If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the organisers of Miss Somali UK 2009 have a lot to learn. In their efforts to promote Somaliness in a community that is struggling to integrate into mainstream UK society, they thought that a beauty pageant would best exhibit the qualities that Somalis in the UK possess.
The campaign to promote the event was well thought out and executed. Their interview on the YouTube site is in accessible if you click here for part one, here for part two and here for part three. They had a Facebook group set up and an official website, Miss Somali UK , that lists all those organisations that supported and sponsored the get-together. The blurb from the website reads as follows:
The Official Miss Somali UK was founded to promote a positive image of the Somali community by creating awareness of the social and cultural aspects of the country as well as the unique beauty of the Somali people. Bringing together a dynamic fusion of fashion, dance and music, The Official Miss Somali UK will celebrate the richness of this East African gem and capture the essence of the Somali culture and tradition throughout this event. The event will be attended by many guests not only from the Somali community but all over the world to support the event in promoting the Somali culture, traditional wear and celebrate talent within the community. We are expecting various performances to compliment the finale at the same time offering individuals and groups the platform of opportunity to showcase their work, acts and talents but an opportunity for the world to see the positive aspects of the Somali community. This event will be the focal point of Somali achievements and encouraging the Somali community to aspire and develop their strengths.
The scenario here is that members of the Somali community, in an effort to seek recognition from their peers, have taken elements of a culture [the objectification of women in this instance] to articulate their position in the absence of utilising their own cultural references. Its facile to suggest that a beauty pageant, no matter how progressive the format, can address the community's needs. It is lazy and flawed to suggest that using Anglo-Saxon cultural references best articulates the position of the members of the Somali community in the UK.
Why did this travesty occur? As suggested in previous posts, it appears that the Somali community is losing its cultural centre and this has resulted in a number of issues that have marked their failure to integrate into mainstream society. A Miss Somali UK competition should be as offensive to people as the Black and White Minstrel Show [18 million viewers watched this BBC programme] was in the1960s and 1970s when entertainers dressed up in black face and captivated the hearts of the viewing public. It is superficial and serves as nothing other than band aid that covers a gaping wound.
Complex problems require complex solutions. The idea that Somali women, parading around a stage for the pleasure of an audience, can help their community is laughable. If anything it is an insult to any sane person who has any inkling for what it means to be a Somali.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Friday, 25 December 2009
Findings of a US State Department Report on the conduct of the Somali Armed Forces in the conflict in the Northern territories in 1988
For the full report, click here
The conclusions on the conduct of the Somali Armed Forces in the Northern territories that comprise Somaliland during the initial phases of their conflict with the Somalu National Movement [SNM] is as follows:
1. In response to the SNM’s May 1988 intensification of the civil conflict in
northern Somalia, the Somali Armed Forces appears to have engaged in a
widespread, systematic and extremely violent assault on the unarmed civilian
Issak population of northern Somalia in places where and at times when
neither resistance to these actions nor danger to the Somali Armed Forces
was present.
2. The Somali Armed Forces conducted what appears to be a systematic
pattern of attacks against unarmed, civilian Issak villages, watering points and
grazing areas of northern Somalia, killing many of their residents and forcing
the survivors to flee for safety to remote areas within Somalia or to other
countries.
3. Simultaneously, the Somali Armed Forces engaged in a pattern of roundups,
summary executions and massacres of many hundreds, if not more, unarmed
civilian Issaks. Some of these actions appear to have been reprisals for acts
committed by the SNM; the motives for others are not clear. But the
appearance that victims were selected for these killings principally because of
their ethnic identity is unmistakable.
4. In an additional pattern of systematic, organized and sustained Somali Armed
Forces actions in Berbera, which has not been the object of an SNM attack or
the scene of conflict, at least five hundred, and perhaps many more Issak
men were systematically rounded up and murdered, mainly by having their
throats cut, and then buried in mass graves, during the four months following
the intensification of the conflict, apparently solely because they were Issaks.
5. In the course of battles with the SNM in the towns of Hargeisa and Burao,
Somali Armed Forces soldiers sometimes engaged in the looting and killing of
unarmed civilians in areas fairly well removed from the immediate scene of
danger or battle.
6. While some survivors of these kinds of actions, as well as civilians simply
escaping the major battles in Hargeisa and Burao, were attempting to flee to
sanctuary in Ethiopia, they were attacked by Somali ground and air forces,
which probably resulted in the deaths of hundreds of asylum seekers.
7. Civilian detainees in Somali Government prisons accused of supporting the
SNM appear to have been, at least at times routinely, the objects of illtreatment,
including severe beatings, stabbing, prolonged choking, use of
metal clips and electric shock on flesh and testicles, and immersion in
excrement. This ill-treatment sometimes resulted in death.
8. 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, in the absence of resistance and in contexts which presented no
immediate danger to these forces.
9. About 70% of the Issak refugees interviewed in Ethiopia and Kenya reported
witnessing Somali Armed Forces murders. The 130 refugees reported over
six hundred such murders, excluding the Berbera mass killings and the
execution of prisoners in Government prisons, an average of 4.8 killings each.
10. Of the over six hundred killings described above, about 70% were said to
have taken place during the May 27/August 31, 1988 period. Five per cent
were attributed to the September/December 1988 period, and about thirteen
per cent were attributed to the January/March 1989 period.
11. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Issak refugees
who eventually arrived in UNHCR refugee camps in eastern Ethiopia did so
by September 1988, by which time most internally displaced Issaks were
already in remote interior locations in northern Somalia. By September 1988,
these migrations placed the majority of Issaks far from most areas in which
the Somali Armed Forces military operations were conducted
This report was tabled at the Senate in 1989; with a view to looking at the human rights record of Mohammed Siyaad Barre's regime following on from requests by the Barre regime for an increase in aid. As previously posted, the Bush administration maintained various levels of support for the Barre regime for most of this period, flying in the face of the consensus at the time.
The conclusions on the conduct of the Somali Armed Forces in the Northern territories that comprise Somaliland during the initial phases of their conflict with the Somalu National Movement [SNM] is as follows:
1. In response to the SNM’s May 1988 intensification of the civil conflict in
northern Somalia, the Somali Armed Forces appears to have engaged in a
widespread, systematic and extremely violent assault on the unarmed civilian
Issak population of northern Somalia in places where and at times when
neither resistance to these actions nor danger to the Somali Armed Forces
was present.
2. The Somali Armed Forces conducted what appears to be a systematic
pattern of attacks against unarmed, civilian Issak villages, watering points and
grazing areas of northern Somalia, killing many of their residents and forcing
the survivors to flee for safety to remote areas within Somalia or to other
countries.
3. Simultaneously, the Somali Armed Forces engaged in a pattern of roundups,
summary executions and massacres of many hundreds, if not more, unarmed
civilian Issaks. Some of these actions appear to have been reprisals for acts
committed by the SNM; the motives for others are not clear. But the
appearance that victims were selected for these killings principally because of
their ethnic identity is unmistakable.
4. In an additional pattern of systematic, organized and sustained Somali Armed
Forces actions in Berbera, which has not been the object of an SNM attack or
the scene of conflict, at least five hundred, and perhaps many more Issak
men were systematically rounded up and murdered, mainly by having their
throats cut, and then buried in mass graves, during the four months following
the intensification of the conflict, apparently solely because they were Issaks.
5. In the course of battles with the SNM in the towns of Hargeisa and Burao,
Somali Armed Forces soldiers sometimes engaged in the looting and killing of
unarmed civilians in areas fairly well removed from the immediate scene of
danger or battle.
6. While some survivors of these kinds of actions, as well as civilians simply
escaping the major battles in Hargeisa and Burao, were attempting to flee to
sanctuary in Ethiopia, they were attacked by Somali ground and air forces,
which probably resulted in the deaths of hundreds of asylum seekers.
7. Civilian detainees in Somali Government prisons accused of supporting the
SNM appear to have been, at least at times routinely, the objects of illtreatment,
including severe beatings, stabbing, prolonged choking, use of
metal clips and electric shock on flesh and testicles, and immersion in
excrement. This ill-treatment sometimes resulted in death.
8. 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, in the absence of resistance and in contexts which presented no
immediate danger to these forces.
9. About 70% of the Issak refugees interviewed in Ethiopia and Kenya reported
witnessing Somali Armed Forces murders. The 130 refugees reported over
six hundred such murders, excluding the Berbera mass killings and the
execution of prisoners in Government prisons, an average of 4.8 killings each.
10. Of the over six hundred killings described above, about 70% were said to
have taken place during the May 27/August 31, 1988 period. Five per cent
were attributed to the September/December 1988 period, and about thirteen
per cent were attributed to the January/March 1989 period.
11. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Issak refugees
who eventually arrived in UNHCR refugee camps in eastern Ethiopia did so
by September 1988, by which time most internally displaced Issaks were
already in remote interior locations in northern Somalia. By September 1988,
these migrations placed the majority of Issaks far from most areas in which
the Somali Armed Forces military operations were conducted
This report was tabled at the Senate in 1989; with a view to looking at the human rights record of Mohammed Siyaad Barre's regime following on from requests by the Barre regime for an increase in aid. As previously posted, the Bush administration maintained various levels of support for the Barre regime for most of this period, flying in the face of the consensus at the time.
SOMALIA AND SOMALILAND: Envisioning a dialogue on the question of Somali unity
If you want to know what security agencies think of the situation in the Horn of Africa, then read articles from the African Security Review.
To read an article on the suggested prospects of a unification between Somaliland and Somalia from Matt Bryden, click here
Despite the date of publication [2004] the generalities of the article remain relevant. The constant stream of transitional governments in the South of Somalia, imposed upon a populous from outside agencies [UN, AU, IGAD etc] is a tool to manage the viability of Somaliland. In so much as, international recognition will not be assured until the fate of Mogadishu is sealed.
To read an article on the suggested prospects of a unification between Somaliland and Somalia from Matt Bryden, click here
Despite the date of publication [2004] the generalities of the article remain relevant. The constant stream of transitional governments in the South of Somalia, imposed upon a populous from outside agencies [UN, AU, IGAD etc] is a tool to manage the viability of Somaliland. In so much as, international recognition will not be assured until the fate of Mogadishu is sealed.
