The departure of the last troops of the United Nations' Somalia operation in March 1995 marks a critical juncture for Somalia, and for international peacekeeping. In researching this report, Human Rights Watch set out to discover what would be left behind when the U.N. withdrew, what the prospects would be for the future, and what recommendations should be made to Somalis and the international community based on what we learned. The resulting recommendations are directed at Somali leaders at all levels of society (including those in the Somali diaspora), at various governments in the region, and at the wider international community, in particular the major European powers and the U.S. They concern the protection and promotion of human rights in Somalia, but also larger issues of international peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian intervention.

In this report, Human Rights Watch calls upon Somalia's de facto authorities to take responsibility for the armed groups acting on their authority, to impose discipline on these forces and hold them accountable for their actions, and to bring human rights considerations into their discussions with other authorities, not least the elimination of practices that discriminate by reason of clan affiliations. Within this broad framework, Human Rights Watch is also calling for an end to the indiscriminate use of force by parties to ongoing conflict in Somalia, to extrajudicial or judicial executions, and to amputations, hostage-taking and forced displacement. Human Rights Watch recommends to the United Nations the incorporation of a human rights component into all peacekeeping operations, while calling upon the international community to make the long-in-force, but never enforced, arms embargo on Somalia a reality until representative government has been reestablished there.

This report considers some of the lessons learned-and those wrongly drawn-from the U.N. operation in Somalia that has now come to an end. First authorized by the Security Council in April 1992, UNOSOM (the United Nations Operation in Somalia) had taken assertive action to support aid deliveries only in December 1992, when backed by 24,000 U.S. troops and 13,000 others under U.S. command in the United Nations International Task Force (UNITAF). In May 1993 UNOSOM and UNITAF were replaced with a program with a broader mandate called UNOSOM II, although those U.S. forces that remained continued to function under a separate U.S. command.

Today the international community risks misreading the Somalia experience as a blunt warning against all engagement in the crises that generate complex emergencies, from war-driven famine to genocide. That the intervention was costly in peacekeepers' lives and produced only limited results is often cited as an argument against engagement. At the same time, many observers fail to note the importance of the U.N.'s overwhelming emphasis on brokering deals between powerful military leaders, to the detriment of those in Somali society seeking reconstruction and reconciliation (and the U.N.'s own programs to this end). Indeed some critics of the operation have argued that it was because the U.N. sought to go beyond simple wooing of the warleaders that clashes with the U.N. took place and the peacekeeping force fell short of its objectives to leave Somalia with some kind of government in place. These critiques should not go unchallenged. (Although these leaders are commonly termed "warlords," this report uses the neutral term "warleader," as their function within each subclan's collective leadership is to lead it in war.)

We conclude, in contrast, that a principal problem of the Somalia operation was that it was pursued firstly as an exercise in conflict resolution between powerful individuals, without addressing the policies each pursued which led to Somalia's continuing devastation. The U.N. dealt with the warleaders as if with national leaders, but without holding these claimants to authority and legitimacy accountable for their actions against any consistent standard. Nor did this approach take fully into account what could be called the constituencies of the warleaders, the relations between distinct parts of society, and the efforts to build bridges of political participation between them-a focus of this report. Stopping the fighting was clearly a crucial goal for the U.N. mission, but the way this was pursued often ran counter to efforts to promote a return to civil society in which fundamental human rights had protection and respect.

In Somalia the focus on a few personalities meant the U.N. (and United States) negotiators treated Somali warleaders first as colleagues, then as outlaws, and finally, after the withdrawal of U.S. and European troops by mid-March 1994, again as the sole principals in the brokerage of power. These swings in the treatment of one or the other of the warleaders opened the U.N. to charges of partisanship. The U.N. and U.S. negotiators seemed arbitrarily to pick and choose between warleaders for commendation and criticism, without any regard for their respective human rights record (or other objective criteria). Open conflict between U.N. forces and a warleader's militia reinforced this perception-in part because the only immutable principle in the U.N.'s approach to a brokered peace appeared to be that its own forces not be subject to attack. In addressing the crisis largely as a matter of arranging cease-fires and alliances with warleaders who had made no commitment to observe international standards, the U.N. mission undercut its own authority and lost sight of its humanitarian mission. Negotiations based on anything but full information and principles may appear-and become-dangerously arbitrary, bringing the integrity of an international operation into question.

Limited, timely and informed actions by the international community can, with economy of effort, counter policies and actions that expose a population to starvation and death. They have the potential to be an effective foil to genocide and other crimes against humanity that also pose dangers to international security and peace. A consistent foundation on the international standards of human rights and humanitarian law, moreover, is the best guarantee against charges of partisanship. That international action to halt crimes against humanity must be in no way "partisan" to anything but humanity should be self-evident: but unfortunately this is not yet fully accepted by the peacekeeping establishment. UNOSOM peacekeepers told Human Rights Watch that even the release of objective information on human rights observance would put neutrality in question; the premise being that anything that disrupts a status quo is a sign of partisanship. A real lesson of the Somalia intervention is that the U.N. peacekeeping and peace enforcement establishment must make human rights integral to its response to such emergencies. The U.N.should ensure that support for human rights monitoring and protection and public reporting becomes a norm in peacekeeping as it has gradually become an accepted part of other aspects of international affairs. To disseminate information on human rights becomes "political" only when to do so is extraordinary-only when information about breaches of humanitarian norms is routinely suppressed or released on a selective basis.

The Somalia experience should also lead the international community to improve its capacity to act opportunely to avert catastrophe before it reaches the level of the Somalia crisis, and to build flexibility into its responses to humanitarian challenges as they arise. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's efforts to foster the U.N.'s current focus on crisis prevention is an appropriate and critical part of this development.

Human Rights Watch has believed from the inception of the Somalia crisis that the U.N.'s humanitarian role there must have as a central aim the restoration of conditions in which human rights are respected and can have lasting protection. Human rights abuses on an enormous scale were, after all, the principal cause of the famine which triggered the intervention. A part of the role of the intervention force was to protect relief convoys; the U.N. was also to assist in political and economic reconstruction in order to remove the need for future assistance, while allowing hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees to return home. To that end, the U.N. should have helped restore guarantees of Somalis' basic human rights so that they could fully participate in rebuilding their society. The U.N. did not, however, consider human rights monitoring or protection to be among its mission priorities in Somalia.

The U.N.'s withdrawal opens the way for the international community either to help Somalia rebuild civil society, or to thwart progress to this end. The situation is one of opportunity and of threat. The military leaders of Mogadishu, whose rivalry had been the U.N.'s focus, confounded predictions of post-U.N. chaos by initially cooperating through a joint "Peace Committee" in the administration of the capital's harbor and airport. Other traditional authorities and representatives of Somalia's population continue to engage in inter- and intra-clan consultations with a view to reconciliation. There has been no clear signal that Somalia will rapidly return to the state of calamity of 1991-1992 that led to an international rescue mission. On the other hand, the reemergence of fragile local authorities, the reaching out of clan-based authorities to other clans, and the revival of commerce and otheraspects of civil society are extraordinarily vulnerable to disruption. The disruptive capacity of a warleader who sees little personal advantage in a society at peace remains high.

The greatest threat to Somalia's reconstruction may be posed by external intervention that disrupts the uneasy balance between rival military leaders and competing social groups. Although the traditional authorities that stand behind the military chiefs now appear prepared to end the conflict of the past five years, a commitment from a foreign government to support one party to the conflict could change this irrevocably. With the withdrawal so recent, the potential for regional and international powers to manipulate Somali affairs remains high. Prospects of one or more states deciding to do so, through arms supplies or mere finance, may rise if the United Nations was indeed to turn away from concerns with Somalia in the aftermath of the U.N.'s troop withdrawal. A disturbing sign that competing powers are already poised to fight over Somalia's potentially rich pickings emerged from interviews by our researcher in January, February and March: international fruit companies are now hiring militiamen and heavily armed "technicals" from the warleaders to fight on their behalf over Somalia's still-limited banana exports.

There have been many analyses of the United Nations' response to the crisis in Somalia since the collapse of central government there in 1991. Clashes between international and Somali forces, attacks on aid workers, and the politics of the U.N. effort itself have dominated this reporting. So too have critiques that the U.N. arrived too late, stayed too long, and spent too much. This report is different in that it takes as its point of departure the human rights situation of the ordinary Somali in Somali society. It centers on the relation of Somalis to de facto authorities-the clan councils, traditional sultans, ugases, sheikhs, and imans, and of course the warleaders-while examining the larger picture of human rights abuse and protection. It considers the potential for the traditional and modern authority structures now emerging in the country to halt abuses and provide protection, and ways the international community can best encourage this. The U.N. is a part of this picture, but only a part.

Somalia's de facto authorities, their armed agents (militias, police and others), and the characteristic ways in which they abuse or protect the human rights of Somalis are the principal subjects of this report. A common theme is that human rights observance, like the emerging pattern of authority itself, is largely differentiated along clan and subclan lines. This in turn reflects dramatic population movements by many of Somalia's clan-based communities in the course of the past five years, and the continued antagonism among some of them. The forcible takeover of territory by rival population groups, and their consolidation of control over resources and transportation routes, was accomplished through indiscriminate killings, selective assassination and executions, and the use of rape as weapons of terror and intimidation, as we demonstrate here. The resulting patterns of exclusion and forced displacement by reason of subclan affiliation form the backdrop to recent moves toward inter- and intra-clan reconciliation. But discrimination by reason of one's clan identity is still a constant in the treatment accorded to different population groups by the competing authorities of modern Somalia.

In examining the human rights situation in Somalia, Human Rights Watch has considered both the applicable standards of humanitarian law (the laws of war) and standards of human rights law which can provide a useful measure of human rights observance even in situations of fragmented de facto authority. The actions of the organized armed groups of Somalia's competing authorities have included breaches of these norms, ranging from hostage-taking, rape, summary execution and the selective assassination of civilians, to the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons with wanton disregard for the lives of civilians. The actions of United Nations forces are assessed strictly against their obligations under humanitarian law and are also found wanting, notably with respect to the indiscriminate use of force by United States air power in civilian areas and against civilian targets. The report recommends changes in the U.N.'s procedures for ensuring adherence to humanitarian law.

