The Isaaq genocide was the genocide of the Isaaq or Banu Ishaq people of Somalia between 1987 and 1989. The Isaaq are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa, while also having supposed ancestral ties to Arabia. In modern times their position as a coastal people along key shipping routes in the region saw them become particularly wealthy within the Horn of Africa through coastal trade, a situation which stirred resentment and then hatred. In 1987, in the context of the Somaliland War of Independence and the emerging Somali Civil War, the military junta of Somalia, led by Siad Barre, commenced a genocidal program against the Isaaq people. Over the next two years anywhere between 50,000 and 200,000 Isaaq people were mass-murdered, while entire Isaaq urban centers like Hargeisa were largely destroyed. Many of those who survived did so by fleeing across the border to Ethiopia, creating a refugee crisis of approximately half a million people. Thus, many people in Ethiopia and other countries today will have arrived there because they or their parents were displaced during the Isaaq genocide.[1]
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Isaaq genocide chronology of events
The genocide of the Isaaq people of Somalia came about as a result of the growing instability of the country under the rule of the military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, who had been in power in the country since 1969. In the late 1970s Barre entered a war with neighboring Ethiopia known as the Ogaden War. Then from 1981 he faced the Somaliland War of Independence in a breakaway region, while in the late 1980s there was growing instability throughout the entire country in the preliminary stages of what would become the Somali Civil War. In order to try and retain power Barre increasingly resorted to tribal politics, playing one ethnic group in Somalia off against another. A key component of this in 1987 became efforts to turn the Ogaden people against the Isaaq people. The genocide of the Isaaq was the end result.[2]
The genocide began in 1987, as large units of the Somali Armed Forces moved into the coastal regions of northern Somalia where the Isaaq lived in large numbers. One such group was given the name Dabar Goynta Isaaqa, transliterating as the Isaaq Exterminators, such was the unequivocal manner in which a policy of genocide was adopted. Many involved in this were Ogaden refugees from the Ogaden War in Ethiopia ten years earlier. These units eventually ended up operating a system of local government in Isaaq-dominated regions, charged with wiping out sections of the population.[3]
The Isaaq genocide was at its most intense in 1988. That year bombing missions and concerted military action led to the virtual destruction of the cities of Hargeisa and Burao, two of the largest cities in Somalia, both of which had large Isaaq populations. In the case of Hargeisa, 90% of the city was destroyed, leading some analysts to refer to it as the Dresden of Africa, a reference to the Allied blanket bombing of the city of Dresden in Germany at the end of the Second World War.[4] The genocide carried on into 1989, eventually resulting in upwards of 200,000 deaths and causing the mass displacement of much of the population of northern Somalia. By the time it ended in 1989, the political situation in Somalia was becoming increasingly unstable and in January 1991 Barre fell from power as the Somali Civil War escalated. It has dragged on for over three and a half decades since in one shape or another. The Isaaq genocide has consequently been referred to as a forgotten genocide, overshadowed by the deteriorating wider geopolitical situation and also eclipsed by the Rwandan genocide which occurred a half a decade later in Rwanda.[5]
Extent of migration associated with the Isaaq genocide
As the attacks on their cities, towns and villages intensified in 1988, hundreds of thousands of Isaaq people began fleeing over the border into Ethiopia, despite the fact that Ethiopia was not entirely sympathetic towards their cause and had been involved in unleashing militias into Somalia itself. In total it is estimated that between 400,000 and 500,000 people fled to Ethiopia.[6] The region around Hartasheikh in Ethiopia became the world’s fastest growing refugee camp as a result, one in which conditions were extremely poor as the Ethiopian government actively sought to undermine humanitarian relief efforts.[7]
Demographic impact of the Isaaq genocide
,_1980s.jpg)
The demographic impacts of the genocide were extreme. There is disagreement as to the death toll, as it is difficult to extrapolate who was killed as a result of the genocide and who was killed as a consequence of simultaneous conflicts in the region such as the Somaliland War of Independence and the long Somali Civil War which was just beginning in the late 1980s. These issues aside, most scholars of twentieth-century genocides agree that the figure was at least 50,000, possibly as high as 200,000, and most likely in the 100,000 to 150,000 range. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and many were unable to ever return to their places of origin as a result of the escalating Somali Civil War in the 1990s. Hargeisa and other cities and towns were temporarily devastated and lost upwards of 90% of their buildings, but have recovered since.[8]
Explore more about the Isaaq genocide
- Somaliland's Forgotten Genocide at the Pulitzer Center
- Somalia (Isaaq Genocide) at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
- In the Valley of Death: Somaliland's Forgotten Genocide at The Nation
References
- ↑ Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, ‘“We Swallowed the State as the State Swallowed Us”: The Genesis, Genealogies, and Geographies of Genocides in Somalia’, in African Security, Vol. 9, No. 3 (July – September, 2016), pp. 237–258.
- ↑ https://www.msf.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/socs-timeline/en/Somalia_Chrono_Eng.pdf
- ↑ https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/valley-death-somalilands-forgotten-genocide
- ↑ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/in-the-valley-of-death-somalilands-forgotten-genocide/
- ↑ https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/somalia-fall-of-siad-barre-civil-war/
- ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/africa/rwandan-genocide
- ↑ Somalia: A Government at War with its Own People: Testimonies About the Killings and the Conflict in the North (New York, 1990), pp. 127–192, 201–206.
- ↑ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/in-the-valley-of-death-somalilands-forgotten-genocide/