Soon after the fall of
the of the Siyad Barre regime of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991,
Somaliland, which comprised the northern five regions of united Somalia,
proclaimed its independence, claiming the same territory that was ruled by the
United Kingdom as the British Protectorate of Somaliland until 1960. Somaliland
had joined with the former Italian colony of Somalia after each received
independence in 1960. Today, for all practical purposes, Somaliland functions
as a separate and independent country, thus far unrecognized by other countries.
It has a bicameral parliament, and an elected president. Twice in the past eight
years, Somaliland has peacefully changed its governing leadership. It maintains
officially recognized liaison offices in neighboring countries such as Djibouti
and Ethiopia and will soon open a Commercial Relations Office in Yemen.
Mine Ban Policy
The self-declared Republic of Somaliland cannot
become a signatory of the Mine Ban Treaty until it receives international
recognition as a separate state. Nevertheless, on the occasion of the signing
ceremony of the ban treaty in Ottawa, the President of Somaliland, Mohamed
Ibrahim Egal, wrote a letter to Lloyd Axworthy, the Canadian Minister of Foreign
Affairs indicating that Somaliland was willing to sign the MBT. In his letter,
Mr. Egal stated “We would be grateful to be accepted as participants in
the Conference and to sign the treaty banning landmines as an autonomous
territory in full control of its destiny and the management of its
affairs.”[1] Somaliland
authorities give every indication that they are willing to unilaterally observe
the MBT and all of its obligations, including the expeditious destruction of
landmine stocks of its national army.
The governmental National Demining Agency (NDA) issued a policy paper on
landmines in 1998. Its proposed policies were approved by the President’s
Cabinet on 26 October 1998. However, the policy did not mention the MBT, and
although it mandated the destruction of landmine stocks, it only made reference
to landmine stocks in the hands of militias or private individuals and did not
mention national army landmine
stocks.[2] On 1 March 1999, the
Somaliland House of Representatives passed an amended version of the NDA policy
that in Article 1 decrees that “the State Shall undertake to destroy or
ensure the destruction of all stockpiled antipersonnel mines it owns or
possesses, or that are under its jurisdiction or control, as soon as
possible.”[3]
In its preamble to the amended policy, the House of Representatives recalled
both the Ottawa Declaration of 5 October 1996 and the Brussels Declaration of 27
June 1997 urging the international community to negotiate an international
legally binding agreement prohibiting the use, stockpiling, production and
transfer of antipersonnel mines.
Until recently there was no organized campaign to ban landmines in
Somaliland.[4] On 26 August 1998
SOYAAL, the Somaliland Veterans Association, issued a statement at the
conclusion of its Second General Congress calling on the government of
Somaliland to ban all
landmines.[5] Subsequently, in
January 1999 the Somaliland Coalition against Landmines (SCAL) was formed,
composed of SOYAAL, the Somaliland Red Crescent Society, the Somaliland Relief
and Rehabilitation Association (SORRA), and the Institute for Practical Research
(IPR). IPR acts as the secretariat for
SCAL.[6]
Production, Transfer and Stockpiling
Somaliland is not known to have ever produced or
exported antipersonnel mines. The Ministry of Defense of Somaliland states that
its national army has not purchased or transferred any landmines, but admits
that it has stocks inherited from the Somali army or various demobilized
militias.[7] The government has
not programmed the destruction of its landmine
stocks.[8] The size and
composition of the stockpile is not known.
Use
The landmine problem in Somaliland is the result of
over two decades of warfare. Between 1977 and 1978, the Somali Democratic
Republic, which then had the third largest army in sub-Saharan Africa, went to
war with neighboring Ethiopia over a long-standing territorial dispute. The war
was heavily contested in the frontier area between northern Somalia (now
Somaliland) and Ethiopia and the corridor between the Ethiopian city of
Dire-Dawa and the border. Both the Somali army of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siyad Barre
and Ethiopian troops of the Mengistu regime heavily mined front lines,
perimeters surrounding military installations and important access routes.