Although the human rights dimension of UNOSOM's own role and its relation with the warleaders is discussed here, this report focuses primarily on the abuses committed on the authority of Somali leaders against other Somalis, and the potential for human rights protection in the long term. To this end we examine the relation between the warleaders, the United Nations mission, and the patchwork of authority identified at the community level. Inparticular, we examine the reemergence of local authority structures that show some promise in assuming responsibility for their actions. These largely traditional structures frequently hold both a capacity for abuse, through their influence on militia and local police, and the potential to remedy abuse and provide a check on the warleaders even in the absence of a national system of law. The relationship of these de facto authorities to the militias, police, bandits and nominally private guards was misread by the U.N. to its cost.

New information concerning the structures, recruitment base and leadership of the militias and the police, and their relation to the ubiquitous private guards and bandits of the UNOSOM period, is a crucial part of the human rights picture shown here. This report provides evidence that the warleaders do, in fact, exercise a considerable degree of command and control over their forces, particularly when mobilizing for war and raiding, and should be held directly responsible for the abuses committed by those forces. The leaders had the authority in some cases to restrain and discipline their subordinates during the difficult times of 1992-94 but did not do so; to the contrary, many of the systematic abuses described below could not have occurred without the warleaders making them happen.

In the aftermath of the U.N. mission, Somalis face the task of reconstruction in their own way. Grassroots efforts, led by a broad variety of activists and elders, offer an alternative to the cycle of violence, although law and order remains an issue dominated by clan discrimination and kinship status, and the warleaders engage in reprisals against key elders to counter their efforts at negotiation. The greatest danger to the broad-based efforts at reconstruction could come from the international community-if any nation chose to interfere now by backing one or more warleader.

This report is largely based on more than seventy interviews carried out by Human Rights Watch consultant John Prendergast in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia during January and February 1995. Those interviewed included Somali elders, sultans and other traditional leaders, local Somali government officials, and officials of subclan-based political factions. Gen. Said Hersi Morgan, one of Somalia's best-known warleaders, was interviewed, as were representatives of other warleaders. Interviews were also carried out with members of particularly vulnerable groups, notably ethnic minority communities, the displaced, and with other members of civil society, including members of women's self-help organizations. Non-Somali and Somali officials of aid agencies, of the United Nations in Somalia, and others provided further useful information through extensive interviews. Most names have been omitted from citations in order to safeguard the security of those interviewed.

John Prendergast visited Somalia during the last weeks of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II), with a brief to assess the basis for human rights protection in post-UNOSOM Somalia. In the course of his mission he visited the interior towns of Baidoa, Bur Hakaba, and Luuq, and the ports of Kismayu, Merca and Mogadishu. Further interviews were carried out in Nairobi, Kenya, where the United Nations now bases its operations related to Somalia, and in Addis Ababa and Washington, D.C. The report also draws upon material from a Human Rights Watch mission to Somalia in October 1993, when Prendergast spent several weeks in Bardera, Baidoa and Kismayu, and material produced by consultant Patrick Gilkes, who conducted extensive interviews on our behalf in Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Somalia in December 1993. The report was written by Michael McClintock and edited by Cynthia Brown.

The U.N. Missions

A Military Approach to a Humanitarian Problem

The international community tended to focus on battles over the capital city and port of Mogadishu. The complexities of a fragmented state were easily misunderstood as a running fight between a few competing "warlords." The rivalry between self-proclaimed "interim president" Ali Mahdi Mohammed, a warleader and politician of the Abgal clan who dominates North Mogadishu and Middle Shebelle Region, and Gen. Mohammed Aideed, a warleader of the Habr Gedir, whose control extends over South Mogadishu and significant parts of the areabetween the south's two rivers, has provided a theme running throughout UNOSOM's presence.1 Another warleader who has preoccupied the U.N. is Gen. Said Hersi Morgan, formerly a chief commander of Siad Barre's army and now head of the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM). Morgan is the warleader of the Harti subclan and heads the coalition that controls the port of Kismayu. Yet another is Col. Ahmed Omar Jess, a warleader of the Ogadeni subclan also operating in the Kismayu area.

The military dimension of UNOSOM/UNITAF, and its preoccupation with the warleaders of Mogadishu, colored and undercut the U.N.'s own programs to nurture the reemergence of community-based authority. The overwhelming emphasis on dealing with military leaders-and pursuing military solutions-swamped these other programs. At the same time, there was no effective plan for transforming the show of force of December 1992, when U.S. troops arrived, into a measured response to changing circumstances. Although political reconstruction became a significant part of UNOSOM's overall program after May 1993, political support at the highest level of UNOSOM's direction was largely reserved for initiatives concerning the warleaders. One Somali UNOSOM official went so far as to tell Human Rights Watch that she herself had virtually no contact with the U.N. Secretary-General's last special representative in Somalia, Victor Ghebo, because he "dealt only with the faction leaders." (She added that of the top UNOSOM officers "no one was interested in human rights."2 Other Somali and foreign observers concur.)

UNOSOM wanted desperately to find a key to understanding the seemingly anarchic or random violence that had initially threatened the Somali people's survival in 1991 and 1992, and a lever to influence it. The warleaders were ostentatiously present in the foreground of the intervention. They could hardly be ignored. At the same time, while damage to long-term reconstruction was done from the start of the U.N.'s Somalia operation, with the public embrace of the warleaders as the principals in the drama, there was a reluctance to treat the warleaders as representative (as they indeed were) or to hold them to any kind of standard as de facto authorities who claimed to be able to take power and form a government. For example, the U.N.'s missions did not challenge the warleaders about their abuses against Somalis. A concentration on high-level political deals with the leaders it called "warlords" provided the framework of the U.N.'s mission.

Ignoring Abuse

In keeping with a tradition in which peacekeeping has been largely segregated from the U.N.'s human rights machinery, UNSOM ignored not only the critical role that human rights abuse had played in creating the 1991-92 famine but also the warleaders' reliance on abuse to maintain their influence.3 This willful blindness was based on the view that human rights reporting would have posed obstacles to conflict resolution. As one former UNOSOM advisor put it to Human Rights Watch in a March 1995 interview, publicly tallying the abuses of various factions, would have "compromised the U.N.'s neutrality."4

Holding warleaders accountable by day-to-day monitoring and reporting of their exercise of (de facto)5 authority may also have been considered to foreclose future options-in which their reputations might need rehabilitation as they became allies, or a foreign government's choice to support as a sovereign leader. Although the U.N. broke new ground by incorporating human rights monitoring into peacekeeping programs in El Salvador and Cambodia, this was not to be the case in Somalia.The U.N. determined from the start to address only the symptoms of gross abuse-the requirements of humanitarian relief-without considering the human rights issues behind them. Some of the practices that violated human rights were largely peripheral to armed conflict: they included hostage-taking, arbitrary detentions, summary executions, systematic rape. Others reflected the disregard for civilian life of those expanding or defending their territorial claims: such as the drive-by strafing of civilians. These everyday occurrences for Somalis largely fell outside the U.N.'s areas of concern-and were excluded utterly even from its public information program. The U.N. was therefore blindsided by its own refusal to address the heart of the Somali crisis: the relation of the warleaders and other Somali leaders to their own people.

Misreading the Warleaders

UNOSOM wavered between identification of the warleaders as the primary decision-makers in Somali political life, and dubbing them mere terrorists. In apparent contradiction, the "warlords" were at once responsible for the violence and unable to control the clan gunmen that were its instruments and their strength.

Yet the warleaders were, in fact, more than mere gunmen. As representatives of their clan-based communities, both they and their clans' larger body of leadership could be held accountable for their actions, and held to certain standards. The clan-elder-merchant-militia-warleader relationship was complex, but should not have been mystifying: the warleaders too were clan leaders, but neither paramount nor unaccountable to others. As a longtime aid official put it, "A warlord could not not be a clan leader, while a clan leader does not have to be a warlord."6 The U.N. mission did not, however, effectively use the relation of the warleaders to their respective communities as a lever, or fully recognize the capacity of the authorities in the background to make or break them.

Much of the warleaders' strength was founded on a promise of protection, supremacy and spoils for their clans, and the domination of others in an order founded on social and economic division and discrimination. This clan chauvinism, like the human rights abuse that was often a consequence of predation against other communities, was difficult for the U.N. to address without challenging the foundation of the clan's support for the warleaders. To the extent that the U.N. dealt with alternatives to the warleaders, efforts were undermined by its emphasis on dealings with the warleaders as the principal option for meaningful dialogue. At the same time, so long as the spoils reached the clans who provided the fighting men, and the militias provided the clan protection, there was little pressure from them on the warleaders to do other than they had always done. As time went by, moreover, and the depredations on other communities continued, warleaders could also appeal to their supporters' fear of revenge and retaliation as a way to maintain support.

The degree to which each warleader in fact controlled the armed men and the use of violence in certain areas deserved comment and denunciation by the U.N. But warleaders claimed they could not control their gunmen, thatthe violence was random and that a multiplicity of armed groups could be responsible for any given attack or civilian death, distancing themselves from accountability for abuses in areas they in fact controlled or dominated. The U.N. did not challenge their claims, and so contributed to the international image of Somalia as one of sheer anarchy. It also left the warleaders entirely free to act as they wished. There was virtually no pressure on the warleaders to observe international standards in their treatment of civilians and evasion of accountability even for attacks on U.N. forces was facilitated by the U.N.'s reluctance to attach blame.

The Legacy of UNOSOM

After March 1994, the umbrella of UNOSOM protection was progressively withdrawn as UNOSOM abandoned many areas of the country. Now that the last U.N. troops have left Somalia, attention must be given to what has been left behind. A limited international effort of aid and reconstruction is planned, including ongoing programs of United Nations agencies-notably UNICEF, the World Food Program, UNESCO and the UNDP-as well as a functioning alliance of international aid agencies and local Somali organizations. Most of these agencies believe they can operate without the security umbrella of UNOSOM, dealing directly with local counterparts and authorities. Some will decentralize to adapt to the fragmented mosaic of authority in Somalia today.

The larger heritage of the UNOSOM presence is difficult to assess. On the one hand, some of the warleaders that were in large part responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in 1991 and 1992 maintain their grip on territory and their domination of sectors of the population (others have lost significant leverage). Efforts to boost Somalia's reconstruction from the bottom up have had some positive effect which has not entirely been erased, notably the persistence of adaptations of the U.N.'s district council structures in some areas.7 On the other hand, in some ways UNOSOM actually boosted the power of the Mogadishu warleaders-by providing a source of political legitimacy, huge amounts of cash, and even arms-as documented further below.

