Justice for the Atrocities of the 1980s: The Responsibility
of Politicians and Political Parties
"One day in mid-August
[1988], Dahir Rayaale, head of the NSS, came to our ice
plant and took my father away. They also arrested one of
the watchmen, an old man, Farah Badeh Gheedi. They were
detained in the police station, accused of talking about
the prospects of the SNM coming to Berbera.
" Abdifatah
Abdillahi Jirreh
By Rakiya A. Omaar
Like so many other Somalis, my life in the 1980s was marked
profoundly by the terrible human right situation under the
regime of Mohamed Siad Barre. I was one of the very lucky
ones. I did not live in Somalia at the time, and no-one
in my family was killed or maimed when the government unleashed
a genocidal frenzy in Somaliland, then the Northwest region
of Somalia. Being lucky implied a responsibility: to let
the world know what was happening, so it could exert pressure
to halt the atrocities. Fortunately, I had just begun my
career in human rights as director of the US-based group,
Africa Watch. This position gave me a platform from which
I could speak and make my contribution.
I am, in particular, proud of one book I researched and
wrote while at Africa Watch, A Government at War With Its
Own People: Testimonies About the Killings and the Conflict
in the North, published in New York in January 1990. Unfortunately,
the Ethiopian government of the time refused us permission
to interview the refugees in the Ethiopian camps. So the
research took me to Djibouti and to various cities in the
UK which housed men, women and children who had fled Siad
Barre’s tactics of terror. I spent months listening
to harrowing testimony about a well-planned campaign to
eliminate an entire people. It is not possible to do justice
to their stories in an article, but this is the picture
that emerged. I am writing about this book now, 12 years
later, because it has, once again, entered the political
arena.
Arguing that all Isaaqs were supporters of the Somali
National Movement (SNM), the guerrilla movement that sought
to drive the government out of the Northwest, life, as we
know it, was denied to them in their own homeland from 1981
to May 1988, It became, instead, a succession of human rights
abuses. Murder; detentions; torture; unfair trials; confiscation
of land and other property; constraints on freedom of movement
and of expression; a strategy of humiliation directed at
family life, at women and elders; the denial of equal opportunities;
discriminatory business practices and curfews and checkpoints
became a daily affair. Both urban centres and rural communities
were targeted, but it was the nomadic population, regarded
as the backbone of the SNM economically and in terms of
human resources, which suffered the most. Their men and
boys were gunned down, their women raped, their water reservoirs
destroyed and people, as well as livestock, were blown up
by landmines.
In late May 1988, the SNM attacked the towns of Hargeisa
and Burao. It was the start of a savage war against Isaaq
civilians which drove most of them into exile in the inhospitable
desert of Ethiopia. Instead of engaging the SNM militarily,
the government used the full range of its military hardware
against unarmed and defenceless civilians, thinking perhaps
that the SNM would be too preoccupied with the chaos of
mass civilian casualties to fight back effectively. The
assault knew no bounds: residential homes were bombed, fleeing
refugees were strafed by planes and men, women and children
perished by the thousands.
Presidenet Dahir Riyale Kahin |
Mohamed Said Barre is not alone in his guilt for these
crimes against humanity, for which no-one has yet been prosecuted.
Some of the other key architects of this policy of annihilation,
men like Mohamed Saeed Morgan, Mohamed Hashi Gaani and countless
other collaborators, continue to wreak havoc in Somalia.
Others, including Mohamed Ali Samater, live in comfortable
exile in the United States and elsewhere in the world. And
then others are right here in Somaliland. And they include
President Dahir Rayaale, who was head of the feared and
powerful secret service, the National Security Service (NSS)
in Berbera. President Rayaale is named in A Government at
War With Its Own People.
The town of Berbera saw some of the worst atrocities of
the war, even though the SNM never entered Berbera in 1988.