Then, between 1981 and 1991, the Somali National Movement (SNM), a rebel army
of mostly northern Somali following, waged an armed insurrection against the
regime of Mohamed Siyad Barre. On 27 May 1988, the conflict intensified to a
full-scale war, and the Somali army, fearing that the population was sympathetic
to the cause of the rebels, embarked on a scorched earth strategy. Nearly one
million civilians were forced out of northern Somalia into refugee camps in
northeastern Ethiopia.[9]
Numerous reports by human rights organizations and others describe the
indiscriminate use of landmines by the Somali army against the civilian
population and their homes, farmland, and water
reservoirs.[10] In particular,
the then regional capital of Hargeisa was targeted by the army. Perhaps as many
as 100,000 landmines were placed in Hargeisa by the army -- around military
bases, refugee camps, private homes, and the
airport.[11] SNM combatants also
used landmines during this civil war.
The most recent use of landmines in Somaliland took place between 1994 and
1995. Militias opposed to the regime of Somaliland President Mohamed Ibrahim
Egal and loyalist forces fought fierce battles in Hargeisa (now
Somaliland’s capital) and areas south and east of Hargeisa.
Landmines were used extensively in this civil war. While the two sides have
now reconciled, the landmines they planted during this period are making life
very difficult in Burao and the surrounding region
Landmine Problem
Most studies put the number of landmines in
Somaliland and Somalia from these three conflicts at 1.2 to 2 million. In 1998
the US State Department estimated one million landmines in all of
Somalia.[12] The United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), which currently operates the Somali Civil Protection
Program and a demining project in Somaliland, indicates that between 400,000 and
800,000 landmines were deployed in Somaliland during the 1988-1991
period.[13] At least twenty-four
types of antipersonnel landmines from ten countries have been identified in
Somaliland. The ten countries of origin are: Belgium, Pakistan, China, the
United States, former Czechoslovakia, former East Germany, Egypt, former Soviet
Union, United Kingdom and
Italy.[14]
In 1997, the Somaliland government constituted a National Demining Agency
(NDA) to coordinate all demining, mine awareness and victim assistance programs
by the government and national and international NGOs. At about the same time,
UNDP established a Somali Mine Action Center (SMAC) to coordinate its landmine
activities in Somaliland and begin a limited training and demining program in
Burao City. The UNDP program also started compiling field data for a level 1
survey. Data on the extent of landmine contamination throughout Somaliland has
been compiled by SMAC, SOYAAL (the Somaliland War Veterans Association) and the
Somali Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SORRA).
According to SMAC, there are twenty-eight mined roads in Somaliland. Most
roads in Somaliland are unpaved; the only exception is one major route that
connects several of the major towns and cities. Consequently, it had been
relatively easy to block roads with landmines. There have been several mine
incidents on the coastal road between the port city of Berbera and neighboring
Djibouti, and a section of this road just east of Berbera has at least one
minefield of undetermined size. Sections of the regular
Djibouti–Jidhi-Borama road are also mined and traffic has been diverted
into alternate routes for the past eight years. The regular unpaved road between
the largest towns of Somaliland, Burao and Hargeisa, has been abandoned, in part
due to the landmine threat.
There are also more than eighty minefields in Somaliland. Sixty-three of
these fields have been confirmed by SMAC. The majority of mine fields are found
near the Ethiopian/Somaliland
border.[15] These minefields were
designed to protect the army of Siyad Barre’s regime from SNM incursions
during the 1988-90 conflict. Somaliland is a pastoral society and the frontier
area is the most important grazing area for Somaliland livestock. Each season,
tens of thousands of nomads and their herds cross the border in search of water
and pasture. These nomads are extremely vulnerable as they travel on foot and
often in large numbers. There are no paved roads in the area and no hospitals or
health care centers. No systematic demining has taken place in this frontier
area.
The city of Burao is also badly mine affected, and the source of most new
mine victims in Somaliland today. More than 70,000 former residents of Burao,
Somaliland's second largest city, have not dared return home and live in a
makeshift camp on its eastern
outskirts.[16] Limited demining by
a UNDP-funded Somalia Civil Protection Project has now resulted in some sections
of the city to be repopulated and the reopening of important public facilities
such as the airport, the bank, a few schools and a number of main streets.
Mine Action Funding
Somaliland’s status as a self-declared
republic that has received no international recognition has made it very
difficult to attract bilateral assistance or funding from the international
community for demining or other mine action projects. Lack of resources has
severely limited demining and mine action activities and currently only one
UNDP-sponsored demining project of a limited duration is active in
Somaliland.
Between 1991 and 1993, the US State Department and later the United Nations
funded a commercial demining project in Somaliland. The United Nations
Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) which operated during the 1992-1994 humanitarian
intervention in Somalia funded a number of local contractors. It is not clear
that any of these contractors worked in Somaliland.