The Somali employees UNOSOM left behind are a further legacy to which the international community must pay particular attention. Threats face those whose close association with the United Nations' programs made enemies of the warleaders. Human Rights Watch has protested to the Security Council the apparent indifference with which UNOSOM has treated threats against some of its Somali employees. Somali members of UNOSOM's political division asked for Human Rights Watch's help during our recent visit to Somalia, and in a letter to Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali that was copied to all members of the Security Council, Human Rights Watch/Africa urged immediate action, including evacuations if necessary-to protect former UNOSOM employees who fear for their safety.8 The situation of former UNOSOM employees-and the fate of those who had already suffered reprisals before the withdrawal-must not be ignored because it is now "out of sight."

Somali Military and Political Forces

Human Rights Abuses

Since before the U.N. intervention, and still currently, abuses by agents of Somalia's de facto authorities have included killings of civilians through the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons, the deliberate, targeted killing of civilians, execution-style killings of captives, rape and other cruel and degrading treatment, and forced displacement and controls on freedom of movement. All of these abuses appear in patterns that reflect discriminatory treatment along clan lines.

Protection from abuses, and compensation for past abuses is also sometimes available, although often depending almost exclusively on clan affiliation. Shari'a (Islamic law) has been credited with significantly reducing common crime in areas in which it has been enforced. Even in those areas where local authorities have agreed to impose either traditional forms of judgment and punishment for crimes, or shari'a, the clan of the offender and the victim may be a determining factor. The virtual absence of due process guarantees in the current Somali application of shari'a and in traditional proceedings, as well as the cruel and irrevocable punishments often handed down-including summary executions and amputations-are further concerns.

The deliberate deprivation of the basic needs for survival, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the civil war, also continues along clan lines, although without the mass killings and the destruction of water systems and the means of production that marked the civil war. That the systemic looting of vulnerable populations has not recently led to massive starvation and death, however, is also a consequence of recent improvements in rainfall and bountiful harvests. The implication is that a return to massive inter-clan conflict could again result in the mass starvation of the past-if it coincided, as in parts of 1991-1992, with severe drought and abandoned agricultural production. Systematic murder on the authority of Somali clans and their warleaders has continued to be reported in the past year, although nothing like the scale of the massacres of 1991 and 1992. Some of these deliberate and arbitrary killings have occurred in the aftermath of battles to control towns or neighborhoods. Murder driven by clan differences has often been reported in the context of moves by victorious militia to expel civilians of rival communities wholly from an area. This clearance of civilian populations from their homes and land has been a feature of the civil war since even before the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre, who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991.

Somalis Most at Risk

The situation of the Somalis who are most at risk of deliberate and arbitrary killing, of forced displacement, rape and other abuse is documented in many of the Human Rights Watch interviews cited in this report. These are the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have been displaced from their homes and dispossessed of their means of support, as well as ethnic minority communities, who face expulsion from their land or looting of their means of survival by the armed militias of more powerful groups. The victimization of women, particularly the displaced, is widespread. And as noted above, some former UNOSOM employees face or have suffered reprisals for their involvement with the U.N.

Others are under threat because they are leaders of their own communities and are seen to pose a challenge to the coalitions led by rival warleaders. Although a rupture of custom, attacks on traditional leaders have been a particularly disturbing part of the recent human rights record. Such killings may be of enormous significance to current efforts by councils of elders and other community leaders to agree to alternatives to continuing conflict.

A common theme emerging from interviews with clan leaders, members of Somali nongovernmental organizations and other Somalis who met with Human Rights Watch in January and February 1995 was a weariness with the war and lawlessness of the past four years. A common desire for law and order frequently took the form of support for the introduction of the "hudud" punishments derived from Islamic law. Traditional means of arbitration between clan elders have also been revived in many areas to provide some means of redress for both abuse by rival authorities and common crime: they can work so long as a victim of abuse has a subclan strong enough to act on his or her behalf. There appears to be a consensus among the traditional leaders Human Rights Watch met that law is the essential precondition of a restoration of order in Somalia. At the same time, but there is little sign of progress either in reintroducing the pre-civil war system of law and justice, or in establishing reformed and effective structures in its place.9

The most dramatic limitations on local, and particularly traditional remedies to abuse-and the protection of the population-are in their discriminatory application. Protection, compensation and justice are in many areas applied strictly on the basis of one's clan identity. As an agency official noted, "The only human rights protection is the structure of the clan, in the sense that it is the clan that protects rights."10 Security and justice too often depend ultimately on one's kinship group and its relative power in a local community.

Exhaustion at the permanent threat of violence has led increasingly to intra- and inter-clan consultations to seek political solutions. A series of inter-clan conferences in the south during the past year has brought together clan elders, businessmen, women's groups, intellectuals and religious leaders, while excluding or marginalizing warleaders' representatives. Mostly held without UNOSOM encouragement or support, these conferences have reached interim agreements toward both resolving inter-clan conflict and undercutting the warleaders who claim their support from rival clans.

The warleaders clearly see such negotiations as a threat. This has been shown by killings and threats apparently intended to intimidate or to eliminate key elders in pivotal communities that contemplate a course of inter-clan relations independent of the warleaders. These killings have continued despite what a longtime aid official in Somalia described to Human Rights Watch as the ordinary Somali's "horror" at attacks on clan elders. But below we document several recent cases in which elders were seized and killed, threatened with death or had relatives kidnapped by agents of the principal warleaders.

The Warleaders: Threats to Reconstruction

From early 1994 to its withdrawal, UNOSOM had an open accommodation with the capital's warleaders, to the detriment of community-based authority structures throughout the rest of the country. The most serious danger with UNOSOM's withdrawal is that this will be followed by direct, unilateral support for one or other of the warleaders by donor or neighboring governments. The prospect of governments jockeying to support one or more rival warleaders, once freed from commitments to UNOSOM to pursue their own short-term interests, poses the most serious threat to the development of community-based authorities that can resist the warleaders.

Outside support for the warleaders would seriously jeopardize the hard-won progress toward reconciliation between grass roots community leaders. It is only through broad participation through their communities that Somalis can hope to counter the power of the warleaders and their "factions." A foreign government might rationalize recognition of one or more of the warleaders as helping promote a "natural" process interrupted by UNOSOM-a process of realpolitik in which one warleader would ultimately have prevailed over all others. But unilateral support now would constitute a blatant interference in the efforts of Somalia's citizens to restore a semblance of order and respect for fundamental rights in their country.

Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations

Somalia's de facto Authorities

· The patchwork of de facto authorities in Somalia includes subclans' councils of elders, merchants or business figures, traditional leaders such as sultans, sheikhs and ugases, religious leaders, and a range of local authorities based on structures introduced by the United Nations. The warleaders are part of this matrix.

International organizations, agencies and human rights advocates should develop communications with de facto authorities at the local and subclan level as alternatives to dealing exclusively with subclan warleaders.

· The armed agents of these authorities include part-time and standing militias, police and armed guards. These personnel often play multiple roles. An individual can be a militiaman, a contract guard, a policeman, or serve in each of these capacities depending on circumstances. They remain largely accountable to their warleader and their clan in a relationship documented in the body of the report. The warleaders and other clan authorities are usually in a position to halt systemic abuse by these forces.

The collective authorities of subclans should be held accountable before Somali and international public opinion for abuses by agents acting on their authority, including their clans' warleaders. This means firstly that human rights observance should be the object of regular monitoring and reporting: and that information on human rights abuse should never be suppressed as a political tactic.

· Discrimination by reason of clan identity is a force behind a wide range of human rights and humanitarian law abuses. The pattern of abuse documented in this report includes cases in which ordinary Somalis were

- deliberately killed solely because of membership in a rival clan, subclan or minority;

- killed through the indiscriminate use of force by armed agents who disregard the safety of "enemy" civilians;

- raped because of clan or minority identity;

- forcibly expelled from a town or a region, stripped of their goods and cut off from their livelihood;

- forced to flee their homes through constant threats to life and security by members of rival clans;

- restricted in their movements and the right to reside in certain areas because of their clan identity.

Somali leaders from the local, community level and the subclan to the regional and national level should be pressed by the international community to commit themselves to upholding fundamental principles of nondiscrimination in their exercise of authority.

· Regardless of clan identity, Somali civilians are at risk of death or maiming due to indiscriminate use of force, including the promiscuous use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas both in Mogadishu and elsewhere. All of the warleaders and their respective militias are responsible for such abuses as a matter of routine.

The warleaders of Somali subclans and others whose agents exercise armed force should take steps to closely regulate the use of force by those under their command, through the production of regulations founded on international standards, and disciplinary measures to enforce them. Any deaths resulting from the use of armed force by de facto authorities should be registered, and compensation paid for civilian deaths.

· Tens of thousands of Somali women live in displaced persons or refugee camps where they are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is also common when marauding clan-based militias raid or forcibly occupy territories inhabited by members of rival clans. Women who are members of Bantu ethnic minorities are at particular risk.

Somalia's de facto authorities should be held publicly accountable by Somali and international public opinion for rapes committed by forces under their authority. The failure to punish members of militia and other forces for rape suggest that rape is an authorized practice. Somali subclan leaders, including warleaders, should be pressed to establish clear regulations that outlaw and punish rape, to immediately investigate allegations of rape, to detain and subject to criminal proceedings anyone credibly accused of rape, and to provide compensation to rape victims. Local authorities should provide security for women in camps for the displaced.

· Extrajudicial executions still frequently occur in the course of clan-based conflict, or in its aftermath. Agents of warleaders sometimes carry out such killings as public executions, with the bodies displayed to intimidate others. Cases documented by Human Rights Watch include those of Somali elders and other traditional leaders extrajudicially executed by agents of warleaders for seeking reconciliation between clans and subclans.

Somalia's de facto authorities should be held publicly accountable for killings by those under their authority, including agents of warleaders acting on behalf of the subclan they represent. Warleaders and other subclan authorities should renounce the use of murder as a political tool, and take steps to stop such killings, including the promise that those responsible will be brought to justice.

· The justice system throughout most of Somalia continues to be based on the traditional elders' system of negotiation, a means through which compensation for an injustice may be arranged through arbitration, although Shari'a and the pre-civil war Somali penal codes applied in some areas. Human Rights Watch welcomes efforts to introduce some form of rule of law in Somalia. We are concerned, however, that all forms of the administration of justice, whether traditional or modern, should comply with international standards. In North Mogadishu, in Gedo Region, and in some parts of the northeast and northwest (Somaliland), Islamic leaders dominate local councils and police acting on behalf of shari'a courts (applying Islamic law) carry out law enforcement duties. Shari'a courts have been credited with bringing dramatic reductions in common crime and lawlessness in some areas. Traditional punishments for unlawful killings have included summary executions without due process of law. Punishments under shari'a have included amputation and stoning for crimes ranging from adultery and theft, to murder. Fair trial guarantees are largely absent, and punishments are cruel and irreversible. In Somali application of shari'a law as well as in negotiations under the traditional diya system, the clan identity of the victim and the accused may result in bias and impunity.

