A Call to President Trump to Correct History and Enable Justice for the Isaaq Genocide

On a sweltering afternoon in Hargeisa, boys in FC Barcelona jerseys kick a soccer ball across the red earth of Malko-Durduro, a dry riverbed on the outskirts of Somaliland’s capital. Human bones protrude from the ground around them—remains of victims from what survivors call the “Hargeisa Holocaust.” These children play football in a mass grave, unaware of the history beneath their feet. Between 1987 and 1989, the regime of Somali dictator Siad Barre—armed and financed by the United States—massacred an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 members of the Isaaq tribe in a systematic campaign of extermination (Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, 2022; Pulitzer Center, 2018). A 2001 United Nations investigation concluded that “the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somalia Government against the Isaaq people of northern Somalia” (Human Rights Watch, 1993; UN Investigation, 2001). Yet today, thirty-seven years later, no international tribunal has been established, no perpetrators have faced justice, and the mass graves remain largely unexcavated.

President Donald J. Trump, who in his first term demonstrated historic courage in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights—decisions he justified as acts of “historic justice” —now faces another opportunity to correct a profound historical injustice. On December 26, 2025, Israel became the first UN member state to recognize Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state, declaring the recognition “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords”. This breakthrough provides President Trump with a unique opening: to extend American recognition to Somaliland and thereby enable the victim state to access the international financial and legal mechanisms necessary to pursue accountability for genocide.

The refusal of the international community to recognize Somaliland is not a neutral act of diplomatic caution; it is an active complicity in the perpetuation of impunity. By denying Somaliland the juridical standing of statehood, the international order has systematically blocked the victim state’s access to International Monetary Fund loans for forensic investigations, UN Security Council authorization for international tribunals, International Criminal Court jurisdiction, and extradition treaties to compel perpetrators living freely in diaspora to face justice (IMF, 2008; UN Security Council, 1994). This article argues that the international community—and particularly the United States, which armed Barre’s genocidal regime with over $200 million in military aid during the 1980s—has blood on its hands, not only for enabling the genocide but for constructing an institutional architecture that renders accountability impossible (Jacobin, 2022; FPIF, 2013).

President Trump, who campaigned on restoring American strength and moral clarity, who recognized that delaying recognition of Jerusalem “has not helped achieve peace over the past two decades”, and who positioned himself as a leader willing to challenge failed orthodoxies, now has the opportunity to break the cycle of denial that has allowed genocidaires to escape justice. The path forward is clear: recognize Somaliland, support the establishment of an international tribunal on the Rwanda model, and provide the resources necessary to excavate the mass graves in the Valley of Death and bring perpetrators to justice. This is not merely a matter of foreign policy—it is a matter of American moral responsibility for crimes committed with American weapons, American financing, and American complicity.

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I. The Architecture of Accountability Denial: Non-Recognition as a Barrier to Justice

Contemporary international law recognizes that state responsibility extends beyond the direct commission of atrocity crimes to encompass complicity through inaction or material support. The Genocide Convention of 1948 imposes upon all state parties an affirmative obligation to “prevent and to punish” genocide. The International Court of Justice clarified in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro that a state incurs responsibility for complicity when “its organs were aware that genocide was about to be committed or was under way, and if the aid and assistance supplied…enabled or facilitated the commission of the acts” (ICJ, 2007). Yet this framework presupposes a functioning international system in which victim states can access the institutional apparatus of accountability.

The denial of international recognition to Somaliland constructs a deliberately inverted legal architecture: the victim is juridically disappeared. Without recognized statehood, Somaliland cannot access the fundamental mechanisms through which justice is pursued in the contemporary international order. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank require state recognition to extend loans (IMF, 2008). The UN Security Council will not authorize international tribunals for unrecognized entities (ICTR, 1994; Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002). The International Criminal Court recognizes the standing only of UN member states to refer situations, a privilege forever closed to Somaliland (Rome Statute, 1998). Extradition treaties remain bilateral instruments with recognized governments, rendering unrecognized territories unable to formally request the return of suspects (Justia, 2025). This creates a perverse inversion: the perpetrator state (Somalia) retains full access to international institutions while the victim state remains excluded. The perpetrators—many of whom hold positions in Somalia’s internationally recognized government—enjoy immunity through the very jurisdiction that committed or enabled their crimes (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, known as the “butcher of Hargeisa,” who reportedly ordered his troops to “kill all but the crows,” lives freely in Kenya and attended the presidential inauguration of Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo” Mohamed in Mogadishu as an apparent guest of the US-backed government (The Nation, 2018; CJA, 2025). This is not an accidental byproduct of non-recognition but an inevitable consequence of a system in which recognition itself becomes a mechanism of amnesty.

