opinion

TRIVIALIZING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN ‘SOMALILAND’

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016
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By Liban Ahmad

Twenty eight years ago, fighters  from the Somali National Movement (hereafter referred to as SNM),  attacked Burao and  Hargeisa  in an attempt  to bring to an end to the reign  of the former  Somali military dictatorship in Togdheer and Northwest regions of the ex-British Somaliland. The response of the Somali Army to SNM attacks, and subsequent human rights violations are the subject of Al Jazeera program, People and Power broadcast on 16 June 2016.

snm
SNM millitia

Before the 1988 civil war a large number of Northerners whom the Somali government of the day deemed to be sympathetic to the SNM had faced mistreatment at the hands of a government whose policies based on guilty by association further alienated many people to the benefit of SNM and other opposition groups that followed in its footsteps and set up bases in Ethiopia.

The 1988 civil war was a turning-point in the sense that government troops and the opposition group fought in two major towns in the north in addition to the countryside. The government troops razed Hargeisa and Burao to the ground, killed and maimed thousands of civilians in addition to causing massive displacement and refugee flows to Ethiopia.

In 1991 Somali opposition groups toppled the military regime; SNM captured Northwest region, Awdal, three-fourth of Togdheer, one-fourth of Sool and two-fourth of Sanaag by district.

The documentary, Somaliland: Kill All but the Crows, has brought several issues to the fore, that could challenge the SNM narrative based on preventing its fighters from carrying out reprisals to which United Somali Congress (USC), its sister organization, had resorted following the fall of Mogadishu in January 1991.  Interviews with witnesses highlight the controversy surrounding collecting testimonies in unplanned manner and for journalistic rather than justice purpose.

Asked who committed the heinous crimes against people whose remains were exhumed, one man said “[Yusuf Abdi Ali] Tuke “. Another man said “Tuke commanded troops who massacred people”. A woman whose father was miraculously spared death by firing squad but whose husband was killed had said “the aim was to exterminate” members of the Isaaq clan.

Why has Somaliland authorities allowed access to mass graves for research almost twenty years after the late Somali President, Mohamed Hagi Ibrahim Egal, described the massacres by the former military dictatorship  as a common experience suffered  by many  Somali clans during the reign of military regime ( 1969-1991)? President Egal was making a speech before a large crowd that was calling for revenge against Siyad Barre’s clansmen and clanswomen but who wanted to spare their clansmen who collaborated with the regime at different stages or bypass human rights abuses SNM fighters committed against people from clans who did not take up arms against the Siyad Barre regime.

When President Egal made the speech Somaliland was emerging from two-year intra-clan war triggered by renegade SNM fighters who questioned Egal election as president of Somaliland in Borama in 1993. Egal disbanded SNM, widened political participation for all clans in Ex-British Somaliland and embarked on a reconciliation program led jointly by politicians and elders. His dream was, a Somaliland not divided along faqash (loyalists) and Mujahidin (SNM fighters/clansmen) lines.

José Pablo Baraybar, the Peruvian forensic anthropologist supervising the exhumation of mass graves, argues this process will lead to the closure for relatives of victims of human rights abuses. During the exhumation of mass graves, the forensic team brought to the scene a man and a woman whose relatives the former Somali government troops had massacred almost three decades ago. “We have already found closure. You are just making us relive the trauma. The Somaliland government for which people died will not be able to hold criminals accountable”the man said, visibly sobbing. “I was not able to mourn that day, because, I was fearing for my life, and that we were in a terrible situation”, the woman said.

SNM fighters were not as heavily armed with tanks and fighter planes as the Somali army but the organization’s fighters habitually attacked settlements of clans they viewed as ‘pro-government’. Before 1991 the extent of SNM incursions into areas inhabited by non-Isaaq clans were not fully documented.

The  Balligubadle Agreement

The 1990 Balligubadle Agreement signed by SNM and politicians and traditional leaders led by Garad Abdiqani Garad Jama of Sool and Bashe Ali Jama, the Somaliland Minister for Water, clearly spelt out that “politics should guide the gun; that responsibility for human rights violations should be personal rather than collective.” In 1991 the former SNM Chairman, and the current Somaliland President, Ahmed Mohamed Mohammad, wrote On a Framework for a Transitional Government in Somalia, and acknowledged that “symbols such as the national flag are all that remains of the Somali state. There is no [a] government or central authority in existence”. He urged “the liberation organization’s [to] to prevent any form of reprisals against individuals or groups of individuals on account of their regional or clan background or on the pretext of injustices committed in the past”. 

