How Somalia handled famine under Barre

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Gif-King
VIP
I'm ciise not Ogaden. I've got no connection to any darood. You're genuinely sped
Many of these qabilists are mentally unstable. What I find jarring is that these people are diaspora too.

OG are not Somalized oromos are you genuinely dumb. I’m not even OG but this is insanity.
Hes Marexaan and has been suffering ridicule both here and on Somnet for over a decade.

Dont bother with him or his fanfiction. The man thinks Siad Barre created the Dervish and that Ogadens were brought south en masse in 1975 even though Ethiopias war didnt start until 1977 and Garissa isnt in Somalias borders yet is settled by Ogadens aswell.
 

ilmoweyn

𐒖𐒈𐒂𐒚𐒇
You wanna show me a record of that
Some (few) sources you can use to connect dots + I use my own living relatives as interviews/oral history

Africa Watch. Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People. New York:
1990. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/somalia_1990.pdf.
Amnesty International. Somalia: A Human Rights Disaster. New York: Amnesty
International USA. July 1992. https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uplo
ads/2021/06/afr520011992en.pdf
Amnesty International. Torture In Somalia. London: Amnesty International UK.
June 1988. https://cja.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Amnesty-Internatio
nal-Torture-in-Somalia-June-1988.pdf
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970.
Höhne, Markus V.. “Political Identity, Emerging State Structures and Conflict in
Northern Somalia.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 2006): 397-414.
Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji. “State and Clan Violence in Somalia.” African Conflict and
Peacebuilding Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 2018): 73-96.
Kaplan, Robert D.. The Coming Anarchy. New York: Random House, 2000.
Kennard, Matt and Einashe, Ismail. “In the Valley of Death: Somaliland’s Forgotten
Genocide.” The Nation, October 22, 2018. https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/v
alley-death-somalilands-forgotten-genocide
Stanton, Gregory H.. “The Ten Stages of Genocide.” Genocide Watch. 2023.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages
Stone, Dan. “Defending the Plural: Hanna Arendt and Genocide Studies.” New
Formations, Vol. 71. (2011): 46-57.
 
Some (few) sources you can use to connect dots + I use my own living relatives as interviews/oral history

Africa Watch. Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People. New York:
1990. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/somalia_1990.pdf.
Amnesty International. Somalia: A Human Rights Disaster. New York: Amnesty
International USA. July 1992. https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uplo
ads/2021/06/afr520011992en.pdf
Amnesty International. Torture In Somalia. London: Amnesty International UK.
June 1988. https://cja.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Amnesty-Internatio
nal-Torture-in-Somalia-June-1988.pdf
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970.
Höhne, Markus V.. “Political Identity, Emerging State Structures and Conflict in
Northern Somalia.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 2006): 397-414.
Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji. “State and Clan Violence in Somalia.” African Conflict and
Peacebuilding Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 2018): 73-96.
Kaplan, Robert D.. The Coming Anarchy. New York: Random House, 2000.
Kennard, Matt and Einashe, Ismail. “In the Valley of Death: Somaliland’s Forgotten
Genocide.” The Nation, October 22, 2018. https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/v
alley-death-somalilands-forgotten-genocide
Stanton, Gregory H.. “The Ten Stages of Genocide.” Genocide Watch. 2023.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages
Stone, Dan. “Defending the Plural: Hanna Arendt and Genocide Studies.” New
Formations, Vol. 71. (2011): 46-57.
I didn't see anything about famines but:

Screenshot_20250113_154546_Samsung Notes.jpg


Would you look at that, there was even more violence after 1991, its almost admitting that overthrowing Barre was a mistake.

Even Somaliland and Puntland saw its fair share of violence after 1991 despite Barre no longer being around.

Screenshot_20250113_154615_Samsung Notes.jpg
 

ilmoweyn

𐒖𐒈𐒂𐒚𐒇
I didn't see anything about famines
I didn't mention anything about famines? I simply said the amount of Soomaalis he saved is almost proportionate to the amount he slaughtered in his torture camps.

Sources for his kill count being:
- 200,000 estimate, evidence being mass graves found around Hargeisa that may indicate the true count being higher (Ismail Einashe, Matt Kennard)
- Evidence of people (i.e. names, ages, and occupations of those killed) in the Africa Watch article from pg.231
- 40,000 killed in only two events seen pg.6 Amnesty International report, alongside interviews of his torture victims
- 300,000+ killed due to state violence (Haji Ingiriis)

SOME of the many forms of violence and abuses mentioned throughout the majority of the sources:
- torture
- assault of men and women
- waterboarding
- isolation
- starvation of prisoners (is this famine enough for you?)
Would you look at that, there was even more violence after 1991, its almost admitting that overthrowing Barre was a mistake.

Even Somaliland and Puntland saw its fair share of violence after 1991 despite Barre no longer being around
Just because there was violence in a post-SIyaad Soomaaliya does not account for the fact he committed crimes against Soomaalis and humanity. Do not try to downplay/ignore Siyaad's crimes simply because to you it was the 'lesser of two evils'

The violence you are referring to is war/civil violence which is entirely different and incomparable to state violence.

And also you forget the PR that was being done for Soomaaliya courtesy of Manfort (US) lol
 
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200,000 estimate
This is an exaggerated figure.
Simple answer he didn't kill that many people. I don't know what the real number casualties are but it certaintly wasn't 50 -200k or whatever exaggerated wikipedia estimates they make up.

There was no Isaaq genocide. Those numbers are not independently verified and most would have probably died of famine and starvation due to the deteriorating situation in the North which not only affected the city but the general country side which was insecure. Others died in the decades/years after from the infighting after the governments collapse.

It was one insurgent group SNM attacking the north blowing things up, doing several combined attack with the Ethiopian army, massacring people in their homes and doing general terrorist acts and it was the Somali national army defending against it. The government was 100% in a defense posture throughout it and launching counter offensives , they were reacting to unprovoked attacks.

SNM was founded in Ethiopia and was using Ethiopia as a base to launch attacks from while the people in the in northern Somalia suffered from a counter offensive, , destroying refugee camps, somali towns in Ethiopia, highjacking planes/ships and preventing humanitarian aid, kidnapped refugee workers, hostage taking , assassinating officials and innocent people, causing people to flee.

The SNM even launched combined attack with Ethiopian Army on Borama , killing a bunch of school children, and caused 80.000 people to flee .They blowed up hospitals and building in Hargeisa.

They would do hit and run, while innocent people suffered from a counter offensive. SNM would wear plain clothing and hide amongst the civilian population, in order to bring the civilian population into it and provoke the Somali government.

They jumped on roof tops of various houses and buildings , with machines guns and rocket launchers shooting at people, before the government resorted to Arial assaults targeting them from above.

We have various eye witness accounts, monitoring groups and local testimonies from the populations living there to support this.
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The supplies to the north was cut off by the southern insurgent groups and not by the government that was battling the government because the same national army in the north was dying from starvation as well towards last year or two.
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If we ignore the unverifiable numbers, which make no sense and evaluate the governments response, there is several things that prove that this was not a genocide.

1) Siad Barre is recorded to order restraint and leniency from his soldiers on the civilian populations

2) From the time of the first insurgency attack until they invaded in the two cities 1988 , the government avoided hitting population centers, gave clear warnings for people to flee and

3) The government payed compensation fees to families affected by the conflict

4) Allowed humanitarian aid & international workers into the area, UN inspectors , to provide relief.

5) The government built camps to house people in safe areas away from conflict.

6) He even tried to create avenues for peace treaties with SNM, reconcilation and open dialogue with them, constantly negotiating with them to end the fight. But they refused it. And even encouraged the US to lead effors of reconciliation and rehabilitation as a neutral third party. He even appointed various northern and other local leaders into a constitutional committee to achieve national reconciliation.

7) Siad Barre commisioned the two cities infrastructure to be rebuilt, hospitals and humanitarian facilitiaties and programmes etc. The united states donated 1 million and provided assistance distrubituted through the Somali government.


So in short there was not attempt made by the government to bring about the destruction of Isaaq or the north in general. It's just an easily disprovable lie . SNM sought to draw out the government to use civilians deaths as propaganda.

They also invent this mythology that they were able to defeat the government when they actually was defeated and repulsed each time and was only able to enter the cities a few moments after the central government collapse. After that they went on a hunting spree targeting innocent Somalis , infighting amongst their ranks and collectively punishing Somalis with unionist asperations. They had zero policy, vision or unitary governmental plan.

Even from a layman's perspective that number is nonsense since Somalia's population at the time was only 3.5 million, most of whom lived in the south. Hargeisa did not have 500,000 people living in it that time.

he committed crimes against Soomaalis and humanity

Defending the nation against armed proxies aren't crimes. While it is regrettable that civilians died, that was largely the fault of those rebel groups, and Barre ended up getting vindicated when those same rebel group turned on civilians when Barre was no longer around.


The violence you are referring to is war/civil violence which is entirely different and incomparable to state violence.
Violence is violence, especially when the rebels who claimed they would do better than Barre in fact did worse. Not long afte the state collapsed, thousands of Somalis perished from famines and other avoidable tragedies. And now in 2024, the number of Somalis that died far surpasses what Siad Barre ever did.
 

ilmoweyn

𐒖𐒈𐒂𐒚𐒇
This is an exaggerated figure.
I gave more than one source, incuding names of those killed as well as death counts for specific events
The higher sources are collective figures including violence in the north/arrested and then killed victims
The specific kill count for a single event in Hargeisa was 10,000

Even from a layman's perspective that number is nonsense since Somalia's population at the time was only 3.5 million, most of whom lived in the south. Hargeisa did not have 500,000 people living in it that time.
The census published 1985 marked the population of Somalia as being between 5.8 million and 8.5 million. Not 3.5 million, that is the (officially unreleased) 1975 estimate