II. The Epistemology of Denial: How International Law Forgets

The concept of a “forgotten genocide” is analytically misleading. Genocide is not forgotten; it is deliberately disremembered through structural mechanisms embedded in international law and practice. The international community did not forget the Isaaq genocide—it made a choice to forget it.

The evidence of systematic mass atrocity was extensive and contemporaneous. Amnesty International’s 1988 reports documented “widespread arbitrary arrests, ill treatment and summary executions” perpetrated by Barre’s security forces (Amnesty International, 1988). Human Rights Watch recorded the systematic destruction of Hargeisa, which destroyed 90 percent of Somalia’s second-largest city in what observers termed “the Dresden of Africa” (Human Rights Watch, 1993). The US embassy in Mogadishu, in cables now released by WikiLeaks, acknowledged that Isaaq civilians were prevented from returning home “by government forces” and endured conditions of “thirst, hunger, disease, and abominable camp conditions” (The Nation, 2018). A 1989 report commissioned by the US government itself concluded that the Somali army’s systematic killing of civilians “principally because of their ethnic identity” was “unmistakable” (Lacuna, 2025). The international community did not lack information. Rather, it possessed a surplus of information yet constructed institutional mechanisms to prevent that knowledge from triggering accountability obligations. This represents a shift from the Holocaust paradigm, in which perpetrators attempted to conceal their crimes, to what might be termed the “visible atrocity” paradigm, in which perpetrators conduct their crimes openly, aware that geopolitical interests will prevent prosecution. The UN’s 2001 investigation, which concluded that genocide had been “conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somalia Government,” languished without follow-up. No tribunal was established. No Truth Commission received international funding. The international community’s silence was not an oversight but a strategic choice aligned with Cold War realpolitik, then post-Cold War regional interests, and now counter-terrorism objectives that position a weak, internationally recognized Somali government as preferable to an independent, stabilizing Somaliland.

III. Blood on Hands: The United States and Complicity in Genocide

The legal doctrine of state complicity in genocide has been insufficiently applied to the American role in Somalia. Between 1980 and 1989, the United States provided Siad Barre’s regime with over $200 million in military and economic aid—nearly 30 percent of Somalia’s entire GDP in 1982 (FPIF, 2013; Jacobin, 2022). This was not humanitarian assistance diverted to military purposes; it was explicit military support provided by officials who understood exactly what Barre intended.

In January 1981, Henry Kissinger visited Mogadishu to cement the US-Somalia relationship. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan met Barre in the Oval Office and approved the military assistance package (The Nation, 2018). At the same moment, the regime was constructing its genocidal apparatus. In 1988, when Barre’s forces began systematic bombing of civilian cities, the arms American taxpayers had funded flowed into the planes dropping ordnance on Hargeisa. When American-supplied weapons arrived at the port of Berbera—a facility the US used for regional surveillance—they were distributed to units specifically created to conduct ethnic cleansing (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). The ICJ’s framework for state complicity requires three elements: knowledge, awareness that genocide was occurring or about to occur, and provision of aid that enabled or facilitated the crime (ICJ, 2007; Opinio Juris, 2024). By 1988, all three elements were satisfied. The US embassy knew. Congressional oversight bodies knew. The State Department knew. Paul Manafort’s lobbying firm, which represented Barre under a $1 million contract, explicitly acknowledged the regime’s brutality while working to “clean up” its international reputation (The Nation, 2018). The question of whether the US “intended” genocide is immaterial under the Genocide Convention’s complicity provision; what matters is whether US officials knew genocide was occurring and continued to supply material support (SOMO, 2024).

The doctrine of state complicity in genocide is often discussed in abstract terms. But its application to American conduct toward Somalia reveals why powerful states resist its development: it threatens to establish precedents that constrain their own conduct. The US provision of aid to various allies despite knowledge of grave humanitarian law violations exists in the shadow of the Somalia precedent, a case in which American complicity in genocide is incontestable yet unprosecuted (Rutgers Law Review, 2011).

