THE HISTORY OF SOMALI DIR CLAN: TAARIKHDA BEESHA DIREED DIR
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Friday, July 27, 2018
ISSA REBELS CLASH WITH SOMALILAND TROOPS- 10 Aug 95
(SWB 12 Aug 95 [RFI in French, 10 Aug 95])The Jibuti army has this morning been put on alert along the country' s border with the self- proclaimed Republic of Somaliland. The Jibuti authorities fear a flare- up of clashes between the Somaliland army and the Issa militias of the United Somalia Front [untraced; in French: Front de la Somalie Unifiee]. Yesterday the militias attacked the locality of Barisle, less than five kilometres from the border. According to Radio Hargeisa, two soldiers and nine militiamen were killed. The Issa rebels admit to five deaths from among their ranks and say that 31 soldiers were killed. Our reporter is Abdi Aden:[Aden] Today the Somaliland soldiers and the Issa rebels are facing each other at Tokhoshi, some 20 km from the Jibuti border, and fighting is likely to flare up anew.The reason for the fighting is to see who can win control of a nine- square- kilometre area claimed by Issa nomads, who are also demanding regional autonomy based on the Boorama charter. The charter is supposed to regulate intertribal affairs in Somaliland. The government of Muhammad Ibrahim Egal does not see things that way, however. He wants to set up an administration which, he says, will represent the three main tribes that live in this area bordering on Jibuti. The tribes in question are the Issa, the Gadaboursy and the Issaq. The Somaliland Issas have categorically rejected this formula, which they suspect is a ploy to manoeuvre them out of the Somaliland political arena.Jibuti, for its part, has put its troops along the border with Somaliland on a state of alert in order to prevent any fighting from spilling over the border.Abdi Aden in Jibuti for RFI.
The BBC and other sources reported clashes between Somaliland armed forces and the Issa clan (a sub-clan of the Dir) in a small area bordering Djibouti in August 1995 (Radio France International 10 Aug.1995). The Issa, according to Radio France, suspect the Isaaq of attempting to suppress their political rights. And in a 1996 report to the Canadian Documentation, Information and Research Branch an expert on Somalia stated that the Midgan clan was no longer being targeted for earlier actions against the SNM and "are now living peacefully and intermingled in [the] North Somali community (IRB 8 Oct. 1996)." All of which is not to say the SNM or Somaliland government are boy scouts but, as the Somalia Desk Officer put it, "We have no knowledge of repression."
ReplyDeleteRadio France Internationale. "Forces on berder alert after Issa rebels clash with Somaliland troops" (10 August 1995) ¿ as reported in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) web site.