Background
Ghalib was born in 1930, Northern Somalia.
Ghalib was born in 1930, Northern Somalia.
He did his elementary and secondary education before going to St Paul’s College, Cheltenham, and the College of Education at Bristol.
In 1951 he started work as a teacher. From 1954 to 1958 he was Vice-Principal of the Sheikh Inter-mediate School, and Principal of the Gabileh Intermediate School from 1958 to 1960.
In 1960 he became Assistant District Commissioner for Hargeisa, and District Commissioner for Erigavo in 1961. Later in the year he went to Moscow as First Secretary in the embassy and from 1962 to 1965 was a member of the Permanent Mission to the United Nations. During this period he was a member of the special committee on South West Africa. He attended most OAU meetings from 1964 to 1968; From 1965 to 1968 he was Ambassador to Ethiopia at a time when relations between the two countries were strained almost to the point of war. He was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the first cabinet formed after the military coup of October 1969.
He has been a faithful exponent of the policies of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, which has followed a surprisingly unaggressive line on the Ethiopian border question. But Somalia has still not dropped its claim to Ethiopia’s Ogaden district. He initiated talks on this problem in Addis Ababa in December and in Mogadishu in January 1973, but no progress was made towards a final settlement.
Tall, handsome, quick thinking, fast talking, the friend of the world’s Pressmen. An outgoing, international personality who has built up his reputation at the United Nations and as Foreign Minister. But, paradoxically, his brilliant rhetoric and mercurial nature does not make him popular at home and his international reputation is not reflected in much real power in Somalia. But his powers as an international diplomat and spokesman for his nation are widely acknowledged.