Ilhan Omar’s Father and the Isaaq Genocide: The Truth Revealed

Between 1987 and 1989, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland.

This dark chapter in Africa’s history, which was known as the Isaaq Genocide, was a merciless military campaign that resulted in the killing of over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. It also involved widespread forced displacement, scorched‑earth destruction of the second and third largest cities (Hargeisa and Burao), aerial bombardement of almost every other single city, town and village in Somaliland, and two decades of large‑scale red-terror style tactics against the civilian population of Somaliland.

It was carried out through relentless aerial bombardments – planes repeatedly strafed fleeing refugees – summary executions, burning of entire villages, deportations, land‑mining of water sources and homes, Holodomor style government enforced man-made famines (the Dabadheer Drought) and the use of paramilitary units such as the Somali Armed Forces’ “Dabar Goynta Isaaqa” (The Isaaq Exterminators), composed exclusively of non-ethnically Isaaq soldiers, to enact mass killings under Somalia’s military direction.

Eyewitness testimonies documented “mass executions by firing squad, forced disappearances, looting, mass torture, mass surveillance, rape used as a weapon, curfews and mass killings of civilians even in areas with limited resistance or lawful liberation movement activities, such in Berbera where thousands of government soldiers were stationed. Isaaq civilians across what was then the Somalia Republic, were detained and executed en-mass by Somalia government execution squads led by Colonels like Ilhan Omar’s father.

Across the country civilians were forced from their homes into dehumanising conditions, including many kept in dungeons, underground prisons and pits. Even famous Isaaqs such as Somaliland’s most renowned poet ‘Hadraawi’ did not escape this torture and years of detention under the most brutal and unsanitary conditions imaginable. Even in Mogadishu, deep inside neighbouring Somalia – and almosr 1,500KM from Somaliland’s capital of Hargeisa – Isaaq civilians were being killed in their homes, in the city and on Mogadishu’s beaches. The Jazeera massacre of 1989 is a particularly brutal example that is etched in history. 

At the heart of this brutal military regime was Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father. His rank, authority, membership of the regime Daarood clan, and 10+ years of having climbed the hierarchy in Somalia military to the rank of Colonel, placed him squarely in the Somali military’s command hierarchy during and at the height of its Isaaq genocide campaign. Based on his position, loyalty to the regime, and his role in the military, it is virtually certain that he had intimate knowledge of and involvement in the planning, conception, direction and execution of the genocide. 

By both legal and historical standards, despite Ilhan Omar’s team’s spin in numerous recent articles which have been placed in left-leaning online publications, the logical conclusion that Ilhan Omar’s father was almost certainly intimately involved in the Isaaq Genocide is unmistakable. It is supported on the balance of probabilities and the totality of circumstantial and inferential evidence available indicates, more critically, that it meets the threshold that this was the case ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

Investigations from Africa Watch, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN‑commissioned Mburu Report, articles from the Washington Post and New York Times are clear: the Isaaq Genocide was conceived, planned, and executed using official state machinery. The Somalian military directed attacks such as the scorched‑earth campaign, the mining of grazing areas and waterholes, and mass destruction of homes; entire cities were intentionally razed to eliminate Isaaq presence.

The numerous reports and newspaper articles detail how the military in which Ilhan Omar’s father was a Colonel, based on government directives such as the notorious “Letter of Death” attributed to General Morgan, advocated a campaign of obliteration and extermination of ethnically Isaaq civilians who form the absolute majority of the population in Somaliland – demonstrating that genocide was national policy, not the act of rogue units. The Somalian military deployed the most heinous an inhumane propaganda to justify and enable their genocide. Ilhan Omar’s father was at one point in charge of propaganda and during his 10+ year tenure with Somalia’s military between 1981 and 1991 – a timeline which coincides with the timeline of when Somalia’s military was perpetrating the Isaaq Genocide – would almost certainly have been involved in conceiving and disseminating Isaaq Genocide propaganda. Propaganda which would have got hundreds of thousands of innocent Somalilanders, ethnic Isaaq civilians, killed. 

Colonels like Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, would have operated within the command structure of Somalia’s military during the Isaaq Genocide. As a Colonel he would have been overseeing operations in Hargeisa, Oodweyne, Burao, El‑Afweyn, Gebiley, Berbera, Garadag, Erigabo, Sheikh and else where in Somaliland where mass arrests, executions, and infrastructure destruction were used to terrorise, ethnically cleanse and exterminate the Isaaq people of Somaliland.

