Northern Somalia has been flattened, raped and traumatised by Siyad Barre's forces. Whole towns have been destroyed. Mines are everywhere, still wreaking havoc on defenceless people. The cracked minarets [of the mosques] symbolise the barbarity. This was a war of total destruction. He still cannot understand how in a country where everyone is Muslim even the house of God was not a safe haven. This was a war waged by Godless people.
President Barre had given orders to his army to exterminate the Isaaq people of the North. Nearly the whole of Northern Somalia is in ruins. No town, no village is left untouched. What remains of the major town of Hargeisa is bullet riddled walls, car wrecks, and twisted steel.
The local SNA army commander, General Morgan, the son in law of Barre, had earlier written a "death letter", in which he asked the president permission to destroy the Isaq clan of Somalia.
Nearly half a million residents lived [in Hargeisa] until 1988 in relative prosperity. In Hargeisa alone an estimated 50,000 people lost their lives. Only 5% of the buildings in Hargeisa still stand - the ones in which the government soldiers resided.
Hargeisa, the second town of Somalia and once the capital of British Somaliland, will have to entirely be rebuilt. The totality of destruction in Northern Somalia is beyond description. It is as if a nuclear bomb had exploded in this town. On the road from Hargeisa via Berbera to Burao, a penetrating smell warns of rotting human flesh. From the rubble of a blown up tank, a shrivelled leg sticks out. On the tarmac lies a decomposing flattened body.
While the clan fighting in the south continues, the SNM has established a fragile peace in the North, the former British Somaliland protectorate, led by Abdirahman Tuur."