HIS EARLY LIFE
Sheikh Ibrahim Abdalle Mohamed "Mah" was born in the "Oil-Rich" but long time war-ravaged Ogaden region, at the historic town of Kallafo, in 1941 to a middle class family. He memorised the Holy Kur'an by heart at a very young age in the shanty village of Bargun. He also studied the rudimentary rules of the Islamic theology, the basic principles of Islam, and the calligraphy and graphology of the Arabic script under the tutelage of a dugsi, a locally administered Somali-style Islamic propagation centre.
HIS BASIC SECULAR ACADEMIC CAREER
Sheikh Ibrahim Abdalle began his basic education in Kallafo, whereupon, he did his lower and upper primary schooling. After his outsmarting completion of the primary level, he left for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for further studies in 1958 on foot. After performing his pilgrimage, he started secondary school in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. On successfully finishing high school, he joined the internationally acclaimed Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in the Holy City of Mecca in 1967. Graduating from the faculty of Islamic Sharia, he obtained his baccalaureate - bachelor degree (BA) IN 1970. It was reported that the deceased was a noted bookish and an avid reader during his stay at the university, and that is where his studious journey of life time student of history started.
JOB EXPERIENCE
on finishing his university studies, he came back to his beloved homeland, Ogaden, to shoo away the boiling nostalgia that evicted him from the Kindom of Saudi Arabia; and he became a teacher in the crops-rich city of Godey early seventies. After working as a teacher for a short period of time, he was promoted to the posts of education inspector and the head of the Teachers Union in Godey. The bodily perished and the theoretically living Somali Ogaden thinker, Mah, went to the then independent Democratic republic of Somalia in 1973 and on his arrival at Mogadishu, he was taken by the ministry of education as a secondary school teacher, whereby he was located in Hargeisa, the second capital city of Somalia.
HIS MIDDLE LIFE AS A FREEDOM FIGHTER
He resigned from the educational assignments that he was holding for Somalia and joined Western Somali Liberation Front in 1976, activating the military and political philosophy of the then Somali-backed movement, WSLF, under the auspices of the late dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre. After a short while, the lost hero, Sheikh Ibrahim, became an active member of WSLF central committee through all-agreed election. He was sent to Abu Dhabi in 1981, as a diplomatic representative for Western Somali Liberation Front.
After the sheer military and political abortion of WSLF as a result of the direct military intervention of Somali armed forces, sheikh Ibrahim co-founded Ogaden National Liberation Front in 1984. In 1991, he was elected the chairman of ONLF and he had been holding that post till 1998. February 1994, Sheikh Ibrahim narrowly escaped from an assassination attempt by Ethiopian battalion based in Warder. He was defended by the people of Warder with the help of ONLF fighters scouting him, and, many Ethiopian soldiers and almost 100 civilians from Warder died because of him. It was reported that Sheikh Ibrahim took part in some of the deadliest armed confrontations between ONLF battalion and Ethiopian garrison in the war-torn Ogaden. Some tidings said that he acted field commander in the front line to give his soldiers moral support.
HIS MARITAL STATUS
Sheikh Ibrahim married three wives and he is survived by four sons and four daughters with a group of grand-children living in Nairobi, UK and the USA.
HIS PERSONALITY
Sheikh Ibrahim was a charismatic born-leader with adamant political objectives. He was an outspoken Islamic scholar and a profound patriot who believed in death for the sake of his country and in the defense of his Islamic belief. He was an honest and God-fearing man. He was a great ideologue yarning for Arab unity and Somalis nicknamed him "The pro-Arab campaigner in the Horn of Africa." He was a confident and firm freedom-fighter longing for the martyrdom of his targeted mission under any circumstance.
My first and last meeting with him in Khartoum by the end of 2006, I put the following question to him, "Ethiopia has got one of the strongest armies in Africa and your fighting with it prolonged the suffering of the Ogaden citizens. Are you capable of vanquishing this powerful and regular force? If not so, why don't you negotiate with the government, Ethiopia?" Sheikh Ibrahim smiled and replied to me, "My NO TO ETHIOPIAN COLONISATION is stronger than the strong armed forces that you mentioned. We have gallant and stronger fighters than theirs, and, we are ready to fight them to the end till they peacefully withdraw from our homeland - Ogaden. Our brave and patient people can't accept the oligarchic colonial rule of the up-starts - the minority Tigtay, under the despotic and autocratic instruction of the callow leadership of Mr Zenawi."
HIS AUTHORSHIP
He was one of the greatest historians in Africa and the finest writers in Arabic language. He was an astute political scientist and a broad-minded researcher on African and Arabian political history. He was a hot political analyst; and an author of heaps of articles on different Arabic magazines and daily newspapers in the Middle East. He wrote over five books on African regional crises and he was now working on a linguistical analysis book about the lexicological interrelations between Arabic and Somali languages. Moreover, he currently finished a book he named "The War on Maps in The Horn of Africa" which is waiting for posthumous publication.
HIS LATER LIFE
Sheikh Ibrahim Abdalle was the head of "The Horn of Africa Research and Strategic Studies Centre" in Abu Dhabi that he founded in 1999. He was also a member of ONLF central committee and the spiritual leader of the above mentioned separatist rebel movement waging war against Ethiopia for the complete independence of Ogaden region. He died in Abu Dhabi on 22 June 2008. He was buried in Abu Dhabi on 24 June 2008. According to postmortem examination, his death was natural
MAAX SHEIHK
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