De facto authorities should institute at least rudimentary systems of justice in areas they control, and acknowledge those systems already established. Authorities should bear responsibility for allowing courts to be independent and pledge to subordinate themselves to their rulings. Some system of justice, traditional or otherwise, is absolutely necessary. Authorities responsible for the administration of traditional forms of justice, and the administrators of shari'a courts, should provide fair trial guarantees, including the right to trial before an independent and impartial court to maintain one's innocence, to present a defense, and to appeal a sentence. Cruel and irrevocable punishments should not be sought or carried out.

· There is little freedom of movement and residence without consideration of clan identity. Whole communities have been expelled or forced to flee their homes and land, and remain under threat of death should they return. The situation is especially critical for the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who remain refugees in numerous countries, afraid to return home to potentially hostile local authorities.

The de facto authorities should reverse measures by which people are excluded from certain areas or occupations by reason of their clan affiliation, or forcibly displaced. Those displaced by reason of their clan identity should have the right to return to their places of origin. De facto authorities of powerful subclans should guarantee the safety of returnees and send emissaries to meet the displaced within the country and those abroad to offer support for their return.

The United Nations and the International Community

· Some limited progress has been made 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. Similarly, the withdrawal of the U.N. has removed a major source of political and economic resources (and legitimacy) from the Mogadishu warleaders, which some observers believe may lessen their capacity to return to sustained conflict.

The international community should do nothing that might sustain the warleaders whose gunmen have dominated past relations with the United Nations. To this end the U.N. should enforce its longstanding embargo on the flow of arms to Somalia.

· The U.N. peacekeeping operation excluded human rights considerations from its program, turning a blind eye to the abuse of Somalis by Somalis, while concentrating on bringing Somali warleaders to the bargaining table. Despite recommendations from the U.N. human rights establishment and the General Assembly to do so, it neither monitored the abusive policies and practices of the rival authorities nor made adherence to international standards an essential element of its negotiations.

The United Nations should take steps to ensure that a human rights monitoring, analysis and reporting office is part of peacekeeping operations wherever they take place. International human rights and humanitarian law standards should become essential norms cited in the brokering of cease-fires and peace agreements by U.N. negotiators, with a view to making clear that these are not negotiable.

· Even when the U.N. was moved to take steps to confront abusive actions by a Somali warleader, such as ambush attacks on U.N. peacekeepers, or using a hospital as a defended position, the legal framework of its action was unclear. The leadership of UNOSOM considered the mission to be empowered by a Security Council resolution to detain Somalis, but did not elaborate.

The United Nations should clarify the legal foundations of police actions taken by peacekeepers, including legal procedures which would regulate detentions in the course of peacekeeping operations so that detainees would enjoy internationally recognized safeguards against arbitrary detention. In the absence of an international criminal court, alternative legal provision should be made to deal with situations in which individuals charged with crimes against humanity are detained by peacekeepers.

· The U.N.'s peacekeeping forces did not operate with a clear and public position regarding their obligations under the laws of war. The UNOSOM command did not exercise to the full its command responsibility to ensure the laws of war were respected, that training and rules of engagement were adapted and reviewed to ensure these norms were observed, and that breaches were monitored and duly subject to judicial action.

The United Nations should acknowledge that its peacekeeping operations are bound by international humanitarian law and ensure that all troops committed to peacekeeping operations are fully trained to observe these standards. The United Nations peacekeeping office should itself ensure that rules of engagement observed by national contingents are consistent with international standards and should monitor observance of humanitarian norms by U.N. forces.

· Military spokesmen of the U.N. and separate United States commands consistently refused to provide regular and detailed information on the identity or number of Somali casualties resulting from encounters with U.N. forces. The Geneva Conventions place a clear obligation on forces participating in any military action to collect the enemy dead, to identity them, to provide information to relatives if possible, and to bury them as appropriate (Articles 15, 16, and 17, First Geneva Convention of 1949).

The United Nations and United States forces should make full and detailed information public concerning civilian and other casualties incurred in the course of peacekeeping operations. Such disclosures should be made both to meet obligations under international standards, and to promote public confidence in the accountability of United Nations forces.

· No single U.N. authority collected and disseminated information concerning the observation of the laws of war by U.N. forces-or measures taken to establish accountability for alleged abuses by these forces. By decentralizingthis process to each independent national detachment (and of course their parent armed forces), the U.N. evaded its responsibility to account for its actions and to ensure each component element was held individually accountable. Although some national contingents brought troops to trial for torture, aggravated assault, murder and related crimes, no central register of complaints, legal processes and remedies to abuse was established.

Procedures should be introduced for all peacekeeping operations which would add transparency to the monitoring, investigation and remedy of abuses by the U.N.'s own forces. To this end, a central registry should be established that would log all reports of possible violations of the laws of war, the measures taken to investigate these reports, any criminal or disciplinary proceedings that result, and the nature of any punishments awarded and compensation paid. Public access to this registry should be guaranteed in the country of operations, with copies of these materials available at U.N. headquarters in New York and Geneva.

· The U.N.'s provision of public information on its military operations was based on a public policy of unconditional defense of U.N. actions, sometimes baldly misrepresenting incidents that were already on the public record. The net effect was to evade or to undermine independent reporting and assessment of actions by U.N. forces and by doing so to evade accountability. Information was distorted or withheld concerning several incidents including major loss of civilian lives in which U.N. forces were widely believed to have violated humanitarian law. This was both an evasion of accountability and a practice that undermined efforts to promote international standards with the parties to the conflict in Somalia.

The provision of public information on United Nations operations, so that the international community is fully informed, should be a high priority of U.N. peacekeeping operations, both as they are planned and as they unfold. This is important not only to ensure accountability by U.N. forces, but to ensure that the public is made aware of the reality of conflicts and complex emergencies on which action is being taken in its name. The public needs to be able to make informed decisions when asked to support the contributions of aid workers and military forces from their countries.

· Several soldiers of U.N. contingents have been held accountable by their national institutions for gross abuses of humanitarian law. U.N. forces have been found responsible for the torture, ill-treatment and murder of detainees. Reports indicate that U.N. forces were also responsible for the indiscriminate use of force in retaliation for prior attacks, excessive use of force in confronting crowds, and the disproportionate use of force when under attack. No U.N. or national disciplinary proceedings are known to have resulted from these latter practices, however. No acknowledgment of the violation of humanitarian law through these practices is known to have been made by representatives of UNOSOM or of the national military contingents in the U.N. force. The U.N. has not made public either the procedures or the full reports of most internal investigations of incidents resulting in multiple civilian deaths. And full independent investigations of these incidents have not been possible.

The United Nations, in consultation with the governments whose troops were committed to the Somalia crisis, should review the record of incidents there in which civilians were killed in disputed circumstances, particularly in cases in which crowds were involved, and as a consequence of aerial rocketing, strafing, bombardment or shelling. The findings of these reviews should be made public. They should provide the basis for future guidelines on the use of force by peacekeepers and for the development of procedures for investigating killings in disputed circumstances of future operations. Gross breaches of the laws of war should result in criminal proceedings against those responsible.

The U.N.'s intervention in Somalia emerged from earlier neglect. In crisis for most of the 1980s, Somalia was abandoned by most international assistance agencies and diplomats in January 1991, the month that longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fled and Somalia fell into anarchy. The basic institutions essential to any modern nation-state had vanished in the last years of Siad Barre's rule. Formal administration, and essential services had all disappeared, as had most of the people who staffed governmental departments. In 1991 Somalia was a nation without a government or central security force, where a collection of armed clan militia fought over spoils and, in a combination of political and ethnic conflict, ravaged the land and systematically killed and displaced the civilian population.

By the time the U.N. secretary-general appointed an envoy to seek an end to the conflict in Somalia, the Algerian diplomat Mohammed Sahnoun, the tactics used by all parties were playing a major role in creating and spreading famine.11 When Ambassador Sahnoun criticized U.N. inaction and called for stronger response to the famine, he was forced to resign in October 1992-while hundreds of thousands of Somali civilians faced starvation and thousands more were being killed by the armed factions.

During 1991 and 1992-when the U.N. made no serious, sustained effort (other than Sahnoun's) to break the cycle of civil war, human rights abuse, and famine-as many as 500,000 Somalis are estimated to have died. Another two million fled their homes to become displaced persons within their own country or unwelcome, and often victimized, refugees in Kenya.12 In the words of the secretary-general's special envoy, Mohamed Sahnoun, "A whole year [1991] slipped by whilst the U.N. and the international community, save for the International Committee of the Red Cross and a few nongovernmental organizations, watched Somalia descend into this hell. The damage will not be repaired."13

The U.N.'s inaction was in large part a function of its lack of experience with anything like the situation in Somalia. The U.N.'s peacekeeping doctrine and institutions were, and by and large remain, wholly distinct from the elaborate apparatus of humanitarian assistance. Created over decades to deal with the humanitarian emergencies posed by flood, famine and disease and mass population movements, the U.N.'s emergency assistance programs were ill-prepared to address a crisis in which relief workers would have no guarantee of immunity from belligerents. Humanitarian intervention-with U.N. troops-was perceived to be needed to make it possible for the full potential of global relief to move into action. The dilemma the international community faced in 1991 was summarized in a June 1993 book by Human Rights Watch on humanitarian intervention, The Lost Agenda: Human Rights and U.N. Field Operations:

The U.N. appeared incapable of responding to humanitarian needs in a country with no government, and its agencies would not return to Somalia without a formal cease-fire. Yet it was clear to observers on the ground that a durable cease-fire was not possible in Somalia at that time, not least because much of the violence was fueled by lack of food-the very food the U.N. could provide."14

The military enabling effort and the humanitarian agencies' work to feed starving Somalis and set the country on the road to recovery proved awkward-largely because it was new and virtually untried. What the U.N. failed to try was a crucial partnership of the humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies with the U.N.'s underfunded and under-appreciated human rights institutions.15 By excluding a human rights component to its Somalia mission, the U.N. turned a blind eye to the origins of the crisis, the Siad Barre regime's record of gross human rights abuse and the fomenting of intolerance that provided a model for continuing inter-clan conflict.

