Buri Hamza: An Obituary

Honorable Buri Mohamed Hamza, a Somali parliamentarian and junior minister, was killed in the recent hotel bombing in Mogadishu by Al-Shabaab ten days ago.

Buri, who hailed from the coastal town of Baraawe, was an intellectual, a political activist, and an avowed environmentalist. He always saw politics as a way of serving his people.

I was 18 when I first met Buri in Cairo, Egypt. He was then a graduate student on break from Tunisia with full scholarship from the Arab League. What amazed me was his great mental capacity, razor-sharp humor, and fervent passion for politics. He and his colleague, Yusuf, a northerner, were fun to be with. Yusuf especially had a knack for constantly joking about the cultural clashes between southerners and northerners. It was interesting that Buri, who was studying science—probably Chemistry—had such penchant for politics.

Buri left his adopted country—Canada—during the first Somali Transitional Government as a major advisor for then Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galeyr. As a protégé of the premier, he became exposed to the day-to-day political intrigue of running the first Somali transitional government after the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. It was dysfunctional and rife with constant jostling for power and backstabbing between President Abdiqassim Salad and PM Galeyr until it finally led to a tangible constrain between the two officials. Galeyr was dismissed and Buri returned to Toronto.

He became bored with the mundane life in Canada and found himself in Mogadishu. He became a parliamentarian and successfully held ministerial positions in the Foreign Ministry, Environment, and the Office of the Prime Minister.

Buri is best remembered for being committed to preserving the environment. He wrote extensively about the danger of foreign countries dumping chemicals in the country’s shorelines and the baneful effect of cutting trees for charcoal and exporting them. He had officially represented his country important international conferences on the environment.

I last saw Buri in Europe in 2012 in an international conference on Somalia. It was a chance encounter at the cafeteria during lunch. He was accompanied by Ambassador Mohamed Sharif, a veteran diplomat who, like Buri, also hailed from Barawe. Buri was then working as an advisor to Sharif Hassan, then the Speaker of Parliament. Always jovial, enthusiastic, and full of energy, Buri sensed that I was a bit bewildered with his employment with the Speaker, a man full of indiscretions. “Did Buri know that his job came with a collateral damage? Was it a tragic lapse of judgment on Buri’s part? Was the Speaker dragging him to the wrong path,” I wondered. Buri was perfectly aware of my critical position of the Speaker.

Buri, a smirk flickering across his face, asked me if I knew whom he was working for.  

“Oh, yes,” I responded, smiling.

Despite his subtle jab at his boss, Buri was not the one to be dissuaded from his objective of seeing Somalia end transitional governments. Paradoxically, that job, which many of his friends gasp, came into an inauspicious end. A new government was formed in 2012 to end transition, the Speaker lost his job, and Buri retained his parliamentary seat.

Buri cared about his country and its political welfare. One things that stands out about Buri is: He led a life devoid of tribalism. He got along with many people; educated, politicians, activists, and laypersons. May God Bless him.