Since early 1991, when the twenty-one-year dictatorship of former president Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown by the United Somali Congress (USC), Somalia has been rocked by civil war as rival ethnic factions have attempted to take control.30 Throughout the Somali conflict, rape has been used as a weapon of war by all the factions to punish rival ethnic factions. The complete breakdown of the government and the ensuing crisis has allowed these factions' combatants to rape women with impunity. The country continues to be in crisis despite the two-year intervention of United States and United Nations peacekeeping operations which unsuccessfully attempted to end the fighting. The withdrawal of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) in March 1995 has once again opened up the possibility of intensified fighting among the various clan leaders and with that, the likelihood that widespread rape will continue.
Rivalry continues between self-proclaimed "interim president" Mohammed Ali Mahdi Mohammed and Gen. Mohammed Farah Aideed. Ali Mahdi, a politician of the Abgal clan, nominally heads the Somali Salvation Alliance (SSA) and controls the North Mogadishu and Middle Shebelle region. General Aideed, of the Habr Gedir subclan of the Hawiye clan, heads the Somalia National Alliance (SNA) and controls South Mogadishu and other parts of the area between the south's two rivers. The area of Kismayu is controlled by Mohamed Siad Hersi "Morgan" of the Harti subclan who heads the Somali Patriotic Movement. Another faction is headed by Col. Ahmed Omar Jess of the Ogadeni subclan. All the rival groups have forcibly consolidated control over resources and transportation routes throughindiscriminate killings, selective assassinations and executions, forced displacement, and the widespread use of rape as a weapon of terror and intimidation. All of these abuses appear in patterns that reflect discriminatory treatment along clan lines.
A staggering number of rapes, as well as abductions of women and forced marriages, have occurred during the civil war, particularly during the fighting of 1991-1992 but by no means confined to those years. Somali women are targeted with sexual abuse when marauding clan-based militias—or moryan raiders—loot or forcibly occupy territories inhabited by members of rival clans. Women who lack the protection of powerful clan structures or who belong to particularly vulnerable groups, such as ethnic minorities, are particularly at risk. The tens of thousands of Somali women who live in displaced persons camps are also susceptible to sexual abuse.
Protection from and remedies for abuses, where available, depend almost exclusively on clan affiliation. The absence of a central government, and the ensuing violence and chaos, has resulted in virtually no recourse for women who have been raped. In some areas, local authorities have agreed to impose either traditional forms of judgment and punishment for crimes, or shari'a (Islamic law). However, the ability of women to seek redress depends on whether her subclan is militarily strong enough to petition a rival clan on her behalf. As a result, most perpetrators of sexual violence enjoy total impunity.
The enormous toll of the famine and war that peaked in 1992 had Baidoa, in Bay region, as its virtual epicenter, with women and children predominant among the dead. The women who have survived, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in and around Baidoa, are vulnerable both to a renewal of the conflict and to the everyday threat of sexual abuse. Members of a Somali organization for displaced people in Baidoa described rape as a frequent threat to women in the region. In a Bay region women's association visited by Human Rights Watch in October 1993, the members estimated that about three-quarters of their approximately 500 members had been raped.31
In the Benadir region, which includes the capital Mogadishu, "the moryan rape indiscriminately."32 One woman told Human Rights Watch thatshe had witnessed a raid in August 1994, when she was in Jowhar, to the north of Mogadishu in Middle Shebelle region, in which "Abgal gunmen crossed the main road and raped numerous Galgaal women." In Kismayu, a health officer stressed that "mothers and children suffer worst in war."33
A Baidoa women's organization established a cooperative in April 1993 in order to create employment for the women in town. The program now has sixty-five women participating in training and income-generating activities. It also runs a school. Most of the members have small children, and 40 percent are widows; most survive by collecting firewood or engaging in local trading. The displaced are mostly members of the Hariin subclan of the Rahanweyne and have little protection from rape:
One woman from the organization—who is now in hospital—was looking for firewood when she was raped by sixteen men. She couldn't walk and was left for two days until she was discovered. This was in November 1994. . . She lives in BP1, one of the displaced camps in Baidoa. She is Hariin, as are most of the women in the displaced camps. Subclan fighting devastated the Hariin, especially at the hands of the Hadamo subclan of the Rahanweyne.34
The women's vulnerability to sexual assault is compounded by the long walks in isolated areas required by their struggle to survive. According to the women interviewed, each woman usually requires six trips a day to bring water for their family and to the market to sell. The firewood collection often requires a walk of up to fifteen kilometers out of the center of town. Rape is always a danger: "men wait for them to leave the camp."35
