At the end of May, General Mohamed Said Hersi “Morgan,” the final defence minister under Somalia’s military regime, died at 76, leaving behind a legacy marked by atrocities for which he was never held accountable. His death closes a tragic chapter in Somali history, where justice was not merely delayed, but ultimately denied to victims. 

Morgan is in many ways a potent symbol of the unresolved issues from the era of Siad Barre’s dictatorship and the subsequent civil war following state collapse. The country, still unwilling or unable to confront its history, continues to drift between superficial reconciliation and the keen embrace of figures like him.

In light of this, the question of justice in Somalia is not just a moral imperative — it is essential to rebuilding collective memory and preventing future violence.

Born in Qardho in 1949, Morgan joined the Somali army in 1967, seven years after independence, and underwent advanced military training in both the Soviet Union and the United States, specialising in leadership and military strategy. He was a man shaped by the Somali Republic, absorbing its Cold War paradoxes as the state swung—abruptly, almost violently—from Moscow’s orbit to the US, before collapsing altogether. All the training he received, all the discipline and doctrine, was eventually turned inward—used not in defence of the republic, but against its people.

During the Kacaan period, he held leadership positions in central and northern regions before becoming the final defence under Mohamed Siad Barre, his father-in-law, a relationship that placed him in very close proximity to power and legitimized him within a system built on personal and clan loyalty.

After the central government collapsed in 1991 and Siad Barre fled, Morgan did not disappear like many others. Instead, he refashioned the remnants of the Barre regime into the self-styled Somali National Front (SNF), a militia group, which committed atrocities against residents of the Juba and Shabelle river valleys - including killings, rape, destruction of irrigation systems, and looting of grain stores. These acts contributed to the outbreak of the 1992 famine that drew international attention. The “Baardheere Famine”, a catastrophe that claimed nearly 300,000 lives - most of them from the Digil and Mirifle clans - due to punitive tactics employed by Morgan’s militias was one of the worst in the civil war, as documented by Alex de Waal. Adding to the suffering, another warlord, Mohamed Farah Aidid, looted humanitarian aid delivered through the US-led Operation Restore Hope.

Morgan is probably best known as the “Butcher of Hargeisa” - due to his role in the repression and later destruction of the city. He personally authored what Human Rights Watch called the “death letter” in January 1987 — a secret memo to his father-in-law, dictator Siad Barre, outlining the genocidal scorched-earth policy against the residents of Hargeisa and Burao. 

Morgan was not merely carrying out high-level orders; he was a key strategist within a ruling elite that viewed mass murder as a means of crushing political opposition and entrenching authoritarian rule.

Despite detailed documentation by organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Morgan was never held legally accountable; neither domestically nor internationally. On the contrary, the government gave official condolences, and Somali political leaders in Mogadishu sent condolence messages. This grotesque spectacle reveals a total absence of ethical awareness and historical responsibility among the ruling elites. Such an official tribute to a documented war criminal is not only a betrayal of the victims’ rights—it is a refusal to challenge the culture which made him. 

Morgan’s story exemplifies what philosopher Paul Ricoeur called “cheap forgiveness”: forgiveness offered without admission of guilt or responsibility, disguised as reconciliation or the preservation of stability. This type of forgiveness has obstructed justice and lasting peace in Somalia’s political history. Given that genuine justice requires fair accountability and open recognition of crimes. 

With the military regime’s decline, many warlords like Morgan transitioned into new power roles within their clan-based communities. He was appointed a security advisor in Puntland - reflecting the enduring overlap between military and political spheres within clan-based frameworks. 

Transitional justice experiences, from post-Nazi Germany to post-apartheid South Africa, show that forgiveness only becomes meaningful political action when it is built on acknowledgment of crimes and centers the victims within a process that connects past and present on a foundation of fairness and shift towards a justice-oriented shared narrative between communities about the past. In Somalia, this path remains blocked. Collective memory is manipulated by clan-based political elites who distort facts and reinforce denial instead of accountability.

French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs noted that memory is not merely recollection; it is a social construct that is continuously regenerative. In Somalia, this construct is contested by two competing narratives: one that seeks to tell the truth, and another that beautifies authoritarian violence under a nostalgic nationalism.

This divide is even more visible in the Somali diaspora — in Europe and the United States — where some identify as victims of genocide and carry wounded memories in exile, while others, from the clans of perpetrators, regard war criminals as national heroes. This conflict plays out in public debates and across social media, reanimating the darkest aspects of the past in the present.

In the Somali context, the discourse of reconciliation and forgiveness has become a hollow ritual, repeated by political elites and devoid of real substance or ethical commitment. Forgiveness, though politically and morally important, cannot have a “let bygones be bygones” approach. It requires a clear acknowledgement of crimes and accountability for perpetrators. The case of Morgan spotlights this contradiction: instead of being held accountable, he was honoured.

Tentative steps have been to at least acknowledge the faults. For instance, when former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo offered a symbolic apology for the crimes of the military regime in Somaliland. Farmaajo blamed the violence on a “system of government” and called for reconciliation among Somalis. But during his speech, he also said that members of the armed groups fighting the regime should similarly come forward — equating victims with aggressors in place of explicit recognition and accountability. This sanitises the past.

The central question remains: How do we build a shared memory that frees us from the tyranny of the past and restores forgiveness as a moral act rather than a cover for complicity?

It begins with recognition: of the crimes; of the victims’ right to memory; and of the truth that reconciliation is not a power-sharing arrangement between political elites, but an ethical commitment to re-establish society on the foundations of truth.

But Somalia today drains these values of all meaning. Welcoming warlords as national icons and honouring criminals in the name of unity destroys any hope for genuine transitional justice. In this climate of denial, talk of reconciliation becomes meaningless noise — a distraction that conceals the persistence of the very structures that produced the violence. As long as this remains the logic of Somalia’s ruling elite, any discussion of justice or a shared future will be nothing more than an illusion... a mirage.