Taken together, these findings show that it is extremely likely that Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, played a direct or enabling role in the genocide. This conclusion aligns with command responsibility in law and meets the legal standard of being demonstrably proven, both on the balance of probability under civil law, and beyond reasonable doubt under criminal law. The idea that a Colonel in Somalia’s military in a brutal dictatorship did not participate in the pervasive and ubiquitous genocidal activities his military was carry out in every city, town and village in the decade in which he was serving in and leading the military, is implausible, illogical and does not stand up to scrutiny. It is high time that Ilhan Omar comes clean about her father’s role in the Isaaq Genocide.

Contemporaneous reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian in 1988‑1989 described systematic aerial bombardments, civilian casualties, mass evacuations, and city‑scale destruction. Eyewitnesses at the time compared Hargeisa’s devastation to “the Dresden of Africa,” with over 90 percent of the city destroyed, widespread displacement, and the use of mercenary pilots for bombing runs. These independent accounts support the historical record and reinforce that senior military officers – including Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father – under a strict command and control structure, could not have remained passive much less or uninvolved. Nor is there any evidence of him refusing to carry out or resisting the military orders of genocide which the commander in chief, dictator Siad Barre, had issued. In fact, Ilhan Omar and her family only fled the country when the regime was toppled in January 1991, when his last enclave in the capital of Mogadishu was overrun by the resistance movements. This suggests her Colonel father was loyal to the dictator to the end, and fought alongside him to perpetrate the genocide, only leaving his side when the regime was toppled. A disloyal Colonel also would not have shot up through the ranks, having been promoted in quick succession, having joined as a cadet in 1981 and left as a loyal Colonel by 1991 upon the regime’s fall. This begs the question, why would a brutal dictator elevate and promote a disloyal Colonel? Of course the reality is that he would not have. Therefore her father must have been a loyal and faithful servant, who executed the orders of Genocide to the letter, and was likely handsomely rewarded for this.

While Ilhan Omar’s camp has recently pivoted to portraying her Colonel father as  a “teacher trainer”, this kind of fiction and verbal acrobatics is far removed from reality. The hint of the nature of his job and the rank he held is clear from his title: Colonel. He clearly held senior military responsibilities. In the genocide perpetrated by the Somalian military, Colonels oversaw planning, command, logistics, and ideological enforcement and practical execution of the Genocide. Their commands were clear and their role was clear. In one well publicised example of such military orders to commit genocide, issued by General Mohammed Said Hersi aka ‘General Morgan’ to all military units, was caught on video, and was later reported by Al Jazeera in their later documentary about the Isaaq Genocide titled “Kill All But the Crows”. The military orders were as follows: “Attack and eliminate them all. Destroy water sources, reservoirs. Burn villages, pillage, kill residents allow no life no activity. kill even the wounded. Kill all but the crows”. Deserters, defectors and those who went AWOL would be found and summarily executed (yet of course this does not excuse being complicit in a Genocide). It is therefore inconceivable that Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, did not carry out or did not authorise key military activities that facilitated, enabled or directly executed genocidal acts. His contributions as a high ranking Colonel likely included:

• Ideological indoctrination, tactical training and direct military orders aligned with anti‑Isaaq policies.
• Coordination of logistics, troop deployment, and use of Somali Airlines and military aircraft.
• Enforcement of loyalty and genocide directives among officers and units.

These responsibilities parallel documented roles described in human rights investigations and reports on command operations during the genocide, and are reflected in US case law based on the legal cases against Colonel Tuken and General Samantar in relation crimes against humanity of which they were accused and which were proven after being brought by US citizens who are survivors of the Isaaq Genocide Ilhan Omar’s father’s military committed.

The portrayal of Ilhan Omar’s father as a mere “teacher trainer” – advanced in diaspora media and sympathetic Western outlets by Ilhan Omar’s PR machine – is contradicted by multiple authoritative obituaries and by Ilhan Omar’s own account referencing his Colonel rank and military service. This narrative serves to minimise his involvement and sanitise the genocide. But the scale, coordination, and leadership structure of the Somali military confirm that officers of his rank—including Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father—were integral to executing genocidal policy.