Discourse on Womanhood in Somali Songs and the Politics of Power
To illustrate the complexities of the Somali language and its connection to the culture of the people, read here Lidwein Kapteijns extended essay here on the discourse regarding moral womanhood in Somali popular songs between 1960 and 1990.
Now ask yourself the question, why is Lidwein Kapteijns undertaking this task instead of person of Somali origin? Look at the short summary of Professor Kapteijns:
Now ask yourself the question, why is Lidwein Kapteijns undertaking this task instead of person of Somali origin? Look at the short summary of Professor Kapteijns:
Lidwien Kapteijns is Kendall/Hodder Professor of History at Wellesley College, teaching African and Middle Eastern History in the Department of History. She teaches courses on the history of Precolonial and Modern Africa, South Africa, and the Early and Modern Middle East. She teaches seminars on Women, Work and the Family in African History and Women in Islamic Society. She is also one of the faculty members teaching HIST 205: The Making of the Modern World Order, a requirement for IR students.
Prof. Kapteijns has two research areas. She started out as a Sudanist and lived and worked in the Sudan, where she taught at the University of Khartoum (1977-1981). For her first book, she did extensive fieldwork in Western Darfur, the area that is currently in the news because of the ethnocidal violence there. Her work on Sudanese history focused on late precolonial states in western Darfur. She also edited and published a number of source publications: Arabic historical documents with English translations.
During her M.A. studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Prof. Kapteijns studied Somali Language and Literature. In 1986 she returned to the study of Somali history and oral literature, which is where her major research interests currently lie. She co-edits a journal called Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, now in its fifth year and her most recent book (written together with Maryan Omar Ali) dealt with Somali oral texts from the colonial period to 1980. It is called Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980 (Greenwood/Heinemann, 1999). She is currently working on a project called “Somali Popular Culture and the Changing National Imaginary, 1960-present.” As Somalia has been in civil war for much of the last 20 years, she did her fieldwork for this book in the Republic of Djibouti, also in Northeast Africa.
Prof. Kapteijns has held a number of administrative positions at Wellesley College: she chaired Women’s Studies, the Peace & Justice Program, and the History Department. She has also served as Faculty Director of Internships and Service Learning since 2003.
She co-founded The Somali Institute for Research and Development (SIRAD), a small non-profit organizing public forums, in Somali, for the Somali community of Boston (siradinc@comcadst.net).
Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae of Lidwien Kapteijns (August 2005)
Education:
Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands): Ph.D. Degree, in History, cum laude, 1982;
“ Doctoraal” Degree, in History, cum laude1977; B.A. Degree, in History, 1973.
University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), M.A Degree, in Area Study of
Africa, 1975;
Work Experience:
Wellesley College, Department of History, 1986 – present. Professor (1997), Associate (1991),
Assistant (1986). Chair of Women’s Studies 1993-1999. Chair of History Department,
2001-2003, and 2005-2006; Chair of Peace and Justice Studies, 2005-2006.
Wellesley College, Office of the Dean of the College: Faculty Director of Internships and
Service-Learning, 2001 to present.
Michigan State University, Assistant Director, African Studies Center, 1984-1986.
Monmouth College, N.J., Lifelong Education, teacher of Arabic and Middle Eastern History.
African Studies Center, Leiden (The Netherlands), Research Associate, 1981-1982.
University of Khartoum, Department of History, Lecturer, 1977-1981
Merowe, Sudan: Higher Secondary School for Girls: English teacher, 1975-1976.
Selected Publications:
Books:
Women's Voices in a Men's World: Women and Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, 1899-1980"(with Maryan O. Ali). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916 (with Jay Spaulding). Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994.
After the Millennium: Diplomatic Correspondence from Wadai and Dar Fur on the Eve of Colonial Conquest, 1885-1916 (with Jay Spaulding). East Lansing: MSU, 1988.
Kapteijns, L., Een Kennismaking met de Afrikaanse Geschiedenis (An Introduction to the History of Africa) (with Jay Spaulding). Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1985.
Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: The History of the Masalit Sultanate, 1870-1930. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Articles:
“ Common Public Identity and Conceptions of Moral Womanhood in Recent Somali History (1960-2000),” forthcoming in a volume on Islam and Gender in Africa, ed. by Margot Badran (Leiden: Brill).
"'Come Back safely:' Laments about Labor Migration in Somali Love Songs," with Maryan Omar Ali, NortheastAfrican Studies, 8, 2 (2005), forthcoming.
.
“ Educating Immigrant Youth in the United States: An Exploration of the Somali Case,” (with Abukar Arman), Bildhaan: an International Journal of Somali Studies, 4, 2005, pp. 18-43.
"Government Qadis and Child Marriage in Aden: Ethnography in the Aden Archives," Internal Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 3 (2004), pp. 401-434.
“ The Disintegration of Somalia: A Historiographical Essay,” in Bildhaan: International Journal of Somali Studies, 1 (2001), pp. 11-52.
“Islam in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa,” in The History of Islam in Africa, ed. by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2000, pp. 27-50.
"`Proclaim to the People:' Five Poems by Sayyid Muhammad `Abd Allah Hasan of Somalia (1856-1921), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 7 (1996), pp. 25-34.
"Gender Relations and the Transformation of the Northern Somali Pastoral Tradition," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28, 2 (1995), pp. 241-259.
"Sittaat: Somali Women's Songs for the "Mothers of the Believers," The Marabout and the Muse: New Approaches to Islam in African Literature, ed. by Kenneth Harrow (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996), pp.124-141.
"Women and the Crisis of Communal Identity: The Cultural Construction of Gender in Somali History," in Ahmed I. Samatar, ed., The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), pp. 211-232.
"Women of the Zar and Middle-Class Sensibilities in Colonial Aden, 1923-1932," (with Jay Spaulding), in Voice and Power: The Culture of Language in Northeast Africa, ed. by R.J. Hayward and I.M. Lewis (London: SOAS, 1996), pp. 171-189.
"The Betrothal of `Ambaru bint Musa: Islamic Law versus Somali Custom in a Colonial Context," (with Jay Spaulding), Islam et Societes au Sud du Sahara, 7 (nov.1993), pp.193-203.
"From Slaves to Coolies: Two Documents from the Nineteenth-Century Somali Coast," (with Jay Spaulding), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 3 (1992), pp. 1-8.
"The Orientalist Paradigm in the Historiography of the Late Precolonial Sudan, (with Jay Spaulding), in Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, ed. by Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991), pp.19-38.
"Class Formation and History in Precolonial Somali Society: A Research Agenda," (with Jay Spaulding), Northeast African Studies 11, 1 (1989), pp. 19-38.
"The Historiography of the Sudan from 1500 to the Establishment of British Colonial Rule: A Critical Overview," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22, 2 (1989), pp. 251-266.
"Islamic Rationales for the Changing Social Roles of Women in the Western Sudan," in M.W. Daly, ed., Modernization in the Sudan: Festschrift for Richard Hill (New York, Lilian Barber Press, 1985), pp. 57-72
"Dar Sila: The Sultanate in Precolonial Times, 1874-1916," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines xxiii, 4, 92 (1983), pp. 447-470.
"Mahdist Faith and the Legitimation of Popular Revolt in Western Dar Fur," in Africa, 55, 4 (1985), pp. 390-399.
"The Religious Background of the Mahdi and his Movement," African Perspectives 2, 1976. pp. 61-81.
Reviews:
Review Essay “State and Clan in Somalia,” African Studies Review, 45, 3 (2002), pp. 52-56.
Review of Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, new edition), in International Journal of African Studies, 34, 1 (2001), 203-06.
Review of I.M. Lewis, A Pastoral democracy (third edition, Oxford: James Currey, 1999), Africa (with Mursal Farah), 71, 4, 2001, pp. 719-722.
Review of: Nuruddin Farah, Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (London: Cassell, 2000)), International Journal of African Studies, 33, 2 (2000), p. 384-86.
Review Essay: “New Studies of Women, Gender, and Islam: Contextualizing and Historicizing Muslim Women’s Lives,” in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 32, 2 (1998), pp. 586-593.
Review of: Judith Olmstead, Woman Between Two Worlds: Portrait of an Ethiopian Rural Leader (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), in American Historical Review, 103, 3 (June 1998), pp. 938-939.
Review of: Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. As Told to Virginia Lee Barnes and Janice Boddy (New York, 1994), International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 128-131.
Review of: Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, 1994), International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 143-145.
Review of: Hussein M. Adam and Charles Geshekter, Proceedings of the First International Congress of Somali Studies (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1992), Journal of African History 35, 3 (1994), pp. 518-521.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
SAWIR MUUJINAAYA GACAN KU DHIIGLE TUKE OO QOF NOLOSHA KU GUBAYA DEGMADA GEBILEY SANADKII 1988 KII
Sawirkani waa sawir murugo iyo xasuus ku beeraya qofwal oo u dhashay Somaliland iyo guud ahaanba dadka binu aadamka ah ee qadariya xaquuqda qofka binu aadamka ah, Waa sawir ka turjumaya xasuuqii uu taliskii Siyaad Bare uu kula kacay dadka Isaaqa ah, sawrikan oo si cad uu uga dhex muuqdo gacan ku dhiiglahaii degmada gebilay nafta ku dhibay sanadadii 1988 kii, sawirkan waa nin nolosha uu ku gubay ninkaas la odhan jiray korneel Tuke waanad aragtaa sida uu ugu qoslayo, nin nolasha uu ku gubay oo nafta la xaribnaaya - Bisadna waa ka ciyaar jiirna waa ka naf baa hore loo yidhi.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
The Somali language version of the famous 'Letter of Death'
Jumhuriyadda Dim Somaliya Wasaaradda Gaashaandhiga Xarunta Taliyaha Qaybta 26aad
TQB26/XKT/28-5/6/87 Taariikh: 28/01/87 S I R C U L U S WARBIXIN:
Ku: Madaxweynaha J.D. Soomaliya Ku: Wasiirka Wasaaradda Gaashaandhigga JDS. Ku: Wasiirka Wasaaraddd Arrimaha Gudaha JDS.
