Somaliland: Kill All but the Crows (Part I) | People & Power

in the late-1980s general CR borrow a launch of genocidal war against people in the north of his country along with it became detentions torture and the mass murder of civilians now 25 years on the true story behind those crimes is emerging in this two-part investigation we follow an extraordinary effort to gather evidence and bring one of the key perpetrators to justice welcome to Somalia regarded by many as one of the most dangerous places on earth to the outside world this is the epitome of a failed States a haven for warlords pirates and terrorists whose ruthless activities yet generalities can be deceptive this is actually Somali not a self-declared nation in the north of Somalia it's stability belies the infamous reputation of the rest of the country it is peaceful and thriving and though its independence isn't recognized internationally its capital at Gaza this flourish boosted by funds from many Somalis abroad but Somaliland also has its dark side with in recent history it witnessed atrocities that brought death and despair to the door of almost every family here now as this would-be nation tries to define its future some feel its harrowing past must also be re-examined to give closure to those who suffer and to call the perpetrators to account this two-part investigation is about that process about truth and justice about the community coming to terms with horrifying events and an extraordinary international effort to bring an alleged war criminal to try now to respond to the allegations I will not touch you I will not touch you not coming no the story has its origins in one of the darkest periods of Somalia's history in the late 1980s the countries then dictator general see at battery viciously turned on his own people especially those belonging mostly to this Hawk clan in the north battery held them responsible for the actions of a rebel movement known as the Somalia national movement or SNM his forces laid waste to what is now Somaliland many tens of thousands of civilians were killed and half a million were driven into exile today the survivors and families of victims are still sensitive to the Agony's of that violent era but some want the crimes of the past remembered and punished Aziz Duryea is one of them a Somaliland activist he lost many members of his own family to Batteries clan cleansing program seeing those responsible brought to justice has become his life's mission it's why he's arranged a visit by a renowned peruvian forensic archaeologist Jose Pablo Baba good it's a crucial step in what Aziz is finding to be an uphill struggle to overcome the reluctance of many who are still not ready to deal with the loss of loved ones during the civil war 25 years ago keep in mind this is a war-torn country we're still having a lot of issues so we don't expect everything to be smooth it's gonna take a little time for people to forgive and forget but I think we are cross that point forgiveness can only start with acknowledgement absolutely and this confrontation is what is needed in us for people to even consider forgiveness and let people the opportunity to talk and discuss and and cry and shout and and bring up whatever they want to bring up once for all in order for certain wounds to try to heal you know for people to be you know to live together in peace in the end we should have peace building exercises Jose Pablo is a war crimes investigator and he's come here to help gather evidence of mass murder killings that grew from three toxic historical roots a divisive colonial legacy sighs Barry's murderous dictatorship and the cold war power game between the Soviet Union and the United States along with many other independence era African leaders battery at first embraced socialism and liked them he enjoyed the support of the Kremlin but after he made the fatal mistake of invading neighboring Ethiopia in 1978 also a Soviet client batteries backers turned on him as a former US ambassador told us it left a power vacuum which was eagerly filled by the American so a lot of what we saw of Somalia in those days was an effort to reaffirm our relationship with the Somali government and to put it bluntly kind of buy off some of that interest that had shifted to the Soviet Union with some military assistance it wasn't the biggest program in Africa but it was one of the largest military assistance programs we had going on in sub-saharan at that time we were in a bit of a a game with each other with Somalia at the center of it but battery was more adept at playing one superpower off against another than he was a caring for his own people by the early 1980s his dictatorship had become deeply repressive and was being challenged by the SNM armed resistance in the north the regime responded savagely with little regard for civilian lives this is Malka dewdrop mass grave site it is about one mile square area in 1988 I think it was late May early true the SNM came attacked the government defeated the government of see a beret and military took revenge basically destroying the civilians and the city very ordered a devastating bombardment of Hargeisa by ground and air it seems reminiscent of World War two eyewitnesses say thousands of civilians were rounded up and summarily executed tens of thousands more fled into exile the campaign was pitiless and brazenly documented by the generals own men who competed to prove devotion to their leader and be rewarded for it but recording her own crimes would come back to haunt them Somali academic dr. Hussain Gohan made an astonishing discovery and the dictators archives I found a tape that was really a