The United States has never apologized. No official has been investigated, much less prosecuted. No reparations have been offered. The perpetrators Barre trained and armed are now integrated into the US-backed government in Mogadishu, their prior crimes transmuted into operational experience (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). In the framework of transitional justice, this represents the highest form of impunity: not merely the absence of punishment, but the promotion of perpetrators into power.

IV. The Somaliland War Crimes Investigation Commission: Justice Starved of Resources

In 1995, Somaliland’s first president, Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, established the Somaliland War Crimes Investigation Commission (now the War Crimes and Genocide Investigation Committee) to pursue the one path to accountability available to an unrecognized state: its own investigative capacity. The Commission’s mandate mirrors that of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, yet its material conditions are radically different (Lacuna, 2025; CJA, 2025).

The ICTR, established by UN Security Council Resolution 955 in 1994, was funded through the UN budget, with dedicated resources for prosecution, investigation, and witness protection (IRMCT, 2014; ICTR, 1994). The Commission indicted 93 individuals and secured convictions of major perpetrators including Jean Kambanda, the interim Prime Minister, and Akayesu, a communal leader whose prosecution established the jurisprudential foundation for recognizing rape as a means of genocide (ICTR, 2014). The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while domestically funded, operated within a framework of international legitimacy that facilitated witness cooperation and perpetrator participation (TRC South Africa, 1995; Britannica, 2025). The Special Court for Sierra Leone, though hampered by reliance on voluntary contributions, received sufficient international support to secure convictions of significant figures including President Charles Taylor of Liberia for crimes against humanity (Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002; Amnesty International, 2005).

The Somaliland Commission, by contrast, operates without international recognition, without dedicated UN funding, without access to international loans for investigation, and without the coercive power that tribunal status confers. As of 2025, the Commission has exhumed only 11 of the identified 200+ mass grave sites, reburied 318 remains out of an estimated 50,000-200,000 victims, and lacks the financial capacity for DNA identification that would reunite families with their dead (The Nation, 2018; CJA, 2025; Lacuna, 2025). The Commission cannot conduct forensic investigations at the scale necessary because it cannot access the institutional support available to recognized states.

The cost disparity is revealing. Rwanda’s Gacaca court system, a traditional community-based mechanism supplementing the ICTR, cost the Rwandan government $39 million over its eight-year operation (2001-2009) (Participedia, 2012; E-IR, 2012). This represented an extraordinary commitment, yet it was possible because Rwanda was a recognized state with access to international development assistance and the political legitimacy to demand investment in transitional justice. Somaliland has allocated resources to the Commission but cannot leverage international financing, international expertise networks, or the imprimatur of international legitimacy that transforms individual investigation into institutional justice (Lacuna, 2025). The Commission’s chairman, Khadar Ahmed, has explicitly requested that the international community establish a tribunal on the Rwanda model (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). This request has been met with silence. A tribunal cannot be established without Security Council authorization, which requires recognition of the victim state. Recognition is blocked by the African Union’s principle of territorial integrity, by neighboring states’ fear of precedent, and by the international community’s decision to privilege the functional capacity of a weak, internationally recognized Somali government over the moral claims of Somaliland’s survivors.

V. Comparative Transitional Justice: The Road Not Taken

Contemporary transitional justice scholarship recognizes three primary models: retributive justice (prosecutorial tribunals), restorative justice (truth commissions and community mechanisms), and reparative justice (compensation schemes and symbolic restoration). Each has proven capable of advancing accountability and survivor healing when properly resourced. The irony of Somaliland is not that appropriate mechanisms are unavailable—they are well-established and theoretically available—but that the state’s lack of recognition prevents access to them.

• The Rwanda Model: Dual Mechanisms and Resource Allocation

Rwanda’s experience demonstrates the power of combining international and domestic mechanisms. The ICTR prosecuted high-level perpetrators, establishing legal precedents on genocide and individual criminal responsibility (ICTR, 1994; IRMCT, 2014). The gacaca courts, revived from traditional practice, tried lower-level perpetrators in community settings, emphasizing confession, accountability, and reintegration over purely punitive outcomes (Gacaca Courts, 2005; E-IR, 2012). The system achieved what scholars term “disaggregated justice”: different perpetrators were held accountable through different mechanisms, scaled to their level of responsibility while maintaining the principle that accountability was inescapable (Restorative Justice, 2015). The dual system’s strength lay in its resource base. The ICTR was funded through the Security Council budget, receiving approximately $90 million annually at its peak (IRMCT, 2014). The gacaca courts received government support supplemented by international donors, including bilateral assistance from countries recognizing Rwanda’s legitimacy as a post-genocide state (Participedia, 2012). The combined system, despite scholarly critiques about its treatment of gender-based violence, its reinforcement of ethnic divisions in some contexts, and its exclusion of crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, nonetheless achieved accountability for over 1 million perpetrators (Gacaca Courts, 2005; E-IR, 2012).

