Interesting hero you've got there.
Ilhan Omar’s Father and the Isaaq Genocide
Between 1981 and 1991, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland.
This dark chapter in Africa’s history, which was known as the Isaaq Genocide, was a merciless military campaign that resulted in the killing of over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. It also involved widespread forced displacement, scorched-earth destruction of the second and third largest cities (Hargeisa and Burao), aerial bombardement of almost every other single city, town and village in Somaliland, and two decades of large-scale red-terror style tactics against the civilian population of Somaliland.
It was carried out through relentless aerial bombardments – planes repeatedly strafed fleeing refugees – summary executions, burning of entire villages, deportations, land-mining of water sources and homes, Holodomor style government enforced man-made famines (the Dabadheer Drought) and the use of paramilitary units such as the Somali Armed Forces’ “Dabar Goynta Isaaqa” (The Isaaq Exterminators), composed exclusively of non-ethnically Isaaq soldiers, to enact mass killings under Somalia’s military direction.
Eyewitness testimonies documented “mass executions by firing squad, forced disappearances, looting, mass torture, mass surveillance, rape used as a weapon, curfews and mass killings of civilians even in areas with limited resistance or lawful liberation movement activities, such in Berbera where thousands of government soldiers were stationed. Isaaq civilians across what was then the Somalia Republic, were detained and executed en-mass by Somalia government execution squads led by Colonels like Ilhan Omar’s father.
Across the country civilians were forced from their homes into dehumanising conditions, including many kept in dungeons, underground prisons and pits. Even famous Isaaqs such as Somaliland’s most renowned poet ‘Hadraawi’ did not escape this torture and years of detention under the most brutal and unsanitary conditions imaginable. Even in Mogadishu, deep inside neighbouring Somalia – and almosr 1,500KM from Somaliland’s capital of Hargeisa – Isaaq civilians were being killed in their homes, in the city and on Mogadishu’s beaches. The Jazeera massacre of 1989 is a particularly brutal example that is etched in history.
At the heart of this brutal military regime was Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father. His rank, authority, membership of the regime Daarood clan, and 10+ years of having climbed the hierarchy in Somalia military to the rank of Colonel, placed him squarely in the Somali military’s command hierarchy during and at the height of its Isaaq genocide campaign. Based on his position, loyalty to the regime, and his role in the military, it is virtually certain that he had intimate knowledge of and involvement in the planning, conception, direction and execution of the genocide.
[continued ...]
somalilandchronicle.com
Tom |
