By Rakiya Omaar, a Somalian, is executive director of the human rights organization Africa Watch.
Nineteen ninety-one is the year Somalia died. Since full-scale civil war broke out on November 17, at least 14,000 people have been killed and 27,000 wounded in the capital city of Mogadishu. Most of the casualties are civilians. Rivalry between the forces of two ruthless men--interim President Mohammed Ali Mahdi and General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, both of whom belong to the same clan and the same movement, the United Somali Congress (USC)--has made Mogadishu an exceptionally dangerous place. In addition to troops loyal to both men, hundreds of armed "freelance" soldiers and looters contribute to the violence.
The large number of causalties can be explained by several factors: the war is taking place in an urban setting; there are about 30,000 armed men and youths in and around Mogadishu, with easy access to a huge arsenal that includes weapons intended for field combat and air attacks; and many of those armed are completely untrained in the use of these weapons.
Lack of adequate medical care is another reason for the numerous casualties. Both factions have been extraordinarily callous, attacking hospitals and periodically interfering with the work of doctors, nurses, and aides. Hospitals do not have minimal nursing support, suffer shortages of medical supplies, and are swollen to three times their capacity. The lack of medical facilities has left many of those wounded who might have survived in a hospital to die in their homes or on the streets.
In the next few months, the already staggering numbers of casualties will be dwarfed by the tens of thousands of people, especially children, who are likely to die from malnutrition and disease. After the rains begin in late April, international relief agencies expect outbreaks of particularly virulent forms of meningitis and infectious hepatitis, as well as cholera.
Mogadishu and south-central Somalia also face the worst famine in the country's history. Drought has played only a minor role in this crisis. The famine, which has already begun, is largely man-made, the result of warfare during the past two years. Along the lower Jubba River, cultivation was disrupted in mid-1991 by battles between the USC and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM). Crops, seeds, tractors, and irrigation pumps were stolen, villages destroyed, and people displaced. Farmers planted smaller areas, and often consumed their crops before they ripened, both to preempt looters and out of sheer hunger. In March 1992, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that "horrifying levels of 90 percent moderate and severe malnutrition" had been found in the area surrounding Belet Huen in central Somalia and in the camps of displaced people around Merca, south of Mogadishu. It estimates that 1.5 million people in and around Mogadishu may be affected by famine, and puts at 4.5 million the number throughout the country who are threatened by starvation.
Democracy Sidelined
The Western media has portrayed the war in Somalia as a clan conflict, ignoring the complex reality that is also an intense power struggle between two ambitious men and a struggle for basic resources, including food, by groups of impoverished but heavily armed men and boys.
The savagery of the fighting points up the absence of civilian institutions to mediate the conflict--an absence that is the legacy of 21 years of dictatorship under Mohammed Siad Barre. After only nine years of post-colonial civilian rule. Siad Barre, the commander in chief of the armed forces, seized power in a coup in October 1969. (Somalia became an independent country in 1960 with the unification of the northern region, the former British Protectorate of Somaliland, and the south, previously an Italian colony and a UN Trust Territory between 1950 and 1960.) The constitution was suspended, the National Asssembly dissolved, political parties disbanded, and professional associations prohibited. Leading civilian politicians were arrested, most of whom remained in detention for years. Civic organizations not expressly sponsored by the state were banned.
The new regime announced radical plans to transform overnight an underdeveloped, conservative, Islamic country, inhabited primarily by nomads and semipastoralist nomads into a modern socialist state through "scientific socialism." Banking and insurance institutions were nationalized, as well as most of the country's limited industry. Management of most of the economy was entrusted to government agencies.
Determined to create a political system without constitutional, legislative, or judicial restraints in the exercise of executive power, Siad Barre worked to cement his control of the country. A vigorous personality cult was encouraged. Public adulation was nurtured by constant references on the radio and in the press to the actions and words of the nation's "Father." Radio newscasts and Siad Barre's public appearances began with a song dedicated to "Our Father, the Father of Knowledge." A forceful and brilliant public speaker whose mastery of language and of Somalia's history and clan structure was unrivaled, Siad Barre quickly dominated the political landscape.