For Somaliland, this model is theoretically replicable but practically inaccessible. The lack of international recognition blocks access to Security Council tribunal authorization. The lack of recognized statehood prevents participation in international donor conferences for transitional justice financing. The perpetrators, many of whom hold positions in the internationally recognized Somali government, cannot be prosecuted without displacing the government the international community has chosen to support.

• The South African Model: Truth-Seeking and Reparative Justice

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) pioneered a different paradigm: conditional amnesty in exchange for full public disclosure of atrocities (TRC South Africa, 1995). The model prioritized truth-telling and survivor healing over prosecution, though it maintained the threat of prosecution for those who refused to participate truthfully (Britannica, 2025). The TRC’s particular innovation was the inclusion of reparations as central to transitional justice, recognizing that accountability without material redress to victims fails the deeper purposes of justice (South Africa Department of Justice, 2003). The TRC’s Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee recommended urgent interim reparations, individual reparation grants, symbolic reparation, legal and administrative measures, and community rehabilitation (South Africa Department of Justice, 2003). While implementation fell short of the Commission’s ambitions—reparations were delayed by years, amounts proved inadequate, and many promised measures remained unfunded—the principle that accountability must include material restoration to victims became institutionalized in South African law and international transitional justice norms (Reparations Commission, 2022).

For Somaliland, the South African model offers particular relevance because it does not require prosecution of perpetrators as a precondition of survivor healing and accountability. A truth commission, properly resourced and internationally supported, could document atrocities, identify perpetrators, and establish a historical record while simultaneously pursuing reparations to survivors. Yet even this more modest transitional justice mechanism requires international recognition and the legitimacy it confers.

• The Sierra Leone Model: Hybrid Tribunals and Limited Scope

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, established in 2002 as a joint UN-government mechanism, represented a compromise position between the expense of full international tribunals (like the ICTR) and the limitations of domestic courts (Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002). The Court’s statute authorized prosecution of “persons bearing the greatest responsibility” for crimes—a jurisdictional filter that reflected budget constraints and political realities (Amnesty International, 2005). Despite its narrower scope than the ICTR, the Special Court secured significant convictions, including Charles Taylor’s conviction for aiding and abetting war crimes, establishing important precedents on the liability of state leaders for crimes committed by non-state actors (Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002; ICRC, 2005). The Court’s funding model, reliant on voluntary contributions, created persistent crises. By 2005, the Court faced severe funding shortages, with $25 million in additional contributions needed to complete its work (Amnesty International, 2005). The Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, established to handle ongoing functions after the Court’s closure, continues to rely on voluntary contributions and faces chronic funding instability (RSCSL, 2022; UN General Assembly, 2024). Yet despite these constraints, the Sierra Leone model proved viable because it operated within the framework of international legitimacy—the government of Sierra Leone was recognized, the Court was authorized by the UN, and the international community, however inadequately, maintained basic funding.

For Somaliland, even the modest Sierra Leone model is precluded. A hybrid tribunal would require joint authorization by the UN and the government of Somaliland, neither of which can occur without recognition. The Court would require voluntary international contributions, but states are reluctant to fund transitional justice mechanisms for entities lacking international legitimacy.

VI. The Perpetrator Escape: Refugee, Diaspora, and Protected Impunity

One of the most striking features of the Somaliland genocide is the remarkable frequency with which perpetrators escaped and were granted safe harbor by third states, particularly the United States. This is not accidental; it reflects a deliberate international choice.

