Yassin Haji Osman, the spiritual father of Somalis by Khalid Hassan Yusuf

05:18 AM May, 25 2026

Sudanese Online
خالد حسن يوسف-الصومال
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He was born in 1924 in Majertenya Governorate, eastern Somalia, from a family belonging to the traditional Al Yacoub chiefdom of the Osman Mahamoud clan of the Majerten tribe.
He received his basic education in the city of Mogadishu, where he grew up. His family was one of the families of the Osman Mahamoud clan, which was transferred by Italian colonialism to Mogadishu, after the attack on the royal Kingdom of the Majerten tribe.

After completing his basic education, he moved to Italy and studied there. During his stay there, he learned about socialist political thought and was close to the Italian Communist Party. After his return, he worked in the field of teaching in Mogadishu, and he was one of the most prominent enlightened Somali youth in the 1940s.

The fall of Somalia under the control of the European colonial powers greatly influenced him, which prompted him to change the existing political reality in Somalia during that period in the early 1940s, during which Somalia was witnessing a state of great political turmoil and coincided with the period of World War II, which resulted in Britain taking control of Occupation of Mogadishu. This was after Italy's defeat in the war.

The freedom fighter Yassin Haji Osman went to communicate with two educated Somali youth, Abdul Qadir Sakha al-Din and Mohamed Haji Hussein, and they met in Mogadishu, where he presented to them his desire for a political change in the country, working to liberate the Somalis from foreign control.

The three comrades agreed, after several meetings and dialogues that took place between them, on the necessity of activating political and organizational action that would frame the Somalis under a political organization that would form their representative and lead the national struggle to liberate the Somali regions from the grip of the European occupation forces. Their agreement stipulated that each of them communicate with his acquaintances and move towards attracting young people. Somali in order to participate in the political struggle.

During that historical stage, the fighter Yassin Haji Osman was ahead of the youth who lived with him in his political awareness, not to mention that he was older than them in age, which led to him becoming the political figure who founded the national struggle, as he organized the Somali youth into a party, and he also formulated the political literature that paved the way for the establishment of the Youth University. Somali in 1943.

He was a fighter with a national political dimension. He wanted to carry the concerns of Somali nationalism in a comprehensive manner and go beyond the state of regional regionalism that prevailed in Somalia, due to the multiplicity of external colonial powers throughout Somalia. He was alerted from the beginning to the necessity of confronting the traditional social and political obstacles that hinder the reality of the national struggle.

In a short period of time, he and his first three companions were able to attract a large number of Somali youth, and he founded the Somali Youth League. He did not seek to control his political organization, but rather embodied the performance of a statesman who wanted things to take their natural course, independent of the obstacles that could hinder the national struggle.

His active political life was short, as was his age, and he died early in his life while in the prime of his youth, but he left a national political legacy that established deep roots, and made it spread and consolidate in the Somali regions subject to British, Italian, French, and Abyssinian occupation, within a few years.

The irony is that this historical Somali freedom fighter rarely finds anyone who gives him his literary rights to struggle, and he was free to give his name to public sites and to have his history of political struggle studied in educational institutions, because he embodied a historical political figure who led the struggle of his people at a critical stage in his political history.

We see many Somali politicians who raised their pictures during modern Somali history. Or those whose photos have been uploaded. While the historical freedom fighter, Yassin Haji Osman, remains more deserving of all of these by virtue of his historical precedence. The transparency of his political history, and the prominent activist impact he left among Somalis compared to others.

Khalid Hassan Yusuf