Before 1988 : Mogadishu’s First Bombing of Hargeisa And the Untold Story Somalilanders Were Never Taught
The current attempt by Hasan Sheikh, Fiqi, and company in Mogadishu, to commandeer Somaliland’s airspace with the E-Visa scheme, elicited a firestorm of outrage, condemnation and calls for Somalilanders to fight back, and rightly so. However, Somalilanders would be making a mistake if they see this devious scheme as a matter of civil aviation only. Rather, it is part and parcel of Mogadishu’s attempt to break Somaliland’s will and destroy it, just as the bombing of Hargeisa in 1988 was part of that project, which brings me to my main point: most Somalilanders think that the bombing of Hargeisa by the Mogadishu regime in 1988 was the only time Hargeisa was bombed by a regime based in Mogadishu. The truth is it was the second time, the first time Hargeisa was bombed by military airplanes from the south was during the Italian Fascist invasion of Somaliland in 1940. I became aware of this information in a conversation I had with the late Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Abdirahim Abby Farah who was present in Hargeisa when the Italian bombing took place and witnessed the killing and destruction it inflicted on the innocent civilians of Hargeisa. There was even a more cruel twist to this aerial assault in that to maximize the number of people killed, the Italian planes did a deceptive maneuver and came from the north of Hargeisa, which made a lot of people come out to the streets thinking they were British planes that were coming to help them, only to be blown away by Italian bombs. One last thought: I had suggested in my last poetry reading in Hargeisa that we locate the type of planes that were used in the Italian Fascist’s bombing, build a model of it which won’t be hard to do with current technology and set it up next to the plane from 1988, as historical reminders that these southern assaults on Somaliland, whether in 1940, 1988, or the current attempts to strangulate Somaliland by appropriating its airspace, are not isolated incidents but are part of a pattern of continuous efforts by various Mogadishu-based regimes to besiege and wipe out Somaliland.
By Jamal Gabobe