General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, “The Butcher of Hargeisa”

• Morgan commanded Somali military operations in Somaliland and is directly responsible for some of the genocide’s most brutal atrocities. He reportedly ordered his troops to “kill all but the crows,” an order that was executed with systematic brutality (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). Morgan fled Somalia in 1991 as the Barre government collapsed and settled in Kenya, where he has lived openly for three decades (The Nation, 2018). He attended the presidential inauguration of Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo” Mohamed in Mogadishu as an apparent guest of the US-backed government, suggesting that his past crimes have been effectively pardoned through his integration into Somalia’s political structure (The Nation, 2018). Morgan’s impunity reflects the broader architecture: he cannot be extradited from Kenya to Somaliland (an unrecognized state with no extradition treaties), Somalia’s government protects him politically, and the United States, which has significant military interests in the region, has shown no interest in pursuing him through universal jurisdiction mechanisms available to American courts.

Yusuf Abdi Ali, the “Colonel of Death”

• Ali served as head of the Somali Army’s Fifth Brigade during the 1980s, a unit notorious for torture, extrajudicial killing, and rape of Isaaq civilians (The Nation, 2018; Lacuna, 2025). Remarkably, Ali fled to North America and lived undetected for years. In 1992, Canadian broadcaster CBC News uncovered that Ali had worked as a security guard in Toronto after fleeing Somalia in 1991 (The Nation, 2018). Despite this early identification, he was not arrested or deported. Instead, Ali apparently moved to the United States, where he worked for nearly twenty years as a security guard at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Ali’s case reveals the mechanism of perpetrator protection. US authorities knew his record—the CBC reporting was public, and the FBI maintains extensive databases on Somali war criminals (The Nation, 2018). Yet despite this knowledge, US immigration authorities allowed him to settle, obtain employment, and live what observers described as “a suburban American life” for two decades (The Nation, 2018). It was only when CNN publicized his presence in 2016 that Ali’s employment was suspended (The Nation, 2018). Legally, Ali has never been prosecuted for genocide; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his torture of a Somali detainee constituted torture and attempted extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act, but not genocide or crimes against humanity (The Nation, 2018). Ali’s case exemplifies how unrecognized victim states cannot compel accountability. The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) has pursued Ali through US courts on behalf of survivors, but the legal framework available to American courts is limited. Without a treaty-based obligation to the victim state (Somaliland lacks the capacity to enter treaties), without ICJ jurisdiction over the case, and without UN authorization for prosecution, American courts operate within the narrow confines of universal jurisdiction—a doctrine that permits but does not require prosecution of international crimes (CJA, 2025).

Mohamed Ali Samantar and the $21 Million Judgment

• Samantar served as Prime Minister of Somalia under Barre and held military ranks that gave him command authority over units conducting genocidal operations (The Nation, 2018). He fled Somalia in 1991 and settled in the United States, where he lived openly under his real name. The CJA, on behalf of Somali plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit in Virginia state court alleging that Samantar was responsible for planning torture and killings of Isaaq clansmen (CJA, 2013). In 2012, nearly thirty years after the genocide ended, a federal court secured a $21 million judgment against Samantar (CJA, 2013; The Nation, 2018). The Samantar case is hailed as a success for universal jurisdiction, and it is—to a point. Yet the judgment itself reveals the limitations of accountability divorced from institutional transitional justice. Samantar has contested the judgment, and collecting on it has proven difficult. More fundamentally, the judgment does not fulfill the deeper purposes of transitional justice: Samantar was never compelled to acknowledge his crimes, no survivor heard him confess his responsibility, no record of his orders was officially documented as part of a historical truth, and the judgment came so late that most survivors never experienced the catharsis of seeing their perpetrator face justice.

VII. State Responsibility and the International Community’s Duty to Prevent and Punish

The Genocide Convention imposes an affirmative obligation on all state parties to “prevent and to punish” genocide (Genocide Convention, 1948). This obligation extends beyond the direct commission of atrocity crimes to encompass affirmative measures to ensure accountability. The International Court of Justice clarified in Bosnia v. Serbia that the obligation to prevent begins “at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed,” and requires states “to employ all means reasonably available to them” to prevent genocide (ICJ, 2007; Opinio Juris, 2024). The international community—understood as the sum of state parties to the Genocide Convention—has manifestly failed this obligation with respect to Somaliland’s genocide. The failure is not passive but active, achieved through the strategic non-recognition of Somaliland and the deliberate obstruction of accountability mechanisms.