In the course of research in Somalia in October 1993, Human Rights Watch received accounts of rape by all the Somali factions. A forty-year-old woman in a camp for displaced persons in the Bay region gave the following account of an attack by Marehan militia:
The Marehan killed, looted, raped and kidnapped women. As far as I know, about sixty women were taken. I knowthem personally. They even took one of my daughters...She is nineteen years old. [She] is now in Kenya...She was forcibly married to a Marehan, a gunman.36
Testimonies about the activity of Aideed's forces in 1992 were similar. A fifty-two-year-old Rahanweyne woman from Baidoa interviewed in the Bay region during October 1993 said, "The Aideed forces came and took Baidoa from the Marehan by force...Where they found Marehan people were staying, they raped the women and killed many people." A twenty-two-year-old Elai woman from Jawarey, a village between Saco Weyne and Bardera, recalled:
I was in the market early in the morning when people started shooting both in the air and at people. It was the Aideed militia, all Hawiye. They raped many women. They looted the market stalls of money, clothes, and sugar. That is what they came for. Not grain or anything else. Then they moved through the town collecting all the animals they could find. Many more women were raped.37
A forty-year-old man from the Darod, interviewed in Gedo region during October 1993, told of an attack by the Ajuran, a Hawiye clan: "They raped many women and then killed some of them. They did not take any captives." An Ajuran woman of about the same age from Middle Juba region, interviewed in October 1993, described an attack by other Hawiye soldiers. She said, "They took about ten women to care for the animals that they stole. I have not seen any of them again. They raped nearly all the women."38
Other women of the Rahanweyne described attacks by Ogadeni militia. One, from the Leisan clan, described how women were forced to betray their husbands or face being raped: "Nine of ten women were raped. When they came to the village, they asked the women where the men, the livestock, and the grain were. If the woman didn't answer, she got raped. If she did, she had to escort the soldiers to the food or livestock or the husband."39
A UNOSOM official gave Human Rights Watch examples of cases in Gedo region, gathered during a UNOSOM visit to the area in October 1993. Early that month, a woman was raped by more than twenty men on the road from Bardera to Baidoa; the previous week, when a group of women was stopped on the same road, the Rahanweyne women were singled out and raped.40
The women of vulnerable communities, notably the non-Somali minority known as the Bantu (or Gosha), are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse, because their communities fall outside the Somali clan structure, fail to field their own militias, and are accorded low social status by ethnic Somalis. A Rahanweyne official told Human Rights Watch the Bantu suffered because "many believe that the Bantu are inferior, and think they shouldn't have rights."41 One observer described this attitude toward Bantus as placing them largely outside traditional systems of arbitration and compensation:
There are constant compensation meetings between elders— agreeing blood money—that are very elaborate. The individual receives money after the clan negotiates in an everyday process. But social status dictates level of recompense; it is not a process of equals. The Bantus can't take advantage of these processes.42
Members of the Bantu agricultural communities of the Juba river area described rape as routine for raiders who loot, intimidate and sometimes kill the rural population. When militia from clans seeking to take over an area raid Bantu communities, rape is endemic. "The number of rapes is so large, it is uncountable. Rapes happen during attacks, as well as against women in the fields."43 One case was cited of a person killed in 1994 for having tried to stop the rape of his wife:
Mohammed Sekondo was killed in Fagan village in Jamaame District. He was killed by Ogadenis. Abdi "Dhere" is the militia man who killed him. Abdi tried to rape Mohammed's wife, and Mohammed said "You will never rape my wife infront of me,"' so then Abdi shot him. The leader of the Ogadeni militia responsible for this is Ahmed Hanshi, a Mohammed Zubeir [an Ogadeni subclan] commander. They are trying to move Bantus off their land; they loot and tell Bantus to leave. This is only happening northwest of Gelib. The attacks are usually carried out by twenty or more men.44
For Somali women who have suffered rape, there is virtually no recourse. Protection, compensation and justice are in many areas strictly applied on the basis of one's clan identity. Traditional means of arbitration between clan elders has been revived in many areas to provide some means of redress for both abuse by rival authorities and common crime—but they only work so long as a victim of abuse has a subclan strong enough to act on her behalf. A leader of a women's group noted, "No one has dealt with rape: not UNOSOM, the elders or the police. No one believes the woman's testimony over the man."45 In some cases, the woman's clan can seek monetary restitution from the offending clan. But in most cases, the woman herself does not receive the damages paid; the money is given to the male relatives of the family.
