench on April 17, 1967, he became part of the country’s first generation of judges—professionals tasked with translating the promise of a new republic into practice.
His career took him across the breadth of Somalia’s geography and political history. He chaired district and regional courts in Beledweyne and Hargeisa, led the Togdheer Regional Court, and later presided over the Benadir Regional Court, the pivotal jurisdiction that includes Mogadishu. These were not distant administrative posts; each bench demanded a jurist who could reconcile codified law with the rhythms of Somali life, where Islamic principles and customary arbitration—xeer—often overlap with statutory norms.
In courtrooms from the Shabelle to the plateau towns of the north, Bare was known for a quiet, even manner. Lawyers who passed through Benadir’s heavy wooden doors recall a judge who kept grudges out of the docket and insisted cases be argued on their merits. The record of his postings reads like a map of Somalia’s institutional memory, traveling with the country through civilian government, military rule, state collapse, and reconstruction.
The Long Arc of Somali Justice
To understand the weight of his loss, it helps to remember what Somali justice has had to survive. After the fall of the state in 1991, court buildings were looted or abandoned. Judges and prosecutors faced threats from militias and mob violence. Across the 1990s and 2000s, much of the dispute resolution fell to elders and religious courts as formal institutions went dark. The past decade has been one of slow repair: training new lawyers, reconstituting legal frameworks, setting up judicial service commissions, and arguing over what belongs in a new constitution.
Throughout that uneven rebuilding, Bare’s generation served as a reference point. Their legal foundations were shaped in the late 1960s, a period when the judiciary tried to articulate a Somali jurisprudence that could sit alongside international standards without losing the confidence of the people. As violent extremism rose, legal professionals continued operating under threat; cases of terrorism, corruption, and land disputes piled up in dockets that often lacked the resources to process them quickly or fairly. In that context, a senior jurist’s steadiness was not an abstraction—it was often the difference between proceedings and chaos.
What He Leaves Behind
The Office of the Attorney General credited Bare with helping rehabilitate the justice and judiciary systems—a compliment that, in Somalia, comes with hard-earned meaning. Rehabilitation is not just drafting laws. It is rebuilding trust: convincing a farmer in Beledweyne that a land case will be heard without a bribe; persuading a family in Mogadishu that a criminal trial will not be manipulated by politics; assuring a young law graduate in Hargeisa or Baidoa that public service is still a noble road despite thin salaries and real risks.
- Chairman, Beledweyne District Court
- Chairman, Hargeisa District Court
- Chairman, Togdheer Regional Court
- Chairman, Benadir Regional Court (Mogadishu)
- Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Somalia
Those titles are markers on a career, but the daily work was human: crowded corridors, whispered pleas in Somali and Arabic, tattered case files, and the persistent hum of a city that sometimes runs on generators. Somewhere in those routines, a measure of order took root.
The Man from Luuq
Luuq is a trading town where the river curves like a crescent. People there are used to travelers—not just from Gedo, but from across the Horn. Many Somalis will tell you that distance steels a person’s patience. Bare’s colleagues say he brought that patience from the river valley to the bench. It is part of why his passing resonates beyond Mogadishu’s legal circles. In moments of mourning, Somalis recite, inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un—“we belong to God and to Him we return.” The phrase is ritual, but it also speaks to continuity: that the institutions he tended will outlast any one life.
Even in grief, the country’s legal community will be doing what legal communities do—arguing over statutes, debating reforms, and reading judgments. That, too, is part of legacy. Generations inherit not just buildings and case law, but habits: how judges speak from the bench, how prosecutors address the court, how a clerk treats the citizen who is afraid and uncertain.
Somalia’s Test—and a Question for All
Somalia is not alone in leaning on elder jurists to navigate transition. Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste have all depended on seasoned benches to rebuild rule of law after conflict. The global trend is clear: without judicial independence and public faith in the courts, democratization is brittle. Corruption flourishes where judges fear reprisal; extremism thrives where citizens doubt redress. In this sense, Abdullahi Dahir Bare’s life invites a larger question: how do societies make sure the wisdom of their legal elders is not lost even as they push for reform?
Somalia’s path forward is crowded with legal tasks: clarifying the constitutional order, strengthening judicial training, protecting court officers from intimidation, and ensuring that the blend of civil, customary, and religious law works for the public rather than at cross-purposes. These are not abstract goals. They are the stuff of daily life—property rights, inheritance, commerce, security. If people believe the law works, they invest. If they do not, they hedge their lives in ways that stifle growth.
There is a second question his passing surfaces, softer but urgent: who will teach the next class? Across Africa and beyond, legal education is expanding, but mentorship remains thin. When judges of Bare’s generation leave the stage, do classrooms and chambers have enough living memory of how to steer a fragile judiciary through pressure? The answer will not be found in a eulogy, but in budgets, training programs, and the quiet discipline of court calendars that run on time.
A Farewell, and a Charge
On Thursday morning, as condolences traveled from Gedo to Banaadir, the city pressed on. Mogadishu often has to hold loss and persistence in the same hand. Somewhere a clerk dusted off a ledger; a lawyer ironed a suit; a family prepared a case file with trembling fingers. The system is imperfect, but it exists. That is not a small achievement after three decades of turmoil. It is built by hands like Bare’s—often unheralded, often criticized, but necessary.
In the end, an attorney general’s legacy is not measured only in the cases he argued or the offices he held. It is measured in whether ordinary people ever feel that the law bends toward them in their hour of need. Abdullahi Dahir Bare spent most of his life helping Somalia answer yes to that question. May he rest in peace, and may those who follow find the stamina, patience, and courage to keep the dockets moving.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