fifth-generation copy of a military documentary producer that Siad Barre regime military had and the officers and soldiers in our geisha we're taping how they were destroying the city and causing all the massacre in order to show their commanders and their president in Mogadishu what a good job here is an instance where them guys were doing it are explaining and justify you don't even need you know another proof you know you see the action you also see in this instance their own their own admission and declaration of what they are doing the body as if they were actually killing some kind of beasts that were not humans and the language was as violent as their actual killing destroying rape kill all all right there still some creaminess I believe there is more than 50,000 people that has been slaughtered by the shed by the government in this side and what they did is they collected a lot of innocent civilians including my father my younger brother my cousin unkilled here I'm very here not very but actually dumped it is very emotional for me because there is still some crosses and ones hanging on this wall so what happened here it's not something that we can forget easily it is something that is very painful that needs to be remembered that needs to be part of our history Aziz has come to market a dog to meet a man who was forced to bury many of the dead yeah buddy military wait wait wait wait one hi Bonnie wait I didn't meet but ready could be blue color ass wait wait so so I have to mount the retina ah so sorry right this awesome Casa Vega ha yeah La Liga you ha your taste for the manga how come mm yeah but I mean of not caring caring yeah hey maka girly oh yeah hi come on Lola the victims were buried in hundreds of unmarked graves around the capital her Gaza there they lay a repressed memory in the minds traumatized I was also doing mental health work people were coming to me daily pulling and taking me from the streets from home where I was where I was staying and asking me to treat victims survivors who were having serious mental health problems and experience that bombardment and massacre survived it nonetheless and they were seriously mentally ill kept at home in Chains most of them so I ended up spending a good deal of time in the treatment of these individuals almost in every neighborhood of the city forty five percent of the city's residents were deeply traumatized and post-traumatic stress disorder was very much prevalent for many the scars from Batteries brutal repression of the Somali North almost 30 years ago will never fully heal but I really don't have a hope to find my family's remains I don't know where they are but it's come to me and say forget about what happened to your father forget about what happened to your brother forget what happened to a quarter of million of the moneylenders I can't let it go that that is not something that's making sense to me but what could perhaps bring such closure is if those responsible for causing such pain are held to account battery himself died in exile in Nigeria in 1995 and with a few exceptions most of his associates have escaped retribution but allegedly one of the most brutal of them is now the subject of an extraordinary international effort to bring him to justice during the late 1980s Colonel Yusuf Abdi Ali also known as Colonel 2k or the CRO was the head of the Somali Army's infamous fifth Brigade and a recent beneficiary of C aid batteries blossoming friendship in the United States we figured that what we were doing with Somalia was not that much different from what the Soviet Union was doing in Ethiopia no big deal but everybody on all sides knew that there was a game going on there that if we raised our ante then they were gonna raise theirs and it wasn't always too comfortable one of 300 Somali elite officers selected for special training 2k spent two years in Kansas before being redeployed back to the town of Gabby Lee west of her Gaza in northern Somalia of all batteries commanders in the region he was infamous as one of the cruelest his unit was allegedly responsible for the detention torture and murder of thousands of people in 1988 at the height of the civil war one of his victims had a near miraculous escape for Hahn Wafaa was arrested by two case men at Kabila on suspicion of stealing a water tank he says he was tortured and then shot and left for dead by Colonel 2k himself the colonel ordered henchmen to dispose of his body instead were far survived and his family managed to bribe his captors to let him go are you illegal he would deal he took about my awesome lolly was followed by Schalke followed by the time the battery regime collapsed in 1991 colonel 2k was back in the US for yet more training now three decades later it's where four Hanwha far as a rare survivor among thousands of victims is bringing a civil case against him the outskirts of gabelli and the nearby village called Arabi so is where Aziz has enlisted the help of forensic archaeologist Jose Pablo bar I bar he's brought a team of international volunteers from his organization beep of a Peruvian NGO that investigates possible war crime sites part of a paths mission is to find forensic evidence that might be used in the case against ookay but just as important is to provide answers to the families of victims of massacres thought to have occurred in the area and to aid their journey towards closure I'll show you just play this very slowly very gently cleaning one of the main things that have to happen here is to dignify the dead and to separate the dead from the living how you do that well first get in the record straight if you really want to get the record