An array of legislative provisions made it a capital offense to be a member of an opposition group or any organization the government considered unacceptable, including trade unions outside the government controlled federation. Siad Barre's political system, like all oppressive regimes, also relied on security agents and secret informants whose function was to police hearts and minds and stamp out attempts at peaceful dissent. The most feared agency of the security apparatus was the National Security Service (NSS), for years headed by Siad Barre's son-in-law. But there were others, including the ubiquitous Victory Pioneers, a uniformed paramilitary group consisting mainly of uneducated youth that has been compared to Haiti's Tontons Macoute.
What the regime could not achieve through terror, it attempted to accomplish through the control of information. The government nationalized printing presses and the media, which was subject to strict and pervasive censorship. Most foreign journalists were denied visas, and contact between Somalis and foreigners living in the country, especially Westerners, was discouraged.
In accordance with the need to create a "modern" country, the government declared war on what it called the "scourge" of tribalism. To discourage clan affiliations, private arrangements for social gatherings, such as engagement and wedding ceremonies and funerals, were forbidden in 1973. Gatherings like these had to be held instead at orientation centers, where courses in political indoctrination were compulsory.
During his two decades in power Siad Barre proceeded, with studied deliberation and thorough effect, to dismantle the institutions that allowed people to articulate their grievances and that provided a framework for the resolution of conflict. Powerless to bring about the change peacefully, many people left the country or turned to violence, setting the stage for the current turmoil.
A Cold War Pawn
Immediately after he seized power, Siad Barre forged close links with the Soviet Union, which provided economic, technical, and military assistance. Even before Siad Barre came to power, many officers had been trained in the Soviet Union, but the military links became closer after 1969 with Siad Barre's commitment to "scientific socialism." East Germany also provided training for the police and security forces, and during the drought that ravaged the country in 1974 and 1975, Moscow provided generous humanitarian assistance.
The Soviet connection was short-lived. In 1974, Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Ethiopia overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. The political turbulence in Ethiopia gave Somalia the opportunity to promote its long-standing claim to the Ogaden, a desert region of Ethiopia settled by Somali-speaking people. In July 1977 the Somali army invaded the Ogaden and quickly captured several major towns.
Ethiopia, which until the emperor's fall had been a close ally of the United States, appealed to Moscow for aid. The Soviet Union switched allegiances, extending substantial assistance to the Ethiopian army, including airlifts of military equipment and advisors. Cuban combat units were also sent. With this outside aid, the Ethiopians forced the Somali army to retreat in March 1978, an event that was to have far-reaching political, economic, and social ramifications in Somalia.
Having been dropped by Moscow, Somalia turned to the United States, which after 1978 became the most important source of economic and military aid. In exchange the United States took advantage of Somalia's strategic location to establish a base from which it could further its cold war strategy in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. During the next decade, American interests in Somalia included a naval and military facility at the port of Berbera that was used for surveillance of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
The United States also supplied Siad Barre with the weapons that are being used today in Mogadishu to shell residential areas. These include the M-198 155 mm. howitzer, which can fire an 18-pound (40-kilogram) shell up to 48 miles (30 kilometers). Many of the small armaments being used, including the 106 mm. M-40A1 recoilless gun, the 105 mm. M-56 field gun, and AK-47 assault rifles, were also supplied by the United States. Close consultations between the administration of United States President George Bush and Somalia's military leaders continued well into 1989 and were finally curbed mainly because of pressure from Congress.
The Genesis of the Somali Opposition
After Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden in 1978, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian refugees poured into the country, most of them from the Ogaden clan (members of which also live in Somalia) and Oromos. The government settled many of the refugees in the northern region. The Isaaks, the largest clan in that region, accused the Siad Barre government of favoring the refugees at the expense of the local population by providing them with jobs, access to land, and educational and business opportunities. There were also complaints that the government was encouraging the creation of militias among the refugees. Clan elders repeatedly met with and sent appeals to government officials, charging that the refugees were terrorizing Isaaks living in the region bordering the Ogaden. The government refused to intervene, which reinforced suspicions that it was using the refugees to undermine the Isaaks.
In 1981 a group of Isaak exiles formed the Somali National Movement (SNM) in London in response to growing human rights violations. The SNM then based itself in Ethiopia and employed hit-and-run tactics to keep the Somali army off balance. It stepped up its military operations after 1984, which led to bloody, indiscriminate army reprisals against Isaak civilians.