Tixraac warbixintii aan soo gudbiney ee ku taariikheysneyd 17.01.87 ee ku saabsaneyd xaaladda Difaaca iyo Nabadgelyada ea Aagga Masuuliyadda Qaybta 26'aad. Xaaladda Gobollada Waqooyi Galbeed iyo Togdheer Nabadgelyadoodu waa soo xumaatay, xabashidiina waxay ku tallaabsatay in Ciidamo ku soo kordhiso Aagga, iyada oo ujeedadu tahay in dagaal soo qaadaan qabsadaana dhul muhiim ah, sidii BALAN-BALLE iyo GALDOGOB, sidii horay aad uga dhadhamisay warbixintii hore Dagaalladii ay soo wada qaadeen waa ay ku guulaysan waayeen, waxaan ka dambaysay in aad sameynay falal Aargoosi ah oo saldhigyada Qurmista iyo xabashidu wada degan yihiin ah, looguna geeystay khasaare wadajir ah iyo baabi' in Tuulooyin , waxaana ka mid ah Saldhigyada Qurmista oo kala ah: DIBIILE, RABSASO, RAMAALE,- iyo GARANUUGLE, falalkaaso oo dhamaantood fuIay habeenimo ,
Ciidunkuna Nabadqab ku soo laabtay, marka laga reebo dhaawacyo fudud. Dagaalladii ay Qurmistu soo qaadeen iyo khasaarihii loo geystay ayay hadda waxay bilaabeen "YAA REER ISAAQ AHEY”, iyaga oo doonaya inay Baandooga u tusaan Ciriirin iyo baabiin dadkooda, sidoo kale waxay dacaayad ku soo afuufeen dadweynaha ayagoo ka dhaadhicinaya dhawaan ayaan qabsanaynaa W/Galbeed iyo Togdheer, arrintaas waxaa sabab u ah oo Iaga qaran karaa hadallada lagu qloray darbiyada iyo Waraaqo lagu daadiyay Degmada Gabileey, Degmada Lughaya, Beesha Allaybaday, arrimahaasoo dhammi waxay astaan u yihiin laab la soo kac, xiisad salka ku haysa,
Qabyaalad iyo Qurmisnimo. Waxay Reer-Reer isugu baaqeen in la soo ururiyo 2000/qof oo Qurmista ka qaybgasha laguna Tababaro AWAARE, ilaa hadda waxaa ku biiray 400/qof, sidoo kale Jabhadii FARAWEYNE oo ah SACAD-MUUSE, ka dib markii la qabtay Qarandumisyadii, waxay isu dhiibeen Xabashida iyo Qurmista, tirada isu dhiibtay waxay noqdeen 60/qof iyo Xiddiglahii Taliyaha ka ahaa, intii kalena waxay baqdin u galeen duurka; waxayna soo bilaabeen in ay dib ugu soo noqdaan Tuuladii. Jaalle Madaxweyne, Jaallayaal, waxaa noo muuqata haddii aan maanta xamlad lagu qaadin Jiritaanka Qurmis iyo Taageerayaashooda in ay waqti kale madaxa la soo kacayaan, maanta waxaan u haynaa daawadii ku habooneyd JERMIGA Qaranka Soomaliyeed ku jira , waxayna tahay: lyada oo laysu dheelitiro dadka maalqabeenka ah oo aan hadda, lsudheelitireyn. Guddiga Deegaanka oo noqday dad soocan oo laysu dheelitiro. Ardeyda Dugsiyada oo loo oggolaado in lagu barxo Ardeyda Qaxootiga ee degan Agagaarka Hargeysa. In lama degaan laga dhigo jiidda u dhaxeysa Ciidanka iyo Cadowga, taasoo ku imaanaysa baabin Baraagaha iyo Tuulooyinka ku teedsan jiidaas oo ay ku soo dhuuntaan. In laga xaaqo dadka C.Q. sida iyo Shaqaalaha ku jire ee yeelan kara tuhumo u adeegid Cadow, (arrintaas oo aan ku jirro Baaritaan iyo helid xog dhab ah, siiba kuwa haya meelaha xasaasiga ah.)
Waxaan halkan idiinku soo gudbineynaa Tilaabooyinkii qorsheysnaa wixii ka hirgalay, si aad ula socotaan: Gaadiidkii Dadweynaha ee nooca Basaska ah oo Tiradii hore uga socon jirtay oo dhameyd 337 Bus, kuwaas oo 2/3 lahaayeen dadka u dhashay reer qura (Sacad-Muuse) oo dibuhabayn lagu sameeyay, markil ay baaritaan ka dib cadaatay in ineyn badankoodu waafaqsaneyn hanaanka nabadgalyada, maadaama aaney sugneyn Dokumantiga mulkiyadda iyo kuwa loogu talagalay dhaqdhaqaaqa, isla markaana xogogaal loo noqday in marar qaarkood loo isticmaalo ku qaadista Muqaadaraadka ama ay rakaab ahaan u raacaan dad tuhmo leh, haseyeeshee la qariyo loona soo tebin Hay'adaha Nabadgelyada, iyadoo tirada Basaskaasi ay Si xad-dhaaf ah uga badneyd baahida magaalada waxaa la go’aamiyay laguna dhaqaaqay: In tirada Basaskaa ayna ka badnaan 80. In bas waliba loo sameeyo lambar sumad u ah (NUMERO SERIE) oo lagu aqoonsado.
1. Basaska si tiro miisaan ah loogu qaybiyo waaxaha magaalada, iyadoo mid waliba loo xaddadayo tubta socodka iyo barxadaha bilowga iyo dhamaadka socodka. Si cadaalad ah leysugu dheeli tiro mulkiyaasha Basaska, iyadoo mudnaanta la siinayo dadka ehelka u ah Kacaanka, lagana qaadayo fursadda inta siyaasiyan ka soo horjeedda.
2. Waxaa Dekedda Berbera lagala soo wareegay 6 Baabuur nooca 4-WD (RIDOOTO LEH) sidaas oo kale waxaa socota ururinta kuwa Magaalada, kuwaas oo dhawaan wixi wax ku ool noqda la saari doono hub, kuwa kalana loo isticmaali doono Gaadiidka Sahamada iyo Taliyayaasha Colalka jiidaha hore, waxaa inoo socda kala soocsoocidda Gaadiidka.
3. Waxaa tuhun taageero Qurmis lagu xiray 45/qof ee dadka Hargeysa deggan iyo 30 dadka Burco degan iyo 7 sarkaal, dadkaaa oo u badan ganacsato lyo maalqabeen iyo qaar ka mid ah nabadoonada waxay ku xiran yihiin Xabsiga Mandheera, waxaase la codsanayaa in deg-deg loogu wareejiyo xabsiyada Laanta Buur ama Xabsiyada Bari IWM, si loo xaqiijiyo xarigooda muddadan lagu Jiro dib u habeynta Xabsiyada oo dhaliilo badan ka jira amnigooda.
4. Waxaa dib loo abaabulay Jabhadda G.S. Galbeed, waxaana lagu xareeyey meel u dhow GEED-DEEBLE 300/qof, kuwaas oo dibuhabeyn ka dib lagu talo Jiro in la dejiyo dextaalada Guutooyinka iyo Ururada oo loo arko iney wax ka qaban karaan la dagaalanka Qurmista, isla markaana ay ka fulin karayaan falal dagaal ah marka loo baahdo.
5. Marba haddii ay sugnaatay in ISAAQU ay si ficil iyo niyadba ay ula jiraan SNM'ta, ayna noo muuqan iney ka tanaasulaan khadkoodii in muddo ahba ku male'awaali jireen si looga hortago waxaa kullamo isdabajoog ah iyo abaabul kicin iyo wacyigelin ku sameynay dadka kale ee kula nool Waqooyi, si loo adkeeyo midnimadooda uguna maro-xeetaan difaaca midnimada Soomaaliyeed, dadkaas waxa ka mid ah Reer Awdul, Soomali Galbeed Wajiyaddooda kala duwan, Reer Laas Qoray R e e r Daami IWM. Waxaa hubaal ah in isku duubnida dadkaasi ay dheeli tiridoonto miisaanka hadda u liicay dadka isaaqa ah, haddii ay si firfircooni lehna u howlgalaan waxaa hubaal ah in ay kibir jebin doonto dadka u haysta in ay Waqooyi leeyihiin, iyadoo xaqiiqdu ay si ka duwan tahay.
Khaladaadkii horay u dhacay oo la xariira kobcinta dhaqaale ee dadkii ka soo horjeeday Qaranka, fursadna loo siiyo kuwa ehelka u ah. Waxaan soo jeedineynaa in Ciidamada aan dhaliilsanahay ay soo diraan waftiyo ka socda . oo si deg deg ah wax uga qabta, sababto oo ah tallaabooyin aan qaadnay iyo kuwa aan qaadi doono (REACTION) u baahan in laga hortago mar haddii Hayadihii xogta ururineyey shaki ku Jiro, kuwana lagu hayo danbiyo cad, waxaa haboon in laga tabaabulsheysto inta ay goori goor tahay, ilaa hadda waxaan ku dulsoconnaa Quraarado jajab ah oo dhulka lagu daadiyay, si ay u xannibaan xawliga waxqabadka howsha, kuwaas oo u baahan xaaqid aan waxba kaga tegin dhulka, maahmaah baa oraneysa (WARAABOW SAANJIID IYO SANQARTIRO KALA REEB). Wixii tilmaan iyo tusaale ah ayaan kaa dhowreynaa.
SAREEYE GUUTO TALIYARA QAYBTA 26'AAD EE WG Maxamad Saciid Xirsi (morgan) X/YARE/.
