Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan
Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 336 pages.
***“We’re going to get it on because we don’t get along.” —Mohamed Ali, Rumble in the Jungle.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”—William
Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust.
***
When the current Somali president,
Hassan Sh. Mohamoud, has recently visited Minnesota, he gave what seemed to be an
inspiring and upbeat speech to that state’s Somali community. Then, he committed
a faux pas when he admonished the audience to forget about the past, what
happened in 1991 and afterward, and not to dwell on it. The reaction of those
who heard the speech ranged from those who wanted to move forward and build on
the positives to those who had hard time swallowing the fact that what happened
in 1991 could be readily dismissed after so many lives were lost, properties
confiscated, and thousands expelled from their homes. The president was
depicted as an insensitive leader bent on concealing the truth rather than
seeking a judicious way of redressing the wrong. Such is the legacy of 1991 and
its deleterious effect on the minds of many Somalis, even after 22 years.
Professor Lidwien Kapteijns’
book, Clan Cleansing in Somalia,
exactly cautions Somali politicians not to engage in empty rhetoric about concealing
and brushing off the “ruinous legacy” of 1991. Kapteijns, who teaches history at
Wellesley College in the United States, is no stranger to Somali studies. She
has extensively written about Somalia and speaks fluent Somali. As long as the
memories, wrongdoings, and injustice of that period are not fully acknowledged
and publicly addressed, she argues, Somalia will remain in a state of conflict
and unable to engage in meaningful reconciliation and nation-building.
Something drastic and major
happened in 1991 in Mogadishu and other parts of the south that was tragic: an
unprecedented violence. Whereas Somalis had history of killing each other—a clan
against clan—what took place in 1991 after the collapse of Siad Barre’s brutal
regime, writes Kapteijns, 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 the political efforts at
social and moral repair.” Various mechanisms were used to conceal, deny or
downplay the 1991 tragedies. The Western media, for instance, failed to uncover
the killings and raping of innocent people in Mogadishu, and when foreign
reporters visited Mogadishu at the apex of the civil war, they were chaperoned
by the operatives of the United Somali Congress (USC). Kapteijns adroitly cites
a case of several Western reporters reporting from Mogadishu on one fateful day
whose narratives almost resembled each other. It was obvious that these
journalists were in the same convoy when they were reporting the carnage in
Mogadishu. The problem was compounded by poor academic and political memoir
writings that failed to grasp the gravity of the situation in Mogadishu.
Moreover, moderate leaders of the USC engaged in covering up the killings. It
was only a decade and half later when warlord Ali Mahdi publicly admitted the
atrocities committed in 1991.
This was a campaign based on
collective punishment of one clan, and, hence, it was “namely that of clan
cleansing, in a new political context and with a new dominant discourse.” In
fact, argues Kapteijns, it was a communal violence in a way because it involved
ordinary people such as friends, acquaintances, and neighbors targeting others
based on being members of the wrong clan. The violence was not done randomly
but instead it was carried out in a well-thought-out manner that pitted, not a
government force against an organized armed group but, a common people against
common people. Kapteijns, though, makes it clear that it was not clans that did
the killings in Somalia but rather people who used the name of clans to kill,
maim and rape.
The 1991 violence was not created
out of vacuum. It was Barre who started using political violence to punish
entire clans. The government’s policy was “using clan sentiment to exacerbate
competition, conflict and grudge among Somalis.” Two incidents stand out.
First, it happened in 1978-1982 in the Mudug, northeast, and Nugaal
regions. Barre’s forces killed innocent
people in those regions, poisoned wells, and starved thousands of people. There
is also the incident that involved the killings of 82 high- ranking military
officers in Jigjiga during the Ethiopian War, an act overseen by Barre’s
minions; General Mohamed Ali Samantar and General Mohamed Nur Galaal. This
happened after a failed military coup, aptly called “the Majertein coup,” which
led to the execution of 17 officers. Oddly, 16 of the 17 killed were Majertein.
The other non-Majertein conspirators, interestingly, had their sentences
commuted to prison terms.
Second, it was the well-written
and widely-covered violence of 1988-1989 in the northwest and Togdheer regions
when the regime bombed cities, killing and dislocating thousands of Isaac people.
When Barre was overthrown, the
USC, according to Kapteijns, adopted a policy that “defined as mortal enemy of all
Somalis encompassed by the genealogical construct of Daarood, which also included
the president.” Many of those targeted by the USC and its allies (the SNM and
the Rahanwein-based SDM), argues Kapteijns, had nothing to do with the Barre
regime, but their crime was they shared the president the same clan. On the
other side of the coin, the 1991 violence also had another dimension: some high-ranking
officials in Barre’s regime were spared after the defeat of the dictator. Kapteijns
mentions individuals such as Hussein Kulmiye Afrah (vice president), Abdiqassim
Salad Hassan (interior minister), General Jilicow (head of security in the
Benadir region) Mohamed Shaikh (finance minister), Abdullahi Adow (minister of presidency
and former Somali Ambassador to the United States) who had largely benefited
from their long association with Barre, found themselves unharmed and, in fact,
were embraced by the leaders of the USC, whereas persons who belonged to
Barre’s clan but never benefited from his regime got killed, robbed, or
expelled because they were from the wrong clan.
Kapteijns chronicles the
atrocities committed against minority groups such as, for instance, the Bravanese,
that had suffered tremendously in the hands of both the USC and the
Daarood-based SNF. A resident of Brava, a coastal town in the south, complained
about how the rule in his hometown had changed hands on numerous occasions. “One
group leaves then the next group comes,” he lamented. “They loot and take away
your possessions. I can’t tell one from the other; they are like ants of the
same color.”
Lidwien Kapteijns’ book is an
important addition to Somali studies. She uses popular poems, radio broadcasts,
and extensive oral interviews to analyze the genesis, fomenting, and
perpetuation of hate speech, and the employment of code words. The book is at
its strongest when Kapteijns delves into the use of poetry and oral recordings to
explain the violence that had engulfed Somalia in early 1990s. This is a-must-read
book for every Somali who wants to know what happened in 1991. It is especially
important for Somali leaders who want to bring a lasting change to Somalia
because the process of uncovering the truth and dealing with it is only the
beginning of the healing process.
