The Road to Hell (21 page)

“Siyaad Barre planted some people in the camps called
the eyes of Siyaad Barre
. We knew who they were. They were armed with pistols, and they were everywhere in camp. If foreigners came to the camp and wanted to speak with refugees, the guys from the government would arrange a meeting of stooges. And even if you don't give the answers they want you to give to the foreigners—if you raise your voice or go away from the point—you will be jailed.

“If foreigners come and ask if we have trouble with local people, we were to say, ‘We don't have a problem with the locals. We are brothers.' If they asked about government propaganda, we were to say, ‘This is a refugee camp; we are free from politics.' If they ask about tribes, just say, ‘We are all Somali.'

“If foreigners asked about rations being stolen, we had to say, ‘Nothing has been stolen. We get our fair share of what has been given.'”

It was true. I'd heard all those responses thirteen years before.

I turned to Aden Farah, who had been listening silently. He had been sent far away to Qorioley. “When we first got to Qorioley,” he said, “Save
the Children gave us hoes and seeds. We were told that we should go and plant and then eat the food. The people were angry. ‘What are we, slaves?' we asked. There was a big confrontation. How can you ask us to dig and plant?

“‘We know you're not slaves, but don't you want to be self-sufficient? Now you have to be given food. We've done everything for you.' We said that we were living on meat and milk before. They said, ‘You have left the milk and meat behind. You are refugees. How do you expect to survive now?'

“The people who knew about farming started to plant. The nomads waited to see what would happen.”

Aden Farah recalled how an American man with a blond beard stood before them one day after the harvest and, pointing to the farmers, said, “This man is rich and you are poor. He was not too proud to work in the soil.”

“People started going toward the farms. Everyone turned toward farming. I planted onions, and soon I had some money and bought a plot of land from another refugee who didn't want to farm.

“I still own the land,” he said, quietly, plaintively. “But now all the land that was allocated to the refugees, including the land I have bought there, has been taken over by the people who were living in Qorioley, and I can't use it anymore.”

As it turned out, some of the land given to refugees in Qorioley actually belonged to other people. When the government of Siyaad Barre fell, some of those people returned to reclaim their land. And some of the land was taken over by General Mohamed Farah Aydiid's militias. Most of the Ogaadeen refugees fled. Aden said he thought the ones who stayed had been killed.

“There are none left now,” he said. “It's too dangerous. If people know you have land there, with documents, they will kill you. The people there take everything, and if you say that you have documents, they say, ‘We don't care about the former government and the documents.' They say, ‘The government was wrong to settle the refugees here in the first place, and we will not listen to anything you have been given unlawfully.'”

In 1990, the Hawiye-based United Somali Congress, led by Mohamed Farah Aydiid, started fighting its way from the center of Somalia toward Mogadishu. Their route to the city took them through traditional Hawiye areas along the Shebelle River southward from Beledweyne. It was along this very route that the Somali government had located the refugee camps, including Jalalaqsi.

Siyaad Barre expected that his Ogaadeen relatives in the camps, grateful for years of relief food and assistance, would help him battle the rebel army. In some cases they did help. But usually they fled. Barre had failed to terrorize them into loyalty. They feared him is much as they feared the rebels. The camps at Jalalaqsi were the closest to Mogadishu, and by the time the rebels were approaching, most of the inhabitants had heard stories from other refugee camps: Those who resisted were killed.

Abdi and the elders at Jalalaqsi decided not to resist. But then word came to them that Siyaad was sending a shipment of arms to the camp and they were expected to mount a defense against Aydiid and the USC army. The NGOs fled, and the rebels learned that the refugees at Jalalaqsi were armed—even though very few weapons had actually reached the camp. Most had been seized en route by the rebels.

With the Jalalaqsi camp in a panic, the local population from the rebel-allied Hawaadle clan began to attack in advance of the rebel army, which was composed mostly of fighters from the Habar Gidir clan.

“They came through the camp and slaughtered people like goats, and they were thrown into the river,” Abdi said. “There was one month of serious fighting every morning.

“One morning after prayers, while I was just having my cup of tea, the Hawaadles came toward the camp.” Abdi began to halt. His eyes moistened. “They were using APCs [armored personnel carriers] with big guns that they were firing. We had only light arms, but bullets from an AK are nothing compared to the big guns. There were casualties, and we were all rounded up. We were told to surrender the guns, and we gave them up. And they went to each and every house and looted everything—men, women, and children herded like animals into the town center.

“The Hawaadles knew the refugees well and vice versa. The bad people were known. Those who sided with Barre were known. Some people were put on trucks by the USCSNA [United Somali Congress rebels] and taken toward the Ogaden, taken out of town. Some were massacred on the river in Beledweyne.

“I stood with my arms folded while they took everything from me— clothing, mattresses, beds, 1,000,710 shillings. A married daughter of mine was trying to stop one of them from going into the house. I saw her shot to death in front of me, and I could do nothing.

“I had a Haawadle friend who was a driver. He rescued me and my family and brought us to Mogadishu, where I am today. I lost everything. Everything. Even now I'm afraid.”

•   •   •

I
spoke with Abdi and Aden over a period of days, while Mogadishu rocked around us with clan violence. After every night of fighting, I went back to visit them, and they were glad to see me. I met CARE wife who apologized again and again that she had no tea for me.

Abdi understood what the aid had done to him. He knew that it had made him greedy and enticed him to abandon the life he would give anything to return to now.

*
The Harti are a subgroup of the Daarood which includes the Majeerteen, Dulbahante, and Warsangeli subclans. The Marehan and Ogaadeen clans—Siyaad's family groups—are not included. The Harti are considered by some to be the upper classes of the Daarood.