What happened in 1991 in Borama shortly after SNM forces captured Hargeisa and near Huddun district in Sool, belies sentiments in Balligubadle Agreement and the proposal by the former SNM Chairman.

Articles in Balligubadle Agreement discussed in an obituary of Said Ali Giir, former SNM member and one of the organizers of 1961 abortive coup in Hargeisa, touched upon the principle that “politicians, not fighters or commanders, should make decisions on dealings with other clans, and that feuding clans in Northwest and Awdal regions  have expressed commitment to peace and that politicians and traditional leaders of Sool support the cause of SNM against the military dictatorship.”

In February 1991, SNM forces jointly with former Ethiopian regime’s troops attacked Borama and Dilla, and killed 764 people.  Sheikh Hassan Daheeye who survived the massacre brought up the issue in a sermon in a Borama mosque. Near Huddun district in Sool regions SNM officer from Sanaag held a meeting with members of sub clan from Huddun. Unbeknownst to the unarmed meeting participants, SNM commanders gathered fighters near the meeting place. Fighters attacked participants of the meetings and killed more than 70 persons including two brothers of a former Somaliland politician.  According to Mark Bradbury “… SNM force attacked the Warsangeli settlement of Hadaftimo in eastern Sanaag.”

Both massacres were a violation Balligubadle agreement. Former SNM political leaders ignored to address human rights abuses of which Ibrahim Meygag Samatar, former chairman of SNM Central Committee, warned in a video clip recorded in 1988 after SNM launched attacks on Burao and Hargeisa. Samatar questioned attainability of SNM goals if the organization “resorts to practices similar to those of the military dictatorship the organization is fighting”.

When politicians mobilize militias by appealing to shared clan affiliation and on account of common suffering at the hands of a dictatorial regime, reprisals by militias can be   prevented through political education without which fighters will have no an understanding of who they are fighting and what they are fighting for.

While the Somali army was shelling parts of Hargeisa under SNM forces, the regime’s top soldiers in the Northwest region were recording their deliberations about strategy to prove to the government in Mogadishu that the army’s response to SNM fighters and its sympathizers was merciless. Professor Hussein Bulhan, Chancellor Frantz Fanon University in Hargeisa, who discovered the video in the former Somali government’s archives, described it as a “raw data” about what former government troops did to civilians fleeing a conflict zone. The video clip brings to light a fact that Dr Bulhan has inadvertently glossed over. The commander whose troops are briefing him on the war is Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess, who defected to become the chairman of Somali Patriotic Movement and signed agreement to topple Siyad Barre regime with Abdirahman Ahmed Ali, SNM chairman, and General Mohamed Farah Aideed, USC Chairman in Ethiopia. Both SNM and USC looked upon Jees as comrade-in-arms.

Aziz Deria, the Somaliland activist working with Jose Bablo Baraybar, the Peruvian forensic anthropologist supervising the exhumation of the mass graves,  contends reconciliation has been achieved in Somaliland but he is unable to forget what happened to “a quarter of a million Somalilanders”. Baraybar prefers “less contentious co-existence” to reconciliation. “Closure happens when people “open up things” said Baraybar. He has a point: Where there is evidence of political violence, retribution rather than reconciliation, is probably the key to closure.

There is gap between the rhetoric Somaliland political leaders, who portray a picture of Somaliland whose citizens have moved on, and the reality that a group of activists are, with the tacit support of politicians, politicizing and trivializing human rights abuses during the reign of the military dictatorship.

When the central governments in Mogadishu were overthrown in January 1991, the USC-installed Prime Minister from the north, Omar Arteh Ghalib, issued a decree to dissolve the army. He instructed Somali Army divisions to surrender to USC, SNM, SPM and SSDF, four the armed opposition groups. Subsequent human rights abuses have been perpetrated by armed opposition groups, who viewed themselves as “liberators”.

Addressing human rights abuses in Somalia is an urgent task if Somalia is keen on learning lessons from political violence sanctioned or downplayed by political leaders in pre and post-1991 Somalia. Two principles should be a basis for such an endeavor:

  1. Those accused of human rights abuses should get a fair hearing
  2. Victims of human rights abuses before and after 1991 should have the right to hold perpetrators accountable for political violence.

Those two principles should be based on a set of criteria to prevent the process of addressing human rights abuses from becoming witch-hunt. During 1990s SNM supporters in Canada targeted anyone who worked for the pre-1991 Somali governments in any capacity.

Liban Ahmad
Emai:libahm@icloud.com

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See below video clips: