Ilhan Omar's Dad Served Somalia's Genocidal Regime
Let Her Who Is Without Genocide Participation Cast the First Stone
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, the radically progressive “Squad” member known best for her hardline stance on Israel and for dismissing 9/11 by saying “some people did something,” poses as a poor refugee from Somalia here in the new homeland that she despises but for the grace of God Allah. But while it’s true that her family fled from Somalia, it wasn’t from death by starvation that they were fleeing. Rather, they were political refugees fleeing from retribution, as her now-deceased father did what she now accuses1 the Israelis of…that is, he helped a genocidal regime.
The Isaaq Unpleasantness
Somalia wasn’t always an anarchic hellscape; much of it was once a relatively well-administered Italian colony with some degree of law and order, economic opportunity, and food security.2 The remainder was an even better-run British colony.3 Then America won World War II and, alongside the Soviet Union, forced the Western Europeans in the Allies and Axis to abandon their colonies. So away from Somalia the Italians and Brits went, and in went the Somalian government.
As happened everywhere else except Singapore,4 particularly countries in Africa,5 decolonization was a disaster. From 1969 to 1991, the so-called Somali Democratic Republic was ruled by a Marxist-Leninist6 dictator named Siad Barre.7 Barre’s regime fought numerous bloody wars throughout the 1970s and 80s, including the Ogaden Conflict,8 the Ethiopian-Somali Border War,9 and the Somaliland War of Independence.10
It was with that last war, sparked by the Barre regime’s brutal policies, eventually led to a horror show now referred to as the Isaaq Genocide.11 During it, Barre’s soldiers attempted to wipe out Somaliland’s main family claim, the Isaaq. During that unpleasantness, to put it mildly, somewhere around 100,000 people were murdered by the Barre regime, and around half a million fled to relative safety in nearby Ethiopia.
The brutality of the Barre regime, however, was eventually too much even for the brutalized people of Somalia, and a civil war began in 1991, with the so-called United Somali Congress eventually ousting Barre.12
It was only with the outbreak of the civil war, after the brutal border wars and all the horrors that they wrought, that a colonel in Barre’s military fled from what his daughter remembers as a walled compound in Mogadishu. Fearing retribution for his role in the Barre regime’s heinous crimes and bloody conflicts, he and his family fled first to Kenya and then eventually to America, which let him in despite his having participated in the campaigns of a genocidal dictator.
Who was that colonel? Nur Omar Mohamed, the father of Rep. Ilhan Omar. He was a colonel in Barre’s military who served both in the Ogaden War, which the Somalis lost, in the late 1970s, and then again in Somalia’s border war with Ethiopia in 1982. Media Saxafi, a news outlet from Somaliland, reporting on his participation in that war, wrote:13
In 1982 Omar's father led a reserve brigade in the Somali-Ethiopian Border War. Also during this time, Barre tapped the military to police civilians with results that were disastrous to human rights.
In "1982, special emergency regulations were put into effect, and civilians were placed under the jurisdiction of military tribunals and the military police," according to HRW. "The extraordinary powers given to the military and security forces under the state of emergency gave them unlimited power over the lives of civilians and led to violent excesses as a matter of policy. As the abuses grew, resistance intensified and the response was increasingly violent."
HRW reports that "since 1982, the army mined the areas along the main roads, several kilometers from their compounds ... hundreds of unsuspecting civilians and animals were killed. No signs were used to warn civilians." This is the army Omar's father helped lead.
Barre's military also kept the country under a strict curfew and harassed and murdered students whom the government perceived as threats.
"The presence of heavily armed soldiers became a feature of school life. At a hint of trouble, or simply to cow the students, they stormed on to school premises, fired live ammunition, and then arrested the students as they ran for cover," HRW reports. "Many students were killed in these confrontations and many more were injured."
Less clear is what Nur was doing after the Border War. While it is claimed that he was a teacher, the family was living in a middle-class compound in Mogadishu,14 which is hardly something that could be afforded on a humble teacher’s salary in a country with an average per capita GP of under $200. Sahan Journal reports that he remained in the military until 1991, writing, “Nur’s prestigious career in the military ended in 1991 after the Barre regime was ousted, and the country sank into civil war,” which would help fill in that gap and explain how he afforded the compound.15
In any case, when the Somali Civil War broke out a few years after the Issaq Genocide, Omar’s family was attacked by those who were tired of the regime’s tyranny. As ABC reported,16 “Civil war broke out when [Rep. Ilhan Omar] was 8, and after her family's compound came under attack by militia, the family escaped and eventually made it to a refugee camp in Kenya, where Omar spent four years before the family moved to the U.S.”
Key in that report is that those militias attacked the family’s compound. Why? Because Omar was a high-ranking officer in the tyrannical regime that those militias were resisting. Mike Solona, Chief Marketing Officer for Founders Fund and CEO of tech-industry journal Pirate Wires, summed up why the Omar family fled Somalia quite well in a post on X. As he put it, “people often frame ilhan omar as some kind of impoverished somalian economic refugee, here by the grace of god. in fact she comes from a family of socialist *political* refugees, unsafe in their native homeland following their participation in genocide.”17
Ilhan Omar, commenting on her family’s flight from Somalia, told City Pages, “Our family was no longer welcome.”18 Indeed, war criminals are rarely welcome once those against whom they committed war crimes win, though “no longer welcome” is quite an understatement and is true in the way that General Sherman is no longer welcome in Atlanta and Stalin’s goons are no longer welcome in the Holodomor-stricken regions of the Ukraine.19
Why It Matters
Ilhan Omar’s father was a colonel in the military of a genocidal maniac. So what? Children ought not be judged based on the behavior of their parents, however abominable those parents might be. That, at least, is how we in the enlightened West try to think.
But not with Rep. Ilhan Omar, both because of her hysteric recent claims about genocide and because of her claims about history.
As to Israel, Rep. Omar has accused the Israelis of waging a “genocide” against Palestinians. Voting against providing aid to that country, she said, “I do not support unconditional military aid that further escalates the already horrific humanitarian situation. It’s unconscionable to provide a blank check to the Israeli military while the genocide of Palestinians continue.”20 Israel here is not the issue, nor do we claim it is without fault; Israeli Military Intelligence probably backed Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation,21 so it’s hard to say that it’s not willing to do detestable things to secure an advantage. But its conduct in Gaza is still far less brutal than that of the Barre regime for whom her father fought. So, is he not equally guilty, if not more so, as the Israelis? If so, should she perhaps not be the one to cast the first stone, as a girl who benefitted while young from her father’s participation in the brutal regime and then who had to flee because of his notoriety?
Regardless of Israel, Rep. Omar has frequently called for judging white Americans today for the supposed sins of their noble ancestors. For example, in a 2018 post on X, she wrote, “We shouldn’t revise history. We’re a country built on stolen land and the backs of slaves. Independence Day allows us to reflect on how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go. Leveraging our voice to fight for justice is as American as it gets. Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸”22 Similarly, in a 2021 tweet, she said, “Proud #Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. As we reflect on the significance of what this day symbolizes, let’s keep fighting to address the lasting consequences of slavery. Next step: reparations.”23
If white Americans are to be judged for what a Leninist from Somalia thinks are the sins of demigods like George Washington and Andrew Jackson, ought she not at least be judged for the far more serious sins of her father? Common sense says “yes,” and thus, Rep. Omar ought to be held to account by the descendants of oppressed Somalis as she thinks American whites ought to suffer for the actions of their ancestors.