Monday, 21 December 2009
The famous 'Letter of Death'
The report is addressed to the President of the SDR, the Minister of Defence, and the Minister of Interior. The latter, Major-General Ahmed Suleiman Abdalla, is also a son-in-law of the President, and Third Deputy Prime Minister. Since President Barre is also the Minister of Defence -- the previous holder of that portfolio, General Mohamed Ali Samatar, having been promoted Prime Minister on January 30, 1987 -- the report is seemingly confined to family members. This would explain its extreme frankness in specifying certain clans as targets for implemented and recommended punitive action.
The target is the Isaaq Clan Family. The term "clan family" was first coined by Professor I.M. Lewis, Professor Social Anthropology at the London School Economics, to describe the collective name for each of the several major divisions to which Somali clans traditionally divide themselves. The Isaaq clan family sub-divides into four main clans.
Top Secret
The Somali Democratic Republic
The Ministry of Defense
26th Sector G.H.Q.
TQ 826/XKT/28-56/87
Date: 23/01/87
Report
To: The President of the SDR
Mogadishu
The Minister of Defence, SDR
Mogadishu
The Minister of Interior, SDR
Mogadishu
Please refer to the report on the state of the defence and security of the 26th Sector's area of control which I transmitted on 17.1.87.2
The security of the North West and Togdheer Regions has deteriorated. The Ethiopians brought additional troops to the area with the objective of securing a foothold similar to [those of] Balan Balle and Galdogob.3 As you gathered from my previous report, they did not succeed in their joint incursion. Subsequently we took punitive measures against the positions jointly occupied by Qurmis4 and the Ethiopians resulting in loss to both of them and in the obliteration of villages, including Dibiile, Rabaso, Raamaale, and Garanuugle.5 All our measures were implemented at night and, except for some light injuries, all the troops returned safely to base.
Following their incursions and their consequent losses, Qurmis resorted to appealing to clan sentiment and began to sound a clarion call to action under [the slogan] "On Isaaq clans!".6 Their objective is to present the curfew7 as a persecution of their own people. Similarly, they directed a propaganda campaign at the people to the effect that they were about to capture the North West Region and Togdheer.
This much can be gathered from the expressions written on the walls of buildings and from the leaflets distributed in Gabiley District, and at Allaybaday village, Lughaya District.8 All this is an indication of a resurgence of anti-State clan sentiment. They have appealed to their various sections to recruit 2000 persons for Qurmis to be trained in Awaare.<$FAwaare, south of Hargeisa, is deep in Somali-populated eastern Ethiopia, in the area commonly known as the Ogaden. So far, 400 individuals have joined. Similarly, 60 Sa'ad Muuse members of the Faraweyne Front9 and a lieutenant who was their commanding officer gave themselves up to the Ethiopians and the Qurmis following the capture of the State-wreckers. The rest stole into the bush out of fear, but they have now started to return to the village.
Comrade President, Comrades:
It has been demonstrated to us that, unless Qurmis and its supporters are subjected to a campaign of obliteration, there will come a time when they will raise their heads again. But, today, we possess the right remedy for the virus in the [body of the] Somali State. It consists of:
- Balancing the well-to-do to eliminate the concentration of wealth [in the hands of the SNM supporters].
- The reconstruction of the Local Council in such a way as to balance its present membership which is exclusively from a particular people; as well as the dilution of the school population with an infusion of children from the Refugee Camps in the vicinity of Hargeisa.10
- Rendering uninhabitable the territory between the army and the enemy, which can be done by destroying the water tanks and the villages lying across the territory used by them for infiltration.
- Removing from the membership of the armed forces and the civil service all those who are open to suspicion of aiding the enemy -- especially those holding sensitive posts.
We set out below for your information those steps of the planned action already implemented:
| Before now the number of buses used as public transport were 337, two-thirds of which were owned by members of one clan (the Sa'ad Muuse). However, when, on investigation, it became clear that most of the buses were not operating in accordance with security procedures, due to defects in their registration and circulation documents; and when information received revealed that they were sometimes used to carry drugs11 or persons open to suspicion, in secrecy and without notification to the security organisations; and since the number of buses greatly exceed the needs of the city, the following decisions were adopted and implemented:
| ||||||||
| Of the persons detained as suspected supporters of Qurmis, 45 are from Hargeisa, 30 from Burao, while seven are officers. Most of them are businessmen and well-to-do people, while some are headmen (Nabadoons).12 They are held in Mandhera prison. However, it is hereby requested that they be transported urgently to Laanta Buur prison, or Bari prison, etc.13 in order to ensure their continued incarceration during the reorganisation of the local prisons which show many defects from a security standpoint. | ||||||||
| The Western Somali Liberation Front14 has been remobilized, and 300 men have been stationed at a place near Geed-Deeble.15 According to plan, they will be re-armed and then put amidst those brigades and battalions considered to be capable of furthering the fight against Qurmis. At the same time they can implement operations inside [Ethiopia] whenever required. | ||||||||
| Since it has become evident that the Isaaq were, by act and intent, with the SNM; and since we could not see them giving up the line they have pursued so deceptively for some time; and in order to forestall them; we arranged for the other inhabitants of the North continuous meetings and a mobilization campaign designed to rouse them to action and to raise their level of awareness. This was intended to strengthen their unity and to surround Somali unity with a defensive wall. Among those inhabitants are: the Awdal people, the various sections of Western Somalis, the Las Qorey people, and the Daami people, etc.16 There is no doubt that the unity of these people will restore the balance of the scales which are now tipped in favour of the Isaaq. If they attack their tasks energetically, their unity will also undoubtedly humble those who arrogantly maintain that they own the North when the reality is otherwise. | ||||||||
| We are still engaged in identifying the positions of those people who maintain current accounts at banks in the North West and Togdheer Regions. The accounts of those recognised as Qurmis supporters will continue to be frozen; the rest will be unfrozen in the near future. |
We see the economic strangulation of the people who work for the enemy as serving a useful purpose. However, it is absolutely essential that this should be accompanied by the strengthening of the economic positions of non-Northerners, with a view to raising the level of their capabilities and their interests in these Regions. This will enable them to put under pressure those who have grown fat on the opportunities offered by the Government banks, but have revolted against the State, having persuaded themselves to use their acquired capabilities against the State and it Revolutionary Government.
Undoubtedly, those successive steps, taken to cripple Qurmis, will instill anxiety in those in Mogadishu who are related to it. We hope that these will not be listened to or heeded so that the impetus of the war being waged against it would not drop.
An investigation into the action of Qurmis against the Burao base revealed that a lieutenant and five sakaris (all police) and some civilians had been behind it. It was implemented by the Habar Je'lo Qurmis.17 When the inquiry is completed, the culprits will be court-martialled.
Comrade President, in order to implement the above-mentioned matters, we need to:
| (a) | purge the Somali Police Force, the Security Force, and the Hangash Force,18 the members of all of which are largely recruited locally; this can be done by finding a force to dilute them and by transferring the present members; and |
| (b) | replace the present members of the Custodial Corps, who -- having assumed the distinctive character of being exclusively from the North -- cannot be entrusted with the task of guarding the prisons, with a force composed of other Somalis. |
| 2. | We also need up to a Division to reinforce the 3rd Division's zone if it is possible to withdraw units from sectors whose areas of control are stable, since the quality of a force in a state of mobilization cannot achieve very much. |
| 3. | We also need the power of the Commercial Bank to give loans and to determine who shall receive them to be transferred to us, so that the past mistakes relating to the economic strengthening of the anti-State people may be rectified and those worthy of it be given a chance. |
We propose that those of our forces we consider to be unsatisfactory should send representatives to discuss urgent corrective action. The reason is that the reaction to the measures we have already taken or will take must be met in advance. Since the intelligence-gathering organisations are suspect, and since some of them have committed clear offences, it is prudent to take precautionary measures before it is too late. Up to now we have been walking on ground deliberately strewn with broken glass in an attempt to reduce the momentum of [our] efforts. It is essential to sweep away the broken glass without leaving a single piece behind. There is a Somali proverb: "Oh hyena, you cannot drag away hides without making a sound."19
We are awaiting your guidance and directives.
(signed)
Major General Mohamed Saeed Hirsi (Morgan)
The Commander of the 26th Sector, North West
Translator's Note:
The translation of the text of the above report is from Somali -- the original language of the report. The footnotes are not part of the report and have been added by me to enhance the clarity of the document. Accuracy, rather than elegance of style, has been my principal aim in this translation.
I am persuaded, on investigation, that the signature to the report which purports to be that of Major-General Mohamed Saeed Hirsi (Morgan) (Commander of the 26th Sector and de facto governor of the regions covered by the report) is in fact his own, and that the report is genuine.
My aim in translating this remarkable document is to make it available to researchers, lawyers, and human rights officials. I am not a member or sympathiser of the SNM or SSDF, although I am opposed to the present regime in Somalia.
In my years in Somalia as a legal practitioner, or member and then President of the Supreme Court, I never saw an official document with recommendations so frank in their departure from legality or accepted norms. Such a document ought not to be allowed to be confined to dissident circles that are privately circulating copies of the original.
This translation was done by me, Mohamoud Sheikh Ahmed Musa, in London on April 27, 1987.
(signed)
Mohamoud Sheikh Ahmed Musa
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Justice for the Atrocities of the 1980s
Justice for the Atrocities of the 1980s:
The Responsibility of Politicians and Political Parties
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.
 Riyaale was head of the feared and powerful secret service, the National Security Service (NSS) and now he is the President of Somaliland |
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.
HRW Country Report 1989
Human Rights Watch World Report 1989 - Somalia
For the past 20 years, Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre has presided over a one-party military dictatorship. His reign has been characterized by vicious discrimination against certain ethnic groups – currently the Isaaqs in northern Somalia – as well as political imprisonment, torture and summary executions, in an effort to suppress all dissent in Somalia. A long-simmering war in northern Somalia between the Somali National Movement ("SNM") and government forces erupted in May 1988 when the SNM launched military operations from Ethiopia. The army responded with a savage counterinsurgency campaign. Throughout the rest of 1988 and 1989, the Somali armed forces engaged in extensive efforts to deprive the SNM of civilian support – members of the Isaaq clam make up most SNM combatants – by driving Isaaq noncombatants from the country through such means as indiscriminate aerial bombardment, the widespread killings of civilians, the destruction of crops, cattle and food-storage facilities, the poisoning of wells, and the jailing of hundreds of political prisoners. Some 450,000 Somalis fled such attacks for Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, and an additional 600,000 were displaced within Somalia.
