East Africa Journal | Hargeisa, Somaliland | Mar 2023
The Killing of Hargeisa
“Alhamdulillah, we survived the killings”. Mursal looks back on the horrors he and his family, along with the rest of the population of Hargeisa had to endure during the Somaliland war of independence at the hands of Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime.
Mursal was born in Hargeisa in 1974, His father was a Somali of the Isaaq clan, and his mother was from Yemen. He had a normal childhood up until the point the war broke out, attending school and playing sports with the other children. To this day he lives in the Xaafada Qudhacdheer neighbourhood of Hargeisa, married to his wife with three young children. He has no formal job and earns money by doing various bits of work around the city, as well as selling eggs and chickens in the livestock market. He was taught how to speak English by his father, who was originally from the coastal city of Berbera, who would have interacted and been taught by the British in the days Northern Somalia was part of British Somaliland.
Modern Somaliland is a self-declared republic occupying the northern part of Somalia. Despite no international recognition, it functions as an independent country, with its own currency, passport, armed forces, and democratic elections. The history of Somaliland starts back in the British colonial era, with Somalia split between Britain and Italy. Somaliland declared independence in June 1960 but was quickly united with the rest of Somalia. The majority of those in Somaliland are from the Isaaq clan.
The fight for Somaliland’s independence started in 1981, with the Somali National Movement (SNM) forming in London and later starting an armed wing in Ethiopia. The SNW was against Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who used clan-based violence to supress the Isaaq people. Fighting started as guerrilla fighting and hit and run attacks against the Somali Army. The war intensified when Barre signed a deal with Ethiopia that would stop the SNM sheltering in Ethiopia in early 1988 which triggered an offensive of Hargeisa and Burao by the SNM. Skirmishing and artillery fire plagued the region until the May of 1988 when Said Barre’s regime would launch an unprecedented, and genocidal campaign to remove the SNM from Hargeisa after word of the offensive in burao.
Mursal remembers the Chaos that erupted on the first day. They were used to small scale fighting and had learned to live with it, but nobody saw the bloodshed that would come. “They took all of the government officials and their families to [the] airport and flew them to Mogadishu; All the banks were shut, and the money removed and taken away”. Mursal, who was 13 in 1988 tells me how he first felt the fear of something bad happening when the first curfews came into effect at 6pm. He recalls how his mother and father told him and his brothers to keep quiet as they were glued to the window. “I couldn’t see outside, it was so quiet, I can tell my parents were scared”. That night felt like it went on forever for Mursal, and the stress rose when his mother realised the government had cut the running water, they had cut the electricity that day too, but his mother couldn’t cook or clean them without the water.
On the second day they awoke to not much sleep, it was rainy season, so they had some water from the collector on the roof, but his mother said it was only for drinking. He left with his father down to the river that flows through the city. “There were many people in the street, but very silent, everybody was scared to make too much sound”. They carried a few bottles and had a wash down along with many others. On the way back to his house he explains how the soldiers, which there were many of, were slashing car tyres and confiscating vehicles to stop the movement of people. They got back to the house and stayed put for the rest of the day, with the curtains drawn and making very little sound. The occasional gunshot would ring around the air Mursal says. The evening of the second day was more intense, Somali soldiers went round the neighbourhoods looking for any SNM personnel, busting in doors and arresting young men in the masses, luckily his home was not targeted.
The River that runs through Hargeisa during rainy season.
The third day, Mursal and his family were awoken to loud sounds from outside, looting had begun in the city, Somali soldiers were taking anything they could find, “They smashed the mosque, they took everything from inside, they beat people and fired on them” when speaking about the small mosque on his road. His mother kept his two younger brothers in the small kitchen at the back of the house, he stayed with his father in the front room. As the day went into afternoon, more and more sounds of gunshots rang out from around the city, sounding closer and closer, eventually shops and small markets were stripped of food by the soldiers and people were robbed by them in the streets. On the spot executions followed for anyone who refused. The sounds grew louder as night fell and eventually the shockwaves of artillery shells ripped through the air.
The fourth day followed, the night was sleepless, “My brothers cried all through the night, they were small, they needed food, my mother stayed with them”. He told me he gets his strength from his father, who stayed strong throughout the war. This day however would prove to be the worst. “When the jets took off Hargeisa became hell”. Somali government fighter jets took off from Hargeisa airport, however once in the air, they turned around and started attacking Hargeisa itself. “As the soldiers left, the bombs started dropping, you could not hide”. Mursal describes how the first airstrike that hit Hargeisa ‘silenced the rest of the world’ and that he could feel it in his bones. “I remember crying, I was so scared, I think I might die”. Bombs pounded the city, destroying everything, for what felt like hours. “You could feel earth below you shake, every second I think it will hit our home”. His road was hit near the end, he could hear pieces of rubble be thrown down the street from the explosion. “I hate you hear sound of the bomb, but you hear nothing after, no people running or screaming, just quiet sound of the jet”. By the end of the fourth day, they had run out of water from the tank on the roof, there was no food either. There were intermittent pauses in the bombardment, you could hear people scurry around when the sound of the jets got quieter.
Mursal was amazed by the fact they survived to see the fifth day. Him and his father went out to try and find water and some food, leaving his mother and brothers at home. “I never forget the destruction, Hargeisa was different city now, most buildings were rubble, and the air was full of dust. Everywhere there are mothers crying because children are dead. There are bodies all over the outside, and blood. I see a man with his head blown open on the road, but my father just pulls me along”. The sound of jets made people scurry like ants, and soon enough another round of arial bombardments would continue, destroying and killing more of the city. In the late morning a strike hit round the back of the houses, smashing apart the kitchen structure, his brothers were only lightly cut and bruised, but his mother sustained shrapnel trauma to the shoulder and collarbone area. “My heart almost stopped, my father pulled my mother in and laid her down on the floor, he shouted at my brothers to be quiet, they were terrified”. The back of his house was badly damaged and his neighbours to the rear were killed, along with their 2 children and grandparents. By that afternoon the bombardment had finished, and they could get out the house again. When asked why they didn’t flee the city sooner, Mursal explains how when the soldiers left before the airstrikes, they placed mines on the perimeter of the city to deter people from leaving.
That evening they heard jets but no strikes, his mother was asleep and had been since she was hit. His father and a neighbour were going into each of the houses along the street, most of them destroyed, trying to find survivors, there were very few. “All roofs were gone, even ours was badly damaged. Most the street was dead”. In the early hours of the Sixth day, they left Hargeisa.
“When the jets had not come back, we decided to leave the city, I carried my younger brother and made sure he didn’t see the city, my father carried my sleeping mother”. There were others that were trying to leave as well, in some places you had to tread over the dead bodies. Mursal points at his shoes and talks about how the bottom of your shoes would become red. There were groups that made it out of the city via the desert to the southwest and settled in camps and villages away from Hargeisa that were still controlled by the SNM. They lived in an improvised camp for a while and his mother was seen to by aid workers.
The desert outside of Hargeisa.
The most harrowing part of the war for Mursal came a week or so later in the camp, although given antiseptic and bandages for her wounds, he watched her deteriorate fast until one morning when she died. “It was the first time I saw my father cry; I didn’t know what to do, I thought he didn’t cry”. The weeks and months that followed were horrific, with very little food and water relying on whatever aid or rations the SNM could give them, whilst the Somali government regained control over the now destroyed Hargeisa. Its is estimated 80-90% of the city was destroyed and 50,000 people, virtually all Isaaq people, were killed in 1988-89. It wouldn’t be until December of 1989 that the SNM would gain control over Hargeisa. In 1991 Siad Barre’s regime collapsed and Somaliland officially declared independence from Somalia. Mursal and his father, along with his younger brothers moved back into Hargeisa in the summer of 1991, rebuilding a house in the Xaafada Qudhacdheer area of the city. Unfortunately, his father died a few years later after a short but severe Illness. One of his brothers lives with his wife in Borama, and his youngest brother lives in London.
To this day Mursal enjoys life. He is proud of Somaliland, and despite no recognition, is proud it’s a free democratic state compared to Somalia. “I always think of the war, I can never forget, and my mother, but we are Somaliland now, we have peace. If we didn’t fight and have the war, we wouldn’t have this, mashallah (God wills it)”. “Sometimes I walk to the war memorial and see the jet, we have had new memorial last year, it is bigger now. It reminds us of the war and struggle for Somaliland”. He’s talking about the war memorial in the centre of Hargeisa in which sits a Somali Mig-17 fighter jet. “Hargeisa is my home, I love her”. Like many other Somalilanders, memories of the horrific path to freedom are still fresh in memory, and likely always will be. In recent talks with Ethiopia about port access, Somaliland is paving the way to some international recognition, which in turn will put Somalia on the world stage. Mursal, like many other Somalilanders, believe it is only a matter of time before their homeland they have fought for will be a recognised, peaceful African nation.
The Somali jet war memorial in the centre of Hargeisa.