User:Jonathanwallace/Somalian Genocide
The killings of civilians in Somalia by various combatants during years of civil strife in the country have been deemed by various commentators to amount to genocide because targeted against particular ethnic groups. Accusations of genocide have been made against all sides to the conflict and nations thought to have an interest, including government forces, Islamist fighters, the African Union and the United States.
In his 1999 memoir, former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali wrote that in Somalia, "genocide by starvation resulted when warlords deliberately withheld food aid from the starving and sick and where 350,000 died before the Secuity Council decided to step in."[1]
In 2007, deputy prime minister Hussein Aideed referred to Ethiopian intervention in Somalia as a "genocide". [2]
The following year, the UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, responding to casualties in the fighting between pro-government and Islamist forces, said that "There is a hidden genocide in Somalia which has sacrificed entire generations". [3]
The Genocide Intervention Network lists Somalia on its website as an area of concern, stating that "Somali civilians remain the targets of atrocities committed by insurgent militias, Somali government forces and criminal gangs."[4]
The Social Science Research Council reported in 2007 that "Somalia is a rare case in which genocidal acts were carried out by militias in the utter absence of a governing state structure." According to the report, Somalia's Bantu population was a target of killing and forced resettlement, as a result of which some 12,000 were granted "persecuted minority" Visas by the United States.[5]
African media have also asserted that the killings in Somalia constitute genocide. For example, an October 2010 article in Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper states the views of Kenyan Deputy House Speaker Farah Maalim that "It is in the interest of the US for Somalia to remain unstable, weak and destitute. That is why they are perpetrating a genocide."[6]
A 2010 editorial on the website of Radio Garowe a northern Somalian radio station, examined the legal definition of genocide in its applicability to various incidents in the Somalian fighting of recent decades. "It is Garowe Online's resolute position that the Somali National Army's war and bombardment of Hargeisa and Burao in 1988 was not 'genocide' -- it is not different than the daily bombardment of Mogadishu by Western-funded African Union peacekeepers (AMISOM) fighting an insurgency that threatens to bring down Somalia's weak and chronically corrupt Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu." The editorial observes that, though government troops overreacted with excessive military force, they were not going "house-to-house to massacre civilians after asking them, 'Are you Isaaq?'". By contrast, "in the Mogadishu of 1991, Hawiye-based USC militia were going house-to-house or stopping civilians randomly on Mogadishu streets to ask the hated question, 'Yaa tahay?' (which clan are you?) If you said Darod, you were killed or raped-- man, woman, young or old." This, the editorial concludes, is the definition of genocide, as opposed to government military action against insurgents.[7]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Boutros Boutros Ghali, Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. 1999) p. 140 ISBN 186064497 X
- ^ "Chaos in Somalia as Fighting Intensifies and Death Toll Rises", Jeffrey Gettelman,New York Times, April 23, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/africa/23somalia.html Accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ "Troubled Somalia Mission Extended", BBC News, December 22, 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7794918.stm Accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ Genocide Intervention Network "Somalia" http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/crisis/somalia
- ^ Catherine L. Besteman, "Genocide in Somalia’s Jubba Valley and Somali Bantu Refugees in the U.S" Apr 09, 2007 http://hornofafrica.ssrc.org/Besteman/ Accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ Emeka-Mayaka Gekara and Billy Muiruri "U.S. is Executing a Genocide in Somalia - Deputy Speaker" October 16, 2010 http://allafrica.com/stories/201010180070.html Accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ Editorial, "Somaliland is becoming 'Africa's Terrorism Secret'" October 29, 2010 garoweonline.com http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Editorial_29/Somalia_Somaliland_is_becoming_Africa_s_terrorism_secret_Editorial_printer.shtml Accessed January 28, 2011