In May 1991, the Garad led the Dhulbahante delegation at the Grand Conference in Burao and was first to table the case for Somaliland's secession.

[5] Garaad Abdiqani was Somalia's minister of foreign affairs in the months preceding and succeeding the fall of Somalia's revolutionary military government in Mogadishu.

He thus became the third Dhulbahante minister of Foreign Affairs in Somalia in a row, after Ahmed Qeybe and Ali Jingali.

[6] Garad Abdiqani was a signatory of the 1990 Somali Manifesto that sought to disestablish the military Somalia government, a manifesto group led by Ibrahim Abyan,[7] who was likewise Dhulbahante.

[8] The SULF, or Somali United Liberation Front, was the primary form of expression of Dhulbahante anti-government activism against Somalia's military regime during the late 1980s and early 1990s.