• The US Complicity in Denying Recognition

The United States, which armed Barre’s genocidal regime, maintains the African Union’s de facto veto on Somaliland recognition by supporting the principle of territorial integrity and the regional primacy of the Somali federal government (FPIF, 2013; Jacobin, 2022). This is not neutral; it is an active choice to privilege the perpetrator state’s sovereignty over the victim state’s right to justice. Under the Genocide Convention’s obligation to prevent genocide, the US should be actively supporting the establishment of accountability mechanisms for past genocide. Instead, it is actively obstructing them by refusing to recognize Somaliland. Furthermore, the US continues to provide military assistance to the government of Somalia, despite documented evidence that senior figures in that government were responsible for or complicit in genocidal crimes against the Isaaq (CJA, 2025; Lacuna, 2025). This continued military support, in the absence of prosecutions or acknowledgment of past crimes, arguably constitutes ongoing complicity—not with current genocide but with the perpetuation of impunity for past genocide.

• The International Monetary Fund and World Bank as Gatekeepers of Accountability

The IMF and World Bank maintain strict policies requiring state recognition for membership and lending (IMF, 2008). These institutions do not make political determinations about the legitimacy of state claims; rather, they defer to the UN’s implicit recognition regime. However, by doing so, they become gatekeepers of accountability. The denial of access to international financing prevents Somaliland from funding forensic investigations of mass graves, establishing a truth commission or tribunal, pursuing reparations for survivors, building institutional capacity for transitional justice. The cost of comprehensive forensic anthropology work in Somaliland is estimated at millions of dollars annually. The Peruvian team EPAF, which has been supported by the Center for Justice and Accountability, requires approximately $50,000-100,000 per exhumation, with the need to exhume 200+ grave sites (The Nation, 2018; CJA, 2025). Somaliland’s government can afford only sporadic exhumations—two per year at most (The Nation, 2018). The international community could solve this resource constraint through directed funding, without requiring formal recognition. Yet no such funding materializes.

• The UN Security Council’s Abdication of Responsibility

The UN Security Council, in establishing ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda (1994), Yugoslavia (1993), and other post-conflict situations, has consistently maintained that international atrocity crimes demand accountability (ICTR, 1994; UN Legal, 2008). Yet the Security Council has never initiated a tribunal for the Isaaq genocide, despite the existence of a UN investigation confirming genocide, despite the existence of identified perpetrators, and despite the evident lack of capacity in domestic courts. The Council’s inaction reflects not legal impediment but political choice. A Security Council resolution establishing a tribunal would require affirmative votes by the five permanent members. Russia and China might abstain or vote no, as they have in other cases where the West has proposed accountability measures. The P5 veto, whatever its rationale, permits the paralysis that perpetuates impunity.

VIII. The Pattern of Genocide Denial: Structural Mechanisms and Political Function

Scholars of genocide have long noted the pattern whereby perpetrator states and their international allies construct narratives that deny, minimize, or justify atrocities (TRT World, 2024; Reset Doc, 2013). In Rwanda, denial took the form of claims that the genocide was a spontaneous popular uprising or a consequence of the civil war rather than a planned state program (ICTR, 1994). In Bosnia, deniers claimed the death toll was inflated and that killings were consequences of warfare rather than genocide (TRT World, 2024). The Somaliland case reveals a different mechanism: not narrative denial but institutional denial. The genocide is not officially denied; it is institutionally forgotten through the refusal to grant the victim state the standing to demand accountability. This is a more sophisticated form of denial because it does not require perpetrator states to construct false narratives; it requires the international community to construct a political and legal architecture that makes accountability impossible.

The mechanism operates as follows: (1) the perpetrator state, by virtue of being first to declare independence (1960), retains the UN seat and international recognition; (2) the victim state, by declaring independence later (1991), is deemed a separatist entity in violation of the “territorial integrity” principle cherished by states fearful of precedent; (3) without recognition, the victim state cannot access tribunals, international financing, or the diplomatic apparatus needed to pursue accountability; (4) as time passes and perpetrators die or escape justice, the crime’s practical enforceability diminishes; (5) eventually, the crime recedes into historical memory, preserved in academic literature but absent from institutional consciousness. This pattern repeats across multiple contexts. Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey, has been unable to pursue accountability for crimes committed during its military occupation because it lacks the international standing to establish tribunals or compel witness testimony (QIL-QDI, 2016; EJIL Talk, 2024). Palestine, unrecognized as a state despite occupying defined territory with a population and government, has been unable to pursue International Criminal Court investigations without the standing that recognition would provide (CIDOB, 2024; Oxford Academic, 2023). The pattern suggests that denial of recognition functions as a mechanism for perpetuating impunity.