Until September 1989, the Bush administration's policy toward Somalia was largely a continuation of that of the Reagan administration. That policy was based on interest in the Berbera port as a strategic location – it is viewed as an important staging area for the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. That interest provided the rationale to extend economic, military and diplomatic support to the U.S. ally in Mogadishu. At the same time, paradoxically, the administration went to considerable lengths to investigate the human rights situation in Somalia, and U.S. officials appeared to have no delusions about the ruthlessness of the Barre regime.
By late 1989, the Bush administration appeared to have reevaluated its policy toward Somalia, and took steps to limit U.S. assistance to the government.A factor in this seemingly revised policy was that the confidence of U.S. military analysts in the capabilities of the Somali army appeared to have been seriously shaken in the summer of 1989 when intense fighting broke out between government forces and soldiers from the Ogaden region who had deserted the Somali army. The government forces, despite brutal reprisals against civilians from Ogaden as well as those from the Harwiye clan, have been unable to retake portions of southern Somalia held by the Ogadenis. This erosion of confidence appears to have led to the cancellation of the "Brightstar" military exercises with Somalia this year. These exercises are high-visibility maneuvers, conducted by the United States with a number of countries in the region, and their cancellation was a blow to Barre's stature as a close U.S. ally. Both the Reagan and Bush administrations – prompted by Congressional interest in human rights violations in Somalia – have attempted to persuade the Barre regime to take steps to improve its human rights record. According to U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Frank Crigler, he raised the issue of certain political prisoners in private discussions with the government on several occasions.
Both the Reagan and Bush administrations also took steps to investigate gross abuses of human rights in Somalia. In August 1988, for example, the Reagan administration sent Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Refugee Assistance Kenneth Bleakley to investigate human rights abuses by visiting refugee camps in Ethiopia and displaced Somalis within Somalia. Assistant Secretary Bleakley spoke frankly with human rights advocates and Congressional staff about his findings, which confirmed prior reports of indiscriminate aerial bombardment, hundreds of political prisoners and torture. Assistant Secretary Bleakley conveyed his findings in a cable to U.S. Ambassador Crigler, who reportedly gave the cable to President Barre. But when members of Congress asked to see the cable, it was promptly classified, according to Congressional sources. This reluctance to publicize its findings deprived the administration of an excellent opportunity to pressure the Somali government. Moreover, the act of classifying the document suggested that the administration wanted to shelter the Somali government from Congressional criticism. In August 1989, at the request of Congress, the State Department released an investigation by Robert Gersony, a consultant and refugee expert who had investigated the situation of Somali refugees in Ethiopia and those displaced within Somalia. He conducted some 252 interviews with refugees and displaced persons, and concluded that the government had committed extensive abuses, including targeted bombings of civilian structures and fleeing refugees, and extrajudicial executions.
Unfortunately, the potential impact of the Bush administration's decision to investigate and report on Somali abuses was all but nullified by the administration's efforts to persuade Congress to provide military and economic assistance to the very forces responsible for those abuses. At various critical moments over the past two years, when abuses have been at their height, the Reagan and Bush administrations have acted to shore up the faltering Barre regime. Military aid, including arms and ammunition, was shipped to the Somali government in 1988, Included in the military aid provided to the Somali government in 1988 was a $1.4 million shipment of M-16 automatic rifles and ammunition. The shipment arrived on June 28, 1989, and was used to arm Ethiopian refugees living in camps in Somalia operated by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The timing of the aid could not have been worse: it arrived at precisely the moment when government forces were waging indiscriminate warfare against unarmed civilians throughout northern Somalia. To escape government terror, as noted, hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled into Ethiopia. and the Reagan administration requested an additional $38 million in military and budgetary support for Somalia in its request to Congress for fiscal year 1990.
In similar fashion, in mid-July 1989 the Bush administration went so far as to request an infusion of $21 million in additional assistance in the form of Economic Support Funds – direct budgetary assistance to the government. The timing of the request sent a terrible signal, since it came as the Barre regime was engaging in a massive crackdown in Mogadishu in which hundreds of civilians were executed and many hundreds more were jailed in sweeps through Isaaq and Harwiye neighborhoods.
When members of Congress blocked the additional aid and criticized the Bush administration for the poor timing of its request, State Department officials claimed to Congressional aides that the request had long been pending and that the notification to Congress just days after the July massacres was simply an unfortunate coincidence. The officials did not explain why the request was not reconsidered once the massacres became known.
Moreover, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Richard Schifter, actively defended the aid request in a letter to The New York Times on September 2, 1989. Rejecting the suggestion that the aid infusion was an attempt by the Bush administration to shore up the faltering Barre regime, Assistant Secretary Schifter defended the aid, stating:
The administration's request to obligate $21 million in economic support funds for Somalia was directly tied to our support for economic reforms in that country. These reforms, worked out with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are designed to transfer economic decision-making power from the Government to the people and the marketplace – to support the very people who are suffering both from poverty and from human rights abuses.
Assistant Secretary Schifter's defense of the balance-of-payments support for the government is highly objectionable. First, despite the claimed economic benefits, the aid violates Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits the granting of Economic Support Funds to governments such as that of Somalia which engage in "a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." Second, the notion that Somali citizens can benefit from aid at a time when many are fleeing in the face of summary execution, torture and political imprisonment seems insensitive at best.
We note, however, that Schifter did acknowledge the severe abuses being committed by the Barre regime. He stated:
The United States has strongly protested the latest human rights violations in Somalia, asked for an investigation and insisted that those responsible be brought to justice.... The serious human rights violations in Mogadishu ... compel us to give careful scrutiny to assistance to Somalia.
This was a welcome departure from the State Department's prior refusal to condemn the Barre government publicly – even when the Department's own investigations revealed extensive atrocities. But it is regrettable that this new human rights message was overshadowed by Assistant Secretary Schifter's public support for aid to the abusive regime.
On one occasion, the State Department not only failed to condemn an important human rights abuse, but also rebuked Africa Watch for calling for an investigation of the problem. In 1988 and 1989, the international press carried numerous credible reports that Libyan President Quadaffi had shipped chemical weapons to Somalia. One such report was aired on January 12, 1989 by NBC news, and the British Foreign Office was said to be deeply concerned about the reports. The State Department denied these reports, and when Africa Watch raised concerns about the possible use of chemical weapons against civilians in northern Somalia, then-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker rebuked Africa Watch. In a January 4, 1989 letter, he stated that he was satisfied with the Somali government's categorical denials, and reminded Africa Watch that "prudence and fairness warrant a heavy burden of proof with respect to charges about willful use of weapons of mass destruction by a government against its own people." In view of the Somali government's campaign of mass destruction in the northern part of the country, which caused the death or flight of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants, the Assistant Secretary's failure to investigate the charges of possible use of chemical weapons and his uncritical acceptance of the government's denial seems unwarranted.
On June 20, 1989, the Bush administration missed an important opportunity to condemn the Somali government's abuses publicly when it refused to send a witness to a hearing sponsored by the House Banking Subcommittee on International Development Institutions and Finance. The hearing was called to examine U.S. human rights policy with regard to multilateral lending to China and Somalia. The administration's failure even to appear at the hearing, after having been invited by the subcommittee chairman, Representative Walter Fauntroy, says volumes about its disinclination to embarrass the Barre regime.
Undoubtedly another factor in the administration's refusal to appear before the subcommittee was the U.S. law barring U.S. support for loans to such abusive regimes as that of Somalia. Section 701 of the International Financial Institutions Act requires that U.S. representatives to the multilateral development banks (such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank) oppose loans to governments engaged in "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." Far from opposing loans to Barre, the Bush administration reportedly promoted Somalia's cause within the banks. In June 1989, the World Bank approved a $70 million "quick disbursing cash loan" to Somalia, and the African Development Bank supplied an additional $25 million as part of the economic stabilization package. According to World Bank officials and Congressional staff, human rights conditions in Somalia were completely ignored in both the administration's and the World Bank's deliberations on future lending to Somalia. On September 29, Chairman Fauntroy, along with 46 other members of the House of Representatives, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Baker urging him to reexamine U.S. support for loans to Somalia by the World Bank and African Development Bank.
What progress has been made in using U.S. influence to promote human rights in Somalia is largely due to Congressional efforts. In 1989, Congress placed aid to Somalia on a "reprogramming basis," which requires advance notification from the executive branch before aid is disbursed. After Congress requested a hold on the $2.5 million in military aid allocated to Somalia in fiscal year 1989, the Bush administration, apparently so as not to lose the amount completely, reprogrammed the amount to other countries. Beginning in July 1988, the Reagan administration suspended shipment of arms and ammunition, but it and the Bush administration continued to provide non-lethal military assistance left over from previous years, until the Congressional action. In July 1989, as noted, Congress also prevented the administration from providing $21 million in Economic Support Funds which had been authorized but not spent for fiscal year 1988. By September, the administration announced its intention to reprogram the $21 million to other countries in Africa. We hope that this welcome decision, in part in response to Congressional criticism, represents a new willingness by the Bush administration to use aid as a lever for promoting human rights in Somalia.
We urge the Bush administration to continue to limit assistance and to take further steps to distance itself from the Barre government. It is important that the U.S. take the lead and make clear, in forceful terms, that a government which consistently disregards human life and basic rights has no place in the international community and will not benefit from international largesse.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
POLITICS OF CAIN – A book launch
POLITICS OF CAIN One Hundred Years of Crises in Somali Politics
H. A. Bulhan, 2009
H. A. Bulhan, 2009
Kayd Somali Arts & Culture is inviting you to the launch of a new book. Come and join us on the launch day to discuss this new book with the author: Professor HUSSEIN A. BULHAN. An opportunity of a lifetime where you will have the chance to debate, discuss and ask direct questions about the book. The World has come to know the anarchy, war & death in Somalia from newspapers & TV reports. The book gives those who wish to understand the causes of this cataclysmic explosion of violence & implosion of rage must delve into Somali history from late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century.