On May 27, 1988, the SNM attacked Burao and on May 31 its forces attacked the northern city of Hargeisa. Unable to defeat the small and poorly organized SNM guerilla force in direct combat, government troops turned their firepower on the civilian population, whom they said welcomed and aided the invasion. Aerial bombardment and heavy artillery shelling of residential districts destroyed Hargeisa and killed tens of thousands of people in towns throughout the north. (In January 1990, Africa Watch estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 civilians were killed in the north between May 1988 and January 1990. For details see Africa Watch, A Government at War with its Own People: Testimonies about the Killings and Conflict in the North (New York, 1990). Even after the war began, shipments of United States military hardware continued to arrive in the country, including a June 1988 delivery of about $1.4-million worth of automatic rifles and ammunition.)
In 1989 guerilla warfare spread to the central and southern parts of the country, when two new movements--the United Somali Congress, operating in the central region with the support of the Hawiye clan, and the Somali Patriotic Front (SPM), supported by Ogaden living in the south--declared war on the government. Anxious to subdue the countryside and make it inhospitable to the guerrillas, the government carried out particularly brutal attacks on the rural population, killing civilians, burning villages, slaughtering livestock, and destroying water reservoirs.
In May 1990, as the government began to crumble, a group of businessmen and intellectuals who became known as the Manifesto group published an anti-government declaration. In September, in an effort to precipitate Siad Barre's departure, the USC, the SPM, and the SNM decided to coordinate their military tactics to overthrow Siad Barre and form a coalition government. There were no public statements about political programs, and it is unlikely that any were discussed. Siad Barre's repression had been generally directed at clans, making ideological differences a luxury no one could afford, and making identification with one's clan a question of survival, both for the individual and the group. In any case, the immediate task was to oust Siad Barre, after which there was an agreement to hold a national conference to hammer out common policies and create an equal distribution of power.
During the last three months of 1990, Mogadishu and the whole of southern Somalia became a war zone as the campaign to dislodge Siad Barre escalated dramatically. In December 1990 and January 1991, as USC and SPM forces closed in on Mogadishu, Siad Barre instigated fighting inside the city. The fiercest clashes occurred on December 30, with fighting between members of the Darod clan (many of them armed by Siad Barre) and the Hawiye clan. Thousands of civilians lost their lives, particularly those belonging to the Hawiye, the largest clan in Mogadishu. At the same time, Siad Barre opened negotiations with some members of the Manifesto group.
On January 19, 1991, USC forces under the command of General Aidid, a former soldier who led a USC faction that was based in Ethiopia, entered the city, forcing Siad Barre to flee in a tank to his home area of Gedo, on the border of Kenya. Three days later, without consulting the leaders of the other armed opposition groups, prominent members of the Manifesto group formed a government, with Ali Mahdi, a wealthy hotelier, as interim president. This move set the stage for the strife that has since devastated Mogadishu. Aidid, the SPM, and the SNM immediately rejected Ali Mahdi's appointment and refused to recognize his authority.
In subsequent months, there was a succession of abortive attempts to reconcile the different armed organizations, legitimize the government, and unite the USC, which has split into factions headed by Ali Mahdi and Aidid. At a USC congress in June and July, Aidid was elected chairman of the entire USC. In August, two conferences were organized in neighboring Djibouti, which representatives of most of the armed movements attended. In what have come to be known as the Djibouti Accords, the presidency was given to the USC, which Ali Mahdi interpreted as confirmation of his position. Aidid claimed that the USC should be allowed to nominate its own candidate--namely himself. The different interpretations were resolved by an agreement in early August, which confirmed Ali Mahdi as president, on the condition that steps were taken to end armed conflict, work toward an establishment of basic civil infrastructure, and make sure that Ali Mahdi would adhere to USC policy for reconstituting a national army.
Fighting again broke out in September, but was contained after neutral clans came between the two USC factions with their armed vehicles and troops. Disputes continued, with each side menacing the other militarily. On November 13, Ali Mahdi moved his forces close to Aidid's headquarters. Full-scale fighting erupted in November 17 when Aidid responded with a lightning military strike on Ali Mahdi's troops.