IX. Toward a Framework of Accountability: Recommendations for Transitional Justice

The restoration of accountability and justice for the Isaaq genocide does not require impossible changes to international law; rather, it requires the political will to apply existing norms and institutions. Several pathways exist, none of which depends on formal recognition of Somaliland, though recognition would facilitate all of them:

1. Universal Jurisdiction and Diaspora Accountability: States with diaspora communities of Isaaq survivors should actively pursue universal jurisdiction mechanisms available to their domestic courts. The Torture Victim Protection Act has proven effective in several cases; European states have broader universal jurisdiction statutes available under their national laws (Oxford Academic, 2023). Countries like Canada, where Ali was identified in 1992, should have pursued extradition and prosecution decades ago. The failure to do so reflects political choice, not legal impediment. A coordinated effort by states with diaspora communities to prosecute documented perpetrators of the Isaaq genocide would bypass the recognition problem entirely and would establish that impunity is not inevitable.

2. International Criminal Court Preliminary Examination: The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has the capacity to initiate preliminary examinations of alleged crimes without requiring state party referral. The Office could authorize an investigation into the Isaaq genocide under its own authority (Article 15), opening an avenue that does not depend on Somaliland’s recognition or Somalia’s cooperation (Rome Statute, 1998). Such an examination would legitimize the victims’ claims within an international institutional framework and would signal that the genocide is not forgotten.

3. UN Commission of Inquiry: The UN Human Rights Council could establish a Commission of Inquiry into the Isaaq genocide, mirroring the approach taken with respect to other historical atrocities. A Commission could gather evidence, identify perpetrators, and recommend prosecutorial pathways without requiring the formal establishment of a tribunal. The Commission’s findings would carry significant institutional weight and could support prosecutions pursued through universal jurisdiction.

4. Direct International Support for Somaliland’s Transitional Justice Mechanisms: The international community could fund the Somaliland War Crimes and Genocide Investigation Committee directly, without requiring formal recognition. This would bypass recognition politics entirely while respecting Somaliland’s institutional capacity. A donor conference specifically dedicated to funding forensic investigations, truth-seeking, and reparations for the Isaaq genocide could be organized by the UN, EU, or a coalition of concerned states.

5. Truth Commission Model: If prosecution proves impossible due to perpetrator protection by state allies, a truth commission process could still advance accountability by establishing the historical record, providing survivors a forum to document their experiences, and creating the documentary basis for future prosecutions (TRC South Africa, 1995). The South African model demonstrates that truth-telling, even without prosecutions, can advance survivor healing and establish moral accountability, even if legal accountability remains incomplete.

6. Reparations Framework: International law has developed sophisticated reparations frameworks through the International Court of Justice and through hybrid tribunals. A reparations commission for Somaliland, funded internationally and operating under international legal standards, could pursue material restitution, collective reparations, and symbolic measures of acknowledgment without requiring formal prosecution. The cost would be far less than a tribunal but would address the material deprivation that survivors face.

X. President Trump’s Historic Opportunity to Correct an Injustice

The Isaaq genocide stands as a stark illustration of the gap between international law’s formal commitments to prevent and punish genocide and the political reality that determines whether accountability is pursued. The Genocide Convention imposes binding obligations on all state parties to prevent and punish genocide (Genocide Convention, 1948). The international community has failed to honor these obligations with respect to Somaliland. The failure is not merely technical or attributable to resource constraints. Sufficient resources exist within the international system; they are simply not directed toward Somaliland’s accountability. The failure is not attributable to legal impediments; multiple pathways to accountability exist, from universal jurisdiction to commissions of inquiry to hybrid tribunals. The failure is fundamentally political—a choice made by powerful states and international institutions to privilege the territorial integrity of a weak, internationally recognized Somali government over the justice claims of a stabilizing, functional Somaliland. In this choice, the international community has become complicit in genocide, not through the provision of weapons or military support (though that complicity is undeniable in the US case), but through the construction of an institutional architecture that renders accountability impossible. By denying Somaliland recognition, the international community has denied the victim state access to:

• International financial institutions necessary to fund investigations and prosecutions
• UN tribunal establishment mechanisms that could authorize international justice
• Extradition treaties through which perpetrators could be compelled to face justice
• The diplomatic standing necessary to demand accountability from perpetrator states

In this construction, the international community has made a profound choice: it has chosen to protect perpetrators and perpetrator states by refusing to grant victim states the institutional standing necessary to pursue justice. The blood that soaks into the red earth of the Valley of Death belongs not only to Barre’s victims but also to the international community that armed those who committed the genocide, that turned a blind eye during its commission, that refuses to recognize the victim state, and that continues to protect perpetrators within the bosom of an internationally legitimated government. This is not merely the failure of justice; it is the complicity of the international order in the perpetuation of genocide’s most profound damage—not the killing itself, but the erasure of accountability and the denial to survivors of the institutional recognition that their suffering was a crime demanding redress.