Elders and businessmen were immediately arrested en masse
after the SNM attack on Hargeisa and Burao; between 27 May
and 1 June, they were transferred to Mogadishu. The killings,
which were exceptionally brutal in Berbera, began shortly
afterwards. Many of the victims had their throats slit and
were then shot. A series of massacres which have been mentioned
again and again took place, mainly in June, in Buraosheikh,
close to Berbera, when about 500 men were killed in groups
of between 30-40. Some of the victims were from Burao, Hargeisa
and surrounding villages who had come as temporary labourers
to the port of Berbera. Others were asylum seekers who had
been returned from Saudia Arabia. The names of some of these
men are listed in the book. As head of the NSS in Berbera,
Dahir Rayaale bears a heavy and direct responsibility for
their fate.
Witnesses who are alive also recall Rayaale’s contribution
to the war against civilians. One of the people I interviewed
in Djibouti in August 1989 and who is cited in the book
is Abdifatah Abdillahi Jirreh. He was only 14 at the time,
but he remembered Dahir Rayaale.
One day in mid-August [1988], Dahir Rayaale, head of the
NSS, came to our ice plant and took my father away. They
also arrested one of the watchmen, an old man, Farah Badeh
Gheedi. They were detained in the police station, accused
of talking about the prospects of the SNM coming to Berbera.
Rayaale is not the only man who has held a senior political
position in Somaliland whose conduct of human rights has
been questioned. Many former Isaaq members of the NSS and
the HANGASH, the military police that came to exert formidable
power over civilians, today occupy key positions in Somaliland
in the NSS, re-established in 1995, and the Criminal Investigations
Department (CID). The people they tortured, interrogated
and spied on, and the people whose loved ones they killed,
will, one day, no doubt give their own account.
So the issue is not one of clan and community identity,
but of individual responsibility for grave injustices. These
men, whether they are Isaaqs or non-Isaaqs, must answer
for what they did in their political and professional capacity.
And the political parties to which they belong must investigate
these accusations thoroughly and objectively and respond
accordingly. The three political parties who will contest
the forthcoming presidential elections—UDUB, Kulmiye
and UCID—must ensure that they do not recruit, let
alone put forward as candidates, human rights offenders.
Since the accusations in the book became a matter of public
debate, “witnesses” have gone on television
to say that Rayaale actually saved lives. That is not the
point; he may well have saved some people, but that does
not prove that he did not commit the acts of which he is
accused.
The case about President Rayaale is especially serious
because he is a candidate in the first free presidential
elections that the country has known in more than 30 years.
He became president, not through the will of the people,
but appointed by the House of Elders on the death of the
late President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal. But now it is a matter
of choice. If he wins, he will remain in power for five
years. Justice for the victims is at stake. But so is the
future of Somaliland. The crimes of the 1980s is the very
reason why Somaliland decided to secede from Somalia in
May 1991. The fact that men like Morgan and Gaani retain
considerable power in Somalia is a major issue for people
in Somaliland. Only a leader whose own hands are clean has
the legitimacy to speak for Somaliland on such major questions
as the prosecution of war criminals and to represent his
people effectively regionally and internationally.
The question will be asked: why has it taken so long for
this information to be widely disseminated and known, despite
the fact that it was documented as early as 1990? There
are many factors, the most important of which was the decision
taken in May 1991 to pursue a policy of reconciliation in
Somaliland. But even then, the leading perpetrators of war
crimes were excluded and a committee named to pursue their
case. But settling the internal conflicts of the 1990s drained
energy that might have been devoted to that task. So justice
took a back seat. But with the prospect of electing a president
who faces such serious accusations, Somaliland cannot afford
to remain silent. Keeping quiet means that tens of thousands
of people died for nothing. It means that an entire people
became impoverished and stateless refugees for nothing.
It means that Hargeisa, Burao, Berbera and other towns became
roofless ghost towns for nothing. And it means that any
attempt to pursue the likes of Morgan and Gaani will be
laughed out of court. It is time to speak out and set the
record straight.
Rakiya A. Omaar is the director of the international human
rights organisation, African
Rights.