After some quarrel and an assassination attempt by members of the Warsangeli clan, Bulhan left and became the commanding general of Boqor Osman Mahamuud who was the ruler of the Majerteen Sultanate.
During his years as commander of the Warsangeli army, Bulhan married a prominent woman of Sultan Mohamoud Ali Shire's family who later was murdered.
During Bulhan's military campaigns against Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan he bravely fought the Dervish movement who had killed his father Guune years prior, when he was still a child.
Bulhan's objective was to avenge his father's death by killing Mohammed Abdullah Hassan himself, he never fulfilled his goal as a result of him having to leave the front-line as a consequence of him being critically wounded during the fighting.
Being a man of immense faith he decided to fulfill one of the five pillars of Islam so he subsequently embarked on a journey to perform the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).
During their stay in Medina on a day after the noon (Zuhr) prayer, an unknown man dressed in white came to the tent of Bulhan and his clansmen.
A couple of days before Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke's assassination in the city of Las Anod, he had requested multiple times that Bulhan accompany him on the trip to the northwestern town.
Directly after the assassination of Sharmarke, Somalia's second president, on October 15, 1969, Bulhan and the other Ministers of the civilian government were rounded up and imprisoned.
These events led Bulhan to join the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), the first resistance group against the authoritarian regime of Mohamed Siad Barre.
Bulhan immediately got a high ranking position due to his previous experience as a politician and his reputation, being a man of great respect.
He had a hand in formulating strategic training syllabi for senior military personnel, the presidential advisory councils, and legislators.