When: Sunday 20/12/09 from 2pm — 6pmWhere: Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 6HG
and..........
POLITICS OF CAIN
One Hundred Years of Crises in Somali Politics
Monday 21 December 2009
6.30pm - 8.30pm
UCL, Roberts G08 Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre
Roberts Building, London WC1E 7JE
(entrance off Torrington Place - directly opposite Waterstones bookshop on the corner of Torrington Pl and Gower St.)
Kayd Somali Arts & Culture in partnership with Somaliland Focus (UK) invites you to the launch of a new book. Come and join us on the launch day to discuss this new book with the author: Professor HUSSEIN A. BULHAN. The world has come to know the anarchy, war & death in Somalia from newspapers & TV reports. Those who wish to understand the causes of this cataclysmic explosion of violence & implosion of rage must delve into Somali history from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. This event offers an opportunity to debate, discuss and ask direct questions about the book and its challenging subject matter.
Professor H. A. Bulhan studied at Wesleyan University , Boston University , and Harvard University . Following service as a tenured professor at Boston University and the Director of the Family Therapy Program at Boston University Medical Centre, Prof. Bulhan started a health consulting firm whose annual revenues quickly grew to US$25M. He returned to Somaliland to mediate a conflict in 1994-1996, subsequently remaining in the country to help in socio-economic rebuilding and trauma treatment. At present, Prof. Bulhan is President of the University of Hargeisa and the Chief Clinician of the Maan-dhaye Clinic.
Documentary premiere - Yuu tuke baal caddi ka hadhin: a film from Hargeysa, 1988
Yuu tuke baal caddi ka hadhin: a film from Hargeysa, 1988
Kayd Somali Arts and Culture in partnership with Somaliland Focus (UK) invite you to a screening of the documentary entitled "Yuu tuke baal caddi ka hadhin" (Somali language). This will be the first time the film will be shown in the public. The documentary calls for a radical rethinking of what happened in Hargeysa in 1988, showing live military footage of action against innocent civilians in Hargeysa, with a full account from a survivor.
Q&A session will immediately follow with the film's subjects and film-maker
Event: Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, London, E2 6GH
Date: Sunday, December 20, 2009
Time: 18.00-20.00
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Briton Mohammed Ezzouek was held in Somalia as an al-Qaida suspect: his interrogators were British
Mohammed Ezzouek, a victim of rendition from Kenya to Somalia, says UK agents were complicit in his torture
Mohammed Ezzouek began to pray. He believed his death was imminent and that it would be bloody and brutal. The 23-year-old from west London could hear men talking in Somali. "They were saying: 'You lot are al-Qaida' and laughing," he recalls. "They were saying, 'You lot are going to get it'."
Ezzouek had had little idea what was happening to him as he and 15 or so other men had their hands tied behind their backs and were bundled onto a plane that left the Kenyan capital Nairobi in the dead of night. By the time the plane had landed just after sunrise, Ezzouek had managed to work his blindfold free an inch.
He saw men with rows of "bullets strapped along their chests", carrying "big guns". "I remember seeing through the window some guys lying down on the runway, their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied. It was like a scene in a film where people have already been executed. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, they're going to kill us.' Everyone thought they were going to die so I started praying. There was nothing you could do; there was no point in crying."
Ezzouek wondered whether this country in which they had landed – and in which he thought he was going to die – was Ethiopia or Somalia. He thought of his family back in Britain. He could have been forgiven for wishing he had agreed to the deal the British agents had offered him just days before in Nairobi. On several occasions, they promised him: "Confess to being a terrorist and you can return to the UK."
But Ezzouek and three other Britons on the plane, who had all fled the Somalian capital of Mogadishu for Kenya in late 2006 as the American-backed Ethiopian forces swept into the country, had repeatedly protested their innocence to their British interrogators
Although he had been held in a pitch-black cell measuring three metres by two and a half – in which conditions were so cramped that some of the 20 inhabitants had to stand for hours on end – every time he had been hauled out he would tell the British agents the same thing: he had gone to Somalia because he wanted to live under sharia law as enforced by the Islamic Courts, the Islamist alliance that back then governed much of the war-torn country, a faction of which has been linked to al-Qaida.
Ezzouek told the agents that he had entered Somalia by flying from Heathrow to Dubai and then from Dubai to Mogadishu. He had told his family what he was going to do. It was hardly the furtive journey of an al-Qaida operative.
Having fled Somalia, Ezzouek had made his way through the jungle and then to Kenya by boat. "I had no idea a war was going to happen," he said. "If I was someone who was looking for trouble, I would not have been someone who turned up in Mogadishu several months beforehand, but a couple of weeks before the fighting broke out. The Ethiopians had bombed the airport so the only way to leave was across the border to Kenya. It was fight or run." It was a dangerous journey, he said. "Helicopters kept flying overhead, dropping bombs and firing rockets across the whole region."
Finally, after almost two weeks of travelling and being holed up in a Kenyan mosque, the exiled group, which included women and children, were captured by the Kenyan army. Ezzouek and his three fellow Britons were transferred to a cell in a police station in the back streets of Nairobi where they were held for almost three weeks. "It was like a horror movie, no lights, completely black, mosquitoes everywhere. You can't imagine it," Ezzouek said.
During this time, early 2007, the four were regularly taken from their cell and smuggled through the back entrance of an upmarket hotel in downtown Nairobi. In a luxurious suite they were questioned by two men who identified themselves as agents with the British security service. Ezzouek asked them if he could phone home.
"I said to them what about my family? No one knows whether I'm dead or alive. Can I make a call to them?" They said: 'No you can't.' It was then that I realised what these people were about."
He was shown photographs of alleged terrorists and asked if he knew them. "They asked me about the 1998 Kenya-Tanzania bombings. I said I remembered exactly where I was during the bombings – I was in secondary school. They were so desperate to pin anything on anyone."
The Kenyan security services also subjected him to interrogations that started at sunrise and were repeated every couple of hours. One Kenyan agent suggested: "Maybe we're being too nice to you. Maybe, Mohammed, if we bring other people to you, you will co-operate, people who will make you talk."
As the questioning progressed and Ezzouek became increasingly anxious, unable to eat and fearing for his sanity, a senior British intelligence agent who identified herself as "Frances" arrived from London. The questioning became more threatening. Fran ces told Ezzouek nobody knew where he was and that "anything could have happened to him".
"She said how would you like it if the Kenyans were to take you to the Somalia/Ethiopia border, within sight of an Ethiopian checkpoint and then leave you to sort yourself out?" It was a terrifying threat, given that Ezzouek had fled the Ethiopians in the first place.
Frances became increasingly angry that Ezzouek was sticking to his story. "She said: 'Look, Mohammed, I did not come all the way from London to Nairobi to hear you say you went to Somalia for an Islamic education. There are serious people back home who are going to be unhappy with this explanation.' I said: 'What do you want me to tell you?' She said: 'I want you to tell me you went to Somalia to fight with those terrorists.'"
The implicit threat that Britain would wash its hands of one of its citizens was never far away during the interrogations. Ezzouek, who was born in Britain to Moroccan parents, was asked if he was happy spending the rest of his life in his Kenyan police cell. One of the British agents told him: "For your people, there's no such things as solicitors, lawyers; you're another breed."
After three weeks of questioning, the British agents seemed to have run out of lines of questioning. It was then that Ezzouek and his three fellow Britons – Reza Afsharzadagen, Hamza Chentouf and Shajahan Janjua – were flown out of Kenya to Somalia.
Ezzouek said they had been accompanied by a group of "brothers", fellow exiles from Mogadishu who had come from Jordan and Saudia Arabia and other parts of the Middle East. It was these men whom Ezzouek had seen from beneath his blindfold, tied up on the runway in Somalia the morning he thought he was about to be executed. Some of the "brothers" were not as lucky as the Britons. Ezzouek later discovered from lawyers that they had been rendered to Ethiopia, where they had been beaten and tortured.
Ezzouek and his three compatriots were placed in a dank, dark cellar in the city of Baidoa, the then home to Somalia's transitional government, which was fiercely opposed to the Islamic Courts.
Bullet holes in the bolted wooden door provided the only light. The men were forced to urinate in a bottle in one corner of their makeshift prison while Somalian military guards held muttered conversations above them. On one occasion, Ezzouek heard a cockney accent. He is convinced British security agents were in the area at the time he was held.
The four might have stayed in Somalia indefinitely. No one, apart from British intelligence, knew they were there and the agents had apparently washed their hands of them. But back in Britain, questions were being asked at the Foreign Office. Shortly before the men had been flown out of Kenya, Janjua had bribed a guard and contacted his family by mobile phone, telling them where he and the others were being held.
The four families were put in touch with the charity Reprieve, which campaigns to free those held in Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve contacted the UK government. That night police raided the family homes of the four, battering down the doors and removing computers and papers.
Looking back, Ezzouek says he now realises the British agents stopped quizzing the four of them only when they realised Janjua had managed to contact his family in Britain. From that moment, the four were no longer invisible.
"That's when they stopped interrogating us," he said. "I didn't know that was why at the time. If Sha [Janjua] hadn't made the phone call, we would have ended up in Ethiopia or somewhere else. The agents were so angry with him when they found out he had made the call. They said 'You've ruined everything, you don't know what you've done.'"
After three days in Baidoa, a British Foreign Office official arrived and took the four back to Britain where they were released without charge.
Ezzouek has never spoken about his ordeal before and is still wary about speaking out two years afterwards. Now 25, his conversation peppered with street slang and wearing trainers and a parka coat, he seems little different from other twentysomethings. Only his long beard and his frequent thanks to Allah hint at his profound religious beliefs and his desire to live in a sharia state.
