The Isaaq genocide, 1987–1989: the killings in the north, from the record

In short

In May 1988 the Somali National Movement (SNM) attacked Burao and Hargeisa. The army of Siad Barre's government answered with a campaign against the Isaaq civilians of the north-west, the SNM's main support base (Library of Congress, Somalia: A Country Study).

A 1989 study for the US State Department, by Robert Gersony, found that the army had carried out "a widespread, systematic and extremely violent assault on the unarmed civilian Issak population" (Gersony, Why Somalis Flee, August 1989, p. 60). The same report recorded killings by the SNM too. Many Somalis, especially in Somaliland, call these events the Isaaq genocide. For the Isaaq clan-family itself, see the Isaaq.

Before May 1988

The SNM had raided the north from bases in Ethiopia since 1982 (see the armed movements, 1978–1991). Gersony's interviews record a small number of army killings of civilians from 1982 to 1987: 18 of the 629 he counted (pp. 32–33).

From 1986 to 1988 the army's command in the north-west was led by General Mohamed Said Hersi "Morgan". A confidential report from this period, known in Somaliland as the "Letter of Death", proposed harsh measures against the Isaaq ("Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan", Wikipedia, citing scholarly works).

In April 1988 Siad Barre and Ethiopia's leader agreed to stop backing each other's rebels. The SNM then moved its fighters into Somalia (Library of Congress).

Hargeisa and Burao, May–August 1988

The SNM attacked Burao on 27 May 1988 and Hargeisa days later. The Library of Congress records the army's response as "massive aerial bombing, carried out by foreign mercenary pilots, that damaged or destroyed virtually every building in Hargeysa" (Library of Congress).

Gersony found that in both towns soldiers "sometimes engaged in the looting and killing of unarmed civilians" far from the fighting. As civilians fled toward Ethiopia, "they were attacked by Somali ground and air forces, which probably resulted in the deaths of hundreds" (p. 61).

He also found that the SNM spread its fighters, "in military and civilian dress", through Hargeisa's crowded Isaaq neighbourhoods. Civilian deaths "resulting in part from this factor may have ascended into the thousands" (p. 64).

Berbera

Berbera saw no SNM attack. Yet refugees told Gersony that from late May to at least September 1988, soldiers "systematically collected large numbers of Issak males on the sole basis of their clan association" (p. 25).

Survivors said prisoners were taken out at night in groups of five to fifty and killed, mostly with knives, and buried nearby. One burial site was about a kilometre from the end of the airport runway. Gersony concluded that "at least five hundred and perhaps many more Issak men were systematically eliminated in Berbera in this manner solely because they were Issaks" (pp. 25–26).

What Gersony found

Gersony's team interviewed more than 250 refugees and displaced people in 31 places in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya (pp. 1–2). His main findings on the army (pp. 60–61):

• Villages and wells. "A systematic pattern of attacks against unarmed, civilian Issak villages, watering points and grazing areas."
• Executions. "Roundups, summary executions and massacres of many hundreds, if not more." He wrote that "the appearance that victims were selected for these killings principally because of their ethnic identity is unmistakable."
• Prisons. Detainees suffered "severe beatings, stabbing, prolonged choking", electric shock and other abuse, sometimes until death.
• The toll. "It is conservatively estimated that at least 5,000 unarmed civilian Issaks were purposefully murdered by the Somali Armed Forces between May 1988 and March 1989."

The 629 killings his Isaaq interviewees described were 60% men, 24% women and 14% children. About 86% were shot and 8% killed by bombing or strafing from the air (p. 32).

What the SNM did

The same report records abuses by the SNM (pp. 62–63):

• Civilians. In the first three months of its offensive, the SNM killed unarmed civilians in cases "which together may have resulted in the deaths of at least several hundred or more". Some were "men sought out and killed apparently only because they were not Issaks".
• Burao. The SNM carried out "summary executions of fifty or more prisoners", some after brief courts martial. Some victims were civilians.
• Refugee camps. In attacks on UN camps for Ethiopian refugees, "at least four hundred unarmed civilian refugees were killed".

Gersony also found that the government had forcibly conscripted Ethiopian refugees from the UN camps for years, and after May 1988 armed some of them to fight the SNM (p. 63).

Refugees

Between May 1988 and January 1989, an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people fled from the north into eastern Ethiopia, "sometimes at the rate of 4,000 a day" (Gersony, p. 1). In January 1990 Africa Watch estimated 50,000 to 60,000 killed and nearly half a million refugees by early 1990 (Human Rights Watch, World Report 1990).

The record since

• A UN study, 2001. A study for the United Nations concluded that "the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somalia Government", as quoted by The Nation (Einashe and Kennard, The Nation, 22 October 2018).
• Mass graves. Somaliland's War Crimes Investigation Commission, set up under President Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, had by 2018 exhumed 11 mass graves and reburied 318 skeletons. The same article reports more than 200 mass graves, most in the valley near Hargeisa known as the Valley of Death (same source).
• A US civil court, 2012. A US federal court entered a $21 million judgment against Mohamed Ali Samatar, Siad Barre's defence minister and later prime minister (same source).
• A US jury, 2019. On 21 May 2019 a jury in Virginia found Colonel Yusuf Abdi Ali liable for the torture of Farhan Warfaa, a teenager in his custody in the 1980s. It rejected the claim of attempted killing (VOA, May 2019; Center for Justice and Accountability). See Yusuf Abdi Ali (Tukeh).

The Nation reported in 2018 that "no one has been criminally punished" (same source).

Who suffered?

Isaaq civilians of every age in Hargeisa, Burao, Berbera, the villages and the grazing lands were killed, jailed, tortured and driven from their homes (Gersony, pp. 60–61). Non-Isaaq civilians killed by the SNM, and Ethiopian refugees in the UN camps, were victims too (pp. 62–63).

Gersony also recorded "heroic efforts in which non-Issak civilians saved the lives of Issak civilians", and Isaaq civilians who saved non-Isaaq lives in turn (p. 65).

Sources differ

• The number killed. Gersony gave a conservative minimum of 5,000 civilians "purposefully murdered" in May 1988 to March 1989, plus at least 500 in Berbera. Africa Watch estimated 50,000 to 60,000 dead by early 1990, from all causes. The Nation gives about 200,000, including more than 40,000 in bombing and ground attacks. No agreed figure exists.
• The word "genocide". The 2001 UN-commissioned study used it, and The Nation calls the events "Somaliland's forgotten genocide". Gersony, in 1989, described ethnic targeting without using the word.
• Who caused Hargeisa's civilian deaths. Some reports blamed the army alone. Gersony wrote that the SNM's tactics shared responsibility, "without absolving either side" (p. 64).
• The 2001 study. Its finding is quoted here as reported by The Nation (2018).

Read the primary sources yourself

• Robert Gersony, Why Somalis Flee: Synthesis of Accounts of Conflict Experience in Northern Somalia, US Department of State, August 1989: PDF.
• Africa Watch, Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People, January 1990: scanned PDF.
• Human Rights Watch, World Report 1990, Somalia chapter: text.
• Library of Congress, Somalia: A Country Study (1993), "Relations with Ethiopia": text.