Mohamed Abshir Musa, leader of Somali independence movement, dies at 91

In one of the world's most war-torn countries, Gen. Mohamed Abshir Musa was a peacemaker.

At 32, he became commander of independent Somalia's first national police force in 1960, and he spent his life working for democracy and unification. But he paid a high price for those ideals and his ties to America.

After a Soviet-backed military coup established Siad Barre as the nation's leader in 1969, Abshir was imprisoned in a remote desert jail for more than nine years.

He returned from the experience more determined to fight for freedom, said those who knew him.

"He's one of the real heroes of the African independence movement," said Robert Gosende, who worked at the U.S. embassy in Somalia in the 1960s and returned as U.S. ambassador in 1992 and 1993 during the height of the humanitarian crisis. "There's no stronger friend we had in Somalia than Abshir."

Abshir, who moved to Minnesota in 2001, died Oct. 25 of respiratory failure. He was 91.

Over the course of his life, Abshir challenged warlords and spoke out against Barre's brutal regime. He worked with international military leaders, businessmen and political and religious elite who shared his vision.

During the chaotic early 1990s, marked by famine and civil war after Barre's ousting, Abshir established a regional government in the northeastern region of Somalia. He maintained a relative peace by setting up a clan-based council of elders that drew members of various subclans and minorities, according to a 1997 New York Times story.

"In the northeast, God forbid, we disagree but we don't shoot each other," Abshir told the newspaper.

Abshir worked with the U.S. military after Bush sent troops to protect humanitarian relief supplies in 1993, and his insight was credited with saving soldiers' lives.

In 2003, the U.S. threatened to deport him as part of a crackdown after Sept. 11, 2001. Six former U.S. ambassadors and special envoys demanded intervention from Secretary of State Colin Powell. At the time, Abshir and his wife, Miriam Moses Gul, who has since died, were living in Eden Prairie and caring for a son with multiple sclerosis.

Martin Ganzglass, then a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer, came to Minnesota to testify before an immigration judge, who ultimately granted Abshir political asylum.

Abshir's admirers said his arrest without a trial prevented a man of vision from making lasting change in the nascent days of Somalia's independence.

"He was cut down in his prime by a malevolent, murderous dictatorship," Gosende said.

Abshir's oldest son, Abdulrahim Mohamed Abshir of Chaska, was one of four children born during house arrest before Abshir was imprisoned.

"I didn't even know what my father looked like. I only knew my father's picture," Abdulrahim said.

Abshir had grown weaker in the past few years, but his son said that "he lived a happy life" in Minnesota after retiring from public life in 2000.