In 1998, the UNDP spent $202,000 on a training and assessment project by
Mine-Tech of Zimbabwe (see below). In 1998, Care International received $343,817
from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and
Migration to start a level II survey in Somaliland and to support NDA and SMAC
capacity building.[17]
Care’s project was slated to start on 1 March 1999.
On 20 January 1999, the Danish Foreign Ministry awarded 4 million Kroner
(approximately U.S. $600,000) to the Danish Demining Group to start a project in
Somaliland in the spring of
1999.[18] During a meeting on 5
March 1998 in Copenhagen, DGG indicated that the funds were for a pilot project
that may be expanded in the
future.[19]
Mine Clearance
The gravity of the landmine situation became
apparent in 1991 soon after the fall of Siyad Barre as large numbers of
residents returned to their homes in Hargeisa. Mines were found everywhere in
Hargeisa and casualties quickly mounted. In 1991, the U.S. State
Department’s Office of Refugee Programs funded a proposal by
Médecins Sans Frontières of Belgium to start a demining program in
Hargeisa. The project was later expanded with further input from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR was responsible for the
care of nearly 800,000 former residents of Somaliland as refugees in
northeastern Ethiopia.
Rimfire, a British firm, was contracted to start demining in and around the
city of Hargeisa. According to some reports, Rimfire’s demining program
had serious organizational and technical shortcomings and some indicated that
more than thirty of its local deminers were
killed.[20] The program and
parallel local efforts resulted in the removal of 21,000 from Hargeisa before
Rimfire closed its project in early
1994.[21] The early demining by
local teams[22] and Rimfire
enabled the re-population of the city of Hargeisa, whose residents now number an
estimated population of 250,000 to 300,000. Mine explosions are now rare in
Hargeisa. However, there are a number of minefields in its vicinity.
The 1994-95 internal conflict in Somaliland, described above, made
humanitarian demining difficult, and no new programs were initiated. In fact,
new mines were laid in the contested areas, and, as noted, most severely
affected by these new mines is the central city of Burao, which had been the
scene of heavy fighting.
In 1998, UNDP funded a three-month commercial demining project to begin the
demining of Burao. MineTech of Zimbabwe was contracted to do a feasibility study
using previously trained Somali deminers. MineTech trained sixty-three Somali
deminers, and with two mine detection dogs and expatriate technical advisors has
now cleared approximately 73,000 sq. meters in Burao removing 107 antipersonnel
mines, fifteen antitank mines and sixty-three UXOs at a cost of $2.75 per square
meter and a total cost of US $202,000. Under a separate contract from HABITAT,
the team also cleared a 1.5 km road leading to the water reservoir of the nearby
town of Sheikh.
On 20 January 1999, the Danish Demining Group (DGG) announced that it would
begin a demining project in Somaliland in the spring of 1999. DGG received a
grant of 4 million Kroner from the Danish Foreign Ministry for a demining,
detonation of UXOs and victim assistance. According to press reports DGG will
establish headquarters in Hargeisa and will train up to forty-five local
deminers.[23]
Landmine Survivor Assistance
In 1991. during the peak of landmine incidents,
Somaliland had only eight general surgeons and two orthopedic surgeons in the
whole country. At that time, the ICRC estimated Somaliland to have one amputee
for every 652 persons. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), in a report published
in 1992, also conservatively estimated that there were then between 1,500 and
2,000 landmine amputees in Somaliland. The population of Somaliland at the time
of the PHR report was estimated at about 1 million, indicating, therefore, that
there was one amputee for every 666 residents. In this period, 60 mine victims a
month were being brought to the main Hargeisa Group Hospital
alone.[24] There are only three
hospitals capable of providing surgery in the whole county, and these are poorly
equipped.
Mine-related casualties have considerably subsided over the past several
years as people become more aware and avoid problem zones. Moreover, nomads and
local communities especially in the frontier areas have often hired freelance
deminers to demine areas they knew had landmines. In April 1998, doctors in
Berbera Hospital indicated that on average they were treating one new mine
victim each month. Most of the victims in Berbera were from the heavily-mined
city of Burao, which is about two hours driving distance from
Berbera.[25] However, the United
Nations reports that between June and December 1998, there were seventy landmine
accidents involving forty fatalities in the Togdheer region of Somaliland
alone.[26]
Currently two NGOs provide some post-operative assistance to landmine
victims. The Somaliland Red Crescent Society (SRCS), with funding from the
Somaliland government., and the Norwegian Red Cross provides plastic lower limb
prostheses to amputees. Handicap International (HI) also provides prosthetics,
crutches and other walking aids, and runs a physical therapy clinic for amputees
and other handicapped individuals. Both centers are located in Hargeisa and
except for occasional travel to other districts, their patients are confined to
victims who can seek assistance in Hargeisa.