GENEVA

—From the Somali poem, “The Fire,” by Ali Dhux

A man tries hard to help you find your lost camels. He works more tirelessly than even you, But in truth he does not want you to find them, ever.

I
n 1985, eight years after the end of the Ogaden war, six years after the refugee crisis began in Somalia, CARE reported that their food delivery systems were running smoothly, their ration card system was mostly in place, they had cut down on the theft of commodities, and refugees were getting fed. By 1985, however, the reasons for the refugee crisis had been long forgotten. In Ethiopia a massive and telegenic famine was dominating world headlines and mobilizing rock 'n' roll stars. The Ethiopian government was busy using the famine to eliminate their own ethnic problems and wasn't worrying much about Somalia. Siyaad Barre had long since abandoned the dream of greater Somalia and was instead obsessed with the rapid rise of militant resistance to his regime.

Some relief agencies had reported as far back as the middle of 1982 that the crisis was over. In February of 1984, Red Cross officials announced that 150,000 refugees had returned home on their own during the previous six months. When the world responded to the famine in Ethiopia, word had
spread among the refugees that better relief and aid programs were available across the border.

The Somali government routinely rejected plans to repatriate the refugees, and then they rejected plans to resettle them. Either option would have meant an end to their “refugee” status in the eyes of the UN and therefore an end to the more than $80 million in annual refugee aid. Aid workers complained but continued to administer the relief programs.

A 1982 Associated Press report summed up the common perception:

“There are strong political and economic reasons why Somalia wants the refugees to remain refugees,” said a top relief official in Mogadishu…. Refugee aid has become so big a source of foreign exchange that it has become an important component of the Somali gross national product, he said, asking to remain anonymous because of his position.

This “top relief official,” like hundreds of others, continued dumping aid into what he knew was a scam, yet he fled from the consequences of his action in order to protect “his position.”

When the first refugees from the Ogaden war crossed into Somalia in 1977, other Somalis welcomed them as family returned home. The war and Somalia's brief victory had set off a rush of nationalist fervor. After seven years, however, the welcome had worn thin. The refugees were receiving favorable treatment from the government and were prospering. Many kept decrepit huts in the camps in order to continue collecting rations but had managed to buy houses in the towns. In some cases the camps were in better shape than the towns.

Around Somalia, refugees were getting government jobs. They were joining the army in increasing numbers. In a country ruled by a military government, it meant a tidal shifting of power from the local clan to a group of outsiders who were totally indebted to Siyaad's government for their food and livelihood. Add to that the fact that the Ogaadeen had a clan relationship with the rulers, and Siyaad Barre had a loyal armed cadre firmly entrenched on the land of his enemies.

Throughout the early 1980s, Siyaad Barre had been faced with an uprising by rebels of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, made up predominantly of members of the Majeerteen clan. The SSDF leader, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, was a hero of the Ogaden war who, along with his colleague Mohamed Farah Aydiid, led a failed coup at the end of the war in April 1978. Barre's troops hit back against Abdullahi Yusuf's Majeerteen subclan in the early 1980s, executing hundreds. All of this took place far away from the expatriates, the refugee camps, and the press. Western governments
said little to Siyaad Barre, who continued to gather more and more economic and military assistance.

The SSDF operated predominantly out of Ethiopia. Barre couldn't use his own troops across the border, which is why the “rebel” Western Somalia Liberation Front become so important. And since the WSLF was composed of Ogaadeen refugees operating out of refugee camps on the border, the camps were a key strategic consideration.

By the mid-1980s, the aid-fed militias of the WSLF had succeeded in tying down the SSDF (which eventually neutralized itself because of internal squabbles), and the Majeerteen were rehabilitated in the eyes of Siyaad, who figured he could count on them if the government were challenged by the Isaaq or Hawiye clans.

Increasingly, the Isaaq clan in the north became the biggest threat to Siyaad's government. Siyaad had a deep and personal dislike for the clan. The real reasons can only be guessed at, but in part it was due to his inability to control them. As accomplished business operatives, they had built a society that was not dependent on government largesse. The Isaaq had traditional trade relationships with the nations of the Arabian Peninsula that continued despite the attempts of the government to center all economic activity in Mogadishu. Siyaad did what he could, however, and Isaaq traders were forced to make the long trip to Mogadishu for permits and licenses.

In addition, the Isaaq definitely had an “attitude” about the southerners. In part, it came from their disparate colonial experiences. The British-colonized north had a more efficient civil service and better system of education than the Italian south.

In 1981, Isaaq dissidents in London formed a rebel group to overthrow Siyaad Barre. It was called the Somali National Movement (SNM). Like the SSDF, they set up their military bases in Ethiopia, and though they didn't cause any immediate problems for the government, they appeared to be growing into a threat. Barre sent two of his most trusted generals to the north to keep things quiet. As military governor, he sent his son-in-law, Mohamed Hersi “Morgan.” Morgan, who was at first referred to simply as the son-in-law, would soon earn a third nickname, the Butcher of Hargeysa. To command the government troops in the area, he sent his cousin, General Mohamed Hashi Gani.

Among other things, Gani directed the refugee-camp-based WSLF in a campaign to terrorize Isaaq civilians and loot food convoys.

As in the south of Somalia, by 1985, the refugee crisis in the north was no longer a refugee crisis. It was status quo. A report from the human
rights organization Africa Watch documented some of what was going on. Hargeysa resident Safia Ali Mataan told Africa Watch,