A human rights dimension of the U.N.'s institutional apparatus could have served as a means to establish objective measures of the actions of self-styled political and military leaders. In practical terms, this could have meant seeking pledges to respect the rights of members of others' subclans: the abuses could not be resolved by brokered cease-fires alone.

The U.N. peacekeepers' blindness to ongoing human rights monitoring was matched by a refusal to examine the past records of the warleaders. Human Rights Watch urged, in June 1993, that such examination was crucial, "given that the disaster in Somalia was created, in large measure, by massive, persistent, deliberate violations of human rights committed by all armed factions..."16 As a consequence, the country's long-term recovery would depend on making human rights a central concern,

with human rights conceived in terms of authentic political participation, legitimate representation in a credible government, and accountability for the human rights violations of the recent past, beginning with the documentation and exposure of past abuses. A durable peace requires that the parties agree to respect human rights and to allow their behavior to be monitored.17

There was, however, no recognition that the brutal conduct of the war aimed at punishing civilian communities had created the famine. Quite the contrary, the peacekeepers determined to deal with the warleaders as if with a clean slate. Although Adm. Jonathan Howe, special representative of the secretary-general at the inception of UNOSOM II, had early in his posting refused to meet with General Morgan, whom he described as "a cold-blooded murderer"18 (for his role in the destruction of the northern city of Hargeisa under Siad Barre), he later told Human Rights Watch that accountability for the past was out of the question: "I don't mean to belittle human rights, but we've had so much difficulty with things happening at the present that looking at the past, at before we came to Somalia, is something we just haven't had a chance to look at."19

Some effort was made to convince UNOSOM to pay attention to human rights from within the U.N. system. A post of independent expert for Somalia was created by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in March 1993,and the commission also recommended that the secretary-general establish a human rights unit for UNOSOM. But these steps produced little. In a disappointing report in October 1993, written without the benefit of a visit to Somalia, the expert concluded that it was "premature to propose any concrete activity" because Somali political forces lacked a serious commitment to the Addis Ababa peace agreement of March 1993.20 Plans for a UNOSOM human rights office in Somalia were cited in the secretary-general's August 1993 report, but as of March 1994, UNOSOM II was still only "planning to establish an Office of Human Rights."21

In practice, UNOSOM's human rights office never functioned, nor did it have institutional support from U.N. headquarters. In March 1995, a policymaker of the U.N. peacekeeping establishment told Human Rights Watch that the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations had no human rights component per se: "It was not in our mandate." She added that her office (UN PKO) was never notified on human rights issues arising in the Somalia operation, except occasionally on the issue of the treatment of prisoners (Somalis held in Somali prisons) "specifically, the lack of food." At the same time, individual member states handled disciplining of their own troops.22

Command of U.N. field operations is exercised by an officer appointed by the secretary-general, with the consent of the Security Council. According to a U.N. review of peacekeeping operations, "the commander has full authority over the operation except for disciplinary questions."23 While holding "general responsibility for the good order and discipline of the operation," the commander is limited in his or her means to exercise this:

He may make investigations, conduct inquiries and require information, reports and consultations for the purpose of discharging this responsibility. Responsibility for disciplinary action in national contingents provided for the operation, however, rests with the commanders of the national contingents. Reports concerning disciplinary action are communicated to the commander who may consult with the commander of the national contingent and, if necessary, through the Secretary-General with the authorities of the troop-contributing Government concerned.24

Since the 1956 agreement to establish a U.N. force for Egypt, national authorities have traditionally had exclusive jurisdiction over crimes committed by their soldiers in the course of U.N. peacekeeping operations.25 Theagreed procedures for chain of command control of U.N. forces do not preclude central monitoring and documentation of national contingent's disciplinary action (or lack of same). A former U.N. official told Human Rights Watch, however, that "no U.N. office kept detailed records on the disciplining of soldiers from the UNOSOM force as a whole."26 The need for both central records and a monitoring capacity was stressed in the report of the U.N.'s Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in an April 1993 forum:

There is a need to establish a monitoring unit to assess the conduct of peacekeeping personnel and public perceptions concerning the behavior of United Nations security personnel. It is important that there exist an office (or ombudsman) with sufficient resources and powers to investigate and deal promptly with complaints concerning behavior."27

The failure to monitor the human rights practices of either Somali leaders or UNOSOM troops meant opportunities to halt and punish abuse were missed-and the U.N.'s own reputation in the field suffered accordingly.

The U.N. had similarly failed to monitor human rights in Somalia before and during the civil war that overthrew Siad Barre, from 1990 through 1992. U.N. humanitarian agencies and policymakers therefore failed to see early-warning signals: the mobilization of pro- and anti- government forces along clan lines, the fomenting of inter-clan hatred and conflict, the mass destruction of cities and decimation of rivals' civilian communities, and the nearly complete disintegration of the state should have been communicated to international decision makers long before famine became the ultimate threat to Somali survival.

By the time UNOSOM troops arrived in force two years after Siad Barre's fall, the crisis was far advanced. The two years allowed the warleaders to fragment the country, to consolidate their use of food as a weapon, and to deny resources to civilian communities as the source of their power. When UNOSOM/UNITAF arrived in force, and facilitated the arrival of aid at the levels needed, the warleaders were already in a position to take maximum advantage of the situation: the new aid, and the resources flowing from UNOSOM's mere presence in the country, would provide them with a new source of power.

The disintegration of the state combined in Somalia with a crisis in which war and policy and nature conspired to annihilate whole populations. De facto authorities worked with militias in the murder of their enemies, the deliberate killing of civilians from clans they designated their enemies, and measures intended to destroy whole communities through hunger and thirst. The deliberate destruction of wells, burning of crops and looting of food stores there combined with drought to spell the death of hundreds of thousands, and to threaten the lives of many more. The human rights dimension was integral to the origins of the Somali crisis, but efforts to make the U.N. address human rights issues (by Human Rights Watch, among other organizations), came up against ingrained resistance from a peacekeeping establishment unable rapidly to adapt to the changing world.

International standards that apply to Somalia since 1991 can be drawn from humanitarian law, the laws of war, which establish minimum standards applicable to internal and international armed conflict. These apply to the Somali situation in which internal conflict has acquired international dimensions through the presence of United Nations peacekeepers.28 These norms applied equally to the Somali "faction" militias and to the forces of UNITAF and UNOSOM. At a minimum, Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 1949, which applies expressly to non-international conflicts, requires the protection of those not taking active part in hostilities, including civilians, those combatants who have laid down their arms, and those placed hors de combat through sickness, wounds, detention or any other cause. With respect to these protected persons, Article 3 forbids

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) taking of hostages;

(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Article 3 also states clearly that humane treatment must be accorded without discrimination: a fundamental tenet of international human rights law with particular relevance in Somalia, given the way clan structures affect human rights abuse and protection. Protected persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria."

In addition to humanitarian law, the principles of international human rights law can be applied both to authorities at the local level and to the actions of warleaders, who exercise enormous power and authority over the lives of ordinary Somalis. It is worth pointing out that, in applying the standards of humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch does not confer any special status to those engaged in armed conflict. Applying human rights standards to the actions of Somalia's rival authorities, in turn, provides an objective means to assess actions that have little to do with conflict, even when such standards apply in law only to governments.

The record of Somali leaders' attacks on U.N. forces involved gross abuses of international standards. Somali forces repeatedly ambushed U.N. forces using Somali civilians as human shields, as well as firing from buildings that should always be protected in conflict, such as hospitals. Somali forces also deliberately attacked UNOSOM medical personnel, in violation of principles of humanitarian law: In September 1994, for example, Habr Gedir forces of the SNA attacked the U.N. field hospital in Baidoa, Bay Region, killing three Indian military doctors serving there.29

Somali forces also violated international law by carrying out unprovoked attacks on U.N. forces engaged in humanitarian missions. On August 22, 1994, for example, ten days before attacking the Baidoa hospital, Habr Gedirforces had ambushed a supply convoy escorted by members of the Indian U.N. contingent, killing seven and wounding nine.30 Somali forces in several incidents were also reported to have violated humanitarian law standards by mutilating the bodies of U.N. troops.

The human rights record of UNITAF and UNOSOM, in turn, was marked by the promiscuous use of the enormous firepower of U.N. forces, in particular the airpower of the United States contingent. In a series of armed clashes with Somali forces, scores of Somali civilians died when both sides used automatic weaponry without consideration for civilian safety. After the June 5, 1993 ambush of U.N. peacekeepers in which the twenty-four Pakistani troops were killed, the incident that marked the beginning of open conflict between UNOSOM forces and General Aideed's SNA, the humanitarian mission quickly degenerated. Defensive action and the guarding of convoys was rapidly transformed into special operations manhunts, days-long attacks with helicopter and fixed-wing gunships and an enormous toll of Somali civilian casualties.

In addition to the destruction of large areas of Mogadishu through aerial rocketing and shelling, the troops of several UNOSOM contingents were also found to have tortured or murdered Somali captives. Although Canadian military disciplinary procedures resulted in prosecutions and convictions of troops from their contingent that were responsible for gross abuses, no single UNOSOM office took effective responsibility for ensuring that uniform standards of discipline and accountability were enforced.31 Similarly, as this report goes to press, no single U.N. source has issued a comprehensive balance sheet of complaints made of abusive treatment by UNOSOM troops or of remedies offered in the form of criminal proceedings or compensation. U.S. Defense Department officials contacted by Human Rights Watch in March 1995 did not, in turn, identify any central repository of such information as it concerned the U.S. contingent in Somalia.