straight and you really want to have an open dialogue and for people to reconcile though I hate that word I don't think that reconciliation such exists that need to have a less contentious coexistence you need to really open up things opening up the past is not an exact size after more than 25 years no one is precisely sure where the bodies are buried finding them needs more than picks maybe we'll be easier for him to come like like this and to start from here I don't know bringing in a bulldozer is a risky tactic digging too deep could destroy the graves lying below desecrating the remains and losing the evidence the team has traveled across the world to collect the atmosphere is tense but finally one of the team's spots a fragment of human bone yet despite a paps good intentions the exhumation has upset the local community who protest at the grave sites the situation becomes so serious that Sumari lands justice minister is called in to calm things down he needs to convince them to allow the remains to be taken to EPF slab in her Gaza and later be given a proper Muslim burial the huge idiot chance and would you arrest them back to the last whatever right after high school mr. adamian well I got more much well they are chemical so [ __ ] you know Lila was in my jewelry smackle oh god oh no how could any look away in the two thing in LA he died in also Lucy sorry hotel is from tada I don't know the love for you Han Korea yoga no no no am i scary you know CeeLo Colorado by the Madonna I'm sure in OCD I hate how they start with the matinee era know how to tell a crab your loss what am i a ha some Larimar oh but how can money yeah okay blue baby ha ha ha photo yellow clothes Gilligan to slot I'm hot Donna I mega lucario Yahoo yeah yeah yeah deal I had no hassle you know it sharing a logo Carla well me happy that alone i strung up a ton of my heart the exact same cook ha where are we dude it'd be so my Lena oh I the relativist of the victim is really has no idea what we're doing and it's very difficult for them to go back to that said dark base of 2 K in Delhi they're basically point is we forgive each other in Somaliland and we want to move on which is fine with me there's a history that we cannot ignore and if we don't ask each other what went wrong then we're gonna repeat the same mistakes again and again and again present on the day the remains are unveiled is the wife of one of the men believed to be lying in the grave in aquarium and then what I saw and then I'll buy it all day making yeah Anika oh they do you know with d'Alene behind up till Karla al-khalili near the tunnel Helen but the animal Carl Heine interlude really did he was wobbly rutilated a bear that have already lost her udder and anything weakly I stopped her Superman okay I saw him in Marana intervening in the sky state doesn't burn okay how's that I don't fall this is dr. Lavery hello escaped already so Kershaw element 1 screams to enormous capability today I can yell Mahalo we doing said Obama even said are you are you so interested not even go for Biola cursor when batteries regime was toppled in 1991 Somalia descended into further chaos Colonel 2k or use of hub the alley as his more formally known was back in the United States at the time receiving training at the US Air Force Base in Mississippi he then spent a brief period in Canada posing as a refugee but when his true identity was discovered he was deported back to the US however any fears he may have had about facing prosecution by the American government were unfounded he was granted permanent residence in 1996 we asked ambassador Craig ler if the US should have kept closer tabs on suspected war criminals flatly no because we didn't know enough we could have pretended to be judge and jury in two case case and ever so many others dozens of others who claimed refuge in the United States after that fighting but we didn't we weren't a police force we weren't an investigating force we weren't even a United Nations humanitarian investigation team what we were trying to do was relieve the suffering until recently colonel 2k has lived openly if anonymously in the u.s. seemingly immune from legal retribution but then for Hanwha fast case was taken up by an American human rights NGO and the battle to bring the former Colonel to court was under way we wanted to put to him some of the allegations that we'd heard in Somalia to get to Ches response to claims that he'd been involved in atrocities but his exact whereabouts in the u.s. were unknown then we managed to track him down to Fairfax Virginia early one morning we went to speak to him I want to ask you I want to ask you about allegations and b-billy against you in the court case not coming over from al-jazeera talk to talk to a lawyer talk to my lawyer did you shoot mr. Worf for five times look I understand that senem was attacking you were very angry right is this what happened just explain is it a conspiracy is the government in the north just trying to get you tell me is it a conspiracy boat that you did a conspiracy is it a conspiracy to respond to the allegations I'm gonna let you I will not touch you no comment no comment don't play don't you want people to you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 468,173

Keywords: somaliland, Siad Barre, war crimes, mass killings, people and power, aljazeera, al jazeera, aljazeera english, al jazeera english, al jazeera live, Somaliland: Kill All but the Crows, Kill All, Crows, Kill, People & Power, People, Power, Kill All but the Crows, Hargeisa, Somalia, Colonel Tukeh, war criminal, Yusuf Abdi Ali

Id: JNBTlc2wHU8

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2016