SUMMARY

Somalia was, in 1992, a very unstable country. A number of rebel groups had been involved in the conflict that resulted in the ousting of former Somali president Siyad Barre in 1991. A year later the rebel groups that had previously shared a common goal, to rid the country of the incumbent president, were engaged in a number of conflicts among themselves over the power of Somalia or regions of the country. Two of these groups were SPM (Somali Patriotic Movement) and SPM/SNA (Somali Patriotic Movement/Somali National Alliance). The SPM/SNA had been created after a staged coup in the leadership of SPM in late 1991. As a result one of the former leaders, Omar Jess, had broken out, aligned himself with the warlord Mohammed Farah ‘Aideed’ of the USC/SNA, and created SPM/SNA. Both SPM movements, at this time, considered the south Somali port city of Kismayo to be the strategically most important place for them to conquer. By late 1992the town was under the control of Omar Jess and his SPM/SNA.

The underlying reason as to why the civilian population was being attacked in late 1992 was the fear of SPM/SNA that the soon to be launched UN mission to Somalia UNOSOM (United Nation Operation in Somalia), would lead to the end of their control of Kismayo. SPM/SNA, who mainly drew its ranks from the Ogaden clan (Darod), feared that they would lose the control to SPM, which was mainly made up of members from Harti clan (Darod). The assassinations targeted important members of the Harti community and took place during a couple of days’ time. As a result of the attacks on the Harti population close to 100 people were killed.

SPM/SNA first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1992, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in December that year when the group massacred some 90 members of the Harti community in Kismayo.