Although the body of humanitarian law is binding on the armed forces of all member states of the United Nations, provisions to monitor compliance with these standards by U.N. troops were notoriously absent under UNOSOM and UNITAF. Ironically, the U.N. has made no explicit commitment binding its own forces to observe the terms of humanitarian law, even though its component forces are so bound. Human Rights Watch has stressed that the U.N. itself is obliged to observe these standards in that humanitarian law has assumed the status of customary international law. But humanitarian law was cited in UNOSOM's mission only after attacks on U.N. troops had begun in early 1993; Security Council resolution 814 (1993), of March 26, 1993 declared that those responsible for breaches of humanitarian law would be "held individually accountable."32 The concern emerged through UNOSOM II's work to reestablish the Somali police: the police were to be prepared for "the investigation and facilitating the prosecution of serious violations of international humanitarian law," but, having no jurisdiction over U.N. forces, the police were to focus only on those who attacked the U.N.33

On June 6, 1993, the day after twenty-four U.N. peacekeepers were killed, the Security Council repeated its affirmation that those who violate humanitarian law would be held "individually accountable".34 The resolution further declared that the U.N. would be "authorized to take all necessary measures against all those responsible for the armed attacks... to establish the effective authority of UNOSOM II throughout Somalia, including to secure the investigations of their actions and their arrest and detention for prosecution, trial and punishment." On June 17, 1993, a Security Council resolution called for the arrest of General Aideed. It was never made clear, however, what legal norms would be applied to any of the detentions carried out by U.N. forces.35

No clear legal basis for such actions as detention was provided by the U.N. throughout the life of its Somalia mission. This in effect meant that some Somalis were arbitrarily held in a form of unregulated administrative detention without trial. If it is now known that some captives were tortured or killed in custody, we know this only because certain military contingents brought charges against their abusive personnel which eventually reached the courts and the media in their home countries. There were none of the due process safeguards for U.N. prisoners that are required of governments. Although it does not appear that large numbers of detainees were held at any time of the intervention,36 the months-long detention of some Somali leaders, like SNA leader Osman Hassan Ali "Ato" (known generally as Osman Ato) were injustices-in that no U.N. official could explain why they were not arbitrary. They were also the subject of recrimination between the U.N. and the communities from which detainees were seized.

The absence of a basis in law through which to prosecute those responsible for grave abuses may also have contributed to the U.N.'s myopic passivity concerning abuses of Somalis by Somalis. So long as it had no clear legal framework to prosecute Somalis for abuses committed against U.N. personnel, there was even less prospect of holding Somali authorities accountable for atrocities against their own people. There was, and is, no international criminal court to which the U.N. could readily turn in such scenarios, and the U.N.'s peacekeeping machinery offered no alternative legal mechanism.

The fragmentation of the Somali state has left a multitude of de facto authorities, often competing, sometimes collaborating, and almost inevitably backed by a degree of armed force. Based largely on the division of Somali society into a profusion of clan families, clans and subclans, these largely traditional authorities provide the body of leaders from which the warleaders derive their authority. A clan's authority ultimately lies with its traditional authorities (of whom the warleaders are only a part). These local authorities engage in complex interaction with neighboring local authorities even from nominally rival communities. It is primarily at the local level, where these authorities and their communities are organized largely on a subclan basis, that limited progress has been madetoward establishing systems of order, as well as the development of inter-community alliances, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and commercial relationships. These measures by local authorities can provide a check on the power of the warleaders.

Discriminatory treatment shapes much of the human rights situation in Somalia's divided society: an individual may be singled out for summary execution, rape, or expulsion from a community solely by reason of clan affiliation. The coercive agents of Somali de facto authorities, in turn, are recruited along clan lines and driven by clan loyalties. The remedies to abuse and to common crime, too, are largely reduced to a form of commerce between clans, with punishment and compensation a question arbitrated, although Islamic courts applying shari'a are functioning in some areas.37

Although the relation to authority of most Somalis is through traditional clan structures, significant sectors of the population fall outside this multi-tiered system. Those who have no clan to stand behind them, or who come from Somalia's large Bantu ethnic minority populations, may be marginalized by traditional and modern authority structures alike, and so more vulnerable to abuse. For the majority of ethnic Somalis, however, the clan elders are their intermediaries in dealings with other clans and with regional and national figures. The subclan provides the means through which they seek justice, mobilize in temporary grassroots militias, and secure access to essential resources.

While the subclan may have the capacity to protect the individual, killings and forced displacement by reason of one's clan identity continue to be a regular feature of Somali society. In April 1994, longstanding rivalry between the Hawaadle and Habr Gedir subclans led to an outbreak of fighting in South Mogadishu that illustrates these divisions of society.38 After fierce clashes, when Gen. Aideed's Habr Gedir militia emerged triumphant, the Hawaadle were expelled wholesale from the city. The expulsion, and summary executions carried out at that time, were described to Human Rights Watch by two Somali U.N. officers:

In April 1994, the Hawaadle and Habr Gedir fought near the airport and near the Green Line. The Hawaadle were defeated. The Habr Gedir militia went after civilians throughout South Mogadishu, very specifically targeting Hawaadle households. Ninety-eight percent of the Hawaadle in South Mogadishu were displaced from their homes. When fighting first broke out, it was "ethnic cleansing." People fear coming back because many Hawaadle were pulled out their houses, killed, and had their bodies displayed on the First July Square.39

Another source confirmed this, and said that after the fighting "the Habr Gedir militia killed eight to ten men, mostly of them middle-aged, and displayed their corpses after as a warning to others. The square is now commonly known as "The Tribuna," or viewing stand.40

Killings Through the Indiscriminate Use of Force

Killings through the indiscriminate use of firepower are less likely to be documented than other killings, the victims often remain anonymous. But this type of killing appears to account for the majority of civilian dead in Mogadishu and other urban areas both before and since UNOSOM began. The use of indiscriminate shelling by the rival forces of Ali Mahdi and General Aideed reached its extreme between November 1991 and March 1992, when shelling by heavy artillery killed at least 14,000 people and injured some 27,000, as much of Mogadishu was reduced to rubble. The majority of the victims were civilians.41

The full range of weapons left by Siad Barre-heavy artillery, tanks, mortars, missiles-were used, often by untrained teenagers. A particularly favored weapon was the "technical"-an open-backed land cruiser or truck on the back of which was mounted a recoilless rifle, heavy machine gun, mortar, or other weapons system. The technicals moved through streets at high speed, spraying a target with fire before disappearing. Like so many other weapons, they were used indiscriminately by the forces of the warleaders.

The persistent use of heavy weapons even in densely populated urban areas continued sporadically after UNOSOM arrived, although it did not reach the level of early 1992. A Somali official noted that during major confrontations the past pattern can resume: "In Mogadishu, [when clashes break out] there is heavy fighting all day long with heavy artillery. Casualties are usually civilians killed randomly."42 The potential for a renewal of major clashes involving the mass destruction of civilian areas through artillery barrages remains. Most recently reported incidents, however, have involved indiscriminate fire on a lesser scale.

A clash in September 1994 between Ali Mahdi's Abgal forces and a rival leader of the United Somali Congress (USC), Mohammed Kanyare, in the neighborhoods of Bermuda and Medina in South Mogadishu illustrates recent abuses of the laws of war through the indiscriminate use of force. According to Somali sources, Kanyare, who lived in Bermuda and headed the Murosade faction of the USC, had opened contacts with Aideed.43 Fighting broke out between Murosade and Abgal militias in September and soon spread to Medina. Abgal forces apparently responded after Kanyare had brought in militia and heavy weapons into the area and received the support of Habr Gedir (Sa'ad) militia forces. Heavy weapons were reportedly used indiscriminately, without concern for the protection of civilians, and the looting and burning that followed the fighting reportedly followed strict clan lines:

As they were being pushed out of Medina, the Murosade fired a mortar into the Medina market in December, killing ten civilians. The Murosade were finally driven out of Medina in late December, and the front shifted to Bermuda, where there were no gains by either side in the whole month of January. Abgal continue to control the majority of the area. Most Abgal houses were burned andlooted by the Murosade. In Bermuda only nine Abgal houses have been spared in the Murosade-controlled area of Bermuda-by reason of inter-clan marriages.44

The use of heavily armed technicals also continues to be reported in many parts of the country. A Somali relief worker, for example, told Human Rights Watch of a massacre in a remote village last year:

There was a massacre in Gudude by the Habr Gedir of Ogadenis at the end of July 1994. Seven Ogadenis-including women-were killed when a Habr Gedir technical opened fire in the village. The local security returned fire and killed six Habr Gedir. It was sparked by four Habr Gedir being killed a few days before in battle. In 1991-92, massacres were common. They have stopped now. If you kill, you must expect revenge, so why kill?45

Extrajudicial Executions

Extrajudicial execution is widely reported as a political tool to eliminate particular individuals, with many cases reported to Human Rights Watch from the Mogadishu area. Asked to confirm that the display of bodies was still a practice in South Mogadishu, a Somali official provided several recent examples of individuals who had been seized from their homes and then executed. He added that just a week before discussing this with Human Rights Watch he had been visited by a survivor of a failed execution in Mogadishu's Red Square:

I cannot remember the number of times that I have seen such a barbaric action in the Red Square "Tribuna" of South Mogadishu. In fact, [name withheld] is one of the survivors of such an atrocity. I met him a week ago here in Nairobi... It was Friday, 22 April 1994 at midnight, when a group of armed men attacked him in his house, near the International Airport of Mogadishu, and took him to the Red Square. He was laid down together with eight other young men and all of them were shot. Their bodies were displayed and left there. Apart from the heavy injuries that he is still suffering, Mr. [withheld] is the only survivor among those nine men. Among the murdered were Abdi Hassan Guleid and Hulli Mohamud. He was unable to remember the names of the other people who were killed and displayed.46

Recently, political murder of community leaders has become more common, sometimes apparently motivated by efforts at reconciliation led by traditional clan leaders. Although the warleaders risk losing support should they disregard the collective leadership of the clans from which their manpower is drawn, warleaders may aim to preserve their control by disrupting inter-clan reconciliation. A Somali observer told Human Rights Watch, "These killings are rare-because of fear of retribution."47 Another source stressed powerful traditional injunctions against attacks on elders: "In one case in Belet Weyne, in 1992, a clan elder was killed deliberately. It was a horror story; an enormous scandal. An elder being targeted is very rare."48 This notwithstanding, Human Rights Watch was told of a series of execution-style murders of clan leaders by General Aideed's Somali National Alliance (SNA) forces inrecent months. A week before our researcher visited Mogadishu at the beginning of February 1995, a sultan and nine other Degodia people were reportedly seized and slaughtered by Habr Gedir militia, apparently for having sought to promote reconciliation with other subclans. Their bodies were reportedly put on display by General Aideed's forces in Mogadishu.49

Similarly, a senior elder of the Digil-Mirifle, Sultan Abdi Hamid Sheikh Hussein, from Dinsor, was reportedly murdered in December 1994-apparently because he was advocating for the rights of the Digil-Mirifle (also known as the Rahanweyne). He was reportedly killed in front of SNA headquarters near Digfer Hospital in Mogadishu.50 Other Somali sources told Human Rights Watch that dissent in areas of Mogadishu controlled by General Aideed's forces was routinely suppressed by murder. One source illustrated this with the case of a Rahanweyne religious leader, Sultan Abdulhamid Sheikh, who had expressed strong critical views at a conference hosted by Aideed in November 1994 in South Mogadishu: "He was killed that night."51

Intimidation sometimes takes the form of threats to the families of independent leaders. A sultan from Lower Shebelle who was interviewed by Human Rights Watch described his family's kidnaping by SNA militia in 1994 as a measure of intimidation as well as in demand of ransom; the sultan now lives in hiding.52 Sometimes intimidation related to local efforts to cooperate with UNOSOM's political initiatives, such as the creation of district councils or the administration of the police.

