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by Adam Weintraub
Africa's newest "warlord" speaks fluent Italian and has spent half his life in southern California.
Hussein Mohamed Aydiid, 34, a U.S. citizen and former corporal in the Marine Reserves, stepped into the role of his father this week, taking command of the most powerful faction in Somalia.
It's quite a switch for the man who served in Somalia with Operation Restore Hope in 1993, just months before his father's fighters killed 18 U.S. soldiers trying to capture the elder Aydiid.
Last week, Mohammed Farrah Aydiid died from gunshot wounds. His son, who returned to Somalia last year, took over. In his new role, the man known in the United States as Hussein Farah added the name Aydiid, an honorific that he says translates as "perfectionist" or "strict leader."
"Professionally, I think as an American," Aydiid told The Associated Press Tuesday at his heavily guarded Mogadishu home. "But I feel like a Somali."
Aydiid is still technically an employee of the city of West Covina, where he's worked on and off as an engineer trainee since 1984. He worked as a gas station assistant manager after high school to earn cash for night classes. He's a few credits short of a civil engineering degree at California State University-Long Beach.
Employees in West Covina circulated a copy of Monday's news reports about his ascent. Assistant city manager Steve Wylie says one bemused colleague, jotted a note on the clipping: "From West Covina engineer to warlord."
Aydiid was "quiet, polite, self-effacing . . . one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet," Wylie says.
Others describe him as shy, intelligent and self-possessed.
Aydiid's father had four wives. The mother of the younger Aydiid is believed to still live in southern California after divorcing her late husband.
After briefly living in Italy, Aydiid moved to the USA as a teen-ager and was a member of the Covina High School Class of '81, where he earned decent grades. After a clan war that destroyed the Somali state in the late 1980s, the son obtained recordings of his father's speeches through contacts.
Steeped in family military tradition, Aydiid joined the Marine Reserves in 1987 and trained in artillery. He became a U.S. citizen in 1991 so he would meet a qualification to be an officer. In 1992, he volunteered to go to Somalia; the corporal was a translator.
"He wanted to do something good for his native country," Marine Col. Fred Peck says. "We knew who he was, we knew who his father was, but we also had few Somali speakers."
When other translators were hired, Hussein Farah went back to the USA.
After attending Marine Reserve exercises in July 1995, he told supervisors he would be traveling outside the country. He never showed up for required training last September.
Instead, he moved to Mogadishu with his Somali wife and son. After his father seized the town of Baidoa, Aydiid became chief of security.
In an address to 10,000 supporters in south Mogadishu, Hussein Aydiid promised to continue in his father's path.