Mohamed Egal, 73; Led Breakaway Republic of Somaliland

Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, the president of the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, died Friday from complications during a medical procedure at a South African military hospital, Somaliland officials said. He was 73.

A statement from officials who accompanied Egal to One Military Hospital in Pretoria, South Africa, for treatment said the cause of death was a laceration during a colonoscopy, a procedure for examining the colon and rectum. Egal entered the hospital on April 23 for treatment of an undisclosed ailment.

Egal was active in the movement for independence of British-administered Somaliland. Independence came in June 1960, four days before the Italian colony of Somalia to the south gained its independence. The two united the next month to form the Republic of Somalia.

He served as prime minister of Somalia from July 1967 until October 1969, when Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre overthrew the government and imprisoned Egal and several others.

Egal spent 12 years in prison under Siad Barre. After his release, Egal took up opposition to the military regime. Siad Barre’s air force bombed Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, in 1988 at the beginning of a general upheaval against his government.

When clan-based political factions ousted Siad Barre in January 1991, Egal and others in the Somali National Movement set up a government for a separate Somaliland in the northwestern corner of Somalia, an impoverished, largely lawless Muslim country on the Horn of Africa. But members disagreed over whether to declare outright independence.

Clan elders and a constituent assembly elected Egal the second president of the Somaliland republic in May 1993 as the rest of Somalia descended into chaos while clan-based warlords fought one another for control. But Egal was never able to gain international recognition for the republic, a fact he blamed on the insistence by the international community that Somalia, although without a central government, should remain a unified nation.

Egal was reelected in 1997, and his final term was to have expired this year. But presidential elections were postponed until next February.

“Egal’s personality was stamped on Somaliland, but Somaliland was there before Egal, and I think it’s safe to assume that it will remain after him,” said Matt Bryden, the coordinator of the War-torn Societies Project in Somalia, a U.N.-funded organization that helps countries rebuild political institutions after wars.

“The reason for this is that Egal’s was an administration and not a faction.... Somaliland is in the process of establishing institutions of government that are young and weak, but they are not dependent on a single personality,” Bryden said in a telephone interview, adding that he expected Somaliland’s neighbors--Ethiopia and Djibouti--to “attempt to influence the process.”

Egal refused to throw his lot in with a transitional national government for Somalia that was chosen by clan representatives in August 2000.

Under the constitution, Vice President Dahir Riyale Kahin became acting president in Hargeisa, where he met with the cabinet Friday.

Egal is survived by his wife, Khultun Haji Dahir, and five children.