But his story threatens to haunt the government. It shines fresh light on the lengths the security services were allegedly prepared to go to by allowing British nationals to be held in dehumanising conditions, without legal representation, out of sight of the law and where the threat of torture was ever-present.
Such treatment contradicts the government's insistence that it "works hard with international partners to stop the practice of torture and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". However, the government has refused to provide clarification on what guidance and policies it has given to British agents to prevent their collusion in the torture and mistreatment of detainees abroad.
What is known is that the guidelines were altered between 2002 and now. Written instructions given to MI5 and MI6 officers in 2002 stipulated they were under no obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated. "Given that they are not within our control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this," the 2002 policy stated. It was amended in 2004, according to the government, which will not explain why or how.
Now, in a landmark move, Reprieve is to launch legal proceedings, seeking a judicial review into the policies governing the actions of British intelligence agents when interviewing detainees abroad. The litigation is designed to elicit what the 2004 policy is and whether it is still in use. Reprieve's lawyers have requested the government provide them with a copy. In a letter to Treasury Solicitors, which provides legal services to government, which has been obtained by the Observer, Reprieve claims: "All of the available evidence which we have outlined... suggests that the 2004 policy is unlawful because it fails to instruct service personnel that they must not obtain evidence in circumstances giving rise to complicity in torture."
As part of the legal challenge, Reprieve and its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, have submitted numerous examples of what they allege are the security services' complicity in the ill treatment, rendition and torture of British and foreign nationals up to 2008, suggesting the policy changes introduced by the government had little effect.
The case of Ezzouek, and the three other Britons known collectively as the "Nairobi Four", will form part of the legal challenge, as will well-known cases such as that of Binyam Mohamed, who was allegedly tortured in Morocco, during which he answered questions sent to his interrogators by British intelligence.
Other, lesser-known examples cited in the legal challenge, include that of Salim Awadh, a Kenyan detained in Ethiopia who, according to Reprieve, was beaten for several months, after which he was questioned by British agents, and Khaled al Maqtari, who was violently beaten in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where he was interrogated by British Special Forces.
The examples are troubling, according to Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford Smith, because they suggest British intelligence agents were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to keep Britons out of the reach of British protection, even if it meant, as in Ezzouek's case, they were rendered to hostile regimes.
Stafford Smith says such a tactic must have been deliberate. "We know from the 2002 policy that high-up people in government approved a policy of turning a blind eye to torture," he said. "We know that a 2004 policy amended the 2002 policy. We know the government desperately wanted to cover that up. But when we look back on the last seven or eight years, the thing we're going to find more pernicious than the torture is the effort to cover up the torture. The only question is how long before all this comes out?"
Allegations of British complicity in torture
Allegations of British complicity in torture and the mistreatment of British nationals held abroad on suspicion of being involved in terrorism date back years and are fiercely rejected by the government. In 2006, the Pakistan-based lawyer who was acting for a British man, Zeeshan Siddique, told the Observer her client was routinely questioned by MI6 officers after being abused by the country's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI. The case of Siddique, who was returned to the UK with damage to his eye and later absconded after being placed on a control order, was one of the first to trigger concern among human rights groups.
But it has emerged that those in British intelligence have also raised concerns. Parliament's 2005 Intelligence and Security Committee report referred to concerns raised by a British agent about the treatment of a suspect interviewed abroad. According to the ISC report, the agent wrote to his superiors asking for clarification of his obligations to the suspect, suggesting that at the very least the guidelines were far from clear. Several other cases of British agents interviewing suspects abroad who were allegedly at risk of torture have subsequently come to light.
In July, the Joint Committee on Human Rights called for the government to publish all the legal opinions provided to ministers concerning the relevant legal standards on torture and complicity in torture. It followed an announcement in March by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, of a review of the current policy on interrogation. Brown promised to publish the current policy "once it has been reviewed by the Intelligence and Security Committee", but since then the government has declined to provide more information.
Tomorrow, the government will be back in the high court as it attempts to prevent the disclosure of any documents that may reveal the extent of UK government complicity in the mistreatment and torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who was interrogated in Pakistan and Morocco.
Given the government's extensive use of the courts to block legal attempts to shine light on the actions of British agents abroad, and its apparent reluctance to publish its interrogation guidelines, campaigners may have to wait until after the next election for a breakthrough.
Mohammed Ezzouek began to pray. He believed his death was imminent and that it would be bloody and brutal. The 23-year-old from west London could hear men talking in Somali. "They were saying: 'You lot are al-Qaida' and laughing," he recalls. "They were saying, 'You lot are going to get it'."
Ezzouek had had little idea what was happening to him as he and 15 or so other men had their hands tied behind their backs and were bundled onto a plane that left the Kenyan capital Nairobi in the dead of night. By the time the plane had landed just after sunrise, Ezzouek had managed to work his blindfold free an inch.
He saw men with rows of "bullets strapped along their chests", carrying "big guns". "I remember seeing through the window some guys lying down on the runway, their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied. It was like a scene in a film where people have already been executed. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, they're going to kill us.' Everyone thought they were going to die so I started praying. There was nothing you could do; there was no point in crying."
Ezzouek wondered whether this country in which they had landed – and in which he thought he was going to die – was Ethiopia or Somalia. He thought of his family back in Britain. He could have been forgiven for wishing he had agreed to the deal the British agents had offered him just days before in Nairobi. On several occasions, they promised him: "Confess to being a terrorist and you can return to the UK."
But Ezzouek and three other Britons on the plane, who had all fled the Somalian capital of Mogadishu for Kenya in late 2006 as the American-backed Ethiopian forces swept into the country, had repeatedly protested their innocence to their British interrogators
Although he had been held in a pitch-black cell measuring three metres by two and a half – in which conditions were so cramped that some of the 20 inhabitants had to stand for hours on end – every time he had been hauled out he would tell the British agents the same thing: he had gone to Somalia because he wanted to live under sharia law as enforced by the Islamic Courts, the Islamist alliance that back then governed much of the war-torn country, a faction of which has been linked to al-Qaida.
Ezzouek told the agents that he had entered Somalia by flying from Heathrow to Dubai and then from Dubai to Mogadishu. He had told his family what he was going to do. It was hardly the furtive journey of an al-Qaida operative.
Having fled Somalia, Ezzouek had made his way through the jungle and then to Kenya by boat. "I had no idea a war was going to happen," he said. "If I was someone who was looking for trouble, I would not have been someone who turned up in Mogadishu several months beforehand, but a couple of weeks before the fighting broke out. The Ethiopians had bombed the airport so the only way to leave was across the border to Kenya. It was fight or run." It was a dangerous journey, he said. "Helicopters kept flying overhead, dropping bombs and firing rockets across the whole region."
Finally, after almost two weeks of travelling and being holed up in a Kenyan mosque, the exiled group, which included women and children, were captured by the Kenyan army. Ezzouek and his three fellow Britons were transferred to a cell in a police station in the back streets of Nairobi where they were held for almost three weeks. "It was like a horror movie, no lights, completely black, mosquitoes everywhere. You can't imagine it," Ezzouek said.
During this time, early 2007, the four were regularly taken from their cell and smuggled through the back entrance of an upmarket hotel in downtown Nairobi. In a luxurious suite they were questioned by two men who identified themselves as agents with the British security service. Ezzouek asked them if he could phone home.
"I said to them what about my family? No one knows whether I'm dead or alive. Can I make a call to them?" They said: 'No you can't.' It was then that I realised what these people were about."
He was shown photographs of alleged terrorists and asked if he knew them. "They asked me about the 1998 Kenya-Tanzania bombings. I said I remembered exactly where I was during the bombings – I was in secondary school. They were so desperate to pin anything on anyone."
The Kenyan security services also subjected him to interrogations that started at sunrise and were repeated every couple of hours. One Kenyan agent suggested: "Maybe we're being too nice to you. Maybe, Mohammed, if we bring other people to you, you will co-operate, people who will make you talk."
As the questioning progressed and Ezzouek became increasingly anxious, unable to eat and fearing for his sanity, a senior British intelligence agent who identified herself as "Frances" arrived from London. The questioning became more threatening. Fran ces told Ezzouek nobody knew where he was and that "anything could have happened to him".
"She said how would you like it if the Kenyans were to take you to the Somalia/Ethiopia border, within sight of an Ethiopian checkpoint and then leave you to sort yourself out?" It was a terrifying threat, given that Ezzouek had fled the Ethiopians in the first place.
Frances became increasingly angry that Ezzouek was sticking to his story. "She said: 'Look, Mohammed, I did not come all the way from London to Nairobi to hear you say you went to Somalia for an Islamic education. There are serious people back home who are going to be unhappy with this explanation.' I said: 'What do you want me to tell you?' She said: 'I want you to tell me you went to Somalia to fight with those terrorists.'"
The implicit threat that Britain would wash its hands of one of its citizens was never far away during the interrogations. Ezzouek, who was born in Britain to Moroccan parents, was asked if he was happy spending the rest of his life in his Kenyan police cell. One of the British agents told him: "For your people, there's no such things as solicitors, lawyers; you're another breed."
After three weeks of questioning, the British agents seemed to have run out of lines of questioning. It was then that Ezzouek and his three fellow Britons – Reza Afsharzadagen, Hamza Chentouf and Shajahan Janjua – were flown out of Kenya to Somalia.
Ezzouek said they had been accompanied by a group of "brothers", fellow exiles from Mogadishu who had come from Jordan and Saudia Arabia and other parts of the Middle East. It was these men whom Ezzouek had seen from beneath his blindfold, tied up on the runway in Somalia the morning he thought he was about to be executed. Some of the "brothers" were not as lucky as the Britons. Ezzouek later discovered from lawyers that they had been rendered to Ethiopia, where they had been beaten and tortured.
Ezzouek and his three compatriots were placed in a dank, dark cellar in the city of Baidoa, the then home to Somalia's transitional government, which was fiercely opposed to the Islamic Courts.
Bullet holes in the bolted wooden door provided the only light. The men were forced to urinate in a bottle in one corner of their makeshift prison while Somalian military guards held muttered conversations above them. On one occasion, Ezzouek heard a cockney accent. He is convinced British security agents were in the area at the time he was held.