Under command responsibility, senior officers are liable when atrocities occur under their command and they fail to prevent or punish the perpetrators. U.S. courts have upheld this principle in landmark cases. The two aforementioned cases were one against General Samantar, where a U.S. federal court awarded damages to Isaaq survivor,  and recognized top Somali officials as legally responsible for genocide, torture, and extrajudicial killings. In a more recent legal case Colonel Tukeh was investigated as part of deportation case, where a U.S. judge determined in a US court that Colonel Yusuf Abdi Ali’s involvement in the genocide and therefore warranted immediate deportation from the US. These are irrefutable legal judgments, not opinion pieces. They confirm genocide occurred and that Colonels comparable in rank, role and responsibility to during Ilhan Omar’s father’s  Nur Omar Mohamed’s activities in the Somalia military were found culpable under US and international law. Since Ilhan Omar’s father is now deceased, the absence of a legal case with his name attached does not prove his innocence. It simply proves that he was never held accountable for his crimes.

Despite this overwhelming historical and legal record of the Isaaq Genocide – and the fact that Ilhan Omar will be intimately aware that her father served as a senior Colonel in the military that perpetrated the Isaaq Genocide and everything that entailed – Ilhan Omar has remained silent on this. She has never issued a public condemnation of her father’s actions, nor acknowledged the genocide in any official capacity. In contrast to her vocal advocacy on various other issues of human rights, she has carefully and skilfully avoided addressing grave issue of immense human rights violations by her own father. Her silence on the topic speaks volumes, is deafening, stands in stark contradiction to her professed values.  It exposes her real political focus: virtue signalling, race-baiting and political opportunism in the U.S. while lauding praise on Somalia, the world’s most comprehensively failed state, and covering up her father’s role in its destruction. 

Ilhan Omar frequently speaks about Gaza and Palestine, championing genocide recognition and accountability daily, presumably to chase headlines and media attention. Yet she has never once acknowledged the genocide associated with the military commanded by her own father. This glaring omission underscores profound hypocrisy – she condemns atrocities abroad but refuses to address atrocities connected to her own family. Her vote against recognition of the Armenian Genocide further suggests a pattern- a reluctance to support formal acknowledgment of genocide, lest it implicate and shed light on her own father’s former regime. If one considers that the genocide her own father’s military was responsible for remains unaddressed, this may explain her opposition to Armenian recognition as part of a broader attempt to quietly and tacitly lend support to broader genocide denial.

Ilhan Omar’s early life was spent Somalia, in an environment she often remarks about gleefully and with fondness, suggesting a sheltered and privileged upbringing. As the daughter of a Colonel in Siad Barre’s military, she likely benefited from the regime’s elite status. Regime officials included Colonels, and their immediate family members like Ilhan Omar, lived gilded lifestyles and were probably in many ways indirect beneficiaries of the Genocide. It is highly plausible that she, even as a child, benefited materially or socially from the outcomes of the genocide: the seizure of Isaaq assets, the redistribution of power and wealth to regime cronies like her Colonel father, and consolidation of power by non‑Isaaq elites. In fact, Ilhan Omar is named in that context in the Palgrave Handbook on Left Wing Extremism where serious and unanswered questions are raised about her claim to be a valid refugee. It is increasingly becoming apparent that a more accurate reinterpretation of her personal history is the daughter of a Genocidaire and war criminal, who lived a gilded lifestyle as a child of the regime elite who was potentially a beneficiary of Genocide, but once in the west reinvented herself as a liberal refugee victim.

Ilhan Omar presents herself as a champion of justice, minority rights, accountability, and anti-imperialism. Her refusal to recognise or condemn the genocide her father’s military executed is irreconcilable with this public brand. Her silence is not neutral—it is an affront to survivors who endured collective persecution and loss. To inherit privilege built on systemic violence yet actively ignore that historical legacy is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of victims and millions of survivors of the Isaaq Genocide her father’s military committed.

Ilhan Omar must publicly acknowledge her father’s role in the Isaaq Genocide, issue a formal condemnation of this atrocity, and actively support international recognition of the Republic of Somaliland. Only through transparency and public moral accountability and redemption can she reconcile her public advocacy with her personal history. Failing to do so makes her an electoral liability to the Democratic Party, as she continuous to bring them into disrepute and cost them votes.

About the Author

Dr Adali Warsame is a political commentator and public policy professional, who is a long time observer of Somaliland politics. He writing focuses on standing up for the dignity of Somaliland’s citizens, who appear to be forgotten in the melee that is everyday Somaliland and Horn of Africa politics.

Adali is an unapologetic Somalilander. He is passionate about achieving justice for the forgotten Isaaq Genocide victims, stopping the doomed Somaliland-Somalia talks and international recognition of the Republic of Somaliland.