Somalia, 1978 — dissident coup attempt
Event Summary
On 9 April 1978 a group of disaffected army officers attempted a violent coup in Somalia against the regime of President Siad Barre, in the bitter aftermath of Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden War against Ethiopia. The coup, led by Colonel Mohamed Osman Irro and involving by CIA estimate around two dozen officers, two thousand soldiers, and sixty five tanks, was driven by fury among officers, many from the Majeerteen clan of the north and center, over the disastrous Ogaden campaign and over Barre's favoritism toward his own Marehan clan. Barre, who had advance warning, moved against the plotters and crushed the ill organized rising, after which seventeen alleged ringleaders including Osman were summarily executed by firing squad.
The attempt's most lasting consequence was that one escaped plotter, Lieutenant Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, fled to Ethiopia and founded the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, the first of the armed opposition movements whose insurgencies would eventually help bring down Barre and plunge Somalia into civil war.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
52004091978- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-520-1978-04-09
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Siad Barre crushed the April 1978 coup attempt and executed the ringleaders, remaining in power until 1991.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
Wikipedia
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →