Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia/Africa/Middle East:
Re: Challenging Non accountable self appointed Human Rights organizations
It is becoming evident that few people organized can make a big impact on current global news and views.
One such group is the self appointed Human Rights Watch that does not have representation of all 6.6 billion people or about 157 nation states, but feels has the right just with a logo called Human Rights Watch to insinuate all sorts of fabrications against a people, community, governments and regional authorities.
The so called Human Rights Watch even supports for the rights of terrorists to terrorize civilian populations across the world.
The most glaring its blatant support for a series of liberation fronts and Jihadists in the Horn without impunity. No transparency and accountability, no second or third hand verification process, just rumour and disgruntled political refugee asylum application form reports projected verbatim as truths. Such level of incompetence should never be honored in today's world of excellence and competency.
The secret, take a high sounding name such as Human Rights Watch and then get incorporated in some high placed city, New York and have few misguided journalists or failed politician in your board, Walla you have a very powerful tool of first class activists with no cause.
Imagine, Watching the Human Rights of people all over the world. Do they have representatives in the Police stations, courts and family centers of the world. No, they only have few misfits in Kenya sitting in Cafes and literally wasting their time listening to refugee stories.
They can go to the respective sites and investigate with appropriate credentials. No, it is much easier to just fart around and write highly sensational stories to blame a people, a civilization and a government. These are the left overs of the Cold War Foreign Correspondents without the credentials. Some are out right couner-intelligence trainees with no supervision.
There you have it their supporters and detractors below.
It is such a shame that few delinquent youths from the West with no journalistic or any competent background can crowd the cafes and hotels and motels of cities like Nairobi, Kenya and fabricate stories of genocide and human rights abuse and publish them as Government Commission Reports.
The sad part is that intelligent people listen to these fools and even governments are forced to respond to them.
Here is the saga of the Delinquent Youths of Human Rights Watch and their admirers and critics at hand.
Dr B
Does the Human Rights Watch Report’s Flaws Reflect Only Methodological Problems or Something Else…?
By: Haimanot Lakew, Boston , MA 11/28/08
Initially, after reading the Human Rights Watch’s report Collective Punishment, released on June 11, 2008, regarding the alleged abuses of the Ethiopian government on the Ogaden region.
As an Ethiopian, I was puzzled. How could such atrocities, to the point of being accused of near-genocide, be allowed to occur under the current political leadership of Ethiopia, especially by its defense forces, in light of its contribution to regional peacekeeping in a number of countries, including Burundi, Liberia, Sudan and its impeccable record of observing the rules of engagement in terms of human rights during the war against Eritrea?
Immediately, I felt that the Ethiopian government should respond to this allegation, especially due to the gravity of the report. Plus, my concern was intensified by the fact that the Human Rights Watch is an organization that has tremendous weight throughout the international community; its name alone has remarkable significance and power in influencing policy-makers throughout the western world. I understood that the burden of moral and political accountability on the part of the Ethiopian government was heavy and would have to be responded to as quickly as possible.
So, the very fact that the Ethiopian government took the initiative in responding with the carefully researched and written report, Flawed Methodology, Unsubstantiated Allegations: The Results of an Investigation by the Government of Ethiopia into Allegations by Human Rights Watch on Human Rights in the Somali Regional State, in November, 2008, was in my opinion, a positive first step.
This report, by and large, focused on exposing what it felt to be the faulty methodology behind the Human Rights Watch investigation and subsequent report. Paramount among these perceived flaws, according to this report, was that the Human Rights Watch investigators hardly ever set foot on Ethiopian soil, meaning that there was a lack of field work, since most investigations were done over the phone from locations like Djibouti and Kenya , which led to dependence on hearsay. Perhaps due to this faulty research, many of the names, locations, and conditions, of places were incorrect, as were many of the testimonies that were used as hard fact within the report, to the point where most of these appeared to be mere fictions as opposed to legitimate accounts of abuse and torture.
As a result, one begins to wonder how such a renowned organization like the Human Rights Watch can commit such serious errors in its research in monitoring human rights violations around the world. Appropriately enough, the Ethiopian government by its very nature, chose to hone in on the flawed research methods used by the Human Rights Watch, finally urging the organization to reconsider its processes for future investigations.
However, as a member and citizen of this world community, shouldn’t I go further to assess, to inquire, even to the point of speculation? Why should such gross errors of professional judgment, as well as the profound lack of professional ethical behavior on the part of staff members of the Human Rights Watch, be tolerated within the organization, never mind in the parties that they accuse? While contemplating within this framework, I came up with three major reasons why such reporting is only to be expected from the Human Rights Watch as long as these underlying factors aren’t immediately discussed.
The first of these reasons is that as an agency, and like most developmental agencies, human rights groups, and international news agencies, etc, there is, what I call, contempt towards the entire continent of Africa .
What I mean by this is that while the need for a human rights monitoring system is vital during this time, as well as the need for such developmental agencies to aid and for other international news agencies to bring objective and more balanced hard facts to the international community and thereby link Africa with the rest of the world and vice versa, what we see from all these international agencies, including the human rights watch groups, is a lack of effort to assemble the best resources for Africa, which would include the best educated staff members to be in the field, as well as the most experienced and most ethical staff.
Time and time again, as demonstrated in the actions of these organizations, by assembling third-rate people to cover Africa, reserving the best staff members for more desirable locales in the Western world, there is a certain amount of contempt, leading to an overall attitude that one always knows what to expect from Africa, which in turn leads to the shoddy reporting and investigation that we have seen manifested in the June of 2008 Human Rights Watch report.
To my readers, the last thing that I would want to be accused of is waving the African Nationalism Flag, because ultimately, no matter what happened, whether it was the ONLF which incited the gross human rights violations within its own community or the government, the fact is that this was our own Ethiopians’ fault and was most certainly not caused by the Human Rights Watch.
However, the difference lies between someone coming from the outside world and merely monitoring, aiding, or bringing news and someone coming from the outside world with his/her own agenda designed to exacerbate the situation that they are coming into. In this respect, the racism of the colonialist era was the lesser of two evils; in other words, it was represented as an occupation force, set up there to impose its own rules and its own racist attitude.
The current version of racism is far more subtle and sophisticated and is demonstrated in such actions as reserving one’s worst reporters and investigators to an area that one deems as meriting less quality of work.
The second reason lies in the whole notion of clumping all the countries in Africa into one large mass that has the same history of violence, patterns of war, bad governance, human rights violations, etc.
Thus, the most incompetent of leaders, Mugabe, is not only to be found in Zimbabwe , but also in the leadership in other parts of Africa as well. By the same token, if there is ethnic cleansing in Darfur, then by all means, the same must be true in the Somali region of Ethiopia as well. This logic continues on and on throughout the entire continent.
There is no effort or hard work on the part of such agencies as Human Rights Watch to find the important distinctions among these countries, since it’s far easier to think of Africa as one large country instead of as a continent of made up of many and diverse countries. It’s this logic which causes the report to stumble into the grave blunder of lumping Ethiopia into the mass of generalities that they choose to subscribe to Africa .
With a little more research and an overview of Ethiopian History 101, Human Rights Watch could have discovered that the present Ethiopian government came to power as a liberation front, so in its present role as a government executing a counter-insurgency operation against the ONLF.
It’s a simple fact that it gives a higher priority to the well-being of its citizens, which would mean that it would take care to focus solely on the military side of the ONLF and ultimately, it would have a strong commitment to solve problems through political means as opposed to a total military solution, unless it was absolutely forced to turn to this measure, as it was in the case of the ONLF. So, one wonders how Human Rights Watch failed to notice this unique historical precedence in Ethiopia which sets it apart from many other African nations, and even from its own past history.
The third reason is that many of these international agencies and organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and in particular, the international human rights monitoring organizations and news agencies are infatuated with the highly romanticized idea of freedom fighters in a liberation front. Somehow, these mythical figures have become embedded in any example of so-called liberation efforts, no matter the real-life context of these so-called freedom heroes.
A classic contemporary example of this is in The New York Times, a highly respected institution within the newspaper industry which has a firm moral ground against any and all terrorist activities around the world, and yet, which has a staff member who has fallen in love with the ONLF forces or “freedom fighters”, recreating their image so as to render them a legitimate political group with a reasonable socio-political agenda. So in short, there are still traces of the leftist political agenda within this organization, traces that must be re-examined in order to fully understand the scope of these unspoken liberal biases.
There needs to be a new outlook to closely monitor the reaction towards these “liberation fronts”, since the phrase can often be deceptive and be manipulated for any number of causes and agendas. It is in discussing this need for a new outlook in addressing this dilemma and how to tackle the situation that Paul Collier brings up the following scenario in his book The Bottom Billion:
“Donations from Diaspora communities have been one of the key sources of finance for rebel movements, so rebels have learned how to manipulate their public relations. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) attracted money from Irish Americans, not just money, either—apparently some of the guns used by the IRA came from the Boston police department (though the attacks of September 11, 2001, brought a stop to that one, once Americans realized what terrorism actually meant).
The Tamil Tigers got money from Tamils in Canada ; the bomb killed or injured more than 1,400 people in Sri Lanka ’s capital city, Colombo , in 1996 was paid for from a Canadian bank account. Albanians across the European Union financed the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that some European politicians actually mistook for a decent political movement until it got its chance to murder.
The best-organized Diaspora movement of all was the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front. The Diaspora financed the war for thirty years, and in 1992 they won. Eritrea is now an independent country. But did the war really achieve liberation of the Eritrean people? In September 2001, after an unnecessary international war with Ethiopia , half the Eritrean cabinet wrote to the president, Isaias Afwerki, asking him to think again about his autocratic style of government. He thought about it and imprisoned them all.
He then instituted mass conscription of Eritrean youth. Ethiopia demobilized, but not Eritre` . Eritrean youth may be in the army as much to protect the president from protest as to protect the country from Ethiopia . Many young Eritreans’ have left the country. As I write, the government is in the process of expelling international peace observers, presumably so that it can restart the war. Was such liberation really worth thirty years of civil war?” (22-23)
While I write this article, I wonder which human rights group will perceive the current terrorist group in India , which has created havoc over the weekend in Bombay , as a “liberation front”. Which outside diasporic community is possibly financing this group?
To conclude my brief reaction to and critique of the Human Rights Watch report, while it was legitimate for the Ethiopian government to solely focus on the research methods which led to the organization’s shortcomings in its findings and while highly appreciative of its desire to further engage with the Human Rights Watch and to “explore the possibilities of collaboration in the field”, it was my duty as a citizen of this world and as a person who is also very appreciative of the admirable mission of the Human Rights Watch’s work, to further probe into the underlying reasons for these kinds of shortcomings and to offer up a new outlook and commitment in monitoring human rights violations around the world.
Human Rights Watch Vs Meles Zenawi’s Government:
The Attempt to Whitewash Crime Against Humanity
Inside the Ogaden Region of Ethiopia
Fekade Shewakena
A recent propaganda piece by the Ethiopian authorities masquerading as a government investigative report issued to whitewash the crimes in the Ogaden Region would have been laughed all the way to the waste basket had the issue in question not been the tragedy and suffering of a mass of human beings.
The 47 page propaganda piece entitled, “Flawed Methodology, Unsubstantiated Allegations: The Results of an Investigation by the Government of Ethiopia into allegations by Human Rights Watch on human rights in the Somali Regional State”1 is full of manufactured outrage and meant to counter the meticulously researched findings and charges by Human Rights Watch (HRW), including crimes against humanity, the use of rape and starvation as weapons of war and the burning of villages and dislocation of people, compiled in a 138 page document.2
But if you carefully examine the so called investigation report by Mr. Zenawi’s government, it gives you a window to see the amount of crime and, in fact, speaks to the opposite of its intended use, in effect corroborating HRW’s charges. It actually reminded me of the story of the proverbial goat in Ethiopia that stole and ate the wheat reserved for ecclesiastical service at the church and was in the end driven to becoming laud more talkative to the level of almost telling that she was the thief. “Megeberia Yebelach fiyel Yaslefelifatal”, so goes the saying.
Apparently, some clever Woyane thought that it is smarter to set out by questioning the methodology of HRW rather than attacking its credibility directly. Or they must have been mindful of the fact that the credibility thing with regard to investigating itself is not the best suit of Meles Zenawi’s government. Many Ethiopians including the international community has not forgotten the fait of the investigation of the post election massacres in Addis Ababa where the investigators had to flee the country with the video and written transcript of the results of their investigation to tell the truth to the rest of the world.
The whitewash of the genocide against the Agnuak ethnic group in Gambella is still fresh. They seem to understand that accusing an organization of stellar global respect as HRW for credibility would not fly. The less intelligent, shoot-from-the-hip TPLF puppies at Aigaforum (the people who wrote editorials recommending death penalty on members of the opposition for testifying at the US congress) did that crazy job already by throwing the kitchen sink at HRW moments after the report was published.
The Ethiopian authorities who wrote this so called investigation report, however, do not tell us how their methodology contrasts with that of HRW or how the witness interview method, one of multiple methods used by HRW researchers, yields less valid results than the interview method extensively and almost exclusively used by Meles Zenawi’s agents on a captive population in the Ogaden, a good number of whom are prisoners accused of being members of the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Movement). Some of the witnesses, we are told in the report, are former ONLF fighters living in the area. And Meles Zenawi and his cronies want people with heads on their shoulders, to believe the pile of crap they compiled by interviewing them.
As an Ethiopian who prides himself of the decency and goodness of the Ethiopian people, I want many of these damning reports by human rights groups and journalists including this by HRW about gruesome war crimes, collective punishment and the use of rape and starvation as a weapon of war by Meles Zenawi’s government to be false. I have two important reasons to want HRW’s report to be false.
First, I believe these kinds of extreme and gruesome crimes reported by human rights groups do not only tarnish the image of only the government or its leaders for which I care less, but unfortunately also speak badly of all of us as a people and distort the image of the country and the people we love. Disgraceful and shameful things that happen in a country, whoever the perpetrator and at whatever scale, often become broad paintbrushes that discolor the good and the bad together and create a bad single whole image of an entire country and people.
Look how a handful of extremists in the Islamic world have tarnished the good religion of Islam. The crimes of the Nazi’s still shame many good Germans who were not even born at the time. Some years ago, I was chatting with a European friend when she asked me how I managed to survive and escape the famines in Ethiopia. She couldn’t believe me when I told her that there were millions of us, more than three fourths of the population at the time, who had enough food to eat. She couldn’t let go the image she formed of Ethiopia and kept on arguing with me until she got onto my nerves. But then again I myself also almost did the same thing to a Rwandan I met recently.
Even inside our long years of civil wars in the past, these kinds of systematic collective punishments of entire people and the use of rape as a weapon, as repeatedly reported by human rights groups and journalists as under Meles Zenawi in the Ogaden and earlier in Gambella, have never been heard of. Even Mengistu’s government, whose brutality is among the worst in our history, was transporting teff and other food items with cargo planes from central Ethiopia to Eritrea at the height of the civil war in the 1980s.
This stands in huge contrast to Meles Zenawi’s blocking of relief organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders from operating in the Ogaden and the closure of access roads to transport food to the area at a time when the region was in the middle of a grueling famine. At one time some of these humanitarian organizations were begging Zenawi’s government to let them save lives. This, in my vew, can happen only in a country that is capable of producing human beasts. I don’t want to believe this took place in Ethiopia.
Second, I find it hard to accept that some among our good, wonderful and decent people turned soldiers, are capable of doing what human rights groups and journalists tell us they do. Having been to literally every part of Ethiopia and knowing most ethnic groups, I find it hard to believe that there could be beasts among those wonderful people who are capable of raping elderly women the age of their mothers, strangle and burry human beings alive, and burn the villages of poor people.
Most of you may remember the days in June 1991 when Mengistu’s government collapsed and nearly half a million soldiers and armed militia were dispersed around the country without any command and control. I have seen them with my own eyes when they beg for food with automatic machineguns hung on their shoulders and round after round of ammunition all over them. Nothing but only that heritage of common decency was between them and the rest of us to stop them from crossing the line. I remember it with pride. That was an “only in Ethiopia” moment. I don’t want to believe that these values and that longstanding fabric of our society and culture have changed in a decade and half.
I don’t want to believe that the poison of hate Meles Zenawi sprays in Ethiopia has succeeded to such an extent. So, I only wish the HRW report or the scathing annual reports of the US State Department on Human Rights or the gruesome stories written about the Ogaden on the New York Times are wrong.
The Sadism, the lie and the pile of crap in the report:
Reading this so-called investigation report of the Ethiopian authorities is a torture on two levels. First, a good part of the English is so difficult to understand. Sometimes you need to translate it into Amharic to understand it. The authorities who wrote, read, approved and issued this report seem to have shed any grain of sense of
embarassment and shame. For heaven’s sakes, this is a government document that, for whatever it is worth, is expected to be read widely. How difficult is it for a government that hires lobbyists in the US with millions of dollars to hire an editor to at least check basic grammar and spelling? Consider the following I randomly picked as example:
“Its [HRW’s] inclusion of irrelevant and inappropriate satellite imagery seems to have
been included to add drama to its media communications”. (Page 5)
And this,
“HRW, however, merely chose to use the burning of Lasoole as another unjustified accusation against her ENDF”. (Page 24)
Or this,
“As far as I know there is nobody has been killed in our village” (Page 34)
I could have gone on and on had this been my main concern here. It is pathetic.
The second level of torture when reading this report is the sadism it is replete with. The government data was obtained almost exclusively through interviewing the local people who are traumatized by the savage war.
A large number of these interviewees are prisoners. Many are women. Still many, we are told on the report, are former ONLF fighters. You can sense the terror they go through as they were trying to avoid the answers their questioners don’t want to hear. The video version of the report being spread by government media is particularly hard to watch. It is a mass manufacturing of lie. If you believe the results of this so-called investigation to be true, you should as well believe me when if tell you pigs can fly.
Here are some interesting highlights. You may remember the 23 year old Mohammed Abdi Wayd who HRW reported was strangled and killed by member of the Ethiopian Defense Forces for being one of many community members who refused to obey a deadline to vacate a village as ordered by the army. The person the government interviewers summoned to testify on this dead kid, we are told, is his next of kin.
Read the following and see the sadism for yourselves. How many Ethiopians under normal circumstances do you think would say the death of their young relative is a punishment from God?
He is a close relative of mine. He died in the fighting between government forces and ONLF. This is the truth. He was a trouble-maker. He was a bandit. Upon Alah’s orders, he met his death fighting the Defence Forces. I didn’t record the exact date when he died. One day there was fighting between ONLF and the Defence Forces in the Wafdug area. In the Yuub area too. He died in that period. He robbed people of their belongings. He picked up a quarrel and attacked people. His death is a punishment fro (sic) all his wrongs.” (Page 32)
Does anybody in his right mind believe that in a traditional society where kinship means a lot more than blood relation, and of all places in the Ogaden, would say of this about his dead relative unless at a gun point?
Obviously, the person must be trying his best to fend off any possible suspicion of supporting the ONLF like his dead kin. Anybody who has done research in rural Ethiopia using questionnaires knows that telling what the government wants to hear is one of many sophisticated survival mechanisms peasants and pastoralists have developed to fight the tyranny of their governments over the years.
And Meles Zenawi and his cronies want us to believe the crap they collected through this bogus method and question the validity of HRW’s conclusions refined over long years of recording Human rights abuse around the world.
In its attempt to clean itself of HRWs charges of rape and sexual abuses the government report, believe it or not, says this,
“It [the investigation team] interviewed people from various sectors of society and a number of women prisoners from several different prisons. All completely rejected HRW’s allegations”. (Page 37).
Now listen to what female prisoner Asmal Isal Abdi tells the investigating team:
“I am in prison here for the crime I committed. I have never encountered any problem. In prison, I am receiving proper treatment.” (Page 37)
And hear from another female prisoner Ram Ali Huyida who is reported to even have gone further in speaking for all women prisoners:
“There is nothing like this that happened to me or to the other prisoners in this prison.” (Page 37)
Another female prisoner, Amina Usman, in the town of Jijiga has a more targeted “testimony” to which the interviewers seem to have direct her – to exonerate the soldier rapists cited in the HRW report:
“No prisoner, including myself, has suffered any ill treatment from Government soldiers.”
(Page 38)
It is not even clear from the report as to why another female prisoner, Faduma Abdu Haj, had to testify saying that there were no women who were burnt alive when she was not even asked. Listen to her:
“I have never seen or heard any information regarding the raping of any woman by Ethiopian soldiers. There is no woman who was raped or burnt alive.” (Page 38)
The report also has a cascade of responses from interviewees who say that no village has been burnt by the ENDF. All of them said that any village burnt was burnt by ONLF solders who were dressed in Ethiopian army uniforms and speaking the Amharic language to make it look the Ethiopian army did it. It gets more interesting, doesn’t it? The people are so in love with the Ethiopian army that the ONLF has to do this to have them hated, and by speaking the Amhaic language without a Somali accent? Huh!
On the other hand the “investigators” tell us that they have done all their interview and research in the Ogaden.
Why the investigators thought it is important to interview people to testify as to whether villages were burnt or not if they themselves see the villages intact is a mystery. HRW has given the geographic coordinates for the satellite imageries of the villages in question by providing the latitudes and longitudes of each site.
Why is it difficult to present another aerial photo or a photograph taken from a higher ground and debunk it if it is a lie? Interestingly, the team has provided us with horizontally taken ground photographs that cannot by any measure show the condition of a larger settlement. Some of the photographs show two or three houses from one side surrounded by scrubland.
More importantly, unless you hire a “tenquay” there is no way to attest that the picture shows the real village in question. They give you no coordinates.
The goons who prepared Zenawi’s report also want us to believe that girl HRW reported was brutally killed by the Ethiopian forces was alive by showing us a photograph of a girl who they say has the same name. They have been parading her on their TV and other media as if it is an airtight evidence to show the real girl is not dead, as if you can’t find hundreds of Faduma Hassans in the Ogaden or as if you cannot name the picture of any girl Faduma Hassan.
The investigators, in their wisdom thought that they should throw us some bones to be believable and help them sell us their pile of crap. They say they have found one case of torture among female prisoners by an
army Major named Kiros. (Don’t forget most women who testified are already reported to have said that no torture of woman has ever taken place). Read her testimony paying special attention to her last sentence:
“I was arrested for being ONLF member. During the time I was in prison, I was tortured by Major Kiros, Intelligence Officer of the Fik zone 7th Regiment. This was around September 2007. During the interrogation, he strangled my neck with cloth, forced me to take off my clothes and flogged my back and feet. He tortured me by saying, out with the truth. Of course, I was ONLF member. Apart from this I do not know any other problem. I have not suffered from any wrongdoing in this prison. I confirm this.” (Page 40) emphasis added
Why was the lady that went through so much torture forced to say she “has not suffered any wrong doing in this prison”? After having gone through that humanly unbearable torture how did she manage to say that? Or shall we say the Investigator Team added it to make it look like what she went though was a prank between friends.
How sadistic is that? By the way, where is Major Kiros the torturer? Why is his last name withheld? Why wasn’t this criminal interviewed like the rest of the prisoners? What was the punishment he received?
The investigators are mum on these. We know why. I suspect Major Kiros is walking the streets of Addis Ababa or Mekele or managing some property of EFFORT somewhere or on scholarship in the Netherlands. After all, the Agazi soldier who killed Wro Etesnesh in front of her children for asking to spare her husband lives in freedom with no questions asked. There is a lot of repugnant and sadistic material to go over in this whitewash. You can read it holding your nose, as I did.
Challenge:
Either out of ethnic identification or innocence or misinformation or any other reason, I believe there are many Ethiopians who want to give Meles Zenawi’s report the benefit of the doubt, as there are many who actively promote this lie.
I challenge all of them and the blind supporters of the TPLF/EPRDF, including my good friend Ato Haimanot Lakew from Boston who made me laugh by referring to the crap as a “carefully researched and written report” 3 and some Molla Mitiku who tried to shamelessly fake an outrage and called the governments investigators “independent investigating team” 4, to ask the Ethiopian authorities to allow independent investigators including the UN and reexamine the case.
Why fear if you are outraged that HRW manufactured its report? To ask anything less is to collaborate with the cover up of crime and injustice. Don’t forget that we will all have to answer for this crime on judgment day. I don think his day is too far.
Fekadeshewakena@yahoo.com
Documents cited:
1http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Flawed_Methodology_Unsubstantiated_Allegations.pdf
2http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0608_1.pdf
3 http://aigaforum.com/articles/Does_the_Huma_Rights_Watch_Report.htm
4http://aigaforum.com/articles/Does_the_Huma_Rights_Watch_Report.htm
“So Much to Fear”
War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia
Copyright © 2008 Human Rights Watch
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 1-56432-415-X
Cover design by Rafael Jimenez
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December 2008 1-56432-415-X
“So Much to Fear”
War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia
Map of Somalia.............................................................................................................1
Map of Mogadishu.......................................................................................................2
Summary.......................................................................................................................3
Recommendations.......................................................................................................9
To the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia.................................................9
To the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia......................................................10
To Al-Shabaab and other Insurgent groups.............................................................11
To the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia..........................11
To the government of the United States, the European Union and its member states,
the European Commission, the African Union, and the Arab League........................12
To the United Nations............................................................................................13
Methodology...............................................................................................................15
Background.................................................................................................................17
The Current Situation.............................................................................................19
International Humanitarian Law and the Conflict in Somalia.......................................26
Civilian Deaths and the Destruction of Mogadishu.......................................................31
Indiscriminate Mortar, Rocket, and Artillery Fire......................................................33
Other Indiscriminate Attacks..................................................................................35
Deadly Threats.......................................................................................................38
An Unrelenting Onslaught......................................................................................39
Human Rights Abuses by Transitional Federal Government Forces...............................42
Identifying the Perpetrators of TFG Abuses.............................................................42
Assault, Rape, and Killings by TFG Forces...............................................................47
Looting..................................................................................................................50
Arbitrary Detention and Torture..............................................................................52
Laws of War and Human Rights Violations by Ethiopian Military Forces.......................58
Indiscriminate Attacks...........................................................................................58
Assault, Rape, Killings, and Looting........................................................................61
Abuses by Insurgent Forces.........................................................................................64
Indiscriminate Attacks and Shielding.....................................................................64
Forcible Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers......................................................66
Targeted Killings and Death Threats......................................................................69
Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.......................................74
Threats on All Sides...............................................................................................75
Impact of the Attacks.............................................................................................77
Abuses of Displaced People and Refugees...................................................................79
Abuses in the Afgooye Corridor..............................................................................79
Violence along the Roads.......................................................................................81
Leaving Somalia....................................................................................................83
The Role of International Actors in Somalia................................................................86
Ethiopia.................................................................................................................87
Somalia’s Other Regional Neighbors.....................................................................89
African Union.........................................................................................................91
Intergovernmental Authority on Development.........................................................92
United Nations Institutions....................................................................................93
United States.........................................................................................................94
European Commission...........................................................................................97
Appendix: Direct Donor Support to TFG Security Forces..............................................98
Acknowledgments.....................................................................................................103
1 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Map of Somalia
“So Much to Fear” 2
Map of Mogadishu
3 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Summary
Somalia is a nation in ruins, mired in one of the world’s most brutal armed conflicts
of recent years. Two long years of escalating bloodshed and destruction have
devastated the country’s people and laid waste to its capital Mogadishu. Ethiopian,
Somali transitional government, and insurgent forces have all violated the laws of
war with impunity, forcing ordinary Somalis to bear the brunt of their armed struggle.
Beyond its own borders Somalia has had a reputation for violent chaos since the
collapse of its last central government in 1991. When Ethiopian military forces
intervened there in late 2006 the country already bore the scars of 16 conflict-ridden
years without a government.
But the last two years are not just another typical chapter in Somalia’s troubled
history. The human rights and humanitarian catastrophe facing Somalia today
threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of Somalis on a scale not witnessed
since the early 1990s.
In December 2006 Ethiopian military forces, acting at the invitation of the
internationally recognized but wholly ineffectual Somali Transitional Federal
Government (TFG), intervened in Somalia against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The
ICU was a coalition of shari’a (Islamic law) courts that had taken control of
Mogadishu in June 2006 after ousting the various warlords who controlled most of
the city. At the time the ICU had begun what might have been a dramatic rise to
power across much of south-central Somalia. But Ethiopia viewed that development
with great alarm; leading figures associated with the ICU had openly threatened war
on Ethiopia and talked of annexing the whole of Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region.
Ethiopia’s ally the TFG was corrupt and feeble and it welcomed the Ethiopian military
support. In 2006 it had a physical presence in only two towns, provided no useful
services to Somalis, and with the ICU’s ascendancy was becoming increasingly
irrelevant. The United States, which denounced ICU leaders for harboring wanted
terrorists, supported Ethiopia’s actions with political backing and military assistance.
“So Much to Fear” 4
The Ethiopian military easily routed the ICU’s militias. For a few days it appeared that
they had won an easy victory and that the TFG had ridden Ethiopia’s coattails into
power in Mogadishu. But the first insurgent attacks against Ethiopian and TFG forces
began almost immediately and rapidly built towards a protracted conflict that has
since grown worse with every passing month. Opposition forces coalesced around a
broad group of ICU leaders, former parliamentarians, and others known as the
Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, around the fundamentalist Al-Shabaab
insurgent group and around numerous other largely autonomous armed factions.
During the past two years life in Mogadishu has settled into a horrifying daily rhythm
with Ethiopian, TFG, and insurgent forces conducting urban firefights and pounding
one another with artillery fire with no regard for the lives of hundreds of thousands of
civilians trapped in the city. The bombardments are largely indiscriminate, lobbed
into densely populated neighborhoods with no adequate effort made to guide them
to their intended targets. Insurgents lob mortar shells from populated
neighborhoods that crash through the roofs of families living near TFG police
stations and Ethiopian bases. Ethiopian and TFG forces respond with sustained
salvos of mortar, artillery, and rocket fire that destroy homes and their inhabitants
near the launching points of the fast-departed insurgents. Fighting regularly breaks
out between insurgents and Ethiopian or TFG forces and all too often civilians are
caught in the crossfire.
The warring parties in Somalia have been responsible for numerous serious human
rights abuses. TFG security forces and militias have terrorized the population by
subjecting citizens to murder, rape, assault, and looting. Insurgent fighters subject
perceived critics or TFG collaborators—including people who took menial jobs in TFG
offices or sold water to Ethiopian soldiers—to death threats and targeted killings.
The discipline of Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia has broken down to the point where
they increasingly are responsible for violent criminality. Victims have no way to file a
complaint—the TFG police force has itself been implicated in many of the worst
abuses, including the arbitrary arrests of ordinary civilians to extort ransom from
their families.
5 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Two years of unconstrained warfare and violent rights abuses have helped to
generate an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, without adequate response. Since
January 2007 at least 870,000 civilians have fled the chaos in Mogadishu alone—
two-thirds of the city’s population. Across south-central Somalia, 1.1 million Somalis
are displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are
living in squalid camps along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road that have themselves
become theaters of brutal fighting.
Thousands of Somali refugees pour across the country’s borders every month fleeing
the relentless violence. Freelance militias have robbed, murdered, and raped
displaced persons on the roads south towards Kenya. Hundreds of Somalis have
drowned this year in desperate attempts to cross the Gulf of Aden by boat to Yemen.
In spite of the dangers, thousands make these journeys every month. As a result the
Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya are now the largest in the world with a
collective population of more than 220,000.
Somalia’s humanitarian needs are enormous. Humanitarian organizations estimate
that more than 3.25 million Somalis—over 40 percent of the population of south-
central Somalia— will be in urgent need of assistance by the end of 2008. But
violence, particularly targeted attacks on aid workers, is preventing the flow of
needed aid. This past year has seen a wave of death threats and targeted killings
against civil society activists and humanitarian workers in Somalia. At least 29
humanitarian workers have been killed in 2008 and the threat of more attacks has
driven many of the very people Somalia most needs in this time of crisis to flee the
country.
As shocking as these statistics are, the full horror of the crisis in Somalia can only be
understood through the experiences of the ordinary people whose lives it has
shattered. Human Rights Watch interviewed a young boy whose wounds from an
insurgent bomb attack were festering in Kenya’s under-resourced refugee camps.
Others saw their relatives cut down by stray bullets during wild and indiscriminate
exchanges of gunfire. One young man saw his parents shot and killed for arguing
with TFG security personnel. A pregnant teenage girl told Human Rights Watch that
she was gang raped by TFG forces. Another young man was overwhelmed with rage
“So Much to Fear” 6
after seeing his sisters and mother raped by Ethiopian soldiers who had killed his
father.
No party to the conflict in Somalia has made any significant effort to hold
accountable those responsible for war crimes and serious human rights abuses. The
grim reality of widespread impunity for serious crimes is compounded by the fact
that both TFG and insurgent forces are fragmented into multiple sets of largely
autonomous actors. TFG security forces are not regularly paid and often act as
freelance militias rather than disciplined security forces.
Somalia’s conflict has international as well as domestic dimensions. For Somalia’s
regional neighbors—Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Kenya—the conflict creates immediate
security risks. Regional and western governments are currently trying to play an
active role in supporting peace talks between the TFG and opposition groups in
Djibouti. With key warring factions refusing to take part, however, these have made
virtually no progress.
This report recognizes that there is no “quick fix” to bring about respect for human
rights, stability, and peace in Somalia. However this does not justify a lack of
political will to engage with problems that past international involvement in Somalia
helped create, let alone policies by outside powers that are making the situation
worse. Many key foreign governments have played deeply destructive roles in
Somalia and bear responsibility for exacerbating the conflict.
The poisonous relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have greatly contributed to
Somalia’s crisis. Eritrea has treated Somalia primarily as a useful theater of proxy
war against Ethiopian forces in the country, while one of Ethiopia’s reasons for
intervening was a fear that an ICU-dominated Somalia would align itself with Eritrea
and shelter Ethiopian rebel fighters as Eritrea has done.
Ethiopia has legitimate security interests in Somalia, but has not lived up to its
responsibility to prevent and respond to war crimes and serious human rights
abuses by its forces in the country. Ethiopia’s government has failed to even
7 Human Rights Watch December 2008
acknowledge, let alone investigate and ensure accountability for the crimes of its
force. This only serves to entrench the impunity that encourages more abuses.
United States policy towards Somalia largely revolves around fears of international
terrorist networks using the country as a base. The United States directly backed
Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia and has provided strong political backing to the
TFG. But US officials have refused to meaningfully confront or even publicly
acknowledge the extent of Ethiopian military and TFG abuses in the country. The US
approach is not only failing to address the rights and suffering of millions of Somalis
but is counterproductive in its own terms, breeding the very extremism that it is
supposed to defeat.
The European Union and key European governments have also failed to address the
human rights dimensions of the crisis, with many officials hoping that somehow
unfettered support to abusive TFG forces will improve stability.
Now is the time for fresh thinking and new political will on Somalia. Human Rights
Watch calls upon all of the parties to the conflict in Somalia to end the patterns of
war crimes and human rights abuses that have harmed countless Somalis and to
ensure accountability for past abuses. This can only come to pass with much
stronger and more principled engagement by key governments that have hitherto
turned a blind eye to the extent and nature of conflict-related abuses in Somalia.
International engagement must take into account the rights and needs of the Somali
people. It should include better monitoring of past and ongoing abuses and, as a
starting point, a commitment at the UN Security Council to establish an independent
commission of inquiry to investigate serious crimes in Somalia. Key governments
should also use their diplomatic leverage with Ethiopian, TFG, and opposition
leaders to insist upon accountability and an end to the daily attacks upon Somalia’s
beleaguered citizens.
In the short term, Human Rights Watch calls upon the TFG to immediately suspend
officials implicated in serious human rights abuses pending the outcome of
independent investigations. The Ethiopian government should launch a full
“So Much to Fear” 8
investigation into abuses by Ethiopian military forces in Somalia and immediately
halt the practice of indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas. Insurgent groups
should immediately halt targeted killings of civilians, indiscriminate attacks, and
obstructions to the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
In Washington, the new administration of US President Barack Obama should
urgently review US policy in Somalia and the broader Horn of Africa and break with
the failed approach of his predecessor. European governments should follow suit,
beginning by reversing the harmful actions of European Commission policymakers
who have funneled donor money to abusive TFG security forces. The UN Security
Council should establish a Commission of Inquiry to map widespread international
crimes and pave the way for ending the impunity that has helped create the
catastrophic situation that prevails today.
9 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Recommendations
There is no “quick fix” to Somalia’s complex and multilayered conflict, but a broad
array of local, regional, and international actors have roles to play in making
possible an end to the abuses described in this report. Many of the same actors had
a hand in laying the groundwork for the catastrophic situation in Somalia to begin
with. The primary responsibility for ending the ongoing abuses that have marked the
conflict lies with the parties who are fighting it. But this is only possible with strong
pressure and support from key foreign governments and multilateral institutions.
International actors must first abandon policies that have exacerbated Somalia’s
downward spiral. They must also insist upon an end to the impunity that has fueled
the worst abuses—and the right place to start is by moving the UN Security Council
to establish a Commission of Inquiry to document abuses and lay the groundwork for
accountability. The underlying causes of Somalia’s human rights catastrophe are
numerous and varied. Understanding those causes and how they have built upon
each other is a prerequisite to any future effort to ensure accountability for past
abuses and prevent similar patterns of abuse from emerging in the future. UN
Security Council action to establish a Commission of Inquiry would be the clearest
signal the international community can send that it is serious about wanting to see
accountability for war crimes and serious human rights abuses in Somalia.
Over the longer term, key actors including the United States and European states
should fundamentally rethink their flawed policy approaches to the Horn of Africa as
a whole. These deeper issues are discussed below.1
To the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia
• Launch an independent, impartial, and transparent investigation into
allegations of serious human rights abuses committed by TFG security forces.
Immediately suspend from office: Commissioner of Police Abdi Qeybdid and
National Security Agency head Mohammed Warsame Darwish pending the
1
See below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
“So Much to Fear” 10
outcome of this investigation. Hold accountable: TFG officials, whatever their
rank, implicated in abuses.
• Immediately issue clear, public orders and take all necessary steps to ensure
that all TFG security forces and militias comply with international human
rights and humanitarian law, including by ending extrajudicial killings, rapes,
mistreatment of civilians, and pillaging and looting of civilian property. Forces
currently responsible for such abuses include the National Security Agency,
the Somali Police Force, the Presidential Guard, and militias beholden to TFG
officials including the former mayor of Mogadishu.
• Facilitate the access of civilians to humanitarian assistance by permitting full
freedom of movement to humanitarian agencies and ending harassment and
other interference with their relief work.
• Cease all mistreatment of detainees and ensure that they have access to
family members and adequate medical care while in detention. Immediately
and publicly communicate these instructions to all police and other security
forces.
• Immediately close the NSA detention facility at the Baarista Hisbiga, where
abusive conditions of detention are systematic. Charge with cognizable
criminal offenses or release all current NSA detainees. Those charged should
be transferred to other detention facilities.
• Immediately allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.
• Invite the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to increase
the number of staff monitoring and reporting on human rights abuses in
Somalia.
To the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia
• Issue clear orders and take all necessary steps to ensure that armed forces
under ARS control comply with international humanitarian law and halt all
human rights abuses.
• Establish mechanisms to ensure that forces under ARS control, including their
commanders, are held accountable for violations of international
humanitarian law and serious human rights abuses.
• Immediately allow independent monitoring of detention facilities in areas
under ARS control.
11 Human Rights Watch December 2008
• Ensure that all civilians in need have access to humanitarian assistance by
permitting humanitarian agencies freedom of movement.
To Al-Shabaab and other Insurgent groups
• Take all necessary steps to ensure compliance with international
humanitarian law, including by:
o Ceasing using civilians as “human shields” or placing them at
unnecessary risk by launching attacks and firing mortars from heavily
populated areas;
o Ending mortar and other attacks that do not or cannot discriminate
between combatants and civilians;
o Facilitating the departure of civilians to safer areas during military
operations;
o Halting death threats and targeted killings of civilians, including
journalists, aid workers, and civilian TFG officials.
• Appropriately hold to account insurgent commanders and personnel who
commit violations of international humanitarian law.
• Facilitate the access of civilians to humanitarian assistance by permitting full
freedom of movement to humanitarian agencies and ending harassment and
other interference with their relief work.
To the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
• Issue clear public orders and take all necessary steps to ensure compliance
with international humanitarian law, including by:
o Ending all attacks, particularly artillery and rocket bombardments, that do
not or cannot discriminate between combatants and civilians or in which
the expected civilian harm is excessive compared to the use of concrete
and direct military gain anticipated;
o Ceasing placing civilians at unnecessary risk by basing Ethiopian troops
near heavily populated areas;
o Acting to prevent abuses by TFG forces during joint military operations,
such as house-to-house searches. In particular, cease the use of area
bombardments of populated areas of Mogadishu.
“So Much to Fear” 12
• Investigate and discipline or prosecute as appropriate military personnel,
regardless of rank, who are responsible for violations of international
humanitarian law including those who may be held accountable as a matter
of command responsibility.
• Ensure that all commanders and troops receive appropriate training in
international humanitarian law.
To the government of the United States, the European Union and its
member states, the European Commission, the African Union, and the
Arab League
• Publicly condemn violations of international humanitarian and human rights
law by all parties to the conflict in Somalia.
• Support measures to promote accountability and end impunity for serious
abuses in Somalia, including through the establishment of an independent
and impartial commission of inquiry to investigate and map serious crimes
and recommend further measures to improve accountability.
• Publicly and privately demand that TFG, Ethiopian, and ARS officials take all
necessary and appropriate steps to halt serious abuses by forces under their
control and ensure accountability for abuses where they do occur.
• Specifically call on the Transitional Federal Government to ensure that their
forces cease abuses against all persons in custody.
• In the case of the European Commission, refrain from applying any pressure
on the United Nations Development Program to provide additional direct
support to the abusive Somali Police Force and other TFG forces.
• In the case of the US, investigate reports of abuses by Ethiopian forces,
identify the specific units involved, and ensure that they receive no
assistance or training from the United States until the Ethiopian government
takes effective measures to bring those responsible to justice, as required
under the “Leahy law,” which prohibits US military assistance to foreign
military units that violate human rights with impunity.
13 Human Rights Watch December 2008
To the United Nations
To the UN Security Council
• Establish an independent and impartial commission of inquiry to investigate
and map serious crimes and recommend further measures to improve
accountability.
• Publicly condemn violations of international humanitarian and human rights
law by all parties to the conflict in Somalia.
• Encourage the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to expand
its capacity to carry out human rights monitoring and reporting work on
Somalia.
To the UN Secretary-General
• Support measures to promote accountability and end impunity for serious
abuses in Somalia, including through the establishment of an independent
and impartial commission of inquiry to investigate and map serious crimes
and recommend further measures to improve accountability.
• Support a further increase in the number of staff from the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights monitoring and publicly reporting on human
rights abuses in Somalia.
To the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS)
• In supporting the Djibouti peace process, ensure that UNPOS does not take
actions that would undermine its neutrality, which is vital for humanitarian
agencies operating in Somalia.
• Refrain from applying any pressure on the United Nations Development
Program to provide additional direct support to the abusive Somali Police
Force and other TFG forces.
To the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
• Do not provide any direct financial or material assistance to Somali Police
Force officers who have not received UNDP-sponsored training as police
officers that includes training on human rights in police work.
“So Much to Fear” 14
• Ensure that all TFG personnel participating in UNDP-funded training programs
have been screened for human rights abuses.
• Halt all direct financial support to the Somali Police Force through UNDP’s
Rule of Law and Security (RoLS) program until, at a minimum, the following
conditions are met:
o Effective mechanisms are put in place to ensure an effective response to
allegations of police abuses as they occur by donor governments
supporting RoLS;
o Commissioner of Police Abdi Qeybdid is suspended from office pending
the results of an independent, impartial, and transparent investigation
into patterns of widespread human rights abuse implicating officers of the
Somali Police Force;
o Independent monitors are granted unfettered access to all police
detention facilities;
o TFG and police officials adequately respond to incidents of human rights
abuse implicating Somali Police Force officers that have already been
brought to their attention.
o Effective mechanisms are put in place to ensure the transparency of any
stipend payments made by UNDP to Somali Police Force officers.
To the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
• Increase the number of human rights officers monitoring and publicly
reporting on human rights abuses in Somalia, and include staff with expertise
on child and minority protection and sexual and gender-based violence.
• Ensure that monitoring of and public reporting on patterns of human rights
abuse remains a central focus of OHCHR’s efforts on Somalia. To the extent
that monitoring inside Somalia is not possible due to security concerns, make
a concerted effort to focus on documenting the experiences of refugees in
Kenya, Djibouti, and Yemen and of displaced people in Somaliland.
15 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Methodology
This report is based largely on six weeks of field research in Kenya, Somaliland, and
Djibouti between June and September 2008. This was supplemented with telephone
interviews with Somalis in Mogadishu during September and October 2008, as well
as interviews with policymakers and analysts outside the region. Travel to Somalia
under circumstances that would have permitted research was not possible during
this period because of security concerns for potential interviewees and local civil
society partners, as well as Human Rights Watch staff.
In June and July, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted in-depth interviews
with refugees who had recently fled Somalia in several different locations—the
Dadaab refugee camps in northern Kenya; in Nairobi; in Hargeisa, Somaliland; and,
in Djibouti. In September researchers carried out additional interviews in Nairobi and
Djibouti. We interviewed more than 80 victims and eyewitnesses to the patterns of
abuse documented in this report. For broader context we interviewed dozens of
analysts, Somali civil society activists, humanitarian workers, diplomats, medical
staff, and journalists, some of whom were also eyewitnesses to the events described
in this report. We also met with TFG officials including Prime Minister Nur Hassan
Hussein, with ARS officials, including Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and Sharif Hassan
Sheikh Aden, and with UN officials, including UN Special Representative of the
Secretary-General (SRSG), Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. We met with European
Commission officials in Nairobi, but the Africa Bureau of the US State Department
declined to provide any comment in response to Human Rights Watch’s criticism of
US government policy towards Somalia.
Because of security concerns, the identities of many of the people whose interviews
are included in this report—including almost all of the victims and eyewitnesses we
interviewed—have been withheld or their accounts have been presented under
pseudonyms. We also omitted other identifying details about individuals or the
locations where they were interviewed where we believed that information could put
them at risk.
“So Much to Fear” 16
This report focuses largely, though not entirely, on events and patterns of abuse in
Mogadishu in 2008. Mogadishu has been the site of the most consistent, brutal, and
destructive fighting throughout the last two years. This is in part a reflection of the
fact that Mogadishu is considered the most important prize in this conflict and a
place that no party to the conflict has yet managed to control. Mogadishu is also
home to a large majority of the refugees Human Rights Watch interviewed about their
experiences. This is both because the intense fighting there has driven far more
people to flee than in any other place and because a greater proportion of
Mogadishu’s population can afford the expense of traveling to neighboring countries.
The situation in other parts of south-central Somalia varies considerably, though
where fighting has occurred it has often involved many of the same patterns of laws
of war violations and human rights abuse documented in this report.
Human Rights Watch was often able to determine the weapons used in particular
attacks documented in this report because civilians, especially in Mogadishu, have
become experts at identifying different weaponry by their specific characteristics.
Dozens of eyewitnesses consistently named specific weapons that were used, and
described to Human Rights Watch the sound or sight of different types of weaponry
even when they were unable to name the type of weapon.
For instance, individuals repeatedly named BM-21 rockets or “Katyushas,” which
they called “BM” or described as “whistling” due to the sound they made when
launched and the loud noise upon impact. Numerous people accurately told Human
Rights Watch that mortar shells, by contrast, were silent in their flight.
17 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Background
Since Ethiopian armed forces entered Mogadishu in December 2006, Somalia has
suffered an increasingly brutal conflict that has devastated the country and laid
waste to its capital. Lawlessness and violence have plagued Somalia since the
collapse of its last central government in 1991. But the magnitude of the crisis facing
the country today dwarfs everything else Somalis have endured throughout the last
10 years.2
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia to oust a coalition of shari’a (Islamic law) courts
known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had taken control of Mogadishu in
mid-2006. Ethiopia—along with the United States—saw in the ICU a threat that could
turn Somalia into a safe haven for al Qaeda and for rebel groups fighting against the
Ethiopian government in its own Somali Region.3 At the time, the ICU looked
powerful enough to sweep away Somalia’s moribund Transitional Federal
Government (TFG). But that changed overnight with Ethiopia’s decision to intervene.4
Until 2006 the TFG had not managed to enter the Somali capital or establish a
physical presence anywhere outside the towns of Baidoa and Jowhar. Plagued with
factional divisions, the TFG provided nothing in the way of basic services to Somali
citizens and enjoyed little material support from a skeptical international community.
But in December 2006 Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) forces acting at the
invitation of the TFG quickly and decisively routed ICU militias, bringing the TFG to
Mogadishu on their coattails. The TFG extended its administration to the capital, and
the ENDF remained in Somalia to provide the military support it needed to survive.
2
A recent analysis of the conflict by prominent Somalia expert Ken Menkhaus argued that “Seismic political, social, and
security changes are occurring in the country, and none bode well for the people of Somalia or the international community.”
Ken Menkhaus, “Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” ENOUGH Strategy Paper, September 2008,
http://enoughproject.org/files/reports/somalia_rep090308.pdf (accessed October 16, 2008).
3
For more on Ethiopia’s security concerns in Somalia, see below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
4
See, e.g., Rob Crilly, “Somalia’s transitional government on the verge of collapse,” Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2006.
The TFG was the product of one of more than a dozen peace conferences convened since 1991 and prior to 2006 looked poised
to end in failure just as all previous attempts to forge a new national government had done. For more background on this see
Human Rights Watch, Somalia—Shell Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu, vol. 19, no. 12(A), August 2007,
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/somalia0807/ pp. 29-33.
“So Much to Fear” 18
Ethiopia and Somalia have a long history of bitter conflict and in 1977 the two
countries fought a full-scale war when Somalia attempted to annex what is now
Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region. Ethiopia has legitimate security interests in
Somalia.5 But for many Somalis, the presence of ENDF forces in Mogadishu was an
intolerable development, and tensions built rapidly among the local population.6
Within a week of the fall of Mogadishu, the first insurgent attacks against the TFG
and ENDF began. In the early months of 2007, insurgent fighters including clan
militias and former ICU forces assassinated TFG officials and staged rocket and
mortar attacks against TFG and Ethiopian bases, police stations, and other
installations. In March 2007, just three months after entering the capital, Ethiopian
forces carried out their first major offensive against insurgent strongholds in
northern Mogadishu. The indiscriminate ENDF rocket, mortar, and artillery
bombardments that accompanied the operation devastated entire city blocks, killed
hundreds of civilians, and caused tens of thousands to flee the city.7
In the two years since Ethiopian forces entered Mogadishu, Somalia has spiraled
ever-deeper into bloody and unrestrained fighting. All sides have pursued military
strategies with little or no concern for the civilians living in their urban battlefields.
Insurgent fighters quickly adopted hit-and-run tactics that have remained a defining
feature of the conflict, staging ambushes or mortar attacks and then fading back into
the cover of the civilian population. Ethiopian and TFG forces developed patterns of
responding to those attacks that have since become part of the day-to-day reality of
life in Mogadishu—reacting to indiscriminate mortar attacks in kind, with devastating
barrages of rocket, mortar, and artillery fire across populated neighborhoods. ENDF
and TFG forces began sealing off sections of entire neighborhoods to conduct often-
violent house-to-house searches for insurgent fighters and weaponry. The brunt of all
this fighting has been borne not by the warring parties but by the hundreds of
thousands of civilians trapped between them.
5
See below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
6
One analyst recently wrote that Mogadishu’s population was “shocked and sullen” in response to the sight of ENDF forces on
the streets of the city. Menkhaus, Somalia: A Country in Peril, A Policy Nightmare, p. 2.
7
Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked.
19 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The Current Situation
In 2008 the human rights and humanitarian situation in Somalia deteriorated into
unmitigated catastrophe. Several thousand civilians have been killed in fighting.8
More than one million Somalis are now displaced from their homes and thousands
flee across the country’s borders every month.9 Mogadishu, a bustling city of 1.2
million people in 2006, has seen more than 870,000 of its residents displaced by
the armed conflict.10 All sides have used indiscriminate force as a matter of routine,
and in 2008 violence has taken on a new dimension with the targeted murders of aid
workers and civil society activists.11
Militarily, the situation has reached an impasse following dramatic gains by
insurgent forces. TFG and Ethiopian forces have lost the ability to exercise even
limited influence across most of the country and appear to have given up trying to
recapture territory they have lost. For example, ENDF forces in July negotiated a
withdrawal to their base outside the strategic border town of Beletweyne, allowing
an ICU administration to take control of the town.12 The only major toeholds left to
the TFG and ENDF are Baidoa and parts of Mogadishu, and in both places they are
under a perpetual state of siege. But while the momentum has clearly swung in favor
of the armed opposition, there is little prospect that TFG and ENDF forces will be
forcibly dislodged from their remaining strongholds so long as Ethiopian forces
remain committed to the conflict.
8
In December 2007 the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Center estimated that 6,000 civilians had been killed in
Somalia due to conflict since the end of 2006. As documented in this report many more civilians have been killed in 2008, but
no organization has been able to produce a credible estimate of the total number of civilian casualties. Estimates put forward
by Somali civil society groups are regarded with some skepticism by humanitarian workers and UN officials. Human Rights
Watch interviews with NGO and humanitarian workers, Nairobi, September 2008.
9
For more details on Somalia’s IDP population see Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, Somalia country page,
http://www.internaldisplacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpCountries)/02EE5A59E76049F5802570A7004B80AB?OpenDo
cument (accessed October 27, 2008).
10
See, Statement by 52 NGOs on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Somalia, October 6, 2008,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-7K6LBP?OpenDocument (accessed October 23, 2008)
11
See below, Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.
12
Human Rights Watch interviews with humanitarian workers, ARS officials, and civil society activists, Djibouti and Nairobi,
September 2008. See also, e.g., Garowe Online, Somalia: Mortars Hit Baidoa, Islamist Rebels Capture Provincial Capital, July 8,
2008,
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_Mortars_hit_Baidoa_Islamist_rebels_capture_provinci
al_capital_printer.shtml (accessed October 23, 2008). Beletweyne is of strategic importance because it lies near the road north
from Mogadishu to the Ethiopian border, a key supply route for ENDF forces in the country. In 2008 Ethiopian forces withdrew
from the town, which lies several kilometers off the main highway, to their base which sits adjacent to the road.
“So Much to Fear” 20
While the armed conflict continues with the civilian population trapped in the midst,
the humanitarian situation has deteriorated drastically. Conflict, drought, and a
collapse of the economy brought on in part by rampant hyperinflation have left more
than 3.25 million Somalis in need of emergency assistance.13 Yet humanitarian
access to populations in need, already restricted by the hazards posed by fighting,
has been severely curtailed by a wave of attacks and death threats against aid
workers and members of Somali civil society. At the same time, rampant piracy off
Somalia’s northern coasts has restricted the amount of food aid coming into the
country’s ports. Hyperinflation has seen the cost of some food staples triple in just
six months during 2008.14 Many humanitarian workers worry that these factors could
be building towards a “perfect storm” and that insecurity will prevent any adequate
response to the disaster.15
In June 2008 TFG and opposition leaders reached agreement on a theoretical
roadmap towards peace in Djibouti.16 The Djibouti process enjoyed broad
international support including the enthusiastic advocacy of the UN Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia (UN SRSG), Ahmedou Ould-
Abdallah. Many analysts believed that the negotiations represent Somalia’s best
chance at a durable negotiated peace in several years and many leading Somali civil
society activists have traveled to Djibouti to participate in talks surrounding the
accord.17 But the process has so far failed to take root, partly because key armed
opposition groups refused to participate in the process.
13
See, Statement by 52 NGOs on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Somalia, October 6, 2008,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-7K6LBP?OpenDocument (accessed October 23, 2008); Cindy Holleman,
“Conflict, Economic Crisis and Drought: a Humanitarian Emergency Out of Control,” Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, Issue 40,
October 2008, http://www.odihpn.org/report.asp?id=2944 (accessed October 20, 2008).(estimating that as many as 3.5
million Somalis could be in need of emergency assistance by the end of 2008).
14
Holleman, “Conflict, Economic Crisis and Drought,” Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, October 2008.
15
Human Rights Watch interviews, Nairobi, July and September 2008; see Jeffrey Gettleman, “Food Crisis Meets Chaos in Horn
of Africa,” International Herald Tribune, May 17, 2008.
16
The Djibouti agreement was formally signed in August 2008 by representatives of the TFG and ARS. The Djibouti agreement’s
central provisions provide for a cessation of hostilities; Ethiopian military withdrawal to be carried out in conjunction with the
deployment of an international stabilization force; and, a commitment by all parties to allow unfettered humanitarian access to
areas under their control.
17
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali civil society activists and independent analysts, Nairobi, Hargeisa, and Djibouti,
July 2008.
21 Human Rights Watch December 2008
While several rounds of talks have been held in 2008, they have not translated into a
lasting ceasefire or halt to the bloodshed. Nor have they facilitated an adequate
response to the country’s increasingly dire humanitarian situation. In October the
parties to the Djibouti process agreed on the redeployment of Ethiopian forces from
contested areas of Mogadishu and elsewhere and on a ceasefire to be implemented
from November 5. But the days following November 5 saw only continued bloody
fighting on the streets of Mogadishu.18 And on October 29 a deadly wave of car
bombings occurred simultaneously in Somaliland and Puntland, targeting
government and UN offices as well as the Ethiopian consulate in Hargeisa. 19 At least
28 people were killed. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but southern
Somalia’s Al-Shabaab insurgents were widely suspected of involvement.20
Increasing Factionalization of the Somali Warring Parties
In part, the failure of the Djibouti process is a reflection of how deeply fragmented
both the TFG and opposition have become. The Transitional Federal Government is
bitterly divided between partisans of Prime Minister Nur “Adde” Hassan Hussein,
who is widely seen as a moderate and enjoys broad support among the TFG’s
international partners, and supporters of TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf. The prime
minister backs the Djibouti process; TFG officials close to the president are deeply
skeptical of it and have not been closely involved with recent talks.21 In August the
chasm between the president and prime minister grew so wide that each pursued
parliamentary resolutions to have the other removed from office. The Ethiopian
18
See, e.g., Garowe Online, “13 killed, 35 wounded in ‘hours of fighting’ in Mogadishu,” November 9, 2008,
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_13_killed_35_wounded_in_hours_of_fighting_in_Moga
dishu.shtml (accessed November 11, 2008); Agence France-Presse, “Five die in Mogadishu Fighting,” November 9, 2008,
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hPKFlsM4BaINF4EIkZUwIlOKUEuQ (accessed November 11, 2008).
19
Near-simultaneous attacks struck an intelligence office of the Puntland Government in Garowe and, in Hargeisa, the UNDP
office, and the Ethiopian consulate. See Alisha Ryu, “Suicide Car Bombings Kill Dozens in Northern Somalia,” VOA News,
October 29, 2008, http://voanews.com/english/2008-10-29-voa35.cfm (accessed November 11, 2008).
20
Human Rights Watch interviews and email correspondence with journalists and independent analysts, November 2008; see
also Hussein Ali Noor, “Suicide bombers kill at least 28 in Somalia,” Reuters, October 29, 2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSL0534420._CH_.2400 (accessed November 11, 2008).
21
Human Rights Watch interviews with senior diplomatic officials, Djibouti, September 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 22
government had to bring Yusuf and Nur Adde to Addis Ababa for mediation to
prevent political collapse. 22
The opposition to the TFG is even more badly divided, both politically and militarily.
The ICU was divided along clan lines even before it was driven from power. Many of
its leaders fled to Asmara, Eritrea after ENDF forces drove them out of Mogadishu in
December 2006, and its leaders then formed a broader opposition group called the
Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS). But the ARS splintered between a
core group that left Asmara for Djibouti and a smaller faction of hard-line dissidents
who remain in Asmara today.23
Currently the broadest opposition coalition is the Djibouti-based faction of the ARS.
The ARS is led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the leader of the ICU when it was still in
Mogadishu, and Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, a former speaker of the TFG
parliament.24 It includes former ICU members, TFG parliamentarians who opposed
the ENDF’s military intervention, members of the Somali diaspora, and others.25
The members of the ICU leadership that remained behind in Asmara constituted
some of its most hard-line elements and now operate under the leadership of Sheikh
Hassan Dahir Aweys. Aweys, who has rejected the Djibouti process, is a former ICU
official and was formerly a leading member of the now-defunct armed militant
Islamist group, al-Itihaad al-Islaamiya.26 Sheikh Sharif and Aweys have engaged in a
very public and very bitter dispute over the leadership of the broader ARS.
22
Human Rights Watch interviews with western diplomats and Somali civil society activists, Nairobi and Djibouti, September
2008. See Garowe Online, “Ethiopian Generals to Mediate Between Leaders,” August 11, 2008,
http://allafrica.com/stories/200808110421.html (accessed October 23, 2008).
23
For more on the reasons for the core ARS leadership’s departure from Djibouti, see below, The Role of International Actors in
Somalia.
24
Sharif Hassan was the Speaker of the TFG parliament until he fled the country after vocally opposing Ethiopia’s military
intervention in Somalia in December 2006.
25
The ARS central committee has 191 members. According to one member of the committee the largest blocs in the committee
are made up of ICU members; “free parliamentarians” who have fled Somalia and abandoned their seats in the TFG parliament;
and prominent diaspora figures including intellectuals and businessmen. Human Rights Watch interview with ARS central
committee member, Djibouti, July 16, 2008.
26
Al-Itihaad al-Islaamiya was allegedly responsible for several bombings inside Ethiopia and fought against current TFG
President Abdullahi Yusuf when he was president of northern Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland. Al-Itihaad’s
military forces were crushed and largely eliminated by ENDF forces and Yusuf’s militias in the 1990s. See Andre Le Sage,
“Prospects for Al Itihad and Islamist Radicalism in Somalia,” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 27, no. 89, September
2001; International Crisis Group, “Somalia’s Islamists,” Africa Report No. 100, December 12, 2005.
23 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The most important division within the opposition, however, is not within the ARS
but between the ARS and other groups. ARS leaders in Djibouti have a strong
influence over insurgent fighters in many areas. But they have little or no control over
many of the groups fighting against the TFG and ENDF, including Islamist Al-Shabaab
fighters inside of Somalia.
Even though Al-Shabaab began as the armed wing of the ICU under Sheikh Sharif, it
has increasingly broken with the ARS during the past two years. Al-Shabaab is
deeply fragmented itself and has spawned numerous splinter groups, but to the
extent that it has central leadership this is concentrated in a handful of individuals
who have remained inside Somalia to carry on the fight. The most prominent among
Al-Shabaab’s known leaders are Sheikh Mukhtar Robow and Hassan Turki, who
control large swathes of territory in Bay and Bakool regions and in the far south of
Somalia, respectively.
Al-Shabaab has rejected the Djibouti process altogether. Just one day following the
signature of a ceasefire agreement between ARS and TFG officials in October 2008,
Sheikh Robow publicly rejected it and vowed to keep on fighting. “We have already
rejected the [peace] conference and its agreements,” he said. “We are now saying
again that we will not accept them.”27 This is significant because Al-Shabaab
controls a much larger proportion of the military forces deployed against the ENDF
and TFG than the leaders of the ARS-Djibouti. This is particularly true in Mogadishu,
where ARS leaders freely admit that they have no control or influence over most of
the opposition fighters on the ground.28 The only administration that was firmly
under the influence of the ARS-Djibouti as of October 2008 was one set up in the
town of Jowhar, north of Mogadishu.29
At the time of writing there are no indications that the fighting in Somalia will end
anytime soon. The Ethiopian government has shown increasing signs of impatience
27
See, “Insurgents Reject UN-Backed Deal for Somalia,” Agence France-Presse, October 27, 2008.
28
Human Rights Watch interviews with ARS Central Committee members, Djibouti, July 2008.
29
The Jowhar administration is run by ICU officials and fighters who as of the time of writing had placed themselves largely
under the control of Sheikh Sharif and the ARS-Djibouti. Human Rights Watch interviews with analysts, diplomats, and ARS
officials, Djibouti and Nairobi, September 2008. ICU-dominated administrations have also taken control of the town of
Beletweyne and other areas but the extent of ARS influence over the leadership of these groups is unclear.
“So Much to Fear” 24
with the inability of the TFG to establish itself and speculation of a possible ENDF
withdrawal was widespread in the latter half of 2008.30 Many analysts believe this
would be well-received by most Somalis but the likely short-term result would be a
spike in bloodshed, and a possible collapse of the TFG, as Somali factions rushed to
fill the vacuum.31 One possible consequence of an ENDF withdrawal could be a
drawn-out, violent power struggle between ARS and Al-Shabaab forces that would
push Somalia still further into calamity.32
Many influential foreign governments have displayed considerably more interest in
Somalia since the rise of the ICU in December 2006. But United States involvement
in the crisis has been hobbled by Washington’s broader policy of uncritical support
f0r Ethiopia and a narrow emphasis on counterterrorism concerns. Other
international donors have focused many of their efforts on bolstering non-existent
TFG “institutions,” in some cases with disastrous or ineffectual results. The role of
international actors in Somalia is discussed in more detail below.33
UN SRSG Ould-Abdallah has lobbied vigorously for a UN-sponsored international
stabilization force, as have the Ethiopian government and TFG. But with Al-Shabaab
and other insurgent groups hostile to the idea, and memories of UNOSOM’s 1993-94
debacle fresh in many minds, there appears to be little international appetite to
contribute troops to such a force.34 The African Union has deployed a peacekeeping
force to Somalia, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). However AMISOM
has a limited mandate that does not include civilian protection and has never
reached beyond a fraction of its intended strength. Only Uganda and Burundi have
30
In October, for example, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi stated that “We have explained to the international
community that there is no readiness by the leadership in Somalia to take their responsibilities for peace and reconciliation.”
Tsegaye Tadesse, “Ethiopian troops to stay in Somalia, wait for AU,” Reuters, October 16, 2008,
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE49F0LU.html (accessed November 11, 2008).
31
One senior Western diplomat in Nairobi told Human Rights Watch that many western governments were concerned that if the
TFG fell Ethiopia would “just revert back to a policy of arming their friends and making sure there is no strong central
government in Somalia.” Human Rights Watch interview with senior, Western diplomat, Nairobi, September 22, 2008.
32
See Menkhaus, “Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare.”
33
See below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
34
For more on UNOSOM, see John L. Hirsch and Robert B. Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope (Washington, DC:
United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995); Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked pp. 28-29.
25 Human Rights Watch December 2008
contributed troops to AMISOM, and the force’s presence has not fundamentally
altered the situation on the ground.35
35
See below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
“So Much to Fear” 26
International Humanitarian Law and the Conflict in Somalia
International humanitarian law (the laws of war) imposes upon parties to an armed
conflict legal obligations to reduce unnecessary suffering and protect civilians and
other non-combatants.36 All armed forces involved in a conflict, including non-state
armed groups, must abide by international humanitarian law.37 Individuals who
violate humanitarian law with criminal intent can be prosecuted in domestic or
international courts for war crimes.38
Humanitarian law does not regulate whether states and armed groups can engage in
armed conflict, but rather how they engage in hostilities. Insurgency itself is not a
violation of international humanitarian law: the laws of war do not prohibit the
existence of insurgent groups or their attacks on legitimate military targets.39 Rather,
the law places restrictions on the means and methods of warfare, and imposes upon
regular armies and insurgent forces alike a duty to protect civilians and captured
combatants, and to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects during military
operations.
Under humanitarian law, the conflict in Somalia—involving Ethiopian and Somali
Transitional Federal Government forces against insurgent armed groups—is
considered a non-international (or internal) armed conflict (an international armed
36
International humanitarian law on the conduct of hostilities is set out in the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the First
Additional Protocol of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I). Protocol I, which provides the most detailed and current
codification of the conduct of hostilities during international armed conflicts, is not directly applicable to the conflict. The
Second Additional Protocol of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol II) on non-international armed conflicts is also not
directly applicable because Somalia is not a party to the protocol (although Ethiopia is). The legal analysis applied in this report
frequently references norms enshrined in Protocols I and II, but as an important codification of customary law rather than as a
treaty obligation. Customary humanitarian law as it relates to the fundamental principles concerning conduct of hostilities is
now recognized as largely the same whether it is applied to an international or a non-international armed conflict.
37
See generally the discussion of the applicability of international humanitarian law to non-state armed groups in International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Customary International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2005), pp. 497-98.
38
See ibid., rule 158.
39
While insurgency is not a violation of international law, acts by armed groups are frequently in violation of domestic law. The
criminal law of Somalia is applicable with respect to many insurgent activities described in this report. Somali law, like the laws
of most nations, proscribes basic domestic crimes including murder, assault, arson, rebellion, and crimes relating to attacks on
government forces or installations. See Book 2, Chapter I of the Somali Penal Code, 1967.
27 Human Rights Watch December 2008
conflict is one between two or more states).40 Ethiopian forces have been viewed
internationally as acting at the invitation of, and in coalition with, the TFG, rather
than directly using force against another government. 41 The international law relating
to the conduct of hostilities is now recognized as largely the same whether it is
applied to an international or a non-international armed conflict.
International humanitarian law limits permissible means and methods of warfare by
parties to an armed conflict and requires them to respect and protect civilians and
captured combatants.42 The fundamental tenets of this law are “civilian immunity”
and “distinction.”43 These tenets impose a duty at all times during the conflict to
distinguish between combatants and civilians, and to target only combatants.44 Also
protected are civilian objects, which are defined as anything not considered a
military objective.45 Prohibited are direct attacks against civilian objects, such as
homes, businesses, and apartments, places of worship, hospitals, schools, and
cultural monuments—unless they are being used for military purposes.46
Humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks. Indiscriminate attacks are of a
nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
Examples of indiscriminate attacks are those that are not directed at a specific
military objective or that use weapons that cannot be directed at a specific military
objective. Prohibited indiscriminate attacks include area bombardment, which are
attacks by artillery or other means that treat as a single military objective a number
40
See article 2 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949.
41
TFG officials had repeatedly called for the deployment of regional and international forces in Somalia to support the weak
transitional government. On June 14, 2006, after long disagreement, the Somali parliament voted for the deployment of African
Union troops “no matter what country they are from.” “Somalia: Parliament votes in favour of foreign peacekeepers,” IRINnews,
June 15, 2007, http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/LSGZ-6QSE39?OpenDocument (accessed November 7, 2008).
42
The legal analysis applied in this report frequently references norms enshrined in Protocols I and II, but as an important
codification of customary law rather than as a treaty obligation.
43
See Protocol I, arts. 48, 51(2), and 52(2).
44
Article 48 of Protocol I states, “Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and
combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against
military objectives.”
45
Ibid., art. 52(1). Military objectives are combatants and those objects that “by their nature, location, purpose or use make an
effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances
ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” Ibid., art. 52.2.
46
See ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, rule 8, citing military manuals and official statements.
“So Much to Fear” 28
of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in an area containing a
concentration of civilians and civilian objects.47 Also prohibited are attacks that
violate the principle of proportionality. Disproportionate attacks are those that are
expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects that
would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage
anticipated from the attack.48
Humanitarian law requires that the parties to a conflict take constant care during
military operations to spare the civilian population and to “take all feasible
precautions” to avoid or minimize the incidental loss of civilian life and damage to
civilian objects.49 These precautions include: doing everything feasible to verify that
the objects of attack are military objectives and not civilians or civilian objects50;
giving “effective advance warning” of attacks when circumstances permit51; avoiding
locating military objectives near densely populated areas52; and endeavoring to
remove a civilian population from the vicinity of military objectives.53
International humanitarian law does not prohibit fighting in urban areas, although
the presence of civilians places greater obligations on warring parties to take steps
to minimize harm to civilians. Belligerents are prohibited from using civilians to
shield military objectives or operations from attack. “Shielding” refers to
purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas
47
See Protocol I, art. 51(4). Similarly, if a combatant launches an attack without attempting to aim properly at a military target,
or in such a way as to hit civilians without regard to the likely extent of death or injury, it would amount to an indiscriminate
attack. Ibid. art. 51(5)(a).
48
Ibid., art. 51(5)(b). The expected danger to the civilian population and civilian objects depends on various factors, including
their location (possibly within or near a military objective), the accuracy of the weapons used (depending on the trajectory, the
range, environmental factors, the ammunition used, etc.), and the technical skill of the combatants (which can lead to random
launching of weapons when combatants lack the ability to aim effectively at the intended target). ICRC, Commentary on the
Additional Protocols, p. 684.
49
Protocol I, art. 57. In its authoritative Commentary on Protocol I, the International Committee of the Red Cross explains that
the requirement to take “all feasible precautions” means, among other things, that the person launching an attack is required
to take the steps needed to identify the target as a legitimate military objective “in good time to spare the population as far as
possible.” ICRC, Commentary on the Additional Protocols, p. 682.
50
If there are doubts about whether a potential target is of a civilian or military character, it “shall be presumed” to be civilian.
Protocol I, art. 52(3). The warring parties must do everything feasible to cancel or suspend an attack if it becomes apparent that
the target is not a military objective. Ibid., art. 57(2).
51
Ibid., art. 57(2).
52
Ibid., art. 58(b).
53
Ibid., art. 58(a).
29 Human Rights Watch December 2008
immune from attack.54 Taking over a family’s home and not permitting the family to
leave for safety so as to deter the enemy from attacking is a simple example of using
“human shields.”55
Violations of the laws of war by one side to a conflict do not justify violations by the
opposing side.56 For example, in Somalia, the unlawful deployment of insurgent
forces in densely populated areas does not permit the indiscriminate or
disproportionate use of force by Ethiopian forces in response.
Finally, humanitarian law requires the humane treatment of civilians and captured
combatants. It prohibits violence to life and person, particularly murder, mutilation,
cruel treatment, and torture.57 It is also unlawful to commit rape and other sexual
violence; targeted killings of civilians, including government officials and police, who
are not participating in the armed conflict; and engage in pillage and looting.
With respect to individual responsibility, serious violations of international
humanitarian law, including deliberate, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks
harming civilians, when committed with criminal intent, are considered war crimes.58
Commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of
command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the
commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish
those responsible.59
All sides to the armed conflict in Somalia have committed serious violations of
international humanitarian law. Those responsible, whatever their rank, should be
54
Ibid., art. 51(7).
55
The prohibition on shielding is distinct from the requirement that all warring parties take “constant care” to protect civilians
during the conduct of military operations by, among other things, taking all feasible precautions to avoid locating military
objectives within or near densely populated areas. Ibid., arts. 57, 58. Such a determination will depend on the situation.
56
See ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, rule 140, citing Common Articles 1 and 3 to the Geneva Conventions.
57
Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which is binding on all parties to a non-international armed
conflict. Somalia became a party to the Geneva Conventions in 1962. Ethiopia became a party to the Geneva Conventions in
1969.
58
Individuals may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit a war crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding,
or abetting a war crime. Responsibility may also fall on persons planning or instigating the commission of a war crime. See ICRC,
Customary International Humanitarian Law, p. 554.
59
Ibid., rule 153.
“So Much to Fear” 30
held accountable for war crimes. Insurgent forces launch indiscriminate mortar
attacks on Ethiopian and TFG targets from densely populated areas, often using local
residents as shields against Ethiopian counterattacks. Ethiopian forces continue to
conduct indiscriminate and likely disproportionate bombardments of populated
urban areas in response that cause numerous civilian deaths and injuries. TFG forces,
often commanded or accompanied by Ethiopian troops, commit assaults, rapes,
killings, and pillage of civilians during house-to-house search operations. And the
insurgent campaign of threats and targeted killings of civilian officials, civil society
activists, and any person deemed to be an enemy continues unabated.
31 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Civilian Deaths and the Destruction of Mogadishu
One morning in March 2008 near Suq Bacad in northern Mogadishu, three young
boys—Zakaria, Abdi, and Hassan—sat eating breakfast with their father and one of
his wives. They heard bursts of gunfire erupt on a nearby street and moments later a
hail of bullets ripped across the family compound. Zakaria and Abdi, aged three and
nine, were hit and died instantly. Four months later, Hassan, a 10-year-old boy with a
garish scar across his stomach, recalled that “the bullet hit Zakaria first, passed
through him and finally the same bullet hit me. [At first] I did not know I was hit by a
bullet. I saw Zakaria and Abdi falling down, then I heard my father and his wife and
she was crying, ‘Oh they are dead! They are dead!’”60
On another morning that March, a 13-year-old girl was walking alongside a road near
Mogadishu’s war-torn Bakara market with her parents and her younger brother. “At
that time there had been some fighting between the government and the wadada
[insurgents],” she told Human Rights Watch. “That’s why we had been walking in the
company of my father and mother—my father warned us in the morning that the
situation was not peaceful so we should stay by one another.” She was lagging
behind her family when they crossed a road and just as she prepared to cross and
join them she heard the familiar whistling sound of an incoming “Katyusha” rocket.
“I heard the foorida [whistling],” she said. “The rocket landed on the other side of
the road, hit some shops and immediately I fell and lost consciousness. In the
hospital I learned that my entire family had perished, and I started crying.”61
Mogadishu has generated thousands of stories like these over the course of the past
two years. Small arms, mortar, artillery, and rocket attacks along with savage,
opportunistic assaults upon civilians in their homes have driven more than 870,000
people from the city—more than two-thirds of its population before December
2006.62 In the eyes of many visitors, the most striking thing about the city today is
60
Human Rights Watch interview with H.A., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
61
Human Rights Watch interview with S.H., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 2, 2008.
62
Humanitarian organizations working in Somalia estimated that 870,000 people were displaced from Mogadishu by October
2008. See, Statement by 52 NGOs on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Somalia, October 6, 2008,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-7K6LBP?OpenDocument (accessed October 14, 2008).
“So Much to Fear” 32
that vast swathes of it are not just gutted but eerily deserted.63 The neighborhoods of
Hodan, Hawal Wadag, Towfiq, Huriwa, Hamar Jadid, Wardhigley, and Gubta have
been especially hard hit by two years of armed conflict. Whole swathes of those
areas are almost entirely depopulated because former residents have been driven
away by regular bombardment and street-to-street fighting.64 The minimal
international presence in Mogadishu has resulted in a situation where Somalis and
Somalia-watchers have seen the violent destruction of a city—unparalleled since
Grozny in Chechnya—take place with almost no international media attention.
Two years ago Mogadishu already bore the scars of 16 years of intermittent warfare.
But it was still in many ways a vibrant city—economically, culturally, and politically.
The bloodshed of the past two years has done what the prior 16 years of
statelessness and strife could not—the parties fighting to drive one another from the
city have largely managed to destroy it, along with the lives of many of the people
who were living there. Thousands of civilians have been killed. More than 2,200
casualties of the fighting were treated in Mogadishu’s Medina and Keysaney
hospitals between the beginning of 2008 and the end of September 2008.65 Tens of
thousands more have felt compelled to leave.
Much of this report documents in turn the patterns of human rights abuse and
violations of the laws of war committed by Ethiopian, TFG, and insurgent forces in
Somalia. But that kind of analysis only captures part of the experience of the victims
who are caught between the warring parties.
For many Somalis the factor that has made the current conflict impossible to adapt
to or cope with is daily unpredictable violence. This is especially true in Mogadishu,
where residents live with the constant possibility of losing everything they have to a
stray bullet or an errant mortar shell. As one man who fled the city in mid-2008 put it
63
See, e.g., “Somalian ‘ghost city’ wracked by war,” BBC News Online, October 6, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7651776.stm.
64
Human Rights Watch interviews with Mogadishu residents, Somali civil society activists, and humanitarian workers, Nairobi,
Dadaab, Hargeisa, and Djibouti, July-September 2008.
65
“Somalia: ICRC urges all sides to respect international humanitarian law,” ICRC News Release, September 26, 2008.
33 Human Rights Watch December 2008
to Human Rights Watch, “There is no life there. If you move you will be shot. If you
are in your house you will be attacked with rockets.”66
Indiscriminate Mortar, Rocket, and Artillery Fire
Since early 2007 all sides to the conflict in Mogadishu have regularly and
indiscriminately fired upon populated residential neighborhoods of Mogadishu.
Mortars, “Katyusha” rockets, and artillery have been used with such little precision
that those firing them have no reasonable expectation of striking any military target
or avoiding civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch first documented the patterns
and the devastating impact on civilians of these attacks more than a year ago.67
Since then Ethiopian, TFG, and insurgent forces have all continued to employ the
same illegal tactics. Those who deliberately or recklessly ordered such
indiscriminate attacks should be held accountable for war crimes.
Bombardments take place in Mogadishu on an almost daily basis and often follow a
common pattern. Insurgent fighters quickly assemble mortars—using populated
residential neighborhoods as unwilling shields—and then fire several rounds in the
general direction of TFG and ENDF installations. There is no evidence that any
insurgent groups regularly use spotters to guide their mortar fire, so frequently their
attacks fall on civilians caught in the general vicinity of their targets.68
Insurgent fighters typically flee after their attacks, leaving the people who live in the
neighborhoods they use as launching sites to face the inevitable artillery
counterattack. TFG and ENDF forces frequently respond to insurgent attacks by firing
mortar shells, artillery, and “Katyusha” rockets—the last being weapons that are
inherently indiscriminate when used in populated areas—towards the
neighborhoods from which they took fire. When such counterattacks are likely to
cause greater civilian harm than the expected military gain, they are also
disproportionate. The insurgents’ unlawful use of mortars in populated areas does
not create a legal justification for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of
66
Human Rights Watch interview with Z.A., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, July 3, 2008.
67
Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked.
68
See below, Abuses by Insurgent Forces.
“So Much to Fear” 34
heavy weapons by Ethiopian and TFG forces in response, which were often
devastating to the civilian population because of the weapons used and the great
intensity of many bombardments.69
Human Rights Watch interviewed several dozen former residents of Mogadishu who
described the suddenness and horrifying aftermath of the artillery attacks.70 Many
were at home with their families or fast asleep when a mortar shell or rocket came
crashing through their roof or landed in the street outside.
One woman who was living near the livestock market in northeastern Mogadishu
recounted to Human Rights Watch how she lost three of her five children one night in
late February 2008:
That evening there were some gunshots in the area, in the direction of
the main road. But there was not so much fighting at that moment. We
could just occasionally hear gunshots. Then the rocket landed on the
left side of our compound…I could not see anything because of smoke
and dust. There was a lot of blood. I tried to escape in search for my
children as people were gathering around.
Four of her children were badly injured, and two of them died before she could get
them to a hospital—a six-month-old girl and a seven-year-old boy. Her 15-year-old
son disappeared that night, but no body was found and five months later his mother
still insisted that he had not been killed. “He must have just run away and not
looked back after it happened,” she said.71
Eyewitness accounts were terrifyingly similar. In April a “Katyusha” rocket crashed
into the home of a vegetable seller near Bakara Market as she sat eating lunch with
her family. The woman’s 10-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son died instantly
69
Insurgent forces generally deployed only mortar fire while ENDF bombardments made use of mortars, artillery, and
“Katyusha” rockets. See also Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked, pp. 56-58.
70
For documentation of the similar use of artillery on Mogadishu residents in the first half of 2007, see Human Rights Watch,
Shell Shocked.
71
Human Rights Watch interview with A.G., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
35 Human Rights Watch December 2008
along with her sister, her sister’s husband, and six of their children. “We heard the
whistling sound [of the rocket],” she said, “but we did not think it was going to fall
on us.” 72
Many of the victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch survived only because they
happened to be away from home when rockets, mortar shells, or artillery tore apart
their homes. One woman returned to her house in Hodan from a day spent working
in the family store in April to find her home a smoldering ruin:
When I went inside I saw my father torn in two and smashed. My
sisters were injured and the neighbors were trying to get them out to
take them to a hospital. I was asking people what happened, but no
one was talking to me because everyone was running here and there.
One of her sisters had a serious head wound and the other’s entrails were hanging
outside of her stomach. Both of those sisters survived, but their father had died.73
Other Indiscriminate Attacks
Insurgent forces have frequently staged ambushes of TFG and ENDF forces in
Mogadishu, often using inhabited homes or crowds of civilians as cover. Very often
these attacks result in firefights with TFG or ENDF forces that cause civilian
casualties—while the insurgent fighters make good their escape. When parties to a
conflict shoot without taking all feasible steps to distinguish civilians from fighters
or use their weapons in a way that cannot target a military objective, then the attacks
are indiscriminate and in violation of international humanitarian law. This remains
the case even if the original attack unlawfully originated from a civilian area.
Often these clashes erupt so suddenly that they catch residents completely by
surprise. One woman told Human Rights Watch that she began walking across an
intersection with her young son just as a group of TFG soldiers in camouflage
uniforms and insurgents began firing at one another from either side of her. Just
72
Human Rights Watch interview with Z.H., Hargeisa, July 10, 2008.
73
Human Rights Watch interview with F.M., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 36
moments after she spotted them, “they immediately sprayed bullets,” she said.
“That was the last time I remember—my child ran away and I fell on the ground.” She
lost one eye to a bullet; her child escaped unharmed. 74
In another incident in late February or early March 2008, a minibus driver stopped to
pick up two people alongside a road near Bakara market. “As I engaged the gears
and started driving, a man shot towards us,” he said, “aiming at two police officers
who were standing nearby.” Law enforcement officials are normally considered
civilians and thus immune from attack, unless the police units have been
incorporated into the military or the police attacked were directly participating in the
hostilities.75 One of the shots struck and killed one of the eight passengers in his
van, and then the police reacted to the attack:
The police responded with a barrage of gunfire. I got injured—I was hit
by a bullet in the buttocks. I lost control of the van. I tried to control
the car but I couldn’t… After it veered off the road I stopped the car and
I was helped out of the driver’s seat by the passengers, only to realize
that four of my passengers had been killed by bullets.
The four passengers at the rear of the van were all dead. The rest escaped unscathed
and the shooting died down as quickly as it had started.76
This kind of crossfire has been a regular occurrence for many Mogadishu residents. A
woman who worked selling vegetables in Bakara market, one of the epicenters of
fighting in Mogadishu, told Human Rights Watch that quite regularly, “ [insurgents]
take cover inside [the market] and government forces chase them. They spray bullets
into the market, scaring everybody. People die and the rest of us run for safety.”77 A
shopkeeper from Bakara said that he used to hide every time TFG forces were in the
74
Human Rights Watch interview with A.M., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
75
ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, pp. 16-17, 21.
76
Human Rights Watch interview with M.F., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
77
Human Rights Watch interview with S.A., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
37 Human Rights Watch December 2008
area because, “The moment you see government soldiers a bullet follows them as if
they are hunted.”78
Insurgent groups also make regular use of remote-detonated explosive devices to
target TFG and ENDF forces in Mogadishu—often in crowded public places. On
February 2, 2008, an explosive device was detonated alongside a crowded major
road and tore through a mini-bus carrying women qat 79 sellers in Mogadishu’s
Waberi neighborhood. Human Rights Watch interviewed a man who witnessed the
aftermath of the explosion:
The vehicle was blown and torn into pieces. Only the driver and the
woman seated at the front had slight injuries but for the others we
could not stand what we saw. Some had their legs cut off, some had
their heads and bodies disconnected, blood and body parts were
strewn everywhere.80
The man did not know the target of the attack, or whether the bomb was detonated
intentionally. According to media reports, at least 11 people were killed in the blast,
including several bystanders, and 10 others were seriously injured. 81
On August 3, 2008, 21 women died while cleaning trash from off a road in southern
Mogadishu when they accidentally set off a mine or roadside bomb. The explosion
took place along a heavily-traveled and oft-attacked route to the strategically
important airport, which is under TFG control.82
78
Human Rights Watch interview with Z.M., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
79
Qat is a leaf that acts as a mild stimulant and is chewed by many Somalis, mainly men, on a daily basis in the afternoon.
80
Human Rights Watch interview with M.A., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
81
See Garowe Online, “8 Die in Mogadishu When Car Struck Landmine,” February 3, 2008.
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_8_Die_in_Mogadishu_when_car_struck_Landmine.sht
ml (accessed October 23, 2008).
82
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali human rights activists, Nairobi, September 2008; Human Rights Watch email
correspondence with activist in Mogadishu, October 2008. See also CNN, Somalia Bomb Kills 21 Woman Street Cleaners,
August 3, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/08/03/somalia.strife/index.html (accessed October 23, 2008).
“So Much to Fear” 38
Deadly Threats
In addition to the outright violence, some Mogadishu residents face a constant and
menacing suspicion that they are supporting one side to the conflict or the other. As
one refugee who had been a merchant in Bakara market put it, “Both sides claim we
are supporting the other even if we are just going to them in search of work or just
seen talking to them.”83
A widow who had stayed in her home in Mogadishu long after most of her neighbors
had fled, described to Human Rights Watch how she came to be viewed by both
ENDF and insurgent forces as a collaborator:
At the beginning of this year, Ethiopian soldiers were on an operation
and met me at my house near the livestock market. They asked me
why I had not left since most of my neighbors had left for the camps
outside of [Mogadishu]. I said my financial status does not allow me to
move—I cannot because I am not able to. Then they alleged that the
reason why I was there must be that I am a sympathizer and perhaps
even a cook for Al-Shabaab. I said I am not a sympathizer, if you can
help me move I will move. Then they ransacked my house but they did
not hurt me at that particular moment. They were looking for weapons.
Several days later in the evening she was visited in her home by a group of insurgent
fighters whose faces were covered by scarves who informed her that she had been
seen talking with and supplying water to Ethiopian soldiers:
Some stood outside, some came in. They knocked at the door and
greeted me. They don’t ransack you, they only threaten you. They
[said], “If you give them water the next time or if they meet you another
time, we will kill you.” I agreed because I was afraid—but I also agreed
with the Ethiopians when they came.
83
Human Rights Watch interview N.M., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 2, 2008.
39 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Shortly afterwards, seeing no other option, she fled the city.84 As discussed later in
this report, such death threats are not mere talk—many Somalis have been murdered
on the basis of similar suspicions.85
An Unrelenting Onslaught
Many of those who remain in Mogadishu are now displaced persons within their own
city, fleeing neighborhoods that have become battlefields to seek shelter in quieter
pockets of the war-torn city. Human Rights Watch interviewed many people who had
hung on tenaciously out of principle or hope or both before eventually fleeing the city
long after most of their friends and neighbors had gone. Many had moved through
several different neighborhoods, fleeing each in turn and ultimately leaving the city
altogether.
One teenage girl told Human Rights Watch that her father had refused to move their
family away from the volatile area around Bakara market because “he used to say he
didn’t want to be a refugee—he was hopeful the fighting would end.” He was killed in
the street by an ENDF “Katyusha” rocket in late March 2008 and the remainder of his
family fled to Kenya. 86
For many who remain, there is no respite. On September 16 while peace talks were
underway but floundering in Djibouti, an Al-Shabaab statement announced that the
group would attack any flights attempting to land at the international airport in
Mogadishu.87 When an African Union peacekeeping force (AMISOM)) aircraft landed
at the airport the day after the closure took effect, insurgent fighters fired mortars at
the airport and then launched a major assault on the AMISOM base near southern
Mogadishu’s K-4 area.88 Weeks of heavy fighting and bombardment ensued,
displacing 61,000 people from their homes in less than four weeks, killing dozens of
84
Human Rights Watch interview with H.A., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
85
See below, Abuses by Insurgent Forces and Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.
86
Human Rights Watch interview with S.H., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 2, 2008.
87
See “Militant threat paralyses Mogadishu airport,” Reuters, September 17, 2008. Attacking civilian airplanes violates the
prohibition against attacks on civilian and civilian objects; also prohibited are attacks against personnel and objects involved
in UN peacekeeping missions. See ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, rule 33, citing general protections of
civilians and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
88
For more background on AMISOM, see below, The Role of International Actors in Somalia.
“So Much to Fear” 40
civilians, and wounding several hundred more.89 Medina hospital in Mogadishu
treated 411 war-wounded civilians between September 1 and October 15.90
Insurgent mortar attacks originating from the Bakara market area attracted a heavy
and sustained counter-bombardment. According to eyewitness accounts reported in
the national and international media, much of the shelling that struck Bakara market
originated from the grounds of the Presidential Palace, where TFG, ENDF, and
AMISOM forces (who provide VIP protection to TFG officials) were all stationed.91
Several individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they saw AMISOM
tanks participating in the bombardment of the area around Bakara market. AMISOM
denied these allegations.92 Such misuse of force by AMISOM would compromise
both its neutral peacekeeping role and its professionalism.93
One woman told Human Rights Watch that she lost seven relatives one night during
these September clashes when a mortar shell fell onto their house in Hodan district.
When Human Rights Watch interviewed her by phone just over two weeks later, she
was sitting in Keysaney hospital in Mogadishu, caring for a two-year-old nephew who
was wounded in the same attack. “Even now,” she said, “the sound of the shells
echoes in my ears.”94
Despite the horrors they have fled, many refugees abroad want nothing more than to
return home, but not if things remain the same. One 12-year-old boy living in a
refugee camp in Kenya—himself badly wounded in a roadside bomb attack in
Mogadishu—had this to say when asked if he hoped to go back home:
89
UN News Center, “Ongoing Violence Uproots another 5,500 people from Somali capital, says UN,” October 17, 2008,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=28614&Cr=somali&Cr1=displace (accessed October 17, 2008).
90
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with staff member of Medina hospital, Mogadishu, October 21, 2008. This figure
includes people admitted to the hospital as well as people who were treated for light wounds but not admitted.
91
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews, Mogadishu, October 4 to 7, 2008.
92
See IRIN, “Fighting Forces 18,500 to Flee Mogadishu,” September 29, 2008,
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80643 (accessed November 10, 2008).
93
Human Rights Watch telephone interviews, Mogadishu, October 4 to 7. These allegations were widely covered in the
international and Somalia media. Shaikh Sharif Shaikh Ahmad of the ARS-Djibouti wrote a formal letter of protest accusing
AMISOM troops of “deliberate mass killing.” Letter from Sheikh Sharif Ahmed to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and others,
September 29, 2008 (on file with Human Rights Watch).
94
Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Mogadishu, October 4, 2008.
41 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Why would I want to go back? There are bullets and bombs. Money has
lost its value. There is a lot of robbing and looting by gunmen around
there—so your money is either worthless because of high prices or it
will be taken from you. The police always ransack houses and steal our
property. They even threaten you; if you do not abide by their demands
they will accuse you falsely that you are a muqaawama [“resistance”
fighter] or accuse you of having weapons. As a child they do not pay
attention to me but I have eyes and I see what they are doing.95
95
Human Rights Watch interview with A.I., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 42
Human Rights Abuses by Transitional Federal Government Forces
Real police and army men are disciplined. But this new government
are just employing mooryaan96 as police. They use their uniforms and
the guns they have been given to come and harass people—they will
come to your shop and take what they want and if you talk to them
about this they will even complain.
—74-year-old refugee and former shopkeeper from Mogadishu.97
The Somali Transitional Federal Government’s security forces and affiliated militia
forces have a reputation for violent criminality among many Somalis. Human Rights
Watch’s own research has uncovered a pattern of violent abuses by TFG forces
including widespread acts of murder, rape, looting, assault, arbitrary arrest and
detention, and torture. Those responsible include police, military, and intelligence
personnel as well as the personal militias of high-ranking TFG officials.
Identifying the Perpetrators of TFG Abuses
The TFG has deployed a confusing array of security forces and armed militias to act
on its behalf. Victims of the widespread abuses in which these forces have been
implicated often have trouble identifying whether their attackers were TFG police
officers, other TFG security personnel, or militias linked to TFG officials. Furthermore,
formal command-and-control structures are to a large degree illusory. TFG security
forces often wear multiple hats, acting on orders from their formal superiors one day,
as clan militias another day, and as autonomous self-interested armed groups the
next.
This confusion about the identities of perpetrators leaves the victims of some violent
abuses with no idea who attacked them. For instance, a 14-year-old girl was
abducted at gunpoint by three armed men in camouflage uniforms, forced into a red
96
Mooryaan is a derisive term that carries connotations of thuggish and criminal behavior. It is often used to describe the
young gunmen who make up unaccountable militia forces throughout the country.
97
Human Rights Watch interview with I.M., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
43 Human Rights Watch December 2008
pickup truck, and then driven to a house outside of Mogadishu where she was
repeatedly raped and beaten over the course of several days. Her mother had to pay
the men a ransom of several hundred dollars to secure her daughter’s release.
Neither the girl nor her mother had any idea who the men were and whether they
were even linked to a party to the conflict and they saw no point in reporting the
episode to the police. 98 TFG officials, rather than investigate such incidents of
violence as a governmental responsibility, have exploited the confusion over
perpetrators’ identities to evade accountability for abuses committed by their own
forces.
Nonetheless, in many cases perpetrators have clearly been identified as personnel
from TFG forces. Yet TFG officials have failed to make significant efforts to rein in or
respond to serious abuses committed by those forces.
Many abuses investigated by Human Rights Watch—including most of those
described below—are not isolated incidents involving a few armed men claiming to
be TFG security personnel. Frequently, abuses have occurred in the context of large-
scale TFG security operations, such as house-to-house search and seizure operations
across whole neighborhoods of Mogadishu. These operations are often carried out
jointly with Ethiopian soldiers or under the command of Ethiopian officers—which in
Mogadishu enables residents to most easily distinguish between criminal groups of
“freelance militias” and TFG-aligned forces. In many cases victims recognized some
of the men involved in abusive operations and know which TFG security service or
militia they work for. Those detained in official detention facilities were also able to
assign responsibility for their mistreatment.
The TFG forces most frequently implicated in the abuses described in this report
include:
Somali Police Force (SPF)
The Somali Police Force numbers roughly 7,000 according to official estimates, but
that figure masks a complex amalgam of different forces. About 2,775 officers have
98
Human Rights Watch interview with A.O., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 44
undergone training sponsored by the United Nations Development Program. The
force also includes reactivated police personnel who served in the force under the
Siad Barre government, which was overthrown in January 1991. More controversially
included are some of the Ethiopian-trained forces described below, who according to
one senior UN official have been shoehorned into the police force in hopes that
donor governments will pay their salaries. All of these forces are largely confined to
parts of Mogadishu and Baidoa.99
The TFG’s commissioner of police is Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid, a former warlord
who fought against UN peacekeeping forces in Somalia in the early 1990s and was a
member of the US-backed coalition driven from Mogadishu by ICU forces in mid-
2006. 100 In 2005 Qeybdiid was arrested in Sweden on allegations that he had
presided over a mass execution of child soldiers in Kismayo in 1991, but the case
never went to trial.101 Qeybdid was taken into custody by US forces during the 1993
“Black Hawk Down” episode, in which 18 US soldiers died, that led to the eventual
withdrawal of US forces from Somalia.102
TFG police personnel are supposedly identifiable by their khaki uniforms and blue
berets.103 But some TFG police officers have reportedly sold their uniforms on the
open market104 and some Ethiopian-trained “police” continue to wear the
camouflage uniforms issued to them at the end of their training in Ethiopia. In
99
Human Rights Watch interviews with foreign analysts, Somali human rights activists, and senior UN official, Nairobi,
September 2008. Also see below, Direct Donor Support to TFG Security Forces.
100
See International Crisis Group, Can the Somalia Crisis be Contained?, Africa Report No. 116, August 10, 2006,
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4333&l=1 (accessed October 23, 2008), pp. 11-14.
101
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Matts Sallstrom, Chief Public Prosecutor, International Prosecutions Office,
Gothenberg, October 20, 2008. Prosecutors responded to a criminal complaint filed by Somalis living in Sweden when Qeybdid
arrived there for a conference. The evidence to be submitted at trial included a videotape that allegedly showed Qeybdid
participating in events that led to the mass execution of captured child soldiers in Kismayo in the early 1990s. The court
declined to hold Qeybdid in custody to allow more time to gather evidence and he left the country.
102
Qeybdid was arrested and detained by US forces during the 1993 raid that ended with the deaths of 18 US soldiers and led
to the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia.
103
Human Rights Watch interview with UN official, Nairobi, September 22, 2008. Many and perhaps most SPF officers dispense
with the beret. Human Rights Watch interviews with former Mogadishu residents and activists, Dadaab, Nairobi, and Somalia,
July to September 2008.
104
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali human rights activists and independent analysts, Nairobi, July, and September
2008. Some TFG officials have actually cited this fact as exculpatory evidence, arguing that serious abuses attributed to
uniformed police officers could in fact have been committed by almost anyone because police uniforms are readily for sale on
the open market. But as one prominent businessman from Bakara market put it, “That is a cheap excuse. If their uniforms are in
the market it is they who are selling them.” Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, July 6, 2008.
45 Human Rights Watch December 2008
practice, as one UN official put it, “Since the end of last year we have a situation
where the police are wearing a mixture of all uniforms.”105 The UN Monitoring Group
on Somalia reported in April 2008 that “The Somali Police Force no longer differs
from other actors in the armed conflict…There is a certain confusion in the streets
about who is part of the Somali Police Force, as it operates jointly with the militia of
[former Mogadishu mayor] Mohamed Omar Habib (commonly known as Mohammed
‘Dheere’) and the Somali National Army.”106
Ethiopian-Trained Security Forces
This report makes no direct mention of the Somali National Army—the TFG’s largely
theoretical professional military force. Where trained TFG military forces appear in
the accounts described below, they were identified by their victims as Ethiopian-
trained forces, often acting in concert with ENDF forces or under the command of
ENDF officers.
The Ethiopian government has provided training to roughly 5,000 Somali military and
police personnel at a camp inside Ethiopia; as discussed below the curriculum of
that training course is a closely guarded secret.107 Upon completion of their training,
graduates of the course were outfitted with green camouflage uniforms and weapons
and sent back to Somalia.108 These forces are intended to form the nucleus of a
professional TFG military force, though about 1,000 former trainees have reportedly
been absorbed into the TFG police force.
Ethiopian-trained troops have been frequently deployed in security operations in
Mogadishu. According to local residents, activists, and journalists, many have
operated under the command of ENDF officers and some have reportedly been
stationed at ENDF bases across Mogadishu.109
105
Human Rights Watch interview with UN official, Nairobi, September 22, 2008.
106
See United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution
1766 (2007), S/2008/274, April 24, 2008, p.7.
107
See Appendix, Direct Donor Support to TFG Security Forces.
108
Human Rights Watch interviews with independent analysts and UN officials, Nairobi, September 2008.
109
Human Rights Watch interviews with journalists, independent analysts, and victims of TFG abuses, Dadaab, Nairobi, and
Hargeisa, July and September 2008. Also see below, Assault, Rape, and Killings by TFG Forces.
“So Much to Fear” 46
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is the TFG’s intelligence service, under the
command of Mohammed Warsame Darwish. The NSA maintains its own detention
facility at the Baarista Hisbiga in Mogadishu; the appalling conditions in this facility
and the treatment meted out to NSA detainees there are described below.110 The NSA
has arrested several journalists and aid workers. In October 2007 the NSA detained
and interrogated a World Food Program official for nearly a week after storming the
WFP’s offices. Darwish publicly defended the action.111
TFG-Aligned Militias
In addition to its formal security forces, key figures within the TFG have deployed
their private militia forces to participate in military and police operations. These
militia forces have often operated jointly with ENDF forces or TFG police. From the
perspective of ordinary Somalis this is the only way they can be reliably
distinguished from the criminal freelance militias that continue to plague the country.
By all accounts the most frequently used TFG militias have been those of TFG
President Abdullahi Yusuf (largely made up of Majerteen clan militia from Puntland
who have been designated as a presidential guard); police commissioner and former
warlord Abdi Qeybdid; NSA head Mohammed Warsame Darawish; and former
Mogadishu Mayor Mohammed Omar Habib (Mohammed “Dheere”).112 None of these
militias wear uniforms that would allow members of the public to easily distinguish
them from other armed groups.113
Under the terms of Somalia’s Police Act, Mohammed Dheere’s militia was permitted
to act with all the powers and authority of the TFG police while he served as
110
See below, Torture and Mistreatment in Detention.
111
See “Somalia Confirms Detention of Food Aid Staffer,” Associated Press, October 19, 2007,
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/19/africa/AF-GEN-Somalia-UN-Detention.php (accessed October 18, 2008).
112
Mohammed Dheere’s full name is Mohammed Omar Habib. Like most Somalis he is much more widely known by his
nickname—Mohammed Dheere.
113
Human Rights Watch interviews with victims of abuses by TFG forces, Somali human rights activists, and journalists, Dadaab,
Nairobi, and Hargeisa, July and September 2008.
47 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Mogadishu mayor.114 TFG Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein fired him from his
position in September 2008 after overcoming significant opposition from TFG
President Abdullahi Yusuf. Human Rights Watch obtained an internal UNDP
memorandum describing a conversation between one UNDP official and SPF deputy
commissioner Bashir Jama. According to that memorandum, written while
Mohammed Dheere was still serving as mayor, Bashir acknowledged that the police
“often finds [itself] negotiating with Mohammed Dheere regarding ‘illegal’ police
operations which come to light through information from the community.”115 As
illustrated by the following pages, the term “illegal police operation” is in reality a
euphemism for operations that often amount to brutal assaults on Somali civilians
and which are carried out by various TFG security forces.
Assault, Rape, and Killings by TFG Forces
Many of the abuses documented by Human Rights Watch took place in the context of
search-and-seizure operations in residential areas that TFG forces have carried out
regularly since the beginning of 2007. These operations have included the
participation of the TFG forces described above. Many witnesses reported that as of
mid-2008 these operations were increasingly being carried out by Ethiopian-trained
TFG security forces under the command of ENDF officers or in conjunction with ENDF
forces.116
These house-to-house searches are intended to apprehend insurgent fighters and
seize illegal weapons and other contraband. In some cases these searches are
carried out with professionalism and courtesy towards the local residents. 117 But
often TFG forces treat the operations as opportunities to prey upon a helpless public,
subjecting them to violence, humiliation, and theft with complete impunity.
114
Human Rights Watch interviews with independent analysts and Somali human rights activists, Nairobi and Hargeisa, July
2008.
115
Memo dated June 10, 2008, on file with Human Rights Watch.
116
The role of the SPF in these operations appears to have diminished over time. Some local activists believe that this is
because the police have come under pressure to stop participating in the abuses connected to these raids. Others attribute it
to the worsening security situation, which leaves SPF officers reluctant to venture into the streets to participate in such
operations. Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali civil society activists, Nairobi and Hargeisa, July 2008.
117
Human Rights Watch interviews, Hargeisa, July 10, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 48
Many victims and eyewitnesses provided vivid accounts of these abuses. One young
man told Human Rights Watch that he was several blocks from his home in
Mogadishu’s Yaqshid district in May 2008 when a search operation was underway.
The forces he saw in the streets were a combination of TFG and ENDF personnel
wearing similar green camouflage uniforms. As he walked quickly towards his home,
an armed man in a green camouflage uniform called him over and accused him of
being an insurgent:
They caught me and said I was a mahaakim [Islamic Courts insurgent].
I said no and they did not believe me. They gave me a gun and said,
“Show us how you do it!” I said, “I don’t even know how to use it.”
They said, “Yes you do, you are lying.” Then they started beating me
with their guns. They were beating me and beating me and when I
started screaming they stuffed a cloth in my mouth.
After beating the young man for several minutes, they tied him to a tree and
abandoned him there by the side of the road with the cloth still stuffed in his mouth.
After they left the area a woman who lived nearby came out of her house and untied
him.118
One morning in late March or early April 2008 TFG forces carried out a search
operation near Bakara market. There had been exchanges of gunfire in the
immediate area the previous days. A half-dozen TFG security personnel wearing
green camouflage uniforms and driving a double-cabin pickup truck arrived at one
family’s home. Human Rights Watch interviewed a member of the family, a 15-year-
old girl, about the ordeal that ensued:
Our mother ordered us to get into the house and the house was closed.
She ordered us to slip under the beds…About five of them entered the
house. I could see their legs as they searched the house. They came in,
started searching the house and turning everything upside down.
118
Human Rights Watch interview with O.M., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
49 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The other children [in the room with me] panicked and shouted for
their mother and at that moment I came out from under the bed and
tried to escape but as I was running I was hit from behind with the butt
of a gun. Then I fell forward. The man was wearing a [camouflage]
uniform and carrying an AK-47 [military assault rifle]. At the back of his
gun it was metal.
I attempted to run because I knew that definitely they would do what
they have done to me…From that particular moment I last remember a
man holding my neck as another climbed on top of my body. I woke up
to yelling and the cries of my mother.
The girl told Human Rights Watch that she felt the rape was not unexpected because
she had heard accounts of similar attacks befalling other girls in the area. “Their
intention was to rape and loot,” she explained. “That is the order of the day for the
government forces in the area. It is their culture.” When Human Rights Watch
interviewed her she was three-months pregnant by one of the men who raped her.119
On June 19, 2008, uniformed TFG police entered the Al Mathal primary and secondary
school in Mogadishu after a mortar attack on the international airport that originated
in the general vicinity of the school. According to eyewitnesses and journalists who
later visited the scene, police officers smashed and set fire to classroom supplies,
beat up and robbed the school’s watchman, and fired random bursts of gunfire
across the school premises. The school was in session at the time and one young
child was reportedly wounded by a stray police bullet.120
In the first week of June 2008, TFG personnel wearing what one surviving witness
described as uniforms “like those worn by ENDF soldiers,” carried out a search
operation in Yaqshid district in Mogadishu. A young man was in a room at the back
of the family house when they arrived:
119
Human Rights Watch interview with A.N., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
120
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with journalist, Mogadishu, October 14, 2008; Email correspondence between
UNDP and donor government officials, on file with Human Rights Watch.
“So Much to Fear” 50
They knocked on our door. When my [two] brothers opened the door
they started arguing—I did not hear exactly what they were saying
because I was at the back of the house, and then I heard shots. I came
out as they were shooting my second brother… they shot him in the
head. I immediately ran to the back of the house again so they would
not see me.
The armed men then forced the young man’s 10 and 16-year-old sisters to leave with
them. Their brother said that when the girls returned home two days later they told
him that they had been raped repeatedly by their captors. “It is so terrible I cannot
explain it,” the young man said, “but it is something all Somalis are sharing.”121
Looting
TFG security forces and militia participating in search-and-seizure operations often
rob the homes they search even if they leave the families who live in them physically
unharmed. Victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch related numerous accounts
of TFG police, soldiers, and militia stealing items including cellular telephones,
jewelry, electronics, money, and even furniture from their homes.
“They visit people at their houses,” said one woman whose home was looted by TFG
forces who were working with ENDF soldiers to search homes in her neighborhood in
April 2008. “The moment they enter, if you are unaccompanied as a woman your
money, your belongings—they take it and don’t even ask you. If you argue they can
arrest you and accuse you of being a[n insurgent] sympathizer.”122 Another woman, a
former resident of Hamar Weyne neighborhood, said that her house was searched
several times by TFG patrols and that “when they came, we would hide anything
valuable and I would just leave a small amount of money where they could find it, so
they would take that.”123
121
Human Rights Watch interview with M.A., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
122
Human Rights Watch interview with F.O., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
123
Human Rights Watch interview with A.A., Hargeisa, July 10, 2008.
51 Human Rights Watch December 2008
One woman told Human Rights Watch that during a search operation in May 2008,
TFG personnel in camouflage uniforms entered her home to search for weapons.
They found nothing but before leaving they demanded that she give them money.
She insisted that she had nothing to give and they left—but only after one of the
departing men paused on his way out the door to slap her across the face.124
TFG forces also loot goods and money from vendors across the city. A former
shopkeeper from Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that “They always used to
come and just take things. It was just a daily routine. They would take drinks, one
time they took my [mobile] phone, sometimes they would make me open the safe
and take money out of it.”125
An elderly man who owned a small shop near Cirtoogte, a center of arms trading
around Bakara market, told Human Rights Watch that in early April 2008 a small
contingent of TFG forces came under fire near his store. “They responded, entering
the market center firing bullets,” he said. Most civilians in the area fled, and as soon
as the threat seemed to have dissipated the men set about looting some of the
shops in the area.126
Another merchant who used to own a shop in the Hawal Wadag area told Human
Rights Watch that several times TFG militia or uniformed police came to his store to
extort small payments from him. He said that on one such occasion, “They asked me,
‘Did you pay your taxes?’ I said yes, and they said, ‘Good, but now you have to pay
us our daily qat.’ I had to pay them, otherwise they would beat me.”127
Another Mogadishu resident told Human Rights Watch that while eating lunch at a
restaurant near his home, a group of uniformed TFG police arrived and ransacked the
establishment. “The people ran away without paying for their lunch,” he said. He and
124
Human Rights Watch interview with H.O., Hargeisa, July 10, 2008.
125
Human Rights Watch interview with O.I., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
126
Human Rights Watch interview with I.M., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
127
Human Rights Watch interview with A.A., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 52
some other customers went back later to pay their bills and the restaurant owner told
them that the police had taken all of the proceeds from that day’s business.128
One woman, widowed since her husband died in a roadside bomb explosion in late
2007, told Human Rights Watch that in early 2008 her home was looted by a group of
11 TFG security personnel. TFG police had arrested several young men from the
neighborhood earlier in the day and this was followed by a search operation across
the area:
They asked for permission to enter the house. I accepted, and then
they started looting. On coming out [of the house] each of them came
out with some of my belongings…they did not harass or beat me but
they took all of my utensils and some money which was given to me by
relatives of my [late] husband.
“How do I try to fight with a man who has a gun and who wants to take my things?”
she asked.129
Arbitrary Detention and Torture
TFG police and NSA personnel have frequently arrested residents of Mogadishu on
suspicion of links to the insurgency. Persons who are arrested as suspected
insurgents often face abusive interrogation at the hands of SPF or NSA officers. One
young man told Human Rights Watch that he was arrested in February 2008 at his
father’s home in Medina during a search operation. A group of TFG security
personnel wearing camouflage uniforms arrived in front of the house. “They knocked
at the door,” he said. “They said they were going to search the house. They identified
themselves as government.” The search turned up nothing but they took the young
man into custody without giving any reason for the arrest.
He was taken to an SPF police station in the Hosh neighborhood of western
Mogadishu, where he was interrogated by TFG police wearing khaki uniforms:
128
Human Rights Watch interview with S.Z., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
129
Human Rights Watch interview with F.Z., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
53 Human Rights Watch December 2008
I was questioned where I was constantly asked to confess that I was
part of the chaos. I was interrogated twice and asked to confess. The
second time they threatened me, “If you don’t tell us what you know
about them [the insurgency], we will kill you.” They used the butt of a
gun to try and force me to confess, beating me at the back and chest
for about five minutes. Then I was taken back to detention.
The young man was released unconditionally after two days. He told Human Rights
Watch that, “After that I got scared and never used to walk outside freely.”130
There is no meaningful judicial review of the legality of detentions, both because the
police generally make no attempt to charge detainees in court and because the
judicial system has collapsed to the point of inutility.131
Torture and Mistreatment in Detention
The TFG’s National Security Agency maintains a dungeon-like detention facility in the
Baarista Hisbiga building near Villa Somalia in southern Mogadishu.132 Human Rights
Watch gathered detailed accounts of the appalling conditions of detention there
from four former NSA detainees.133
The detention facility consists of a long basement corridor with seven rooms
branching off of it. Five of those rooms are holding cells and two of them serve as
communal toilets and washrooms. There is no source of natural light or fresh air and
as many as 200 detainees are held there at one time. The cramped holding cells
cannot hold such large numbers so the doors are usually left open and detainees
compete for space inside of the cells and along the corridor. One former detainee
130
Human Rights Watch interview with M.M., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
131
In July 2008 a UN official who works on capacity-building efforts for the TFG judiciary told Human Rights Watch that there
were only two judges sitting on the regional court for Benadir, the region that encompasses Mogadishu. The official also
maintained that five Mogadishu judges were killed and another dozen resigned between the end of 2007 and July 2008. Human
Rights Watch interview, (location withheld), July 12, 2008.
132
The same detention facility was used by the government of President Siad Barre, who built the Baarista Hisbiga to house
the headquarters of his Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party.
133
In May 2008 a television documentary on British television’s Channel 4 included interviews with former Baarista Hisbiga
detainees and with NSA head Mohammed Warsame Darwish. Aidan Hartley, “Warlords Next Door?” Channel 4, May 23, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 54
recalled that on his first day there, “The most difficult issue was that you could not
get a place to sleep. I sat down somewhere and someone yelled at me, ‘Don’t sit
there, that is my place!’”134
The toilets are filthy and often back up and overflow with raw sewage and cold water.
The taps inside of those rooms are the detainees’ only source of drinking water. The
two holding cells opposite the toilets would flood whenever the toilets overflowed;
the guards sometimes use these as punishment cells for detainees who caused
trouble or made too much noise.
The only time detainees normally leave the basement detention facility is if they are
brought up the stairs for questioning and many detainees remain underground for
weeks or months at a stretch. These conditions caused some detainees serious
psychological distress. One former inmate recalled that, “At night it was very hot,
people are shouting, sometimes they are jumping to try and break the door at the top
of the stairs” that served as the only exit from the place.135
The detainees who spoke to Human Rights Watch had been interrogated both by
NSA and ENDF personnel. None said they had been tortured, but all had seen other
detainees shoved down the stairs back into the basement after questioning bearing
the signs of severe beatings and other forms of torture. “When people came back
from upstairs they were bloody and beaten,” one former prisoner recalled. “People
were crying. And there is no doctor in there.”136
The Baarista Hisbiga’s detainees were a diverse group. Those interviewed by Human
Rights Watch said that during their time there they met suspected insurgent fighters;
businessmen suspected of supporting the insurgency; journalists; and relatives of
wealthy people who had never been interrogated and believed they were being held
only for ransom. Others said they had been arrested at random off of the street
following roadside bomb attacks or ambushes of TFG or ENDF personnel.
134
Human Rights Watch interview with H.M., Nairobi, July 19, 2008.
135
Human Rights Watch interview with H.M., Nairobi, July 20, 2008.
136
Human Rights Watch interview with M.Z., Nairobi, July 20, 2008.
55 Human Rights Watch December 2008
One journalist interviewed by Human Rights Watch was held for 15 days in the
Baarista Hisbiga in early 2008. He was questioned only once, by an NSA official in
the presence of an ENDF officer. All of the questioning concerned radio reporting he
had done that the intelligence official believed was overly sympathetic to the ARS-
Asmara.137
Another journalist said he was questioned for the first time 15 days after being
arrested and locked up in the Baarista Hisbiga. “They were accusing me that I was a
killer,” he said. “But they questioned me only once. They never took me to court,
they never asked me any other questions.” After his interrogation he spent 33 more
days in the basement before being released without any further questioning. His
family told him that they had paid US$1,500 to secure his release and asked him to
leave the country so they would not have to do it again; he has not been back to
Somalia since.138
Another man told Human Rights Watch that his teenage son disappeared one night
in January 2008. The next day he received a call from his son’s cell phone—the caller
demanded a ransom of $20,000 if he wanted to see his son alive again. Negotiations
ensued and eventually the caller revealed that his son was being kept at the Baarista
Hisbiga. Through the help of a friend with connections to the NSA he managed to
reduce the ransom to $1,000 and secured his son’s release—37 days after he was
arrested.139
Arbitrary Detention and Extortion by Somali Police Force Officers
Somali Police Force officers have frequently extorted ransom payments from
detainees or their relatives, refusing to free them until a payment is made. In effect,
many police officers have turned police work into a form of kidnapping.
In March 2008 insurgents ambushed a group of TFG security personnel along a main
road in Mogadishu’s Medina neighborhood, killing two of them. The insurgents fled
137
Human Rights Watch interview with M.Z., Nairobi, July 20, 2008.
138
Human Rights Watch interview with M.I., Nairobi, July 19, 2008.
139
Human Rights Watch interview with S.B., Hargeisa, July 12, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 56
after a brief exchange of fire, passing through a residential neighborhood. A group of
TFG police officers in khaki uniforms were chasing after the men, but they gave up
their pursuit and instead arrested four men who were sitting outside talking.
The brother of one of those four men was alerted to what had happened by his wife
almost immediately. “I went after them,” he told Human Rights Watch. “They were
headed towards the police station at Galbeed.” He went on:
I know one of the police officers [who had arrested the four men]. He
demanded some money to secure the release of the boys. They were
still walking towards their car with them and by then they were
conducting a sweep in the neighborhood. By then I did not have
money so I promised to catch up to them before they went to the
police station. I hurriedly rushed home, dressed and rushed to a
nearby shop of a friend, took money on credit and went after them.
They [the police officers] thanked me and apologized, but warned the
boys never to associate themselves with the muqaawama
[“resistance”] and asked me as a resident of the area to cooperate
with them and inform them of any suspected insurgent operations or
people.
“I was lucky because I knew one of the officers,” he said. “But the money was hard
to pay back.”140
Human Rights Watch interviewed one young man whose father, uncle, and
grandfather were all arrested by TFG police after heavy fighting near their homes in
Hawal Wadag neighborhood. He went to the police station in Hawal Wadag to
demand his relatives’ release but the officers at the station refused even to let him
see the detainees. He said:
140
Human Rights Watch interview with O.B., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
57 Human Rights Watch December 2008
I then approached a relative of mine who is a police officer for help. He
works at a different police post. Normally they would arrest people
whenever they needed money. They demanded a bribe, and said they
are not being paid. They asked for US$800. Since that was too much
for the family to raise at such a difficult time, we sent a signal to all our
extended family and the money was raised. It took several weeks to
collect the money and they were still in jail [during that time].
The three men were released from prison towards the end of December 2007, more
than a month after they were arrested.141 His uncle had been hit in the ankle by a
stray bullet just before his arrest, and by the time he was released the wound was
badly infected.
Human Rights Watch interviewed several activists and refugees from Mogadishu who
said they believed that the practice of police detention for ransom, while still a
continuing problem, had decreased in frequency during the latter part of 2008. Part
of the reason for this may be the efforts of TFG Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein to
rein in the police force, something he has received widespread credit for at least
attempting to do. But there may be other reasons for this trend. As one prominent
activist put it, “Perhaps this is because of [political] pressure. Perhaps it is because
there are not many people left in Mogadishu to arrest. Or perhaps because the area
of Mogadishu the police can [safely] go to is shrinking.”142
141
Human Rights Watch interview with J.A., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, July 3, 2008.
142
Human Rights Watch interview I.J., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 58
Laws of War and Human Rights Violations by
Ethiopian Military Forces
As of early 2007, ENDF troops had a reputation among many Somalis interviewed by
Human Rights Watch for being admirably disciplined in their day-to-day interactions
with Somali civilians, even if most Somalis resented their presence in the country.143
That discipline has been allowed to erode severely. Ethiopian forces have been
implicated in numerous violations of the laws of war, including acts by individuals
that amount to war crimes. They have indiscriminately bombarded populated areas
with mortar shells, artillery, and rockets. They have increasingly responded to
insurgent ambushes and other attacks by firing indiscriminately at anyone and
everyone in the general vicinity. And incidents of killing, rape, and looting involving
ENDF personnel have greatly increased.
Indiscriminate Attacks
Rockets, Mortars, and Artillery
ENDF forces in Mogadishu have routinely and indiscriminately bombarded populated
residential areas of Mogadishu since March 2007. They have made regular use of
“Katyusha” rockets in Mogadishu, often fired from BM-21 “Grad” multiple-rocket-
launchers.144 Their use in populated urban environments is inherently indiscriminate,
in violation of international humanitarian law.
The crushing impact of these bombardments on Mogadishu residents has been well-
documented.145 Nonetheless, there is no evidence that Ethiopian forces have in any
way curtailed them.
143
See Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked, p. 73. This reputation has eroded due to the events of the past year but many
Somalis still see a difference in the discipline of ENDF and TFG forces. For example one refugee who fled Mogadishu in May
2008 told Human Rights Watch that, “The Ethiopians will attack you if they are attacked and use heavy weapons but they will
not come into your homes and attack you like the Somali government forces.” Human Rights Watch interview, Dagahaley
refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
144
Residents of Mogadishu refer to these as “BM,” because the rockets are often fired from BM-21 multiple rocket launchers or
as “whistling” because of the whistling sound “Katyusha” rockets make while in the air. See Human Rights Watch, Shell
Shocked, pp. 56-60.
145
Human Rights Watch, Shell Shocked; also see above, Civilian Deaths and the Destruction of Mogadishu.
59 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Ethiopian forces carried out similar indiscriminate bombardments in fighting in the
strategically important town of Beletweyne. In July 2008 Al-Shabaab fighters
launched mortar shells against ENDF troops stationed at a base just outside
Beletweyne unlawfully using the town’s civilian population as cover.146 ENDF forces
responded by indiscriminately bombarding large swathes of the western districts of
the town for three days beginning on July 24.147 Humanitarian organizations
estimated that at the end of July, 74,000 people—more than 75 percent of the town’s
population—had been displaced as a direct result of the bombardment and related
fighting.148
Indiscriminate Gunfire
There have been increased reports in 2008 of Ethiopian forces responding to
insurgent ambushes and other attacks by firing indiscriminately into populated
areas. Incidents of indiscriminate ENDF fire that claimed civilian lives appear to have
occurred with increasing frequency, particularly in Mogadishu, Baidoa, and along the
Mogadishu-Afgooye road.
One of the most notorious incidents of 2008 occurred on August 15 when an ENDF
convoy was struck by a roadside bomb along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road, home to
hundreds of thousands of displaced persons from Mogadishu and a frequent site of
armed clashes. Ethiopian soldiers in the convoy responded by firing wildly in all
directions, and when the shooting stopped at least 40 Somali civilians were dead,
including the passengers of two public minibuses.149 Human Rights Watch put these
allegations to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC, which responded that a
thorough investigation had demonstrated the civilian casualties were the result of a
146
Beletweyne sits a few kilometers off of the main road leading north from Mogadishu towards the Ethiopian border, a key link
in the supply lines of ENDF forces in Somalia. It is the largest town in Hiran region and a large ENDF base sits along the highway
just outside the town.
147
Documents on file with Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch interviews with journalists and Somali civil society
activists, Nairobi and Djibouti, September 2008. The eastern half of Beletweyne (which is divided by a river) is largely
populated by Somalis of the Xawadale clan, who are seen as sympathetic to the TFG. The western half of the town is seen as a
hotbed of Al-Shabaab and ICU activity.
148
Human Rights Watch interviews with UN officials, Nairobi, September 2008; “Monthly Cluster Report: Humanitarian
Response in Somalia,” UN OCHA, September 2008, p. 2.
149
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali civil society activist, Nairobi, September 20, 2008. See also “About 50 people
killed in separate Somalia attacks,” Reuters, August 15, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 60
roadside bomb planted by insurgents. As of the time of writing, no evidence to
support this version of events, which is contrary to all other credible eyewitness
accounts, has been made public by the Ethiopian government.150
Many similar incidents have been reported, often in the immediate aftermath of
insurgent attacks on ENDF personnel. In late March or early April, another incident
near Afgooye saw an ENDF convoy hit by a roadside bomb. A witness to the incident
told Human Rights Watch that ENDF soldiers responded by “spraying bullets” in all
directions. Most people in the area escaped but several were cut down by ENDF
gunfire that continued for about 10 minutes. “When we came back, we came face to
face with dead and injured people,” the witness recalled. “One of the bodies had
one of the hands shot off.”151 On April 30 ENDF troops in Baidoa reportedly opened
fire wildly after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb, killing several
civilians.152
The descriptions that emerge from interviews with witnesses to these incidents
indicate that the indiscriminate shooting by Ethiopian soldiers in response to
insurgent attacks reflects poor discipline rather than criminal intent. ENDF troops
rotated into Somalia from the end of 2007 were reportedly less experienced and
well-trained than the soldiers they replaced. This, combined with the escalating daily
violence, may have contributed to an overall breakdown in discipline and misuses of
force causing civilian casualties.153 At the same time, there have been no reported
instances where ENDF soldiers have been investigated or held accountable for
possible war crimes. This absence of accountability of Ethiopian soldiers has
doubtlessly contributed to violations of international humanitarian law by Ethiopian
forces.
150
Letter on file with Human Rights Watch.
151
Human Rights Watch interview with J.I., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
152
See “Ethiopian soldiers kill 12 Somali civilians after roadside bomb attack,” Garowe Online, April 30, 2008,
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Ethiopia_soldiers_kill_12_somalis.htm (accessed October 15,
2008).
153
Human Rights Watch interviews, Nairobi and Hargeisa, July 2008. See also Amnesty International, Routinely Targeted:
Attacks on Civilians in Somalia, p.11.
61 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Assault, Rape, Killings, and Looting
ENDF soldiers have been implicated in serious violations of human rights and
humanitarian law against Somali civilians with increasing frequency since the end of
2007.154 In Mogadishu, many of these abuses are not committed by Ethiopian
soldiers acting alone but during joint operations with TFG security forces. Somalis
interviewed by Human Rights Watch recounted horrifying accounts of ENDF abuses in
2008, including assaults, rape, killings, and looting.
Following a clash between EDNF troops and insurgent fighters in northern Mogadishu
in April 2008, TFG and ENDF forces cordoned off an area around the site and began
conducting house-to-house searches. A 22-year-old man from Mogadishu told
Human Rights Watch:
Some Ethiopian and government soldiers came to our house and said,
“Where are you hiding them [the insurgents]?” We said we were not
hiding anyone, and that’s when they shot my father. He was just
explaining to them that we did not see the people they are looking for
and that we had been in the house all day, and they shot him, telling
him he was lying. They shot him in the chest. My sister and mother
were screaming at me to leave the place. But I wanted to resist, and I
said, “Why are you doing this?” but they started beating me with the
back of their guns.
The young man and his family were members of a minority clan that traces its
ancestry partly back to immigrants from Portugal and so were unusually light
skinned. The Ethiopian soldiers began joking that the young man’s two sisters and
mother looked more like Eritreans than Somalis. With the family’s father lying dead
on the floor in front of them, several Ethiopian soldiers took turns raping the three
women. “And I was sitting there helpless,” the young man said. “They started raping
my sisters and they were screaming. They were there for almost three hours. I saw
154
For more accounts of such abuses see Amnesty International, Routinely Targeted, pp. 10-13.
“So Much to Fear” 62
them raping my mother in front of me…I could not help my mother or help my
sisters.” At his mother’s insistence, he left Mogadishu the next day.155
Human Rights Watch interviewed a farmer who had fled his home in the outskirts of
Beletweyne when fighting between Al-Shabaab and ENDF forces erupted there in July.
He boarded a truck with others heading towards Somaliland along a back road156 but
they were soon stopped by a group of ENDF soldiers:
They stopped our car and said we are hiding some of the people they
are looking for. We came out of the truck and they started searching.
When they saw that there were two pretty girls with us they just took
them. There was nothing we could do to resist. They did not even ask
anything, they just grabbed them and started going with them. The
girls were crying but the soldiers were slapping them and dragging
them across the ground.
We waited for them. I was hearing their screams and cries, they were
just near to us. They shot one girl because she was screaming a lot.
We took the dead body and buried her. They shot her in the chest…The
other girl did not want to talk about it but she said three of them were
raping her at the same time.157
The truck and its passengers were then allowed to continue on their way.
In April 2008 one of the year’s most widely publicized atrocities occurred during an
ENDF raid on a mosque in northern Mogadishu. ENDF soldiers, operating jointly with
TFG forces, reportedly killed 21 people during that raid, seven of whom were found
with their throats cut. Amnesty International reported that the dead included Islamic
scholars who were inside the mosque at the time of the raid. The soldiers also
155
Human Rights Watch interview with D.M., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
156
The interviewee told Human Rights Watch that ENDF forces had forbade the use of back roads as a security measure but that
they took such a route anyway because they were afraid of suffering violence at ENDF checkpoints along the main tarmac road.
Human Rights Watch interview, Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
157
Human Rights Watch interview with S.E., Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
63 Human Rights Watch December 2008
detained several dozen children who were present at the mosque at the time of the
raid.158 The Ethiopian government denied that these or any other serious abuses
involving ENDF soldiers took place.159 Following the April 2008 mosque killings the
only Ethiopian government response was to issue a statement denying the
allegations and declaring that their operation in the area had been “successful
beyond expectation.”160
ENDF forces have also been implicated in acts of looting in Mogadishu, though these
incidents do not appear to be nearly as common as those involving TFG forces. One
former shopkeeper from Hodan in Mogadishu said that his shop was looted twice by
joint ENDF and TFG patrols in late 2007.161 A former merchant whose shop was in the
Bakara market area said that another joint patrol looted his store in April 2008. And
a prominent Hawiye political figure from Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that
some groups of ENDF soldiers went on looting sprees during search and seizure
operations in 2008 prior to being rotated out of the country.162
158
See Amnesty International, “Ethiopia Must Release Mosque Attack Children,” April 24, 2008,
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/ethiopia-must-release-children-captured-mosque-attack-20080424
(accessed October 27, 2008).
159
See “Ethiopia Denies Mosque Killings,” BBC News Online, April 24, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7364543.stm
(accessed October 27, 2008). See also Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “No massacre at the mosque but a successful
operation against Al-Shabaab,” Week in the Horn, April 24, 2008,
http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_April_24_2008.htm (accessed October 27, 2008).
160
See Agence France-Presse, “Amnesty Urges Ethiopia to Probe Mogadishu Mosque Executions,” April 25, 2008,
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4MQRvn2wVE-Wrz-9WCmwLU26Gpw (accessed November 10, 2008).
161
Human Rights Watch interview, Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
162
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, June 25, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 64
Abuses by Insurgent Forces
Insurgents fighting against TFG and ENDF forces in Somalia have committed rampant
violations of the laws of war as well as serious human rights abuses against Somali
civilians. These have included death threats, targeted killings, coerced recruitment,
and use of child soldiers. As discussed separately, members of Al-Shabaab and
other insurgent groups have also attacked and threatened humanitarian workers and
obstructed the delivery of humanitarian assistance.163
The confusing array of groups fighting under the banner of the insurgency in Somalia
often makes it difficult or impossible to determine precise responsibility for serious
abuses. Al-Shabaab is militarily the strongest and most active group, but Al-Shabaab
is itself plagued with internal divisions and even more radical groups have splintered
off from it. It has also spawned a broad range of localized imitators who claim to be
Al-Shabaab fighters even though they are operating largely on their own.164
Indiscriminate Attacks and Shielding
Insurgent groups have routinely violated the laws of war through their indiscriminate
use of mortars and remote-detonated explosive devices in populated areas and by
using civilian neighborhoods as cover to launch mortar attacks and ambushes.
Insurgent groups also make no effort to remove local residents from areas in which
they deploy their forces.
Human Rights Watch believes that all or nearly all of the attacks involving remote-
detonated explosive devices are carried out by insurgent groups. Almost all of the
attacks that Human Rights Watch documented as well as most of those reported in
the media were clearly targeted at ENDF or TFG officials. Civil society activists and
residents of Mogadishu interviewed by Human Rights Watch, including some who
163
See below, Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.
164
This is equally true of “Al-Shabaab” fighters in other parts of south-central Somalia, and in some cases pre-existing clan
militias have simply adopted the Al-Shabaab label and carried on as they had before. One recent analysis quoted a Somali
resident of the Juba Valley as stating that “the militia who call themselves shabaab are just the same Habar Gedir gunmen who
have occupied us for years.” Menkhaus, “Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” p. 6.
65 Human Rights Watch December 2008
are generally sympathetic to the aims of Al-Shabaab and other insurgent groups,
also said they believe that most remote-detonated devices are set by insurgent
fighters.165
Many former Mogadishu residents told Human Rights Watch that they were deeply
troubled by the insurgents’ tactic of using the streets around civilian homes as
launching sites for attacks on TFG and ENDF forces. “They put mortars and mines
near people’s homes,” one young woman said. “They will use your area to attack and
then immediately move. Then the government will identify your place and your
neighbors’ as a base and attack you.”166
Most Mogadishu residents see no option but to seek inadequate cover indoors when
insurgent fighters are launching mortar shells from the streets around their homes.
One resident of northern Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that in October some
residents and local security personnel from the area around Bakara market made
some attempts to demand an end to attacks being launched from the area. However,
he said that “To interfere with Al-Shabaab when they are firing does not happen a
lot” because local residents are afraid to confront the fighters. “They cannot stand
up to Al-Shabaab too often.”167
Human Rights Watch interviewed a woman from Medina district who had personally
confronted insurgent fighters firing mortar rounds from near her home—and she met
with a violent response. One evening she confronted a group of young men, “barely
18 or 20 years [old]” who were setting up a mortar tube in the street in front of her
house:
I came outside even with my brother telling me not to come outside. I
found the courage to tell them, “You say you are religious people, but
you are killing us. You shouldn’t use us as a launching pad.” Then they
told me, “Get back to your house, you dog!” They tried to force me
165
Human Rights Watch interviews, July and September 2008, Nairobi and Hargeisa.
166
Human Rights Watch interview with A.S., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
167
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with H.T., Mogadishu, October 4, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 66
towards the house, I resisted and one of them beat me with the butt of
his rifle.
The young men quickly forced her back inside, returned to setting up their mortar
tube, fired off several rounds, and then disappeared. She suffered bruises on her
shoulder and chest. 168
The practice by insurgent forces of firing mortars or otherwise launching attacks from
heavily populated neighborhoods can constitute “human shielding,” which is a war
crime. A party to the conflict violates the prohibition against shielding when using
the presence or movement of civilians “to render certain points or areas immune
from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from
attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.”169 Shielding requires a
specific intent to place military forces among civilians.170 Somali insurgent forces
know that Ethiopian forces routinely respond to attacks originating within populated
areas with counter-fire by artillery that may result in numerous civilian deaths and
injuries (insurgents might even seek such a response for propaganda purposes).
However, this does not lessen the responsibility of the insurgent forces that are
placing the civilians at risk or failing to remove them from the areas where they
deploy. Unless circumstances prevent insurgent forces from carrying out attacks
from non-populated areas (such as during a retreat), conducting operations from
heavily populated areas demonstrates an intent to use civilians as shields.
Forcible Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers
Insurgents in Mogadishu are expanding their ranks through the use of forced
recruitment and of child soldiers. International humanitarian law prohibits the
forcible recruitment of adults and any recruitment of children into armed groups.171
Human Rights Watch interviewed three people from Mogadishu whom local Al-
168
Human Rights Watch interview with N.H., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
169
Protocol I, art. 5(7).
170
See ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, pp. 339-340; Knut Doermann, Elements of War Crimes Under the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Sources and Commentary. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
pp. 344-45.
171
Protocol I, art. 77(2); Protocol II, art. 4(3)(c) (prohibiting the recruitment of children).
67 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Shabaab fighters attempted to recruit as fighters. They and other Mogadishu
residents, including parents whose children had faced similar pressures, said that
young men and boys in Mogadishu face a combination of peer pressure, promises of
cash payments, and threats from insurgent fighters seeking to recruit them into their
ranks.
One 15-year-old boy told Human Rights Watch that neighborhood boys who were
apparently members of an insurgent group convinced him that he should join their
“struggle” against Ethiopia and the TFG:
Those who were recruiting young ones were older boys from the
neighborhood…I was convinced we should go and join them. Some
boys from the neighborhood including from the house next door
convinced me. They said we will give you money, we will give you
pistols, and some bombs to throw at the enemy if you will do as we tell
you. I was excited about it. I thought it was a way to paradise.
He soon began to have second thoughts, however. “I became afraid,” he said. “And I
told my grandmother, who asked me to distance myself from these people.” But his
would-be recruiters persevered:
When I said no, they did not threaten me but they tried to convince me
by giving me different lectures and promises. They said that if I
successfully execute an operation they would give me US$100. I would
only have to throw a hand grenade at a government or Ethiopian car.
Or, we could target a cinema if they refused to close. They would give
me $100 for this. I was not yet convinced. They used to come even to
the football pitch to convince us to join.
The boy said that many of his friends from the neighborhood accepted these offers
and joined.172 His grandmother told Human Rights Watch that this pressure was the
172
Human Rights Watch interview with I.I., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 68
reason the family had left Mogadishu to seek refuge outside the city. “I was afraid he
might accept to be diverted from his education and join those militias,” she said.173
A student living in Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that insurgent fighters who
said they were members of Al-Shabaab came into his high school and interrupted
their ongoing lesson. They told the students, many of whom were children, that they
were required to attend a meeting that evening, and wrote down all of the students’
names on a sheet of paper. “The teachers could not even talk,” he said. “Otherwise
anything could happen.” He and his classmates reported for the meeting as
instructed that evening and then every evening for the next week:
They would come and tell you, you have to meet at this place and we
would go there. You have to go and meet them or anything can happen
to you.
At the meetings they started talking about what is going on in the
country, how Ethiopia is mistreating us, raping our women and
desecrating our holy places and we are just standing there watching
them and it is time for us to respond by training, taking guns and going
to jihad with them. For seven days they were having meetings every
day. We just had to sit there and listen to them talk. It was different
people every day; our neighborhood is full of Al Shabaab.
Some [of my friends] were saying, “If this is the only solution to get
them out of our country maybe we should join.” Others were saying,
“No, we have been at war too long and we need to educate ourselves.”
Others were saying, “Let’s just give up, we are caught between them
and we are dying.”
At the last meeting one of them came to me telling me that I am young
and strong, let us get rid of the Ethiopians from our country. I said I
want to be something in life and I am working for my future. He said,
173
Human Rights Watch interview with Z.A., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
69 Human Rights Watch December 2008
“You cannot be something when they are stealing your country.” They
gave me three days to think about it.
He said the he felt there was a very clear threat implied in that three-day ultimatum
and went to tell his mother, with whom he lived alone, about his dilemma. She
advised him to wait and see what would happen. “Each day I was going to school
worrying if they were going to come and ask me for my decision,” he said. But on the
third day he came home to find that during the day his house had been hit with a
rocket or mortar and that his mother was dead. He fled Mogadishu a short while later
with money given to him by relatives.174
A man named Mohammed told Human Rights Watch that he, his father, and his
uncle were all approached by men who identified them as Al-Shabaab fighters and
pressured into joining them. He said he thought his father and uncle were especially
targeted because they had military and police experience, respectively, in their
younger days. All of the men rebuffed these attempts at recruitment, and all then
received several phone calls where the callers threatened to kill them if they did not
reconsider. One day in August 2008 Mohammed heard a series of gunshots and
raced over to his father’s house to find him lying dead in a pool of blood along with
his uncle and brother. He fled Mogadishu the next day.175
Targeted Killings and Death Threats
Insurgent forces have both threatened and carried out dozens of assassinations
against perceived TFG collaborators and other Somali civilians. These abuses have
increased in frequency in 2008. Their victims have included civilian TFG officials;
police officers; Somalis working at menial jobs that involve contact with TFG offices
or ENDF soldiers; civil society activists; journalists; cinema owners; and people from
many other walks of life. Under no circumstances are any of these categories of
people, including civilian TFG officials not directly taking part in armed hostilities,
legitimate military targets under international humanitarian law.176
174
Human Rights Watch interview, (location withheld), July 11, 2008.
175
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, October 8, 2008.
176
See ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, rule 6, citing Protocol I, art. 13.
“So Much to Fear” 70
Responsibility for some death threats and killings, particularly those targeting local
activists and journalists, may lie with individuals linked to the TFG or be purely
criminal in motivation. Human Rights Watch believes, however, that Al-Shabaab and
other insurgent groups are responsible for a large majority of the targeted killings
and death threats that have taken place in Somalia in 2008. Targeted attacks on civil
society and humanitarian workers are discussed below.177
Civil society activists and analysts interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that
many targeted killings adhere to a similar pattern: the victim will receive two or three
warnings either in person, by phone, or by text message.178 These either offer their
recipients a chance to desist from doing whatever they stand accused of or simply
advise them to prepare for death. The same pattern emerges from more than a dozen
specific cases documented by Human Rights Watch through interviews with victims
or their relatives.
Many of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch involved people who
publicly disagreed with or simply failed to express sufficient enthusiasm for
insurgent goals and tactics. As one young shop owner from Mogadishu complained
to Human Rights Watch, “They will tell you—you have to agree with our ideas and to
help us get rid of the Ethiopians—and if you disagree they can kill you.”179
Human Rights Watch interviewed one young religious scholar who was forced to flee
Mogadishu after speaking out against Al-Shabaab during a lecture he gave at a
mosque in May 2008. His lecture, given to a small group of students he believed he
could trust, denounced what he called Al-Shabaab’s “politicization” of religion.
“Islam is about peace,” he explained to Human Rights Watch. “I felt it right as a
Muslim and also as a Somali to speak out against this vice—people who are using
religion as a shield to cover their actions.”
177
See below, Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.
178
A media report on the same phenomenon quoted a Somali journalist as saying that, “When the phone’s screen says ‘private
number,’ most people don’t answer…It means someone is calling to assassinate you.” Paul Salopek, “In Somalia, Death Often
a Cell Phone Call Away: Threats, Violence Turning Mogadishu in to Ghost Town,” Chicago Tribune, October 28, 2007.
179
Human Rights Watch interview, Hargeisa, July 11, 2008.
71 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The next day, a student came to tell the scholar that one of the young men who
attended the lecture had informed local Al-Shabaab fighters about it and that those
fighters now intended to kill him. Because of the warning he did not attend the dugsi
[Islamic school] where he normally teaches the next morning, when a group of
masked, armed men arrived there demanding to know where they could find him. He
fled Mogadishu several days later and has not returned.180
In some cases insurgents have targeted people for threats and killings because of
their participation in the Djibouti peace process or other reconciliation efforts, which
Al-Shabaab and some other insurgent groups reject. One activist received a text
message while he was in Djibouti that denounced his participation in the process
and threatened that he would be killed if he returned to Mogadishu. He was able to
trace the threat back to some Al-Shabaab members based near Bakara market in
Mogadishu and when he returned to the city he sent a representative to meet with
them and ask them to reconsider their threats. “They rejected it,” he said to Human
Rights Watch. “They said, ‘We have already agreed that we do not want you here. If
you decide to stay it is up to you.’” He has not been back to Mogadishu since then.181
In November 2007 TFG officials and some Hawiye clan elders from Mogadishu held
meetings in Baidoa aimed at promoting reconciliation prior to the TFG’s appointment
of Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein the following month. A clan elder who
attended the meetings in Baidoa said that he had received several threatening
phone calls in the days running up to the discussions, warning him not to attend. As
he traveled in a convoy back to Mogadishu following the meetings, a roadside bomb
detonated as the car driving in front of his own passed alongside it:
We felt an explosion and the whole car went up. The driver who was
sitting to my side was wounded and fell on top of me. Although the
body of the car was destroyed the engine was working and the car
continued moving. I jumped out of the car and it continued moving by
itself…All of us were bleeding a little bit from our ears.
180
Human Rights Watch interview, Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
181
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, June 19, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 72
According to media reports, at least five people died in the attack.182 Later that night
he received a phone call from an anonymous caller. The man at the other end of the
line said, “You survived, but the second time you won’t.”183 Shortly thereafter he fled
Mogadishu.
On October 7, 2008, a traditional elder named Da’ar Hersi Hoshow was shot and
killed in Beletweyne one day after he publicly denounced Al-Shaabab threats to aid
workers (discussed below).184 No group claimed responsibility for the killing but
Dahir’s murder was reportedly the sixth assassination of a community leader
between May and October 2008 who had recently spoken out against Al-Shabaab.185
Other victims of apparent insurgent attacks interviewed by Human Rights Watch
believe they were targeted because they worked in one way or another with TFG
institutions. Unidentified armed men gunned down a former police officer outside of
his home in late 2007. He spent the better part of a year recovering from his wounds.
Just as he was nearly ready to return to work in early 2008, he began receiving
threatening phone calls warning that he would be killed if he returned to work. He
ultimately fled the country.186 A member of the TFG parliament told Human Rights
Watch that he fled Somalia and abandoned his seat in parliament because he had
begun receiving frequent death threats by phone. “They would call and say, you are
Mr. [name withheld]. We are going to kill you…we will kill you if you are going to be
supporting the government.”187
Not all of those targeted for threats and killings are linked in any meaningful way to
one of the parties to the conflict in Somalia. Some of the attacks carried out by Al-
Shabaab and other insurgent groups suggest a broad range of the Somali public
being perceived as enemies and targets.
182
See Garowe Online, “5 civilians killed by landmine and subsequent gunfire,” November 18, 2007,
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_5_civilians_killed_by_landmine_and_subsequent_gunf
ire_printer.shtml (accessed November 10, 2008).
183
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, April 30, 2008.
184
See below, Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists.
185
Documents on file with Human Rights Watch.
186
Human Rights Watch interview with A.Q., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, July 3, 2008.
187
Human Rights Watch interview with M.G., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 2, 2008.
73 Human Rights Watch December 2008
For example, Human Rights Watch interviewed one person who was shot and nearly
killed simply for performing sporadic low-paid work for TFG offices. “I was not
working for the government,” he explained, “but I used to go and do manual jobs
just to get a wage—usually messenger service work for them, from one office to the
other.” In January 2008 a group of men arrived at his home. They identified
themselves as members of Al-Shabaab and not finding him present warned his wife
that he should find another way to make a living. “They said, ‘If your husband does
not stop supporting the government, we are going to kill him,’” she recalled.
A second warning came just as the first, and several days after that second warning
the part-time messenger was gunned down outside of his home as he returned from
work in the evening. “As I was about to enter the gate, I was shot at close range,” he
said. “I ran away, and a second bullet hit me…I ran some distance and collapsed.”
He was shot in the right wrist and the right calf, but he survived. He and his family
fled the city after he recovered from his wounds in the hospital.188
Another man interviewed by Human Rights Watch was shot several times in his own
home because he worked for a TFG media outlet.189 Other sections of this report
describe other examples of ordinary people, humanitarian workers, and activists
who have faced similar threats.190
In addition to these abuses, administrations set up by insurgent groups linked to Al-
Shabaab have abused civilians through the application of harsh penalties in the
context of their interpretation of shari’a law. In October 2008 an Al-Shabaab-
controlled administration in Kismayo organized a public execution of a young girl
who had reportedly gone to the authorities to file charges of rape against three men.
The authorities in turn accused her of adultery, and had her publicly stoned to death
inside a crowded stadium.191
188
Human Rights Watch interview with M.B., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
189
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, July 20, 2008.
190
See above, Civilian Deaths and the Destruction of Mogadishu and see below, Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil
Society Activists.
191
Amnesty International, “Girl Stoned Was a Child of 13,” October 31, 2008, http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-
releases/somalia-girl-stoned-was-child-13-20081031 (accessed November 20, 2008).
“So Much to Fear” 74
Attacks on Humanitarian Workers and Civil Society Activists
In 2008 an unprecedented wave of attacks against humanitarian workers and civil
society activists has had a devastating impact in Somalia. Between January and the
middle of November, 29 humanitarian workers were reportedly killed in Somalia and
another 12 were injured in attacks.192 At least 19 more were kidnapped during the
same period.193 In addition, more than a dozen Somali human rights activists,
community leaders, and other members of civil society were murdered during the
same period. And the example of those attacks has driven many others to flee the
country after they received death threats themselves.
The Somalis who have been murdered in these attacks came from different walks of
life. Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of UNDP’s Somalia office, was gunned down
outside of a mosque in Mogadishu on July 6. Abdikadir Yusuf Kariye, the director of
an orphanage serving displaced people in Afgooye, was killed in his home by
unidentified gunmen on August 6. Mohammed Hassan Kulmiye, a peace activist with
the Centre for Research and Development, was shot dead in his office in Beletweyne
on June 22. A recent report by Amnesty International on these killings contains a full
description of how each of the 40 Somali activists, humanitarian workers, and other
people connected to civil society were killed in the first 10 months of 2008.194
These killings are not simply a byproduct of the broader chaos that has engulfed
Somalia. The study carried out by Amnesty International examined 46 separate cases
in which humanitarian workers and members of Somali civil society were reported to
have been killed in 2008. It concluded that the majority of these deaths were
192
Report by the Secretary General on the Situation in Somalia, November 17, 2008, United Nations S/2008/709, par. 71;
Statement by 52 NGOs on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Somalia, October 6, 2008,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-7K6LBP?OpenDocument (accessed October 23, 2008). Some reports put
the number of humanitarian workers killed as high as 33. Report on file with Human Rights Watch.
193
Report on file with Human Rights Watch.
194
Amnesty International, “Fatal Insecurity: Attacks on aid workers and rights defenders in Somalia,” AI Index: AFR
52/016/2008, November 6, 2008, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/millions-risk-somalia-attacks-aid-
workers-escalate-20081106 (accessed November 10, 2008).
75 Human Rights Watch December 2008
targeted killings.195 Human Rights Watch’s own research reaches the same
conclusion.
Threats on All Sides
Many of the attacks against civil society activists and humanitarian workers have
been carried out by Al-Shabaab and other insurgent groups. In the view of the groups
that have carried out those killings, the common thread that binds Somali civil
society and international humanitarian relief agencies is a suspicion that all of them
are somehow in league with Western government efforts backing the TFG or
supporting US government counterterrorism efforts.
These insinuations have been clearly articulated by some insurgents themselves.
After the July murder of local UNDP head Osman Ali Ahmed, a group called Jabhad
Islaamiya claimed responsibility for the attack. In a radio interview shortly afterwards,
a spokesman for the group stated that the killing was justified because of the
financial and material support that UNDP provides to bolster the TFG police force.
“The army of Abdullahi Yusuf is helped financially by the UNDP,” the spokesman
said. “First order of business is to expel from the country the UNDP.” He went on to
claim that many nongovernmental organizations are “spies” who are “behind the
problems in the country.” 196
The same suspicion has affected international humanitarian organizations, with
some insurgent groups believing them to be engaged in espionage on behalf of the
United States.197 In October armed men raided, searched, and shut down several
offices of CARE and the International Medical Corps that had been operating in Bay
and Bakool regions, the stronghold of Al-Shabaab leader Muktar Robow.198
Even where this perception does not lead directly to violence, it often imposes
severe restrictions on the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate. The
195
Ibid., p. 1.
196
Transcript on file with Human Rights Watch.
197
In 2008 the US launched two airstrikes against Al-Shabaab.
198
Sheikh Robow confirmed responsibility for the closure of the CARE and IMC offices in a media interview. See “Somali
insurgents jeopardize aid operations,” Associated Press, October 5, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 76
perception that humanitarian aid workers are committed to neutrality is critical to the
ability of independent humanitarian organizations to operate in the midst of armed
conflict.199 Civil society members have also been subject to attack, like others, for
expressing support for the Djibouti peace process.
The suspicion and hostility of some insurgent groups is possibly the single greatest
threat facing activists and humanitarian workers in their day-to-day work. But many
Somali activists say that the danger from multiple directions is what has pushed
their situation from difficult to untenable. And those targeted often have no way of
knowing exactly where the threats against them originate.
Civil society activists in Somalia have long had to find ways to survive and work in a
violent and lawless environment. But even the coping strategies that allowed
activists to carry on during more than a decade and a half without a central
government provide no security in the current context. In this, the plight of activists
who have fled Somalia mirrors that of the more than one million Somalis displaced
by the ongoing conflict, who are being hammered from all sides at once with
nowhere to turn for protection.
All of the Somali civil society activists interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they
felt that the dangers facing them had a variety of sources. And many said that they
had no real way of knowing precisely whom they had to placate or avoid to protect
their lives. Some worried that individuals would use the wave of threats and killings
as cover to settle old scores. Others expressed concern that TFG officials who have
regularly harassed and arbitrarily detained journalists and other critics might do the
same.200
It is this uncertainty that has driven many activists to flee the country—including
people who had found a way to live and work in Somalia throughout the turbulent
199
Neutrality is one of the seven fundamental principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The other
principles are humanity, impartiality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. Many international humanitarian
non-governmental organizations have voluntarily ascribed to these principles under a Code of Conduct. See Denise Plattner,
“ICRC neutrality and neutrality in humanitarian assistance,” International Review of the Red Cross, no.311, pp. 161-179; and
Jean Pictet, “The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross: Commentary” (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1979).
200
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali civil society activists, Nairobi, Hargeisa, and Djibouti, July and September 2008.
77 Human Rights Watch December 2008
period since 1991. One activist who fled Somalia in July 2008 told Human Rights
Watch:
I have been in Mogadishu since 1987. Maybe sometimes I would move
from the country for other business but mostly I have been there and I
have been a witness to all of what has happened since then. What is
happening right now is the worst since the collapse of the former
regime. Before, people at least knew where danger was coming
from.201
As another human rights activist, who fled Somalia in mid-2008 after receiving
several death threats, put it, “We are in the middle of nowhere—you don’t know who
will attack you, who will kill you. If I knew the government would not kill me I could
stay safe in government-controlled areas—but the government can also kill you.”202
On July 2, 2008, a prominent businessman from Bakara market, Abdikarim Sheikh
Ibrahim, was shot and killed in the streets of Mogadishu. He had been the chairman
of a committee set up to financially support several orphanages. Hours before he
was killed, armed men reportedly broke into his office and stole his computer. Some
of his friends and colleagues told Human Rights Watch that despite their best efforts
they had been unable to determine who was responsible for the killing. Said one
Bakara market businessman who knew Ibrahim well, “The three sides to the conflict
are all threats.”203
Impact of the Attacks
Attacks, kidnappings, and threats targeting civil society and humanitarian workers
have severely restricted the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver
assistance to populations in need. Somalia is now the most dangerous place in the
world for humanitarian workers.204
201
Human Rights Watch interview with S.B., Hargeisa, July 10, 2008.
202
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, June 19, 2008.
203
Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, July 6, 2008.
204
Menkhaus, Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare, p.5.
“So Much to Fear” 78
The impact of these attacks goes far beyond the affected workers or their
organizations. Somalia is facing a deepening humanitarian crisis that is exacerbated
by violence targeted at humanitarian workers who are trying to help populations in
need.
By October 2008 more than 3.25 million Somalis were in need of emergency
assistance—roughly 40 percent of the population of south-central Somalia—and
many were not receiving it.205 The humanitarian situation has been exacerbated by
conflict, hyperinflation, drought, and other factors—and now by direct attacks on
humanitarian workers. These attacks provide a stark illustration of both the brutality
of the conflict in Somalia and the extent to which impunity for rampant human rights
abuses has come to make progress almost impossible on any front—even in
providing basic assistance to the most vulnerable members of Somali society.
In November 2008 the ICRC warned of a “major deterioration of the humanitarian
situation,” which was dire to begin with.206 As of October 2008 one in six children in
south-central Somalia was acutely malnourished and this figure continued to
steadily increase. By October 2008 overall rates of acute malnutrition in rural areas
had passed the emergency threshold of 15 percent.207 Conditions in the sprawling
IDP camps around Afgooye have been appalling for the poorest of the displaced
people there; one journalist who visited the area in October 2008 reported that over
400 women with malnourished babies lined up outside just one local clinic every
day.208
Attacks and threats against civil society activists have also deprived Somalia of an
untold number of people whose talents should have been an essential part of any
eventual effort to rebuild the country. Beyond those killed are many others who have
fled the country, uncertain as to how and when they will be able to return.
205
UN News Center, “Ongoing Violence uproots another 5,500 people in Somali capital, says UN,” October 17, 2008. There are
no accurate census figures for the total population of Somalia and all estimates are a subject of intense debate. Most
commonly cited estimates, however, put the population of south-central Somalia (excluding Somaliland and Puntland) at just
over 6 million.
206
ICRC, “Somalia: ICRC provides relief for half a million people faced by life-threatening food shortages,” November 11, 2008.
207
See Cindy Holleman, “Conflict, Economic Crisis and Drought: a Humanitarian Emergency Out of Control,” Humanitarian
Exchange Magazine, Issue 40, October 2008, http://www.odihpn.org/report.asp?id=2944 (accessed October 20, 2008).
208
Jeffrey Gettleman, “With Focus on Pirates, Somalis on Land Waste Away in the Shadows,” New York Times, October 10, 2008.
79 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Abuses of Displaced People and Refugees
More than 1.1 million Somalis are internally displaced and each month thousands
have sought asylum abroad in 2008. But for many, the decision to flee their homes
represents only the beginning of a terrible ordeal. Hundreds of thousands of
Mogadishu residents have fled the city to live in camps along the road to Afgooye
only to find that the brutality they fled has followed them there. And those who
choose to risk traveling further to seek asylum abroad must run a deadly gauntlet of
abusive freelance militias, soldiers, police, and human smugglers.
Abuses in the Afgooye Corridor
Many of the 870,000 Somalis who fled Mogadishu have ended up in sprawling,
makeshift IDP settlements along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road. The war in Mogadishu
has expanded to follow them there, where the same warring parties have been
responsible for many of the same patterns of abuse. One man who fled to the IDP
camps in April 2008 told Human Rights Watch:
There was so much to fear there. The fighting took root again in the
camp. Occasionally the wadaadada [insurgents] will cover and hide
within the people and target the government soldiers and Ethiopian
vehicles moving along the main road just next to the camp. The
government [soldiers] and the Ethiopians could trace them and come
into the camp and look for persons who have sustained injuries. Any
injured person they could claim was part of the wadaadada and arrest
him.209
Another man who fled Mogadishu after nearly being caught in a roadside bomb
attack told Human Rights Watch that when he arrived at the camps in early 2008
there was no fighting in his immediate vicinity. But within a few months, he said,
“The muqaawama started attacking guerilla-style the government forces in the area.
Also they were planting mines along the major tarmac highway. In response,
209
Human Rights Watch interview with A.B., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 80
Ethiopian and government forces will spray bullets arbitrarily.”210 He fled the Afgooye
corridor just as he had fled Mogadishu, after a bloody firefight erupted several
hundred meters from his home when an ENDF convoy was ambushed. Several other
examples of conflict-related abuses in Afgooye are described in previous sections of
this report.211
International aid organizations seeking to deliver aid to the IDP populations around
Afgooye have an extremely difficult task. One very serious challenge is that the TFG
has no capacity to provide security for aid distributions in Afgooye—and some TFG
officials have in the past been hostile to the idea of distributing assistance there at
all.212 As a result, agencies are forced to rely on local gatekeepers who can help carry
out and guarantee the security of those distributions.213 But the unaccountable
militias of those gatekeepers have been implicated in serious abuses against the
very people whose access to assistance they are meant to help secure.
Human Rights Watch interviewed one young woman named Samira who made a
living selling qat while living in the camps along the Afgooye road. One day in March
2008 there was a distribution of non-food items nearby. A close friend of hers
offered to go and collect both of their rations if she remained behind to sell both of
their qat:
Soon I heard gunshots—I thought nothing of it—gunshots were as
common as banging doors for us. But five minutes later a boy came
running to me and asked, “Who is Samira? Who is Samira?” He said,
“Your friend has been shot and she is dead.”
She rushed to the scene and found her friend lying in a pool of blood, with her father
and husband kneeling beside her. Onlookers told Samira that her friend had gotten
210
Human Rights Watch interview with I.B., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, June 28, 2008.
211
See above, Human Rights Abuses by Transitional Federal Government forces; Laws of War and Human Rights Violations by
Ethiopian Military Forces.
212
In August 2007 then Mogadishu mayor Mohammed Dheere publicly accused organizations providing humanitarian relief to
displaced people around Afgooye of feeding “terrorists.” “Somalia: Displaced people branded ‘terrorists’ by Mogadishu
mayor,” IRIN, August 22, 2007, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=73862 (accessed October 23, 2008).
213
Human Rights Watch interviews with humanitarian workers, Nairobi, September 2008.
81 Human Rights Watch December 2008
into a heated argument with a militiaman guarding the food distribution site after the
man refused to allow her to enter because she was carrying two different UNHCR
ration cards—her own and Samira’s. The man became enraged and shot her in the
stomach. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Her baby was already lost
when Samira found her, and she died in a Mogadishu hospital 18 days later.214
Violence along the Roads
The chaos in Somalia drove more than 80,000 Somalis to seek refuge in neighboring
countries between January and September 2008. More than 45,000 Somali refugees
crossed the border into Kenya and made their way to the refugee camps near Dadaab
during that period.215 UNHCR estimates that more than 23,000 Somali refugees
crossed the Gulf of Aden into Yemen during the first nine months of 2008.216
These numbers are striking in and of themselves. But the figures are even more
remarkable given the threats would-be refugees face along their way. Human Rights
Watch interviewed refugees who were raped, robbed, beaten, imprisoned, or
tortured while trying to reach the country’s borders. Some saw their traveling
companions murdered on the road.
The route south from Mogadishu towards Kenya is especially perilous.217 Freelance
militias prey upon minivans and trucks that are often loaded with refugees and their
remaining possessions. Human Rights Watch interviewed several Somali refugees in
214
Human Rights Watch interview with H.E., Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, July 1, 2008.
215
According to UNHCR, 80,000 new Somali refugees were registered in Dadaab between January 2007 and the end of October
2008—18,000 in 2007 and 50,000 in the first 10 months of 2008. As of November 2008 at least 8,000 additional refugees were
in the camps but had not yet been registered. By the beginning of November 2008 an average of more than 250 new refugees
were arriving in the camps every day. Dadaab currently houses the largest concentration of refugees in the world. Human Rights
Watch interviews with UNHCR officials, Dadaab, October 2008.
216
According to figures provided to Human Rights Watch by UNHCR, 23,098 Somali refugees arrived in Yemen between January
1 and September 31, 2008. The total number of refugees who arrived in Yemen by boat during that period was estimated at
33,596 and most of the non-Somalia arrivals were from Ethiopia. Figures on file with Human Rights Watch. These figures should
be treated with some caution: anecdotal evidence indicates that many Ethiopian refugees—especially Ethiopian Somalis—
falsely claim to be from Somalia when they arrive in Yemen in order to secure prima facie refugee status which is granted to all
Somali nationals seeking asylum in Yemen. As a result the proportion of Somali refugees in the total figure may be
overestimated to some degree.
217
Amnesty International also documented numerous cases of violent attacks on refugees on the road between Jowhar and
Beletweyne. Amnesty International, Routinely Targeted: Attacks on Civilians in Somalia, AI Index AFR 52/006/2008, May 6,
2008, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/routine-killings-civilians-somalia-20080506 (accessed October
23, 2008).
“So Much to Fear” 82
Kenya who were robbed by these militias as they made the journey south. In some
cases militias simply required each traveler to pay a specific amount of money and
then allowed them to go along their way. But in other cases militiamen assaulted or
raped their victims and stripped them of all of their possessions.
One married couple told Human Rights Watch that in May 2008 they were
intercepted by a group of armed militiamen between the towns of Belethawa and
Garisley while traveling to the border town of Dhobley.218 The husband told Human
Rights Watch:
I together with the rest of the passengers was robbed of all my
personal belongings and money. I asked them, “Why are you doing
this?” and one of them picked up some soil and said, “This is our soil.
No one else can rule us here.” They beat some men who tried not to
give them their mattresses, watches and the good shirts they were
wearing. They beat them with guns and sticks. One beat my wife in her
chest with the butt of a gun because she refused to give up our
mattress, saying she wanted to use it for our children.219
Highwaymen linked to local clan militias have raped many Somali women along the
roads south towards the Kenyan border. One 23-year-old woman told Human Rights
Watch that she was robbed and raped while traveling south past Kismayo near a
place called Kunyaboro:
Militamen waylaid our car. They stopped our driver forcefully by use of
gunshots and threatened to kill him if he did not stop. He complied.
They ransacked all of the passengers. There were only three [young]
women out of the fourteen on board—the rest were all children and
older people. All three of us were raped. They took us to some bushes
near the highway. The militiamen were five in number. Two kept watch
218
Dhobley sits three kilometers from the Kenya-Somalia border and 21 kilometers from the first town on the Kenyan side, Liboi.
Dhobley is the primary crossing point for the vast majority (95 percent +) of refugees entering Kenya from Somalia. Human
Rights Watch interviews with UNHCR officials and NGOs working in the border areas, Dadaab and Nairobi, October 2008.
219
Human Rights Watch interview with H.W., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 29, 2008.
83 Human Rights Watch December 2008
and forced the driver not to go anywhere, while three of the butchers
took us to a nearby thicket and raped us. Each of them went for one of
us.
I did not suffer too much bodily harm other than kicks and blows and
slaps. I gave in because I heard stories of girls who tried to resist being
frightened by having bullets shot between their legs or by other ways.
From there we were brought back to the car. They took our personal
belongings and disappeared into the bush.
She was two months pregnant at the time of the rape—three months later she
believed that her pregnancy had been unaffected by the ordeal.220
Human Rights Watch interviewed other refugees who were robbed while fleeing in
the opposite direction, northwest towards Somaliland and Djibouti. In addition,
Human Rights Watch encountered three different young men from Mogadishu who
said that they were arrested in Garowe, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of
Puntland in northern Somalia. Each of them said that they were questioned
repeatedly by Puntland government security officials; one said that his interrogators
repeatedly accused him of being on his way to Eritrea to receive training and
weapons from the ARS-Asmara. Two of the young men said that they were beaten
during the course of these interrogations.221 Each was freed after several weeks in
detention when they were brought before a judge who ordered their immediate
release.222
Leaving Somalia
Somali asylum seekers who reach their country’s borders or the port of Bosasso still
have daunting obstacles to surmount. Kenya’s border has been closed since January
3, 2007. Once refugees have reached the three camps surrounding the town of
Dadaab they seek registration by UNHCR. Once they have been registered they are
220
Human Rights Watch interview with F.W., Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya, June 30, 2008.
221
Human Rights Watch interviews, Hargeisa, Kenya, July 11, 2008.
222
Human Rights Watch interviews, Hargeisa, Kenya, July 11, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 84
not at risk of deportation. However, the border closure has meant that the UNHCR
transit camp at Liboi—just across the border from the Somali town of Dhobley, the
most popular point of crossing for Somali refugees—has been closed since January 3
(except for six weeks between March 15, 2008 and early May 2008). Refugees are left
to their own devices to find a way to traverse the 85 kilometers of desolate brush
between the border and the camps without being caught by the Kenyan police.
Human Rights Watch interviewed refugees in Dadaab who traveled from the border
to the camps by foot, many moving only at night or away from main roads to avoid
detection by the Kenyan police. Others were able to raise funds to engage the
services of smugglers who transported them in vans across the border and then to
the camps. Some were arrested by Kenyan police along the way but eventually
released—in some cases after paying a bribe to the police who arrested them.223
Some of those who could not or would not pay the bribes demanded were deported
in violation of the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of
refugees to countries where persecution threatens their lives or freedom.224
Once in Dadaab, refugees must contend with the same problems affecting the
camps’ other 220,000 refugees.225 The camps are currently the largest concentration
of refugees in the world.226 They are filled well beyond capacity and are unable to
provide adequate resources to existing refugees.227 New arrivals must sometimes
wait weeks to be registered and be eligible to receive food assistance. Many cannot
access the registration system at all. Violent crime, sexual violence in particular, are
rampant in the camps.228
223
Human Rights Watch interviews with Somali refugees, Dadaab refugee camps, Kenya July 2008.
224
Convention relating to the status of refugees, 198 U.N.T.S. 150, entered into force April 22, 1954, Art. 33.
225
According to UNHCR statistics, the total population of the Ifo, Dagahaley, and Hagadera refugee camps around Dadaab
exceeded 220, 000 as of October 30, 2008. Of the total, 96.2 percent were refugees from Somalia. This did not include a
backlog of several thousand refugees who had not yet been registered. An average of over 5,000 new refugees has been
arriving in the camps each month in 2008. In September and October that figure increased to roughly 6,900 per month. Figures
on file with Human Rights Watch.
226
Chad has a higher population of refugees than Kenya but it is scattered across a wide area and numerous different camps;
the three camps around Dadaab are close to one another and managed as a single entity.
227
In mid-2008 UNHCR began delicate negotiations with the Kenyan authorities with a view to securing new land to expand the
camps.
228
Human Rights Watch interviews with refugees, women’s rights activist, Ifo and Dagahaley refugee camps, July 2008.
85 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Daunting as these challenges are, they pale in comparison to the risks taken on by
Somalis attempting to seek refuge in Yemen. Yemeni authorities accord prima facie
refugee status to all Somalis who arrive there but the journey itself is perilous.229
Most cross the Gulf of Aden with the assistance of smugglers based out of the port of
Bosasso in Puntland. According to estimates by UNHCR officials, 261 Somalis died
between January and September 2008 while attempting the crossing.230 Some boats
have capsized, drowning many of their passengers.231 In other cases, smugglers have
forced refugees off the boats and into the sea rather than risk capture themselves. In
September, 52 Somali refugees perished when smugglers abandoned them at sea
aboard a broken-down ship without food or water.232 In the second week of October
2008, smugglers forced some 150 Somali refugees overboard a full five kilometers
from the coast. Only 47 managed to swim to shore; the others were believed to have
drowned.233 And at the beginning of November another 40 people drowned when
smugglers forced them overboard in deep water off the coast.234
229
For a detailed account of the perils facing those who make the crossing see Médecins Sans Frontières, No Choice: Somali
and Ethiopian Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants Crossing the Gulf of Aden,” MSF Report, June 2008,
http://www.msf.org.uk/UploadedFiles/no_choicerefugees_yemen_200806192148.pdf (accessed October 24, 2008).
230
Figures on file with Human Rights Watch. The true numbers may be considerably higher. Some of those who are lost at sea
may never be reported to UNHCR, and some Yemenis living along the coast have reportedly buried many dead refugees who
wash up along the beaches without reporting this to the authorities. Human Rights Watch email correspondence with
journalists working in Yemen, October 19, 2008.
231
In September 2008 a boat carrying refugees capsized in the Gulf; at least 40 people are believed to have drowned. UNHCR
figures on file with Human Rights Watch.
232
The ship was left at sea for 18 days before eventually being carried to shore by the current. See UNHCR, “Fifty-two Somalis
die after being left adrift for 18 days by smugglers in Gulf of Aden,” September 29, 2008,
http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/48e0c8df4.html (accessed October 23, 2008).
233
See BBC News Online, “Migrants ‘feared dead’ off Yemen,” October 10, 2008,
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7663318.stm (accessed October 23, 2008).
234
UNHCR, “Dozens dead or missing in latest Gulf of Aden tragedy,” November 4, 2008,
http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/491039774.html (accessed November 11, 2008).
“So Much to Fear” 86
The Role of International Actors in Somalia
There are at least two distinct and important layers to the crisis in Somalia: the
internal dynamics that are directly responsible for driving the conflict forward and
the exacerbation of those dynamics by external actors. Foreign states and interstate
organizations have played a central role in Somalia during the past two decades and
in some cases that role has been destructive.
Since the collapse of Somalia’s last government in 1991 the international community
has veered between intense engagement with and complete neglect of the country’s
problems. From 1992 to 1995 a massive UN peacekeeping operation, UNOSOM,
attempted to restore peace and secure badly-needed humanitarian relief to
Somalia.235 The intervention ended in total failure, brought on in part by the killing of
18 US Rangers in the streets of Mogadishu in 1993.236
UNOSOM’s example has left many international actors with a profound
unwillingness to re-engage deeply with Somalia in the years since then. The UN Arms
embargo on Somalia, in place since 1992, has been almost entirely ineffectual and
no real effort has been made at enforcing it.237 For the better part of a decade most
international actors went no further than sponsoring a seemingly endless series of
peace conferences. The last negotiations in 2004 produced the TFG, which received
little international support until the Islamic Courts Union began consolidating their
control, triggering Ethiopia’s 2006 intervention.
Since the end of 2006, the nature and scope of international involvement in Somalia
has changed greatly, but has not had benign effects. Ethiopia is now a central party
to the conflict triggered by its military intervention in support of the TFG. Eritrea
235
There were actually three separate missions-UNOSOM (The UN Mission in Somalia) I, which was quickly replaced by a US-
led Unified Task Force (UNITAF), which was in turn replaced by UNOSOM II.
236
The infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode led to the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia, which signaled the eventual
death-knell of the overall peacekeeping operation. At least several hundred Somali militiamen and civilians died in the battle in
October 1993 and 73 other US soldiers were injured.
237
Human Rights Watch interview with UN official, Nairobi, September 21, 2008. See also “Anatomy of a Sanctions Regime: A
Case Study of Failed Efforts to Effectively Implement Sanctions in Somalia,” Security Council Report, September 16, 2008.
87 Human Rights Watch December 2008
continues to back insurgent forces, reportedly providing arms and other supplies as
well as hosting some hard line leaders.238 The United States, which has long had
concerns over the presence of individuals with alleged terrorist connections in
Somalia, has seen its support for the Ethiopian intervention and intermittent air
strikes contributing to the violent collapse of order and the rise of Al-Shabaab in
south-central Somalia. While the calamitous effects of the conflict on civilians has
gone largely unremarked, the uncontained spread of Somalia’s chaos has gained
greater prominence in late 2008 due to increasing piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
In 2008 collective international engagement with Somalia has coalesced around the
Djibouti peace process, which has brought together moderate ARS leaders with TFG
officials and key international actors including Ethiopia.239 International support for
the Djibouti process has been broad, but limited political progress between the
parties has not translated into an effective ceasefire or end to attacks on civilians—in
large part because the most militarily powerful insurgent actors have rejected the
process altogether. While the agreements around the Djibouti process all envisage a
strong regional or international force to replace the Ethiopian military and provide
stability, memories of UNOSOM’s failed intervention loom large in the minds of
policymakers loathe to contribute forces to such a mission.
Ethiopia
The rise of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Mogadishu was the primary reason for
Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia in late 2006. Many analysts characterized
the decision to intervene as disastrous and ill-conceived although Ethiopia had
genuine concerns. Ethiopia and Somalia have a long history of mutual enmity and
the two countries fought a costly war in 1977 when Somalia’s military invaded
Ethiopia in a doomed attempt to annex what is now Ethiopia’s Somali Region.240
238
See below, Somalia’s Other Regional Neighbors.
239
See above, Background.
240
Ethiopia’s Somali Region is populated largely by ethnic Somalis and following independence many Somalia nationals
believed that the Horn of Africa’s entire ethnic Somali population—including those in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, should be
united under the flag of Somalia. Somalia was ultimately routed from Ethiopia’s Somali Region in 1978 by Ethiopian forces after
the Soviet Union withdrew its backing to Somalia and adopted Ethiopia as its primary ally in the Horn.
“So Much to Fear” 88
In 2006 some ICU leaders took actions and made statements that stoked Ethiopia’s
fears of what a resurgent and hostile Somalia could mean for its own stability.
Hardliners within the ICU declared war against Ethiopia. Some also publicly voiced
irredentist claims on Ethiopia’s Somali Region—the same claims used to justify
Somalia’s 1977 invasion. The ICU also courted the support of Ethiopia’s arch-foe
Eritrea, which has made a policy out of waging proxy wars against Ethiopia through
client rebel movements. All of this took place while Ethiopia was waging a brutal
counterinsurgency campaign at home against the ethnic Somali Ogaden National
Liberation Front—an armed group Ethiopia did not want enjoying the patronage of
any potential ICU-led government.
But irrespective of Ethiopia’s motives for intervention in Somalia, there is no
justification for the numerous violations of the laws of war and human rights abuses
committed by Ethiopian forces in the country.
Diplomatically, Ethiopia has also by and large failed to play a constructive role. The
Ethiopian government has more diplomatic leverage over Somalia’s TFG than any
other foreign power—most analysts believe that the TFG would crumble without the
backing of ENDF forces on the ground.241 In August 2008 Ethiopia made important
diplomatic efforts to mediate a dangerously widening political rift between TFG Prime
Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf.242 But Ethiopia has
applied no discernable pressure on TFG officials to rein in the abusive conduct of
their security forces and militia fighters. Instead, ENDF forces have themselves
committed serious human rights abuses in operations they have conducted
alongside those TFG forces.243
Ethiopian government officials have refused to investigate or respond in any
meaningful way to allegations of international human rights and humanitarian law
violations by ENDF forces. Instead, Ethiopian officials have dismissed and angrily
241
Human Rights Watch interviews with independent analysts and civil society activists, Nairobi and Hargeisa, July 2008.
242
Ethiopia called both men to Addis Ababa for mediation after a dispute over the Prime Minister’s sacking of Mogadishu
mayor Mohammed ‘Dheere’ caused the resignation of several cabinet ministers and a dramatic deterioration of relations
between the President and Prime Minister.
243
See above, Laws of War and Human Rights Violations by Ethiopian Military Forces.
89 Human Rights Watch December 2008
denied all such allegations of abuse, no matter how well documented.244 A
November 2008 communiqué from the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC to
Human Rights Watch stated that the government was “unaware of any specific
instance” where Ethiopian troops fired indiscriminately into civilian crowds or
indiscriminately fired mortars or “Katyusha” rockets (the latter being inherently
indiscriminate weapons unsuitable for use in urban environments).245 This mirrors
the Ethiopian government’s response to criticisms over its domestic human rights
record, including war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by ENDF forces
in Ethiopia’s own Somali and Gambella regions.
Somalia’s Other Regional Neighbors
The Eritrean government has viewed Somalia primarily as a convenient theater of
proxy war against Ethiopia.246 It provided training, arms, and other support to military
factions of the Islamic Courts Union prior to 2006 and initially played host to the
opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia in the wake of the ENDF’s
intervention in Somalia. But ultimately, Eritrea’s efforts to control the ARS and coerce
its leaders into rejecting the idea of a negotiated peace were a primary reason that
the mainstream core of the opposition alliance relocated to Djibouti in 2008.247
Eritrea continues to play host to a small breakaway faction of the ARS led by Sheikh
Hassan Dahir Aweys and has reportedly continued to provide weapons and funds to
244
For example, the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to Human Rights Watch’s August 2007 report on Somalia
with a statement that called the report “morally repugnant” and a “carefully framed attack on Ethiopia,” while denying all
allegations of ENDF abuse. Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Morally Repugnant—Human Rights Watch’s report on
Somalia,” A Week in the Horn, August 17, 2007,
http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_August_17_2007.htm (accessed October 27, 2008). When Amnesty
International reported in April 2008 that 21 people were killed by ENDF soldiers in a raid on a Mogadishu mosque, the
government did not investigate the incident but immediately dismissed the allegations as “unsubstantiated lies and
propaganda.” “Ethiopia Denies Amnesty Mosque Killing Allegations,” Reuters, April 24, 2008.
245
Communique on file with Human Rights Watch.
246
The Eritrean government hosts and materially supports a broad range of Ethiopian rebel groups including the Oromo
Liberation Front and the Ogadan National Liberation Front, both of which maintain armed forces in Eritrea along with the
residences of their top leadership. Eritrea has supported those groups, along with the ICU and then the ARS-Asmara, with the
primary aim of destabilizing Ethiopia. See International Crisis Group, Beyond the Fragile Peace Between Ethiopia and Eritrea:
Averting a New War, Africa Report No. . . . , http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5490&l=1 (accessed November 11,
2008).
247
Human Rights Watch interviews with ARS central committee members, Djibouti, July 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 90
abusive insurgent groups.248 One member of the ARS central committee in Djibouti
told Human Rights Watch that, “Eritrea will make a maximum effort to make the
[Djibouti peace] agreement fail.”249
The Djiboutian government has actively supported peace negotiations between the
TFG and opposition groups. It has hosted ARS leaders Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and
Hassan Sharif since the mainstream ARS left Asmara. Djibouti has also been the site
of the ongoing peace talks between TFG and ARS officials.
Kenya has played host to enormous numbers of Somali refugees since the collapse
of the Siyad Barre government in 1991, but as discussed above, the number of
Somali refugees in Kenya has increased dramatically in 2008.250 This influx of
refugees has occurred despite the Kenyan government’s closure of its border with
Somalia. The border closure has served as a serious impediment to would-be
refugees and rendered them more vulnerable to abuse at the hands of smugglers
and corrupt police.
The border closure is due in part to Kenya’s own security concerns regarding Somalia.
Memories of the August 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi and the 2002 attack
on an Israeli-owned resort near Mombasa have left Kenya fearful of the potential for
terrorist attacks originating in Somalia.251 Three terrorist suspects which the United
States accused the ICU of sheltering in Mogadishu in 2006 were wanted in
connection with those attacks.252 The refugee issue is also difficult politically in
Kenya, with many local communities and politicians increasingly unhappy about the
growing and seemingly permanent refugee presence in northern Kenya.
248
The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia said in its April 2008 report that “the monitoring group received information that the
Government of Eritrea continues to provide support to groups that oppose the Transitional Federal Government in the form of
arms and military training to fighters of the Shabaab” as well as to Kismayo-based warlord Barre Hiraale. See United Nations
Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution 1766 (2007), S/2008/274,
April 24, 2008, pp. 20-21.
249
Human Rights Watch interview with ARS central committee member, Djibouti, July 16, 2008.
250
For more on the situation in Dadaab see above, Abuses of Displaced People and Refugees.
251
Two hundred and nineteen people died in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in downtown Nairobi. The 2002 bombing of
the Paradise Hotel near Mombasa killed 13 hotel guests and wounded dozens more. A simultaneous attack using shoulder-
fired missiles was made on an Israeli airliner but the missiles failed to find their target.
252
Those were Faizul Abdallah Mohammed (a Comorian national); Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (a Kenyan national); and Abu Taha
Al-Sudani (A Sudanese national).
91 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The government of Yemen has also been host to tens of thousands of new refugees
in 2008, most of whom brave an extremely perilous crossing of the Gulf of Aden to
reach Yemeni beaches.253 In 2008 the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia reported that
it had “repeatedly received information” that weapons were being supplied to
Somalia from Yemeni government stocks, in violation of the UN arms embargo.254
Many Arab states have taken an interest in the crisis in Somalia. For instance, Saudi
Arabia has provided diplomatic support to the Djibouti peace process and has
reportedly indicated a willingness to help fund an eventual UN stabilization force if
conditions more conducive to a successful operation come about.255
African Union
The African Union has deployed a peacekeeping force to Somalia pursuant to UN
Security Council Resolution 1744.256 The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
has an authorized troop strength of 8,000 but has never come close to reaching that
number. As of October 2008 only 2,850 troops had been deployed, all of them from
Uganda and Burundi. Other African states have been reluctant to contribute troops to
the mission, at least partly due to the lingering memories of the United Nation’s
disastrous Chapter VII intervention in Somalia beginning in 1993. That hesitation has
only been reinforced by increasingly frequent insurgent attacks on AMISOM forces,
including a sustained barrage of attacks in September 2008.257
In comparison with other international military interventions, AMISOM’s mandate is
limited. It does not include the protection of civilians in Somalia. Instead it focuses
primarily on providing protection for TFG officials and infrastructure, contributing to
the secure delivery of humanitarian assistance, and the “re-establishment and
training” of Somali security forces.258 Because of its mandate and overall lack of
capacity, AMISOM’s activities have largely been limited to VIP protection, mainly for
253
See above, Abuses of Displaced People and Refugees.
254
UN monitoring group on Somalia report, para. 101.
255
Human Rights Watch interviews with diplomat and independent analysts, Nairobi, July 2008.
256
The UN Security Council passed resolution 1744 in February 2007. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1744 (2007),
S/RES/1744 (2007), http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/sc8960.doc.htm (accessed October 28, 2008).
257
See above, Civilian Deaths and the Destruction of Mogadishu.
258
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1744, para. 4.
“So Much to Fear” 92
TFG officials; protection of Mogadishu’s airport, seaport, and presidential villa; and
occasional patrols through parts of Mogadishu. This has led Al-Shabaab and other
insurgent groups to see AMISOM as a party to the conflict allied with the TFG.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has repeatedly stated that AMISOM or a
broader international force should play a more central and assertive role in providing
security in Somalia.259 Many analysts and diplomatic officials have expressed
concerns that a pull-out of Ethiopian forces without an adequate international
stabilization force would risk a TFG collapse and further civil strife.260
The agreement signed between ARS and TFG officials in Djibouti in October 2008
envisages an ENDF relocation away from conflict zones in Mogadishu, with AMISOM
forces maintaining security until a joint ARS-TFG police force is up and running.261 As
of the time of writing it is not clear whether AMISOM has the capacity to fulfill such
an ambitious mandate, especially given that Al-Shabaab and other hard-line groups
have not backed the agreement.
Intergovernmental Authority on Development
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is a regional
intergovernmental body that brings together Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia,
Sudan, and Uganda to cooperate in areas related to economic development as well
as regional peace and security. Eritrea joined IGAD in 1993 but suspended its
membership in 2007 due largely to its hostile relationship with Ethiopia.
In theory, IGAD provides an ideal mechanism to engage with the crisis in Somalia,
and the AU force on the ground in Mogadishu was originally conceived as a force
under the auspices of IGAD. In fact, IGAD has proved largely irrelevant on Somalia,
partly due to the internal tensions among its members. An IGAD meeting in October
259
See, e.g., Tsegaye Tadesse “Ethiopian troops to stay in Somalia, wait for AU,” Reuters, October 16, 2008,
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE49F0LU.html (accessed November 11, 2008); Human Rights Watch interviews with
UN and diplomatic officials, Nairobi, September 2008.
260
Human Rights Watch interviews with diplomatic officials and analysts; see also Menkhaus, “Somalia: A Country in Peril,” p.
7.
261
Modalities for the Implementation of Cessation of Armed Confrontation, Art. 6, signed October 26, 2008.
93 Human Rights Watch December 2008
2008 in Nairobi, however, brought together key regional governments with TFG and
US officials, and provided a forum for a public dressing down of TFG officials by
regional leaders angry at the TFG’s failure to establish itself or make any progress in
transitioning towards a permanent government. The meeting closed with a demand
that the TFG meet concrete benchmarks towards achieving transition to a permanent
government.
United Nations Institutions
The current UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Somalia,
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, played a leading role in cobbling the Djibouti peace
process together and has been the focal point of international support for the talks.
In April 2008 Ould-Abdallah was made chair of the International Contact Group,
which brings together and seeks to coordinate the policies of governments playing
direct roles in Somalia. He has consistently and very publicly called for an end to
human rights abuses on all sides, for accountability for past abuses, and for more
robust international engagement with the crisis in Somalia.
Despite his widely acknowledged dynamism, the political mandate of the SRSG and
some of his initiatives pose challenges for wider UN and NGO humanitarian
operations. The SRSG has advocated the use of donor funds to equip and pay TFG
police forces—who at best have behaved as an abusive front-line combat force and,
at worst, as armed criminals (see Direct Donor Support to TFG Security Forces, below).
Critics of the SRSG feel that this has blurred the perception of neutrality that
humanitarian organizations require to work safely and effectively in conflict
situations.
In 2008 the size of the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR) was increased from three to five staff, with a mandate to carry out
expanded human rights monitoring as well as capacity-building. However the
placement of the OHCHR staffers within the United Nations Political Office for
Somalia (UNPOS), headed by the SRSG, raises serious concerns about its ability to
maintain independence from the SRSG’s political agenda.
“So Much to Fear” 94
Human Rights Watch believes that the OHCHR presence should be expanded further,
should include sufficient numbers of staff with expertise in child protection and
sexual and gender-based violence, and that human rights monitoring should be
more of a priority. Wholly inadequate monitoring to date has contributed to weak
international pressure on TFG and Ethiopian officials to address and prevent human
rights and humanitarian law violations. While security remains a serious challenge,
the current staffing levels neither meet the scale and gravity of the human rights
crisis nor reflect the potential for investigative work that could be undertaken in
stable areas of Somalia and in refugee destinations.
United States
Under the administration of President George W. Bush, US policy in the Horn of Africa
has focused on combating the threat of terrorism and prioritizing strong relations
with the Ethiopian government, Washington’s only stable and reliable ally in the
Horn. This narrow policy framework has exacerbated serious human rights problems
across the region. Rethinking policy on Somalia means rethinking policy across the
wider Horn.
The United States has consistently failed to exert significant pressure on the
Ethiopian government to improve upon its dire human rights record—even though
Washington has considerable leverage as the aid-dependant country’s largest
bilateral donor and most important political backer.262 Some high-ranking US
officials have rejected all evidence of human rights violations to insist that they do
not know whether abuses in Ethiopia have taken place at all. In 2007, for example,
US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer publicly stated that
allegations of ongoing ENDF war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ethiopia’s
Somali region were “unsubstantiated,” rather than express concern about the
abuses to Ethiopian officials. 263
262
Total US development and humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia totals several hundred million dollars annually. A small
fraction of that total consists of military aid, mainly training for ENDF forces.
263
Peter Heinlein, “US Official Urges Greater African Involvement in Somalia Peace Efforts,” Voice of America, September 9,
2007. Human Rights Watch documented patterns of ENDF abuses in the Ogaden in detail. Human Rights Watch, Collective
Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State, June 2008.
95 Human Rights Watch December 2008
The same policy framework has driven United States policy in Somalia. As in Ethiopia,
Washington has turned a blind eye to ENDF laws of war violations in Somalia. US law
forbids the US government from providing assistance to foreign military units
involved in serious human rights abuses.264 But US officials have made no credible
effort to investigate and determine whether ENDF units implicated in abuses in
Somalia are past or potential beneficiaries of US military training and assistance to
Ethiopia.265
As the ICU consolidated control in Mogadishu, Washington came to view it as a
terrorist threat. In mid-2006 the United States sought the handover of several non-
Somali terrorist suspects who it believed were being sheltered by the ICU, but ICU
leaders reportedly ignored those requests. Washington responded by backing a
coalition of Somali warlords, each in command of personal militia forces, in a bid to
oust the ICU from Mogadishu. The warlords, who played upon US terrorism concerns
by branding themselves the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and
Counterterrorism,” were defeated by the ICU in mid-2006. 266
When Ethiopia decided to intervene militarily against the ICU and empower the TFG
later that year, the United States provided staunch political and material support.
Since then the United States has failed to publicly criticize the Ethiopian government
over the serious and widespread abuses carried out by ENDF forces in Somalia or
even acknowledge that those atrocities have taken place—the same approach
Washington has taken with regard to ENDF abuses, including war crimes and crimes
against humanity, inside of Ethiopia. High-level US officials have equally failed to
demand accountability for TFG officials who are responsible for those abuses or to
264
The so-called “Leahy law” prohibits US government assistance to units of foreign militaries that are implicated in “gross
violations of human rights” unless the governments concerned take appropriate action to address the abuses. The full text of
the law (separate versions for State Department and Defense Department assistance) is available online at:
http://leahy.senate.gov/issues/humanrights/law.html (accessed November 11, 2008).
265
The Leahy law does not prescribe specific actions State Department and Pentagon officials must undertake to gather the
information they need to determine whether specific military units have been implicated in gross human rights abuses. But the
law has little meaning unless policymakers undertake proactive measures to gather such information. In the case of Ethiopia,
US officials have repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that they simply have no credible information that units have been
involved in human rights abuse in or outside of Ethiopia, or that they do not know which ENDF units are stationed in a particular
place at a particular time. Ibid.
266
See International Crisis Group, Can the Somalia Crisis be Contained?, Africa Report No. 116, August 10, 2006,
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4333&l=1 (accessed October 23, 2008), pp. 11-14. Also see above,
Background.
“So Much to Fear” 96
support the conditioning of donor support for TFG security forces on improvements in
their appalling human rights record.
The US government continues to place central emphasis on efforts to eliminate so-
called high-value targets with alleged links to al Qaeda in Somalia. The United States
has carried out at least two airstrikes on Somali soil in 2008, both aimed at killing
prominent Al-Shabaab leaders. The first, in Dhobley in March, did not find its target
but injured several civilian residents of the town.267 Many analysts believe the target
of that raid was Hassan Turki, a prominent Al-Shabaab commander who controls
Dhobley as well as the surrounding countryside.268 The second, in Dhusamareb in
April, killed Aden Hashi Ayrow, a prominent Al-Shabaab military commander who
was on the US government terrorist list. The US government designated Al-Shabaab
itself a terrorist organization on March 19, 2008. 269
There is strong evidence that US policies in Somalia have aggravated the very
concerns about terrorism they seek to address. Because of Washington’s unreserved
backing of Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia, many Somalis see the United
States as complicit in the military occupation of their country and in the atrocities
they have suffered at the hands of ENDF forces. Washington has expressed strong
support for an international stabilization force to replace the ineffective AMISOM
contingent, but some insurgent leaders have sought to criticize the plan as an
attempt to channel more international support behind the TFG.270 The aftermath of
US airstrikes have left a more lasting impression in the minds of many Somalis than
US funding for humanitarian assistance.271
267
Jennifer Daskal and Leslie Lefkow, “Off Target: When missile strikes at alleged terrorists go awry,” Los Angeles Times, March
28, 2008.
268
Hassan Turki is a member of the Ogadeni clan and a former prominent member of the now-defunct Islamist group Al-Itihaad
Al-Islamiya. At the time of the attack, some US government officials claimed that the target of the attack was Saleh Ali Saleh
Nabhan, a Kenyan wanted in connection with the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan coastal resort.
269
US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, “Executive Order 13224— Blocking Property and Prohibiting
Transactions with Person who Commit, Threaten to Commit or Support Terrorism,”
http://www.treasury.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf (accessed October 23, 2008).
270
ARS-Djibouti opposition officials have offered cautious support for the idea of an international stabilization force, which is
envisaged in the Djibouti accord. However prominent Al-Shabaab leaders have rejected the idea along with the accord itself.
271
See, e.g., Daskal and Lefkow, “Off Target,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2008.See also Menkhaus, “Somalia: A Country in
Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” p.8: “In short, the average Mogadishu resident is shocked, desperate and furious with the violence
visited on the public by both the TFG and the insurgents. But most of their anger is currently directed at the group of actors they
hold immediately responsible for the disaster—Ethiopia, the TFG and the United States government.”
97 Human Rights Watch December 2008
European Commission
Most European states do not maintain ambassadors in Somalia and have channeled
much of their development assistance through the European Commission, the
executive branch of the European Union. The Commission’s policy in turn has been
driven by the notion that donor resources should be used to empower moderate TFG
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.
This largely reflects a broader trend that has seen western governments, donors, and
UN institutions frame policies around their hopes that Prime Minister Nur Hassan
Hussein would prove able to chart a more constructive course for the TFG than TFG
President Abdullahi Yusuf. Many donor representatives privately acknowledged to
Human Rights Watch that in doing so they are also seeking to marginalize President
Yusuf and the perceived hard liners around him.272 Donors and independent analysts
alike see Yusuf as being resistant to the Djibouti peace process and as being tied to
many of the worst abuses and failures of the TFG since the end of 2006.
This approach has, however, led to a disastrous effort by the European Commission
and other donor states to push for direct and unconditional financial support for TFG
security forces responsible for serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.
This policy is discussed in more detail in the Appendix below.
272
Human Rights Watch interviews, Nairobi, July and September 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 98
Appendix: Direct Donor Support to TFG Security Forces
One of the most compelling recent examples of the flaws in the broader policy
approach of donor governments and multilateral bodies to Somalia has been the
United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) direct financial support to the TFG
police force through its Rule of Law and Security (RoLS) program. Poorly conceived
from the outset, UNDP has now suspended its payments to the police as it reviews
financial safeguards and mechanisms in place in order to ensure accountability and
to prevent it funding human rights abusers. However, the pressure UNDP has come
under from certain donors, particularly the European Commission, to continue
paying possible human rights abusers underlines the broader flaws with much of the
international engagement with Somalia.
Since 2007 UNDP has provided training, equipment, and salary payments to officers
of the Somali Police Force.273 The program’s backers have argued that its support
improved both the conduct of police officers and their capacity to provide a more
secure environment for Somali citizens.274 Some 2,800 police officers have
undergone UNDP-sponsored training and have then received monthly stipends
through RoLS until December 2007. RoLS has also provided double-cabin trucks,
radios, and other equipment to the police force. 275
However, Somali police personnel have committed widespread human rights abuses
with impunity. The commissioner of police, Abdi Qeybdid, is himself a former warlord
who has been implicated in serious human rights abuses that predate his tenure as
commissioner.276 These realities alone have given rise to widespread misgivings
about the approach donors have taken through RoLS.
273
RoLS also includes support for the judicial system, mine action, and community security in separate programming areas for
Somaliland, Puntland, and South/Central Somalia.
274
Human Rights Watch interviews with donor government and other diplomatic officials, Nairobi, September 2008.
275
One diplomatic official acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that double-cabin pickup trucks were chosen because they
cannot easily be turned into “technicals”—the pickups mounted with antiaircraft guns that have been a feature of Somali
conflict since the early 1990s. Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, September 2008.
276
See above, Human Rights Abuses by Transitional Federal Government Forces.
99 Human Rights Watch December 2008
UNDP, and the broader policy of providing donor support to the Somali Police Force,
has come under considerable fire for some time. An April 2007 letter from a
European Commission security expert to Eric Van der Linden, then head of the
European Commission delegation in Nairobi, warned that:
[T]here arise urgent questions of responsibility and potential
complicity in the commission of war crimes by the European
commission and its partners, specifically with regard to the current
and ongoing financial and technical assistance being provided by the
EC to any of the parties who may have committed war crimes.277
Likewise, a 2007 internal European Commission memorandum obtained by Human
Rights Watch warned that the Commission could suffer “legal consequences” as an
accomplice to ongoing police abuses; that the program could well “constitute a
violation of the [UN] arms embargo” on Somalia; and that the program “could not be
considered as support to a professional, civilian and community-based police
force…but rather as assistance to counter-insurgency efforts.”278
UNDP has also been unable to effectively track stipend payments to individual police
officers to ensure that they reach their intended recipients. In 2007 some of these
payments were delivered in the form of cash payments to the commissioner of police.
One official with knowledge of the program told Human Rights Watch that many of
the receipts given to RoLS to account for the distribution of stipend payments in
2007 were obvious forgeries.279
Largely because of this lack of financial transparency and uncertainty over the police
credentials of individuals collecting stipends, and also because of increased
complaints of SPF human rights abuses, UNDP and donors have put the brakes on
any further stipend payments until a reliable mechanism can be found to ensure the
transparency of their delivery. In 2007 UNDP decided that no stipends would be paid
277
Letter on file with Human Rights Watch. See also Xan Rice, “EU Given War Crime Warning over Somalia Aid,” The Guardian,
April 7, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/07/eu.warcrimes (accessed October 17, 2008).
278
Memorandum on file with Human Rights Watch.
279
Human Rights Watch interview with senior diplomatic official, Nairobi, September 20, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 100
beyond the first quarter of 2008 until such a mechanism is put in place. One official
told Human Rights Watch that unless this was done “there is a danger this money
would fall into the hands of militias and their leaders and that some of the money
designated for police will not go to real police.”280
Remarkably, some of the donors who fund RoLS reacted to this prudent step by
putting enormous pressure on UNDP to immediately recommence stipend payments
and to dramatically expand their scope in ways that would only build upon the
program’s flaws. Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and
Humanitarian Aid, wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in July 2008 asking
that he instruct UNDP to recommence the stipend payments immediately—and also
to expand the program “to cover the salaries of an additional 4,000 police.”281
In the face of repeated warnings from commission experts themselves and the
obvious lack of accountability and transparency associated with the payments and
the recipients, this proposed expansion of stipend payments was a reckless request.
None of those 4,000 receiving salaries had undergone the UNDP-sponsored training
(which includes instruction in basic human rights and community policing principles)
that was a prerequisite for the payment of stipends to other police officers.
Many may not be police officers at all. Out of the group of 4,000, 1,000 were
absorbed into the police force after undergoing a secretive training program in
Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government forbade donors, including the European
Commission and the UN, from observing the training or having access to the
curriculum it employed. But a document circulated to donors by Ethiopian officials
asking them to fund the training program acknowledged that one of its areas of focus
was “counterinsurgency” training.282 Most Ethiopia-trained forces returned from the
training course as soldiers, and many of them have been involved in serious human
rights abuses during operations in Mogadishu—often while operating under the
280
Human Rights Watch interview with senior diplomatic official, Nairobi, September 20, 2008.
281
Letter from Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-
moon, dated July 30, 2008 (on file with Human Rights Watch).
282
Communication on file with Human Rights Watch.
101 Human Rights Watch December 2008
command of Ethiopian military officers.283 Roughly 900 others are Presidential Guard
military forces—Majerteen clan militiamen with no police training who are loyal to
TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf. The remainder are reportedly a mix of reactivated
police officers from the Siad Barre regime and militiamen loyal to TFG Police
Commissioner Abdi Qeybdid.284
The apparent justification for this proposal lies in the view among some donor
officials that they should honor a 2008 request by TFG Prime Minister Nur Hassan
Hussein to provide him with funds to pay for militias under his direct control or that
of his allies. Asked by Human Rights Watch to explain the European Commission’s
demands that UNDP pay the salaries of the 4,000 Ethiopian-trained forces, Georges
Marc-Andre, a Special Envoy of the Commission to Somalia, replied that the Prime
Minister Hussein had asked them to do so. “Based on the hope and trust we have in
the prime minister,” he said, “our response was, we want to take the risk of
supporting you because we know what you want is to establish the rule of law and
peace in Somalia.”285
Some current and former donor officials told Human Rights Watch they believed the
reason the European Commission and other donors wanted to make police stipend
payments through UNDP was that doing so bilaterally would be too politically
embarrassing. One senior diplomatic official accused the European Commission of
trying to “disguise” their actions by “having the UN do it for them.”286 Certainly the
potential for political embarrassment is real. The UK government’s Department for
International Development (DFID) stopped supporting police stipend payments in
2008 after a television documentary called attention to British links with abusive TFG
officials. The Times of London wrote about the program that “millions of pounds of
taxpayer money…is financing a police force filled with militiamen and led by one of
the country’s most notorious warlords.”287
283
See above, Human Rights Abuses by Transitional Federal Government Forces.
284
Human Rights Watch interview and email correspondence with senior diplomatic official, Nairobi, September 20 and
October 25 2008; Human Rights Watch interview with independent analyst, Nairobi, September 21, 2008.
285
Human Rights Watch interview with George Marc-Andre, a Special Envoy of the European Commission to Somalia
(appointed June 8, 2007), Nairobi, September 22, 2008.
286
Human Rights Watch interview with senior diplomatic official, Nairobi, September 20, 2008.
287
Rob Crilley, "British taxpayer funds Somali police force for regime accused of war crimes,” The Times, June 2, 2008.
“So Much to Fear” 102
Meanwhile, the same donors who are pushing for more direct UNDP support for TFG
armed forces have failed to confront TFG officials about allegations of serious abuses
involving the police. No effective mechanism exists, through UNDP or bilaterally
through RoLS’ donors, to ensure that financial support for the police is tied to
meaningful efforts at ensuring prevention of and accountability for police abuses.288
In October 2008 an agreement signed between TFG and ARS officials in Djibouti
called for the formation of a joint police force of 10,000 to maintain security in
Mogadishu following an envisaged relocation of ENDF troops from much of the city.
The agreement requested UNPOS to cover the “financial needs” of the force and at
the time of writing the European Commission was considering providing this funding
through RoLS.289
In Human Rights Watch’s view there is very real cause for concern that donor
pressure will again mount on UNDP or another donor mechanism to financially
support this new force of 10,000 whether or not they have any training as police,
whether or not mechanisms are put in place to ensure the financial transparency of
payments, and whether or not effective mechanisms are put in place to ensure an
effective response to human rights abuses involving members of the new force.
288
A European Commission official told Human Rights Watch that Commission officials regularly raised concerns about police
abuses with the office of the TFG Prime Minister but that while the prime minister deplored such incidents he was powerless to
stop them. Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, September 22, 2008. UNDP has sent formal inquiries about specific
incidents of abuse to SPF officials but has received no adequate response to any of them. Human Rights Watch interviews with
diplomatic officials, Nairobi, September 20 and 22, 2008.
289
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with donor agency official, October 28, 2008.
103 Human Rights Watch December 2008
Acknowledgments
This report was researched and written by Chris Albin-Lackey, senior researcher in
the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. The report was reviewed and edited by
Leslie Lefkow, special initiatives researcher and Horn team leader in the Africa
Division; Andrew Mawson, deputy program director; and James Ross, legal director
at Human Rights Watch.
McKenzie Price, associate in the Africa Division, provided production assistance and
support. Grace Choi and Fitzroy Hepkins made possible the production of the report
and Anna Lopriore assisted with the cover photograph. Yaron David designed the
map of Mogadishu.
Human Rights Watch wishes to thank the many individuals who came forward to
offer the testimony and other information that made this report possible. We also
wish to thank the individuals who offered their assistance in facilitating this research
and helping to review sections of the final report.
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