In the course of 1991, the conflict between Aidid and Ali Mahdi became in part a battle between two subclans. The fighting surprised Somalis, since there are no appreciable religious, cultural, or other differences between the two subclans. There is no history of interclan fighting within the Haeiye clan, nor is there any traditional enmity between Aidid's Habr Gidir subclan and Ali Mahdi's Abgal subclan. The current rivalry between the two results from the way in which first Siad Barre and then the two USC leaders have sought to manipulate clan loyalty in order to secure a political power base. This legacy of newly manufactured ethnic tension is one of the most damaging political developments in contemporary Somalia, once Africa's most homogenous nation.
As the fighting continues, subclan loyalty--even subclan survival--is increasingly at stake, with the fear that the future may bring murderous retaliation against the losers. The fight is also fueled by money. In a poor and aid-dependent country such as Somalia, control over the symbols of "legitimate" or "sovereign" government is more than a matter of status; it is a license to print money. The government not only literally manufactures bank notes, but also controls the exchange rate, receives foreign aid, and can run up debts on the national account--all of which can bring great personal fortunes to those in office. Ali Mahdi and his ministerial colleagues have lost most of their businesses and depend on holding office for future income. Similarly, General Aidid and his financial backers are banking on their share of the spoils if they should win.
The Northern Secession
Mogadishu is not the only trouble spot in Somalia. With Siad Barre's defeat, the SNM became increasingly dissatisfied with its alliance with the USC and the SPM. The lack of consultation by the USC and the SPM, and the failure to hold the long-promised national conference after the government's collapse, galvanized pro-secession sentiment among the northern region's Isaak clan, which is the SNM's support base. Isaak discontent fed on many grievances--the ferocity of the 1988 war and bitterness that none of the other main clans had condemned its savagery and had actually fought for the government and profited from the plunder of Hargeisa. There was also a deep-seated feeling that the north had been deliberately starved of development resources and that the introduction of Somali as the official language was partly--if not entirely--motivated by the determination to blunt the educational advantages enjoyed by the north as an English-speaking region.
Despite widespread support for secession among the rank and file, the SNM leadership was against it, since it was aware that winning international recognition would be difficult. Ali Mahdi's decision to take power strengthened the hand of the pro-secessionists who forced the decision on the leadership by arguing that a government dominated by southern groups would deny it a voice in a united Somalia. The Republic of Somaliland was declared on May 18, 1991.
The security situation in the north is rapidly deteriorating, compounded by dire economic problems and the many Isaaks who are fleeing the war in Mogadishu. The predictable reluctance of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the United Nations (UN), or any government to extend recognition means that little development assistance has been forthcoming. A few humanitarian groups with limited resources work with indigenous organizations struggling to rehabilitate a region devastated by warfare and land mines. (There are still as many as 400,000 mainly Isaak refugees living in eastern Ethiopia, who the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is eager to repatriate. However, both the administration in Somaliland and international relief agencies worry that many will be killed by land mines and that their sudden arrival would put a further burden on resources.) Hargeisa, to which most refugees from Mogadishu have returned, lies in ruins, with almost all its buildings destroyed. While there is no ideologically based opposition to the administration in Somaliland, its domination by the Isaak-supported SNM has led to resistance from some members of non-Isaak clans.
The UN and Somalia
The tragedy in Somalia has been an international embarrassment for the UN. Citing security concerns, the UN and its specialized agencies withdrew their personnel from Mogadishu immediately after Siad Barre fell, even though the killing of civilians had already begun. It provided no assistance in 1991 and made no effort to become engaged when Mogadishu became a killing field in November. The burden of caring for civilians has been left primarily to the Red Cross and a few other humanitarian agencies, including the United States International Medical Corps, France's Doctors without Borders, and Britain's Save the Children Fund. In mid-December 1991, stung by unusually harsh public criticism from the Red Cross and the United States Departments of Foreign Disaster Assistance, the UN sent Under Secretary General James Jonah to Somalia. The visit, which was poorly planned and turned into a fiasco, revealed the depth of the UN's ignorance of the situation in Somalia.
Anxious for success, in mid-February of this year the UN called negotiators for Ali Mahdi and Aidid to New York and declared, after only two days of talks, that a cease-fire had been concluded. The fighting in Mogadishu, however, continued unabated. In late February representatives of the UN, the OAU, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference visited Mogadishu to work out the details of the cease-fire.
UN insistence that the warring factions respect the cease-fire agreement before it provides food, medicine, and other necessities is misplaced. The war in Mogadishu is fueled by hunger, and carefully planned deliveries of humanitarian assistance regardless of a cease-fire will make a political agreement easier.