Acts of intimidation are also reported even between close allies; a Somali analyst told Human Rights Watch that General Aideed's longtime supporter, Osman Ato, who had spent months in UNOSOM detention in 1993, had himself been threatened:

On his release, Ato announced that he was for peace. He met with the ugas (a traditional "chief of chiefs") in North Mogadishu. After saying that he was maybe not with Aideed, his house was forcibly entered, and Aideed's thugs intimidated him into falling into line. Ato underestimated Aideed.53

Another Somali commentator also described a growing rivalry with the two Habr Gedir leaders, and the limits on Aideed's options to deal with his colleague. "Osman Ato is also asking questions of Aideed's leadership. Aideed sees Ato as the real challenge, but can't kill him because Ato is influential within [Habr Gedir subclan] Sa'ad."54

A Somali official told Human Rights Watch on January 23, that just five days before, the wife and three children of Gen. Omar Abdulle, a Rahanweyne leader from Bay Region, had been kidnapped by SNA forces in Mogadishu. This was allegedly intended to influence his work as a member of an inter-factional committee formed to establish the police at the national level. He had, according to this account, been pressured by the SNA to agree to have more Habr Gedir police. "He said he couldn't do this on his own authority, and his family was soon kidnapped."55

Other warleaders, too, have been responsible for kidnappings, threats and atrocities targeting community leaders, including several notorious incidents of mass killings. In December 1992, just days before the first U.N. troops landed, the warleader Col. Ahmed Omar Jess, a member of a branch of the Ogadeni subclan (the Mohammed Zubeir sub-subclan), sent his forces from house to house in the southern port of Kismayu, to seize and kill prominent members of the Harti subclan (which includes the Majerteen and Dolbahante). Human Rights Watch received the names of 126 clan elders, religious leaders and others from the Harti community who were reportedly killed in Kismayu between December 8 and 10, 1992.56

UNOSOM's civilian employees were also targeted by the warleaders' forces. A series of attacks occurred in the wake of the open hostilities between UNOSOM and General Aideed after June 5, 1993. Somalis who were involved in the political side of UNOSOM's work, including the area of public information, were under particular risk. In an attack on July 7, four Somali employees of the U.N. paper, Maanta, were murdered by Aideed's SNA militias. A senior Somali analyst described this to Human Rights Watch:

Four Maanta employees were killed in mid-1993 in an ambush at K5 (a traffic circle) in Mogadishu. Three were killed on the spot; one was taken and cut into pieces. Maanta was attempting to mobilize people for peace. Aideed wanted to close down Maanta.57

In February 1995, in Mogadishu, as the U.N. prepared to withdraw, Human Rights Watch also met with Somali staff members of UNOSOM's Political Affairs Division who sought assistance with their requests for support and protection from the U.N. A letter to Human Rights Watch, dated February 2, 1995, described cases in which they and colleagues had been threatened with death, suffered beatings and stabbings, or been attacked with gunfire in assassination attempts. The letters' signatories were fourteen UNSOM staff members who served as national officers, translators, interpreters and secretaries. These staff were afraid of more and worse to come.

It is apparent that the aftermath of UNOSOM will affect our lives... We also dread [meeting] the same fate as that of the Rwandan Tutsi intellectuals working for the U.N. who were left behind to be massacred. ...Heinous revenge was already taken against UNOSOM local personnel.... One can simply envisage the recurrence of the same fate for us...58

They believed their plight was due to their responsibilities for the "bottom up" side of UNOSOM's program: the development of district councils, women's groups and other building blocks of civil society that persisted even astop-level UNOSOM officials dealt primarily with the warleaders. As described in their letter, their work at the community level "put us under the scrutiny of those who did not like the political course, initiatives, policies and intentions of the mission."59

One Somali analyst told Human Rights Watch that there were particular problems for the former Somali employees who worked in the political reconstruction effort:

For those working in the political affairs division, justice, or in public relations for UNOSOM, there are many problems. They have been accused by faction leaders of misinformation. There are frequent SNA broadcasts against Somalis working with UNOSOM. They are accused of helping to bring back neocolonialism. They are warned by factional representatives: "We will see what will happen to you when UNOSOM goes." The Somali UNOSOM workers will lose salaries and their ability to hire personal security. Factional leaders felt threatened by the district councils; and it was the UNOSOM-Political Somalis who helped UNOSOM construct the district councils.60

This source cited the murder of employees of the UNOSOM newspaper, Maanta, and the assassination attempt on UNOSOM political advisor Prof. Ahmed Mumin Warfa, as examples of the threat.

Professor Warfa, who was the senior advisor to Leonard Kapungo, director of UNOSOM-Political, from late 1992 to September 1994, told Human Rights Watch of his own experience and the threat facing colleagues who may be left behind. He said he was ambushed on February 24, 1994 by eleven gunmen led by an SNA militia leader, days after SNA officials threatened him with death. He was shot five times, but received emergency treatment in Mogadishu. He subsequently fled to Nairobi with his family.61 Professor Warfa believes that members of UNOSOM's Political Division staff, from translators to specialists, are now vulnerable "to one of the young gunmen." Those who were involved in "grassroots work" for UNOSOM-Political face the most serious threat.62

Another Somali, responsible for humanitarian assistance in Baidoa (Bay Region), told Human Rights Watch of his being targeted over the disbursement of aid. He told us that shortly after UNOSOM troops pulled out of Baidoa, one group which had been denied assistance had in December 1994 sent ten gunmen to capture him at his home. He had armed men with him, however, and they repulsed the attack. He added that "the elders eventually settled the problem."63

Senior non-Somali UNOSOM officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch denied that local staff would be at risk; some implied that any trouble they would face would be no responsibility of the United Nations. For example, Babikar Khalifa, the officer-in-charge of UNOSOM-Political Division, told Human Rights Watch in Nairobi, "No one is at risk. The Somalis are exaggerating. Only those that meddled in politics are at risk, and UNOSOM can't be blamed."64 That UNOSOM's political affairs division, in the conduct of its agreed mission, mayhave been seen by the warleaders inherently to be "meddling in politics," however, would tend to reinforce concerns for the safety of its Somali employees.

When Human Rights Watch raised the question of post-withdrawal security with U.S. Amb. Daniel Simpson, he too expressed skepticism that ex-UNOSOM staff would face risks, while, like Mr. Khalifa, suggesting that it was their own fault if they did: "Somalis who worked for UNOSOM were doing it for the money"; he added, "they made their own deals."65

At the time of the withdrawal, however, the U.N. had not taken effective action to protect its Somali employees. A Somali analyst told Human Rights Watch:

The U.N. has done nothing. The Somali UNOSOM employees went to the director of the Political Office and gave him a letter, especially after the threats intensified after the U.N. moved from the embassy compound to the airport. There has been no reply as of yet. The U.N. is abandoning people from the Political Division just like they did those from the Justice Division ...These people should be given political asylum if they cannot be given protection.66

Local UNOSOM officials were in large part dependent on private guards, and had salaries commensurate to this need; even where armed relatives provided security for Somali employees, funds were needed to pay for their food and upkeep. All of these salaries, however, were due to end at the end of February, and with them the possibility of maintaining private guards. "The presence of UNOSOM also inhibited attacks; now that they are going, the UNOSOM 'family' is not there to protect them."67

Forced Displacement and the Vulnerable Dispossessed

Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been dispossessed and displaced in the past five years, expelled from their homes and cut off from their source of livelihood because of their kinship. Many internally displaced as well as those who have fled across borders have returned to their places of origin, while others continue to flee their homes under threat of death. The expulsion of civilians from rival or weaker communities continues to be an objective of clan-based militias. Even at the height of UNOSOM's military presence in Somalia, operations by competing warleaders resulted in the expulsion of members of "enemy" groups from whole territories.

The enormous populations displaced since 1992 are highly vulnerable to abuse. In December 1994, in an appeal for $70.3 million for continuing emergency assistance in Somalia, the U.N.'s under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Peter Hansen, stressed the particular needs of those displaced by the years-long Somali crisis. The U.N. at that time said there were an estimated 350,000 displaced within Somalia, and another 600,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia and Djibouti who need assistance.68

In February 1995, an official of the International Organization for Migration told Human Rights Watch that between 150,000 and 200,000 internally displaced people remained in Mogadishu as UNOSOM prepared to withdraw, with most of them from Lower Juba and Lower Shebelle. Security problems, and the impossibility ofcontrolling distribution of assistance fairly, meant that systematic efforts to assist this population had largely ceased over the past year. Although an estimated eighty to ninety camps were located around the city, with each housing from thirty people to thousands, no registration of the displaced and no formal organization of the camps had been carried out. The vast majority of the displaced are women and children: the IOM estimated up to 80 percent.69 The displaced are also housed in and around other towns and cities of the south.

In the past year, forced displacement has taken many forms. The Abgal routed the Murosade out of the Medina neighborhood of Mogadishu, and the Murosade in turn burned many of the Abgal homes in neighboring Bermuda. But most of the new displacement in Somalia was caused by Habr Gedir advances, pushing Biyaamal leaders (officials, elders, and the sultan) out of Merca and the Hawaadle from South Mogadishu, Belet Weyne, Bulo Berti, Jalalaxi, and Lower Shebelle. Those displaced correspond to those who present a military or political challenge to the Habr Gedir. For example, when the Hawaadle attacked Habr Gedir-occupied Belet Weyne on December 26, 1995, the latter responded by destroying two Hawaadle villages, Badeere and Bowholle in Hiran Region. Some Bantu have been pushed from the west to the east side of the Juba River, primarily by Ogadeni gunmen looking to expand their territory.