The lack of a state legal system has led many Somali women to support the imposition of traditional shari'a. They believe that the shari'a penalties for rape are effective both as a method of holding rapists accountable and as a deterrent. A leader of a women's group working with Rahanwayne displaced in Baidoa, for example, told us, "All of the women support shari'a, because it would mean that rape would be severely punished: if a man rapes a woman, he will be beaten badly the first time and killed the second."46 The same women told us that, in their view, a Somali interpretation of shari'a would adapt to Somali tradition.:
Shari'a supports women's rights. Inheritance is fair under shari'a—it recognizes women's rights. It allows Muslim women to go outside the house and have jobs. The branch of Islam in Sudan is different than in Somalia. If womendon't want to cover themselves in Somalia, there is no problem. Women are collecting water, tending livestock; they can't wear heavy clothes covering themselves up.47
Other sources in Baidoa told Human Rights Watch that elders and religious leaders are presently discussing shari'a, and that "the restrictions on women wouldn't be compulsory."48 Bantu community leaders also saw shari'a as effective in reducing sexual abuse: "When the fundamentalists came into the area, they reduced the problems; rapists are afraid of the fundamentalists, who were preaching that it was against Islam."49
Now that the international community has withdrawn from Somalia, Somalis face the task of bringing the war to an end. There has been some limited progress toward political reconstruction, particularly at the local level. Subclans have in some cases taken steps to limit or withdraw support for their warleaders, as measures to promote cross-clan reconciliation. In other areas, local religious or authority structures have been reestablished. However, these traditional structures are limited. They frequently carry the potential for abuse of personal power in the absence of a national system of law, and their presence is easily destabilized by renewed violence in an area. Ultimately, protection from rape and the establishment of mechanisms of accountability for perpetrators of rape can only come with an end to the conflict and the restoration of civil society in Somalia.
30 The following material was adapted from Human Rights Watch/Africa, "Somalia Faces the Future: Human Rights in a Fragmented Society," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 7, no. 2 (April 1995).
31 Interviews, members of women's group, Baidoa, Somalia, January 24, 1995, and October 1993. All names withheld by Human Rights Watch unless otherwise indicated.
32 Interview, Somali official, Nairobi, Kenya, January 19, 1995.
33 Interview, U.N. health officer, Kismayu, Somalia, January 24, 1995.
34 Interview, members of the women's program, Baidoa, Somalia, January 24, 1995.
36 Interview, Baidoa, Somalia, October 1993.
37 Interview, Gedo region, Somalia, October 1993.
39 Interview, Baidoa, Somalia, October 1993.
40 Interview, UNOSOM official, Gedo region, Somalia, October 1993.
41 Interview, U.N. aid officer, Baidoa, Somalia, January 22, 1995.
42 Interview, aid officer, Nairobi, Kenya, January 21, 1995.
43 Interview, Bantu displaced persons, Kismayu, Somalia, January 29, 1995.
46 Interview, leader of a women's organization, Baidoa, Somalia, January 24, 1995.
49 Interview, Bantu displaced persons, Kismayu, Somalia, January 29, 1995.
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