The latest UN Security Council resolution on Somalia, adopted on March 17, sparked an angry exchange between African countries and the United States. Afraid that Congress would refuse to provide additional aid to another country because it was concerned about the high cost of UN peacekeeping efforts in Cambodia, El Salvador, Yugoslavia, and the Western Sahara, the United States succeeded in downplaying the political significance of UN involvement in Somalia. At United States insistence, the final resolution limited the UN role in Somalia to the delivery of humanitarian aid. The United States also took the lead in toning down an earlier Security Council resolution on Somalia, adopted on January 23, to ensure that it would not engage the UN in attempting to resolve the underlying political conflict there.
The United States, which no longer needs Somalia as a cold war pawn, is now eager to avoid the larger costs associated in the short term with a UN role in curbing the slaughter. After spending millions of dollars to keep Siad Barre afloat, and giving him the military hardware to sustain the conflicts that have ravaged Somalia, the United States is now withholding the money that might bring a respite for the Somali people.
Resolving the Conflict
The current dispute within the USC is extraordinarily complex. The UN and other intermediaries must therefore take the time to learn the details of the situation. There are several potential flash points in the search for solutions.
The Ali Mahdi camp insists on UN peacekeeping forces, assuming that international involvement implies recognition of its claim to be the legitimate government of Somalia. This is reinforced by the varying degrees of support the OAU, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference have given to the Djibouti Accords of last July. Aidid fears international resolution of the conflict precisely because he suspects that the UN implicitly supports the accords and is prepared to recognize the existing government after the current fighting stops. Aidid is therefore adamant that a national reconciliation conference be held. Having repudiated the second accord signed at the Djibouti conference, he is confident that such a conference would replace the Ali Mahdi government with one in which his faction would play a greater role.
Another sensitive issue is responsibility for monitoring the cease-fire. Aidid's group favors the use of "neutral" monitors from the Hawiye clan, the Ali Mahdi faction, suspecting the neutrals of a pro-Aidid bias, prefers an international presence, again hoping that this will endorse the legitimacy of the interim government.
The neutrality of the "neutral clans," such as the Hawadle and the Sheikhal, is largely a "negative neutrality"; for the most part they do not want to become involved in the conflict. There is, however, an opportunity to transform this into "positive neutrality" observed during the fighting last September, when the then-neutral clans intervened to stop the fighting. International endorsement of their neutral position and political pressure, particularly from the UN, would strengthen their hand and encourage them to play a more active role to ensure careful monitoring of the cease-fire. (A major drawback of the February talks in New York was the failure to invite members of neutral clans.)
One of the most effective ways to keep a cease-fire in place and prevent an escalation of the war is to register and monitor heavy weapons and "technicals"--pick-up trucks with antitank guns or large caliber weapons such as machine guns. This should be done before attempting to disarm the two factions.
The country's best hope for relieving its agony is to return to its past and rely on the collective experience of its elders. Elders are regarded as the only social group in Somalia with the authority to promote the search for peaceful dialogue. This is a sobering measure of Somalia's desperation. Siad Barre had sought to undermine traditional communal authority through a policy of co-opting elders. Those he could not co-opt were killed, imprisoned, or forced into exile. Fortunately, some have survived and the community's respect for them remains intact. Although relief agencies have left the distribution of aid to the elders and have drawn the elders into discussions about the country's security, they cannot bear primary responsibility for brokering a peace accord. The intensity of the fighting alone makes it impossible for them to meet in peace and to forge common positions that will enable them to bring the warring factions to the negotiating table.
While the United States has been generous in its humanitarian assistance, the reality is that unless the conflict is resolved, humanitarian assistance to Somalia has only limited value. The prospects for peace are diminished by the absence of civilian institutions that might have fostered an atmosphere conductive to political discourse. This imposes a special responsibility on those who have the potential to play a constructive role--the OAU, the Islamic Conference, the Arab League, neighboring countries, and above all, the UN. Only constant international pressure will encourage the two warring factions to move toward a formula for ending the war, which has already claimed so many lives, and which has impoverished the entire population. If this can be accomplished, it could serve as a model for the numerous other conflicts in the country that have made Somalia such a stark international symbol of human misery.