The displaced who are members of ethnic minority groups, or agricultural communities expelled from their land, are frequently targeted. So too are members of these communities in areas disputed between more powerful groups. A pattern of raiding, sometimes with an aim to strip communities of their harvests, in other cases to expel them from the land, has been the frequent context of clan-based murder, rape, and terror. In the civil war of 1991-1992, raiders frequently stripped whole communities of the very means of survival-destroying wells and looting or destroying food stores, tools, seeds and livestock. A consequence of these scorched-earth tactics between the Juba and Shebelle rivers, the country's principal agricultural area, was that the effects of famine were magnified for precisely those food-producing communities on which the Somali people had depended. Today the survivors of these agricultural communities continue to be subject to raiding and land-grabs. One interviewee said simply, "The most vulnerable now are those who always were: the Bantus, the Rahanweyne. For thirty years these people have been displaced by land grabbing, and are still vulnerable."70

As that source noted, a principal target of looters and of eviction operations are members of the large communities of Bantu (or Gosha) farmers and plantation workers in the area between and on both sides of the Juba and Shebelle rivers.71 A Bantu elder told Human Rights Watch of Ogadeni raids in the Juba river valley:

The Ogadenis are trying to chase out the Bantu northwest of Gelib. The villages of Haraawe, Osman Moto, Malenda and others were targeted because of their fertile land. The Ogadenis come at night to the house or farm and take all possessions. They don't burn houses, and only attack you if you try to stop them.72

Bantu leaders described a recent example in which raiders waited for crops to be harvested, then moved to seize them:

The night before last, looters came to the house of [name withheld by Human Rights Watch], a Bantu from Makalango village [on the west bank of the Juba, across from Kamsuma]. He had just harvested sim-sim. They tied him to a tree and took everything. No one knows who, they wore masks made of cloth. They usually come into town on foot with machine guns; no horses, no vehicles. The daughter discovered him at noon the next day, still tied. This happens weekly to different people. Those responsible are Habr Gedir, Biyaamal, Sheikhal, Galgaal, and Ogadeni. The last three are the worst, because they don't want to farm, they just want to take what others cultivate.73

Elsewhere, whole communities have been expelled on pain of murder. Bantu community leaders described recent developments in the Lower Juba region:

Bantus have to pay protection money throughout the Juba valley. The worst situation is in the Juba valley northwest of Gelib. The Ogadenis come from Bilegsa and Farshalbele [near Merere] to Bantu villages by foot and begin firing guns so people run away, and then they loot, day, night, anytime. Villages looted in the last year were Osman Moto, Kalanje, Marere Jimo, Hargesa, Mukuyuni, Shargard, Moblen, Kumaydhe, Libanga, Kamtande, Hatul-Baraka, Sandariya, Abdalakakane, Asbole, Beledul-Karim, Kumbarera, Bula-Marer, Haraw, Kulow, Danbaley, and Jija... Sometimes they beat Bantus and force them to carry properties from these villages to Afmadow by foot. They are trying to move Bantus off their land; they loot and tell Bantus to leave. This only happens northwest of Gelib. Attacks are usually carried out by twenty or more men. About half the people of Mofi are gone...74

The attacks by Ogadeni on Bantu communities in Lower Juba are echoed by attacks by Habr Gedir forces on Ogadenis, apparently aiming to protect trade routes and access to the production of the inter-river region.75 In the face of Habr Gedir military power, it is the Ogadenis who are most vulnerable, according to one commentator, himself an Ogadeni. While the same source noted that the Habr Gedir had helped Bantus in recent fighting, he added, "Bantus are trapped in the middle, suspected by the Ogadeni of supporting Habr Gedir, and vulnerability increases for Bantus when fighting erupts."76

In some areas, Bantu farmers are protected, while reduced to a form of servitude in that they are regularly subjected to looting of their crops and goods by their nominal protectors. One interviewee described the Bantu situation in areas under Habr Gedir control as fairly positive. The Habr Gedir "are using the Bantus as laborers," by this account, but "the Bantus are not slaves, they are contract farmers..."77 Such accounts should be balanced,however, against evidence of other measures to prevent Bantu leaders from organizing independently, including attacks on those who threaten to ally themselves with rivals. A Habr Gedir official described this:

Those not armed are the most vulnerable. The Bantu, for example. SAMO [Somali African Muki Organization], the Bantu political faction, was allied with Ali Mahdi, although some switched to Aideed. It doesn't represent the Bantu grassroots; it's just one or two people. The SAMO-SSA chairman lives in Medina in Mogadishu. Aideed's people would kill him if they could. In Afgoi, SAMO tried to have a Congress in October 1993, but Aideed's militia shot it up and destroyed all the preparations. People have no chance to get together to discuss. The SAMO-SSA wanted to change chairmen in June 1994, but Ali Mahdi refused.78

In the Shebelle river valley, in Hiran region north of Mogadishu, the Bantu population had suffered displacement and starvation earlier in the civil war, and now provides labor to dominant clans:

In Hiran Region, the Bantu are completely neglected and have no influence. Their lands have been taken since the civil war began by Hawaadle and sometimes Habr Gedir. They were displaced by the fighting, and often came back and found their land occupied. They are often working on their own land now for someone else. They won't necessarily go hungry; they are needed for their labor.79

Another source used almost the same terms to describe the situation of farmers of the Hawaadle and Rahanweyne communities who were displaced from Lower Shebelle and other areas by the Habr Gedir, but allowed to return as laborers: "They now work the land they used to own."80

Sexual Abuse in an Absence of Law

The sexual abuse of women by the armed men of rival clans' militias or moryan-bandit-raiders has been a persistent feature of the Somali conflict. Women among the hundreds of thousands of displaced, and others who lack the protection of powerful clan structures, are particularly vulnerable. One prominent Somali woman official described rape by both bandits and clan-based militias as endemic: in Benadir Region, which includes Mogadishu, "The moryan rape indiscriminately."81 Compensation has sometimes been won-for the victim's diya group, not the woman herself-when elders have sought restitution from the offending clan. The official interviewed told Human Rights Watch that she had herself 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 that case compensation was sought and won ("Elders sat and discussed this afterward and money was paid by the Abgal").82

In Kismayu, a health officer stressed that "mothers and children suffer worst in war." Cut off from resources and services, and restricted in their movements, they are readily victimized by "looters." In Kismayu, rape was most common in 1991-1992, and continues.83

The enormous toll of famine and war that peaked in 1992 had Baidoa, in Bay region, as its virtual epicenter, with women and their children predominant among the dead. Of the women who have survived, many were displaced by the conflict and are living in and around Baidoa. In a long interview, a senior Rahanweyne elder told Human Rights Watch that he continued to be most concerned about the safety of women and children in Bay region.

Most fathers ran away from their families when the war came; women and their children were unable to run. Most of those who died were mothers and children. Baidoa was the City of Death. The men caused the deaths of the children and women.84

Participants in a Somali program for displaced people in Baidoa described rape as a frequent threat to women in the region, including its own members. For the displaced, "rape is common."85 According to its members, the program was established as a cooperative in April 1993 in order to create employment for the women in town, and 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 through petty trading. "The women feed the families." 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 the 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. Her name is [name withheld by Human Rights Watch] and 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 Rahanweyne.86

The women's vulnerability is compounded by the long walks in isolated areas required by their struggle to survive. According to the women interviewed, each usually requires six trips to bring water for her family and to reach the market to sell. Collection of firewood often requires a walk of up to fifteen kilometers outside the center of town. Rape is always a danger: "Men wait for them to leave the camp."87

A staggering number of rapes, as well as abductions and forced marriages, occurred during the civil war. Rape was a tactic of war used by all the militias, particularly during the fighting of 1991-92, but by no means confined to those years. 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 Rahanweyne woman in a camp for displaced persons in 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 know them 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."88

Testimonies about the activity of Aideed's forces in 1992 were equally horrific. A fifty-two-year-old Rahanweyne woman from Baidoa interviewed in 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."89 A twenty-two-year-old Elai woman from Jawarey, a village between Saco Weyne and Bardera, said:

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.90

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."91 An Ajuran woman of about the same age from Middle Juba region was interviewed in that region during October 1993 and 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."92

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."93

A UNOSOM official gave Human Rights Watch examples of cases in Gedo region, during its visit there in October 1993. In early October, a woman was raped by more than twenty people on the Bardera to Baidoa road; the previous week, when a group of women was stopped while traveling on the same road, the Rahanweyne women were singled out and raped.94

The women of some vulnerable communities, notably the non-Somali minority known as the Bantu (or Gosha), fall outside the Somali clan structure. Their communities lack militias, and ethnic Somalis accord them low social status. 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."95 The latter was described by one interviewee 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 socialstatus dictates level of recompense; it is not a process of equals. The Bantus can't take advantage of these processes.96

Members of the Bantu agricultural communities of the Juba river area described rape as a routine of 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."97 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 Muhammed said, "You will never rape my wife in front 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.98

Many of the women interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that sexual abuse was a major concern underlying women's support for shari'a law. A leader of a women's group working with Rahanweyne displaced in Baidoa, for example said, "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."99 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 women don'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.100

The same woman explained, however, that to date "no one has dealt with rape: not UNOSOM, the elders or the police...No one believes the woman's testimony over the man."101 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."102

Bantu community leaders also see 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."103

A welter of competing authorities in Somalia has gradually filled the vacuum left by the collapse of central government in 1991. The human rights situation of the ordinary Somali depends largely on his or her place within this patchwork, largely of clan and subclan, into which much of Somali society is divided. A level of authority can be found in each of these clan-defined fragments of the body politic with varying capabilities to protect the rights of its members-or to abuse the rights of others.

These authority structures combine traditional forms that bring together the elders, merchants and religious leaders of a clan with the modern administrative systems promoted by the United Nations. These authorities also have a capacity to collaborate with others across clan lines, through largely traditional mechanisms of arbitration and alliance building. They may, at the same time, mobilize forces dedicated to exclude others from the exercise of their fundamental rights or to be the instrument of the deprivation of such rights.

The human rights situation of the ordinary Somali depends largely on these local authorities. It is principally through their clans that they relate to powerful warleaders, and to members of other clans and subclans. The clan elders and traditional authorities such as the ugas or sultans are the arbiters of social relations at the grassroots, but also act through the district and regional councils that can bring different communities together in local government. These local authorities can be the agents of either protection or abuse in Somali communities.

Local Leadership and District Councils

Human Rights Watch interviews conducted in January and February 1995 found evidence that consultations, arbitration and judgments within and between clan councils had in some areas resulted in the restoration of a degree of protection for the local communities from gross abuses by rival militias as well as from purely criminal acts by private citizens.The traditional councils of leaders of subclans and subclan alliances provide the underlying authority of the warleaders, the military-political