Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan (Somali: Maxamed Siciid Xirsi Moorgan;[1] Arabic: وقال محمد هيرسي مورغان) was the son-in-law of Siad Barre and minister of defense of Somalia.[2] Said Hersi Morgan is thought to be responsible for many atrocities committed against the Somali population during the Barre government and during the civil war of the 1990s in the region of Kismayu. His military campaign in Southern Somalia in 1992 was one of the main causes of the famine in Somalia in that same year. As a consequence 300.000 Somali may have died.[3] He is also accused of drug-dealing[4] and controlling the supply routes of khat.[5]
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Mohammed Said Hersi (Majeerteen from the sub-clan Abdirahim) received his military training in both Italy and the USA. As a colonel he was commander of the Mogadishu sector, where the elite units of the Armed Forces were stationed (ca. 1980).[6] He then went on to become commander of the Red Barets,[7] responsible for the suppression of the revolt of the Majerteen united in the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) in 1982. From 1986 to 1988, as a general, he was the military commander of the 26th military district (the region of Somaliland) and in September 1990 he was appointed as minister of defense and substitute head of state.
In 1988, operations conducted by the Barre government against Somali National Movement (SNM) rebels in the northern part of the country led to the death and imprisonment of thousands of Somali civilians by the Somali National Army.[8][9][10] Hersi Morgan was in charge of these operations, and thus became known as the "Butcher of Hargeisa."[11]
Mohammed Said Hersi led the shelling and bombing of Hargeisa in response to the city being taken over by the SNM. The shelling and subsequent battles that took place in the North of Somalia led the deaths of an estimated 50 - 60,000 people.
After the fall of the government on 26 January 1991 Mohammed Said Hersi together with Siad Barre fled from Mogadishu to the South-West of the country. In Gedo he regrouped the army. Together with Barre's son General Maslah, Mohammed Said Hersi went abroad through Kenya on an arms purchasing mission. According to a report of the Minority Rights Group based in Britain[12] they purchased $27 Million worth of arms and petroleum at various black markets. Mohammed Said Hersi became the chairman of the newly founded Somali National Front (SNF); the remains of the Somali National Army functioned as its militia. The SNF made two efforts (one in April 1991 and the other in April 1992) to recapture the capital Mogadishu. Both efforts failed. The SNF was vanquished by the USC and pushed back to the Kenyan border. It later survived in a diminished form in and around Kismayo. Mohammed Said Hersi then tried to unite the Marehan with the other Darod (Ogaden and Majeerteen) to conquer the region around Kismayo. Siad Barre fled to Kenya in April 1992.[13] On January 8, 1993 Mohammed Said Hersi was one of the signatories of agreement reached at the UN-sponsored Informal Preparatory Meeting on National Reconciliation, and the March 1993 Conference on National Reconciliation in Somalia, both in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.[14][15] However, fighting continued in the country unabated.
In December 1993, Mohammed Said Hersi's troops captured Kismayo, and awaited the departure of Belgian UN peacekeepers who were stationed there. His troops had taken advantage of the UN's preoccupation with Mohamed Farah Aidid and had rearmed and regrouped.[16] Mohammed Said Hersi remained in control of Kismayo until 1999. In that period Hersi Morgan cooperated with his former enemies, the Majerteen of the SSDF. Operating from Kismayo, Mohammed Said Hersi was also active in the Kenyan border area. His militia rarely fought those Siyad Hussein, Col. Omar Jess, Ahmed Hashi which also operated in this region; instead they devoted most of their energies to preying upon IDPs and refugees. The area around Dobley refugee camp earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous and violent places in the entire region; women gathering firewood in the bush were routinely raped by predatory militiamen, aid convoys were looted, and refugees subjected to extortion and shakedowns.[17]
After the SNF had split up between Marehan and other factions Hersi had lost his position as leader of that faction. He then joined the Somali Patriot Movement (SPM), which consisted of Darod tribe militias, the Rahanweyn Resistance Army, and the South Somali National Movement (SSNM). Hersi Morgan was head of the self created entity Jubaland between September 3, 1998—June 11, 1999. However he lost the territory to the Juba Valley Alliance (JVA) under Ahmed Warsame in 1999 and only briefly recaptured Kismayo on 6-7 Aug 2001. The town remained in the hands of the JVA until 2006.
Hersi Morgan was present at the conclusion of the peace Talks in Kenya (2002–2004) in which a transitional Somali Transitional National Government (later to become the Transitional Federal Government) was formed. This conclusion, however, was put to risk in September 2004 by the withdrawal of Said Hersi Morgan, who prepared his forces to attack Kismayu, controlled by the JVA which had ousted him in 1999.[18]
Ambassador Kiplagat requested IGAD to impose sanctions against Hersi Morgan for withdrawing from the peace process. The JVA and other warlords began to mobilize forces to oppose him. In September there was some fighting at a distance from Kismayu and the local population fled, but within some days the conference facilitators had persuaded Hersi Morgan to return to Nairobi and re-join the reconciliation conference, although he was not selected as a member of parliament. According to Amnesty International "his presence at the peace talks, more than any of the other warlords, had highlighted the significance of the issue of impunity and its effect on human rights in the future."[19]
In May 2005 Said Hersi Morgan left Nairobi to pay a short visit with his militia in Mogadishu and talked to representatives of the USC.[20] The battle between the militia and the ICU for the control of the capital would start February 2006. Members of this same USC have been the victim of atrocities of troops of Said Hersi Morgan in 1992. In that year the SNF retook with assistance of the Kenyan military (in violation of a United Nations Security Council arms embargo), the Gedo region. In October 1992, the SNF captured the town of Bardera, committing atrocities against civilians who were thought to have supported the USC (solely on the basis of their clan identity) and greatly disrupting relief efforts.[21]
In 1991, when Said Hersi was minister of defense in the Barre government, there still were 54,000 soldiers under his command. Fourteen years later only 1,000 of those remain.[22]
Morgan's militia is currently based in the Ethiopian town of Gode, located in the southern Ogaden. The family of Mohammed Hersi Morgan lives in the United States.
Mohammed Said Hersi "Morgan" is held to be a war criminal by many in Somalia and abroad. A member of the British Parliament, Andrew Robathan, stated that "it is generally accepted that General Morgan, who was in Siad Barre's Government at the time, was responsible for the shooting of a large part of the male population [of Hargeysa]." (4 Feb 2004)[23] An independent paper written for the UNHCR by Professor Kenneth Menkhaus in August 2003 stated, "General Morgan is a political pariah, likely to be the first Somali leader charged with war crimes at some point in the future."[24] However, as yet no charges have been leveled against General "Morgan" by any international criminal court.[25]