Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991

Introduction

Introduction Our understanding of events, conceivably also of ourselves, is a process of bringing the disparate into a same frame of reference. It is like taking a photo: The unassimilable, the strange, the foreign and the menacing all become domesticable because artificially focused in a frame of fixed and isolated “seeing.” —Breyten Breytenbach 1994 This book deals with the changing use of clan-based violence against civilians as a technology of power in the Somali civil war (1978–present). At its center is what I consider the violence of the “key shift,”1 activated by politicomilitary leaders in the course of the armed uprising that culminated in the expulsion of President Maxamed Siyaad Barre on January 26, 1991. This study argues that the violence that accompanied and followed the moment of regime and state collapse was analytically, politically, and discursively something new, a transformative turning point and key shift that has remained largely unaddressed (and has been purposefully denied and concealed) both in the scholarship about the Somali civil war and in political efforts at social reconstruction and moral repair. Before explaining why I interpret the violence of January 1991 as a key shift and give it a central place in this study, I will sketch in outline what it consisted of and how it fits into the framework of the fast-moving political events and changing dominant discourse of this period. 2 Introduction 1991 as Key Shift When Barre, who had been president of Somalia since his military coup of October 1969, was toppled, his regime was morally, politically, and financially bankrupt. It had been an autocratic and patrimonial regime, in which an increasingly narrow elite of close family members and top political officials (the cream of the patrimonial clients or serviteurs patrimoniaux, as Compagnon 1995 calls them), increasingly devoured the national, public resources of the state for private, personal gain and gradually turned all national institutions that were not part of the repressive apparatus into empty shells. Moreover, in order to contain political and popular resistance against it, the Barre regime developed a calculated policy of using clan sentiment to exacerbate competition, conflict, and grudges among Somalis.2 As we will see below, these divide-and-rule policies included campaigns of brutal collective punishment of civilians suspected of harboring sympathies for one or the other of the armed opposition fronts that from 1978 onward took up arms against the regime. In December 1990 and January 1991, the USC (United Somali Congress), supported by two other armed fronts, the SPM (Somali Patriotic Movement) and the SNM (Somali National Movement), captured Mogadishu and drove Barre out. However, when Mogadishu passed into its hands, the leaders of the USC, followed by USC fighters and civilian supporters , adopted a politics that defined as mortal enemy all Somalis encompassed by the genealogical construct of Daarood, which also included the president.3 Although the vast majority of these individuals had not been associated with, or benefited from the regime—in many cases as little or even less than those now hunting them down—they were nevertheless targeted for elimination and expulsion not only in Mogadishu but also, over a period of two years, in central, south-central, and southern Somalia. This is the violence that is central to this study. It did not just represent violence against civilians based on clan, which is in itself not new in Somalia, but a shift to a new kind of collective , clan-based violence, namely that of clan cleansing, in a new political context and with a new dominant discourse. Political violence targeting civilians on the basis of their clan background has deep historical roots in Somalia. It may well go back to precolonial times and certainly was, in the form of “collective clan punishment” and “punitive” expeditions, one of the foundations of colonial policy toward Somalis. During the decolonization process, the young politicians of the era of civilian administrations (1960–1969), who had inherited a deeply tribalized state from MUSE (2024-04-25 06:35 GMT) Introduction 3 their colonial masters, built national institutions, and promoted a national Somali identity and imaginary. However, they also used political patronage and feelings of clan solidarity among their constituencies as a political instrument against each other. Nevertheless, political violence, though not negligible (e.g., around elections) was not pervasive. The use of large-scale violence against civilians on the basis of clan did not become common political practice until the military regime of Barre (1969–1991). The latter developed...