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President Trump: The Opportunity for Historic Justice

President Trump (Trump, 2025), you have demonstrated throughout your career a willingness to challenge failed orthodoxies and to make bold decisions that correct historical injustices. In your first term, you recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, declaring that “delaying the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has not helped achieve peace over the past two decades” (Trump, 2017). You recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, calling it an “act of historic justice” based on Israel’s “need to protect itself” (Trump, 2019; Netanyahu, 2019). These were controversial decisions, opposed by the foreign policy establishment, yet history has vindicated your courage. You now face an equally significant opportunity. On December 26, 2025, Israel became the first UN member state to recognize Somaliland, declaring the recognition “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords” that you brokered (Netanyahu, 2025; Times of Israel, 2025). This breakthrough provides an opening for American leadership. By extending US recognition to Somaliland, you would:

1. Correct a profound American moral failure: The United States armed and financed Siad Barre’s genocidal regime with over $200 million during the 1980s. American weapons were used to bomb Hargeisa. American aid sustained the regime that massacred 200,000 Isaaq civilians. No American president has ever apologized or acknowledged this complicity. You have the opportunity to be the president who finally confronts this dark chapter of American history and takes concrete steps to enable justice (FPIF, 2013; Jacobin, 2022; The Nation, 2018).
2. Enable accountability for genocide: Recognition would allow Somaliland to access IMF loans for forensic investigations, to petition the UN Security Council for tribunal establishment, and to negotiate extradition treaties to bring perpetrators living freely in the United States and other countries to justice. Without recognition, these mechanisms remain blocked. With recognition, accountability becomes possible (IMF, 2008; CJA, 2025).
3. Support a stable, democratic ally in the Horn of Africa: Somaliland has maintained relative stability, democratic governance, and counterterrorism cooperation for over three decades while the internationally recognized Somalia remains fragile and dependent on international peacekeeping forces. Your National Security Strategy emphasizes burden-sharing and supporting “capable, reliable” states willing to advance US interests (Trump, 2025). Somaliland exemplifies these criteria.
4. Advance the Abraham Accords: Israel’s recognition of Somaliland was explicitly framed as advancing the Abraham Accords that you brokered. Somaliland has announced its intention to accede to the Abraham Accords framework. US recognition would solidify this expansion and demonstrate that the Accords can bring peace and justice to new regions (Netanyahu, 2025; Times of Israel, 2025).
5. Establish a legacy of justice and accountability: Your administration has emphasized restoring “truth and sanity to American history” (Trump, 2025). Recognizing Somaliland and supporting the establishment of accountability mechanisms for the Isaaq genocide would establish a legacy of moral leadership—demonstrating that America confronts its past complicity, supports victims of genocide, and refuses to allow perpetrators to escape justice.

The path forward is clear, Mr. President. Recognize Somaliland. Support the establishment of a UN tribunal for the Isaaq genocide. Provide funding for the Somaliland War Crimes Investigation Commission to exhume the mass graves and identify victims. Pursue perpetrators living in the United States through universal jurisdiction. These are not radical proposals; they are applications of existing international law and American values.

The boys playing soccer in the Valley of Death deserve to know the history beneath their feet. The survivors of the Hargeisa Holocaust deserve to see perpetrators face justice. The American people deserve a government that confronts its complicity and takes concrete steps toward accountability. And history will remember whether you seized this opportunity to correct a profound injustice or whether you allowed the cycle of impunity to continue.

Mr. President, you have shown that you are willing to make bold decisions that the establishment opposes when those decisions are right. This is such a moment. The recognition of Somaliland is not merely a diplomatic gesture; it is a moral imperative and an American responsibility. The blood is on our hands. The question is whether we will finally wash it clean.

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