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C h a p t e r 3 Clan Cleansing in Mogadishu and Beyond Introduction From mid-December 1990 on, the number of foreigners who remained in Mogadishu dwindled.1 The U.S. embassy, where foreign nationals of many backgrounds toward the end had taken refuge, was evacuated on January 5, 1991, the Italian embassy on January 12. Both evacuations involved dramatic rescue actions by land, sea, and air.2 Groups of stragglers, especially Italians who worked in the city or the agricultural areas of Jubba and Jannaale, also managed to arrange for escape but had to leave all their possessions behind.3 By January 10 even most humanitarian workers had left the country to escape the violence. A rare exception was Austrian Willy (Wilhelm) Huber of SOS Children’s Village, who, with a small Somali staff of doctors, nurses, and aides, stayed put and provided emergency aid to the wounded. As this hospital was located in a zone captured by the USC early on, Huber was able to bear eloquent testimony to the human costs of the indiscriminate shelling of the city by heavy government artillery.4 However, for reasons that may include the relentless pressure of the work in the hospital, his dependence on the USC to be allowed to continue it, or even an attempt to stay above the fray, he never bore witness to the violent clan cleansing that began to happen even before Barre was expelled. Most international news reports of this period describe, apart from the cannon fire with which Barre’s men blanketed parts of the city from Villa Somalia, indiscriminate violence perpetrated by a mix of criminal gangs, marauding former government soldiers, USC militias from the countryside, and ordinary people running amok. Chaos, a free-for all, urban poor looting at 132 Chapter 3 will, government officials making off with ill-gained wealth or a final bribe,5 impoverished rural guerillas and ordinary criminals on a rampage, a people pushed to the limit taking mass revenge on the supporters of the regime, clan vengeance, and leaders unable to exercise control—this is what has constituted the framework for many journalistic and scholarly accounts alike.6 There was truth to such representations, for all of this was indeed also happening . However, all the need, greed, and anger that under the cover of war were injected into the dramatic moment of regime collapse gave a lethal charge to a dimension of the violence to which these news reports did not pay attention, namely organized clan cleansing. Yet it was this clan dimension that, for whoever was willing or able to see it, constituted the most sinister aspect of the violent events in Mogadishu in January 1991, one that showed that a significant dimension and amount of the violence was not random but organized and did not pitch government against armed opposition but common people against common people. If the violence had been a popular outburst against the benefactors and supporters— even alleged benefactors and supporters—of the regime alone, then men who had been central pillars of the military regime and its policies until the very end would have all become primary targets of such anger. They were not. A closer examination of who was not attacked and who was targeted for violence provides crucial insights into that dimension of the violence that was part of an organized strategy of clan cleansing, a strategy in which the agency of particular politicians and military men, as well as popular fury, played a crucial role. “Recycling in Tribal Key”: Some of Barre’s Henchmen Embraced as Heroes by the USC The evidence that the violence perpetrated by the USC leaders and rankand -file from January 1991 on was not random lies in the fact that even top generals who had been the heart, muscle, and brain of the Barre regime from its inception did not become targets for violence when they were of the clan background associated with the USC, that is to say, when they were Hawiye. The Barre regime fell on January 26, 1991, when an armed convoy took Barre out of the city toward Kismaayo in the South. Within two days, on January 28, 1991, the leadership of USC-Mogadishu (including Xusseen Bood) hurriedly proclaimed a transitional administration USE (2024-04-25 09:39 GMT) Clan Cleansing in Mogadishu and Beyond 133 with Cali Mahdi as president, a move immediately rejected and deeply resented not only by USC-Caydiid but also by the...

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