Defending the nation against armed proxies aren't crimes. While it is regrettable that civilians died, that was largely the fault of those rebel groups, and Barre ended up getting vindicated when those same rebel group turned on civilians when Barre was no longer around.
Siyaad wasn't simply defending, he gained power through a coup (albeit bloodless it was an unstable way to begin a reign), and the lack of elections further reinforced his illegitimacy

As Hannah Arendt correctly theorised, violence appears when there is a lack of power. Siyaad was illegitimate and sought to justify this by torturing people in his prison 'Godka' and hiring groups armed forces specifically targeting Isaaqs

Don't forget explicit confessions of purposeful violence aimed to control by his General Mohammed Morgan, in 1988, he's said to have ordered his troops "to kill all but the crows." in Hargeisa

Siyaad was simply an enforcer of clanism, Morgan called the conflict between SNM and Siyaad's state 'a conflict between Isaaq and Darood'

Violence is violence, especially when the rebels who claimed they would do better than Barre in fact did worse. Not long afte the state collapsed, thousands of Somalis perished from famines and other avoidable tragedies. And now in 2024, the number of Somalis that died far surpasses what Siad Barre ever did.
Even if you disagree with the SNM's ideology, the fact that those simply suspected of collaborating with the SNM were rounded up, bound and shot and buried in places like the valley of death is a blatant abuse of power

Medical examinations between Nov 1986 and April 1988 show that 19 of Somali-Canadian refugees had been tortrued over the last 10 years (some were as young as 12 or 14) and were arrested on the suspicion of: collecting money for the SNM or taking part in the protests or criticisng the govt or related to a member of an oppositional organisation, were detained without being tried, some by military police etc

If Siyaad was defending the nation, surely he'd attempt to be democratic, nevertheless, Siyaad's regime was simply qabilism and a frenzy for power

Cherrypicking from things I've said is not doing you much good
 
I gave more than one source
None of those are independently verified or accurate. The most authentic source for the casuality figure is the Gersony report which states estimating the casuality figure is impossible and that most died from hunger and thirst than weapons.

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as being between 5.8 million and 8.5 million.
That still wouldn't put Hargeisa at 500,000+ in population. Suggesting 200,000 died is flat out apocalyptic levels of deaths that surpass even Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Siyaad was illegitimate
According to who? His coup along with his entire administration was highly popular among Somalis who supported him even well after 1977. The lack of elections is irrelevant since as you already admitted, the 60s civilian government was highly corrupt and was manipulating their elections anyways, it was a flawed democracy.


in 1988, he's said to have ordered his troops "to kill all but the crows." in Hargeisa
And Barre was reported to telling his troops to have restraint and avoid hitting civilians, allowed aid workers into the north and wanted to negotiate peace with SNM who kept refusing. Literally not a single document, interview or letter showing Barre had genocidal intent which puts a huge hole in that narrative.

If Siyaad was defending the nation, surely he'd attempt to be democratic

Somalia was actually well on its way to transitioning to democracy hence the name of the state being the Somali Democratic Republic, it was always the plan to switch to democracy eventually and indeed Barre planning on stepping down but rebel activities put a halt to that.

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More importantly however, you don't need to be democratic to defend or help the nation. Democracy isn't actually a good starting point for new countries and @Idilinaa explains it perfectly:

You forget how military regime in the first place didn't replace the government through democracy . The 1960 attempt at democracy failed because Somalia was a new nation that lacked the infrastructure, institutions, and systems required for smooth governance in place and needed a centralized control to build it.

Believe it or not most succesfull modern day democracies today didn't start of as a democracy, they either began as monarchies or dictatorship, even the ones that made huge transformations like for example Singapore and South korea, started as one party dictatorships. Look at how impoverished and behind they were in the 1950s/60s, even a bit worse than Somalia at the time. Lower living standards, literacy 20% and lacking in industries and infrastructure.

Why did they work out? because dictatorships are often associated with long-term planning because leaders are not constrained by the short electoral cycles or the need to appease voters. This can allow for focused, visionary economic policies, especially when a country is in need of modernization.

A dictator can play a key role in unifying a country, particularly in cases where the country is ethnically, religiously, or regionally fragmented. By suppressing divisions and creating a sense of national identity, a dictatorship can lay the groundwork for future democratic governance

Over time, as the population becomes more educated and politically active under a dictatorship, they may demand greater participation and representation. This pressure can lead to democratization.

You saw that with the pressures they made for increased political participation and how he allowed for that , which indicates Somalia was heading to a more democratization. This was right after the Ogaden war btw

You also saw the gradual reforms that was talking place. All the opposition had to do was slowly facilitate this process or capitalize on the foundations created by the regime.

Somalia already tried democracy and it failed. Why? Because conditions were not there yet for a successful democracy which is what Barre was trying to fix.
 

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