Between 1993 and December 1998 the SRCS rehabilitation center provided
prostheses to 908 patients. Forty percent of the patients were mine victims.
The majority of mine victims do not receive any post-operative assistance. The
need for post-operative care was illustrated in October 1998 when SRCS staff
visited Burao. In a single day, the SCRS team saw sixty amputees who needed help
with obtaining mobility
devices.[27] The SCRS now plans
seven mobile clinics, four for the Togdheer region and three for Awadal during
1999.[28]
[1]Letter dated 26 November
1997 from Somaliland President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal to Canadian Foreign Minister
Lloyd Axworthy concerning Somaliland’s willingness to sign the Mine Ban
Treaty.
[2]National Demining Agency,
“Somaliland Government Policy on Landmines and Unexploded Ordnance,”
26 October 1998.
[3]Golaha Wakiilada (House of
Representatives), reference GW/KF-7/89/99, 1 March 1999.
[4]The Somali Relief and
Rehabilitation Association (SORRA) has been the most active. It hosted the
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) team that wrote the 1992 report on landmines
in Northern Somalia. The Deputy Speaker of the Somaliland House of
Representatives, himself an explosives engineer, has also been an active
anti-landmines advocate.
[5]SOYAAL Second Congress
Resolutions, 26 August 1998.
[7]Discussion with Rashid Haji
Abdillahi, Somaliland Minister of Defense, 20 January 1999.
[8]Interview with Col. Mohamed
Ali Ismail (ret), Director of NDA, 26 November 1998.
[9]United States General
Accounting Office, “Somalia, Observations Regarding the Northern Conflict
and Resulting Conditions, Report to Congressional Requesters,”
GAO/NSIAD-89-159, Washington, DC., 1989.
[10]Physicians for Human
Rights, Hidden Enemies: Landmines in Northern Somalia (Boston:
PHR,1992).
[11]Somalia Handbook:
Foreign Ground Weapons and Health Issues, U.S. Army Foreign Science and
Technology Center, December 1992, DST-1100H-107-92, p.8.
[12]U.S. Department of State,
Hidden Killers, September 1998, p.46.
[14] Human Rights Watch and
Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, (New York: Human
Rights Watch, 1993), p. 225. This gives the types of mines for each nation.
[15]Human Rights Watch, Arms
Project and Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, (New
York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 223.
[16]U.N. Assessment Mission to
Northwest Somalia, June 1998.
[17]Somalia Mine Action Program
(SOMAP), Care International, October 1998.
[18]DGG is a humanitarian
demining NGO affiliated with the Danish Refugees Council.
[19]LM researcher met with the
Danish Refugee Council and DGG on 5 March 1998.
[20]Rimfire was faulted for
hiring practices that exacerbated inter-clan friction, not disposing of
landmines properly and for failing to follow safety guidelines. African Rights
and the Mines Advisory Group wrote a critical report on Rimfire’s work,
Violent Deeds Live On: Landmines in Somalia and Somaliland (London:
African Rights and MAG, December 1993). In addition, a UN Assessment Mission to
Northwest Somalia in June of 1998 reported that thirty local deminers were
killed during Rimfire’s project.
[21]Physicians for Human
Rights, Hidden Enemies,pp.32-33.
[22]A.A. Haij Gam-Gam and H.
Wilson, “An outline of a Proposal for the Establishment of a Landmine
Clearance Program in the Republic of Somaliland,” May 1994.
[23]Berlingske Tidende,
(Copenhagen), 20 January 1999.
[25]Discussion at Berbera
between doctors working for the Coperazione Italiano (COOPI) and a visiting
delegation lead by U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti, Lange Schermerhorn, April
1998.
[26]UN Assessment Mission to
Northwest Somalia, June 1988.
[27]Ali Sheikh Mohamed,
Director of SRCS Rehabilitation Center in Hargeisa, 27 November 1998.
[28]Mustafa Rashaad, SRCS,
Hargeisa, 18 February 1999.
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