The four might have stayed in Somalia indefinitely. No one, apart from British intelligence, knew they were there and the agents had apparently washed their hands of them. But back in Britain, questions were being asked at the Foreign Office. Shortly before the men had been flown out of Kenya, Janjua had bribed a guard and contacted his family by mobile phone, telling them where he and the others were being held.
The four families were put in touch with the charity Reprieve, which campaigns to free those held in Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve contacted the UK government. That night police raided the family homes of the four, battering down the doors and removing computers and papers.
Looking back, Ezzouek says he now realises the British agents stopped quizzing the four of them only when they realised Janjua had managed to contact his family in Britain. From that moment, the four were no longer invisible.
"That's when they stopped interrogating us," he said. "I didn't know that was why at the time. If Sha [Janjua] hadn't made the phone call, we would have ended up in Ethiopia or somewhere else. The agents were so angry with him when they found out he had made the call. They said 'You've ruined everything, you don't know what you've done.'"
After three days in Baidoa, a British Foreign Office official arrived and took the four back to Britain where they were released without charge.
Ezzouek has never spoken about his ordeal before and is still wary about speaking out two years afterwards. Now 25, his conversation peppered with street slang and wearing trainers and a parka coat, he seems little different from other twentysomethings. Only his long beard and his frequent thanks to Allah hint at his profound religious beliefs and his desire to live in a sharia state.
But his story threatens to haunt the government. It shines fresh light on the lengths the security services were allegedly prepared to go to by allowing British nationals to be held in dehumanising conditions, without legal representation, out of sight of the law and where the threat of torture was ever-present.
Such treatment contradicts the government's insistence that it "works hard with international partners to stop the practice of torture and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". However, the government has refused to provide clarification on what guidance and policies it has given to British agents to prevent their collusion in the torture and mistreatment of detainees abroad.
What is known is that the guidelines were altered between 2002 and now. Written instructions given to MI5 and MI6 officers in 2002 stipulated they were under no obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated. "Given that they are not within our control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this," the 2002 policy stated. It was amended in 2004, according to the government, which will not explain why or how.
Now, in a landmark move, Reprieve is to launch legal proceedings, seeking a judicial review into the policies governing the actions of British intelligence agents when interviewing detainees abroad. The litigation is designed to elicit what the 2004 policy is and whether it is still in use. Reprieve's lawyers have requested the government provide them with a copy. In a letter to Treasury Solicitors, which provides legal services to government, which has been obtained by the Observer, Reprieve claims: "All of the available evidence which we have outlined... suggests that the 2004 policy is unlawful because it fails to instruct service personnel that they must not obtain evidence in circumstances giving rise to complicity in torture."
As part of the legal challenge, Reprieve and its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, have submitted numerous examples of what they allege are the security services' complicity in the ill treatment, rendition and torture of British and foreign nationals up to 2008, suggesting the policy changes introduced by the government had little effect.
The case of Ezzouek, and the three other Britons known collectively as the "Nairobi Four", will form part of the legal challenge, as will well-known cases such as that of Binyam Mohamed, who was allegedly tortured in Morocco, during which he answered questions sent to his interrogators by British intelligence.
Other, lesser-known examples cited in the legal challenge, include that of Salim Awadh, a Kenyan detained in Ethiopia who, according to Reprieve, was beaten for several months, after which he was questioned by British agents, and Khaled al Maqtari, who was violently beaten in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where he was interrogated by British Special Forces.
The examples are troubling, according to Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford Smith, because they suggest British intelligence agents were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to keep Britons out of the reach of British protection, even if it meant, as in Ezzouek's case, they were rendered to hostile regimes.
Stafford Smith says such a tactic must have been deliberate. "We know from the 2002 policy that high-up people in government approved a policy of turning a blind eye to torture," he said. "We know that a 2004 policy amended the 2002 policy. We know the government desperately wanted to cover that up. But when we look back on the last seven or eight years, the thing we're going to find more pernicious than the torture is the effort to cover up the torture. The only question is how long before all this comes out?"
Allegations of British complicity in torture
Allegations of British complicity in torture and the mistreatment of British nationals held abroad on suspicion of being involved in terrorism date back years and are fiercely rejected by the government. In 2006, the Pakistan-based lawyer who was acting for a British man, Zeeshan Siddique, told the Observer her client was routinely questioned by MI6 officers after being abused by the country's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI. The case of Siddique, who was returned to the UK with damage to his eye and later absconded after being placed on a control order, was one of the first to trigger concern among human rights groups.
But it has emerged that those in British intelligence have also raised concerns. Parliament's 2005 Intelligence and Security Committee report referred to concerns raised by a British agent about the treatment of a suspect interviewed abroad. According to the ISC report, the agent wrote to his superiors asking for clarification of his obligations to the suspect, suggesting that at the very least the guidelines were far from clear. Several other cases of British agents interviewing suspects abroad who were allegedly at risk of torture have subsequently come to light.
In July, the Joint Committee on Human Rights called for the government to publish all the legal opinions provided to ministers concerning the relevant legal standards on torture and complicity in torture. It followed an announcement in March by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, of a review of the current policy on interrogation. Brown promised to publish the current policy "once it has been reviewed by the Intelligence and Security Committee", but since then the government has declined to provide more information.
Tomorrow, the government will be back in the high court as it attempts to prevent the disclosure of any documents that may reveal the extent of UK government complicity in the mistreatment and torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who was interrogated in Pakistan and Morocco.
Given the government's extensive use of the courts to block legal attempts to shine light on the actions of British agents abroad, and its apparent reluctance to publish its interrogation guidelines, campaigners may have to wait until after the next election for a breakthrough.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Individual action versus collective responsibility
At the Anti-Gun and Knife Crime Seminar given by the Banooda Aid Foundation in Fulham yesterday the emphasis for progression was placed heavily on individual action. The event, sponsored by the Home Office, brought together a microcosm that appeared to me to be representative of all that is ill within the Somali community.
The presenter, a third sector advocate, stressed that the children of today [with confidence and self-belief] shaped their paths towards a better tomorrow. All of what is wrong with their environment can be changed with perseverance and hard work. To illustrate this point the presenter introduced his own story into the seminar; he came from an impoverished background in South India travelled the hard path towards education and arrived in the UK with the dream of achieving the best he possibly could. He succeeded and this was proof that, with hard work and perseverance , we could all make it in the society that we now call home.
This perspective however, removes all the complexities that are evident in mainstream society. All the subtle nuances that influence society and create an environment that is better for some and not for others. When prompted by me about if there were external factors, that lay beyond the realm of individual action, that shape our paths in life the presenter stopped talking. I asked if those in attendance went to Henry Compton School in Fulham [a number did] and asked that if a school allows for only 3 out of 10 pupils at 16 to leave with 5 good GCSEs is this a factor as to why kids may be failing. He agreed, but added that individuals controlled their own destiny and if a number of individuals managed to understand that they controlled their own destinies then this would have a cumulative effect and change would be the outcome.
Now, if this was the case the world would be a very different place. But it is quite clearly not the case. Schools are supposed to provide an environment that nurtures educational attainment for students from all backgrounds, it is not about universal education but a universal level of education. Human beings are creatures of habit; we must encourage good habits in order to avoid the prospect of the young picking up [and sticking with] bad habits. If we allow for an environment to persist that encourages bad habits and discourages educational attainment then we should not be too surprised when these same children/young adults end up acting out like they are today across the UK.
The group that hosted the event appeared to be well meaning and are actively trying to address issues that effect their community. But they fail to see the big picture. Individual action is compromised without collective responsibility. To this end the Community Education Forum has asked S.A.A.N to help mentor 45 Somali boys who attend Henry Compton School [25 of whom are monitored and considered to be at extreme risk of offending etc]. They are under performing and do not attend supplementary schools that are supposed to target pupils who need educational support. A parents evening, with these boys, is scheduled later this month and this discussion forum will involve S.A.A.N.
This is collective responsibility in action.
The presenter, a third sector advocate, stressed that the children of today [with confidence and self-belief] shaped their paths towards a better tomorrow. All of what is wrong with their environment can be changed with perseverance and hard work. To illustrate this point the presenter introduced his own story into the seminar; he came from an impoverished background in South India travelled the hard path towards education and arrived in the UK with the dream of achieving the best he possibly could. He succeeded and this was proof that, with hard work and perseverance , we could all make it in the society that we now call home.
This perspective however, removes all the complexities that are evident in mainstream society. All the subtle nuances that influence society and create an environment that is better for some and not for others. When prompted by me about if there were external factors, that lay beyond the realm of individual action, that shape our paths in life the presenter stopped talking. I asked if those in attendance went to Henry Compton School in Fulham [a number did] and asked that if a school allows for only 3 out of 10 pupils at 16 to leave with 5 good GCSEs is this a factor as to why kids may be failing. He agreed, but added that individuals controlled their own destiny and if a number of individuals managed to understand that they controlled their own destinies then this would have a cumulative effect and change would be the outcome.
Now, if this was the case the world would be a very different place. But it is quite clearly not the case. Schools are supposed to provide an environment that nurtures educational attainment for students from all backgrounds, it is not about universal education but a universal level of education. Human beings are creatures of habit; we must encourage good habits in order to avoid the prospect of the young picking up [and sticking with] bad habits. If we allow for an environment to persist that encourages bad habits and discourages educational attainment then we should not be too surprised when these same children/young adults end up acting out like they are today across the UK.
The group that hosted the event appeared to be well meaning and are actively trying to address issues that effect their community. But they fail to see the big picture. Individual action is compromised without collective responsibility. To this end the Community Education Forum has asked S.A.A.N to help mentor 45 Somali boys who attend Henry Compton School [25 of whom are monitored and considered to be at extreme risk of offending etc]. They are under performing and do not attend supplementary schools that are supposed to target pupils who need educational support. A parents evening, with these boys, is scheduled later this month and this discussion forum will involve S.A.A.N.
This is collective responsibility in action.
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