By Hawo Taako, a Somali ex-Muslim writer now living in Europe. Follow her work here.

Right now, there’s a #metoo movement taking place on social media in Somalia, this is mainly due to a victim breaking her silence and recounting her ordeal to an online American newspaper. Muna Ahmed’s story is just the tip of an iceberg. The true extent of rape and sexual violence in Somalia would shock the rest of the world.

We may never know the exact number of Somali women, children and men who have fallen victim to sexual violence particularly within the last thirty years. Close to a million? That might not seem such an exaggeration as rape has been an epidemic within Somali society for the last three decades. 

Rape has always existed in every society, but before the civil war rape was not common within the Somali community. In fact, between 1969 and the early 1980s, when Somalia was ruled by a communist government, Somalia was one of the most peaceful countries in the world, especially in the cities. In Mogadishu for instance girls would dress up with semi-sheer Diric (traditional Somali dress), wear their hair in a variety of styles and with high heels they would stroll along the high street in the evenings going to the cinema, concerts and social gatherings. 

Even before the communists, when the majority of Somalis were nomads, wandering around in the wilderness herding their livestock without a king or government to keep social order, Somalis were a well-established and well-structured people living in peace and order. They lived by what they called a Qaynoon - a social convention so fundamental and sacred that no one dared to violate it. 

For instance, a rapist would be shunned from society. No man would ever allow him to marry his daughter, no woman would want to marry him, and no one would want to befriend him ever again.  A rapist was referred to as the one who died a thousand deaths.

Big Mouth: The War

Life changed dramatically when the war began and rape became a weapon of tribal warfare. The first perpetrator who used rape to settle political disputes was Mohamed Siyaad Barre aka ‘Big Mouth’, the last Somali dictator. In 1979, to crush the first rebellion in the Majarteen region, the dictator sent in the Somali military, which at the time was the most powerful army in Africa. The army killed the men and boys, burned entire villagers to the ground, stole their livestock, poisoned water wells, and conducted systemic rape against Majarteen women. 

The next mass rape happened in 1989 when the Isaak tribe rebelled against the dictator. Big Mouth again sent the military into the Isaak territory and as before, the army, who were made of up soldiers from the south, conducted mass rape against the Isaak women.

In 1990 when the Isaak tribe overcame Big Mouth’s army and took back control of their region they began raping and executing all non-Isaak tribes living in the region.

A couple of months later the Hawiye tribe overthrew the dictator and took control of southern Somalia including the capital, which was populated by over two million people. 

Two Hawiye warlords who were part of Big Mouth’s regime, mobilized close to a million Hawiye men, mainly nomads, to the outskirts of Mogadishu. The warlords had trained the men for months, sharpened their mood, and poisoned their minds by telling them that they should wipe out anyone who doesn’t belong to the Hawiye tribe from southern Somalia. Before the rebels were unleashed on to the capital, they were given imported amphetamines, steroids, alcohol, Viagra and Khat. They were told these stimulating drugs would make them ferocious and fearless real men. Each man swallowed handfuls of pills with alcohol, and stuffed his cheeks with Khat cradling automatic machine guns in their arms. By the time they reached the nation’s capital their lust for sexual violence and brutality had reached fever pitch. They didn’t rape only women, they raped men, children and even domestic animals.

The militia men created concentration camps within their bases, and imprisoned the women of Big Mouth’s tribe and used them as sexual slaves.  When the Darood tribe had been cleared out from Mogadishu and surrounding areas, the Hawiye militia turned their attention to the minority clans living in southern Somalia. 

The militia men would stupefy themselves with all sorts of rousing drugs to rejoice in extreme violence, and sexual debauchery. They would abduct women and girls, some as young as nine, inject them with drugs to prevent them from resisting or attempting to escape. Since all Somali girls and women were victims of the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia) at a young age, in order to be raped, the wound had to be cut with a blade. And so, the militia men would cut the sensitive parts of the girls’ bodies, risking infection and sepsis. If these victim’s did suffer from an infection, they would be taken and dumped at a rubbish depot, and a new girl would be abducted to replace her.  

There were many families who found their girls in the rubbish depot and the only way that they could alleviate the girls’ suffering was to end their lives. The minority clans couldn’t take the girls to a hospital as all of them were occupied by the ruling Hawiye militia. 

Sometime later the two warlords fell out over how to control Mogadishu; they divided the tribe into sub-clans and waged war against each other. And once again systematic rape was used as a weapon to settle tribal warfare and the Hawiye women fell victim to it, much worse than the minority clans or the Darood as their attackers were men from their own tribe. 

The New Normal

From then on rape and murder became the new normal in Somali society. We don’t know exact numbers, but it is possible that three out of ten Somali children born after the war are the products of rape.

Rape has been used as a weapon, not only in tribal wars but also in the name of religious ideology. Islamic extremism is also guilty of committing atrocities and abuse against Somali women. 

As Somali warlords and clan leaders were busy squabbling over power and turning their tribes on each other, Islamic extremist groups from the Middle East, who had been planning to overthrow the communist government and transform Somalia into an Islamic state governed by Sharia Law, sent thousands of Somali Islamic militants who they’d been training and radicalising since childhood to Somalia and ordered them to radicalise the Somali population quickly and establish an Islamic state in the country. These mercenaries were given substantial amounts of money and ships full of weapons to fulfil their project.

In order to impose their schemes quickly on to the country, the Islamic militants came out with cunning tricks. For instance, they secretly hired hundreds of young boys and men to attack smartly dressed Somali women going to work on the street and strip them off. The militants would follow the boys from a distance, and when the boys attacked and stripped the victim, the conspirators would show up, encircle the victim and applaud at the spectacle.  If a member of the public tried to intervene, the Islamic militant would stop them, claiming the woman got what she deserved because of her indecent and unIslamic dress. 

The militants began their terror targeting professional women, such as police officers, students, soldiers in uniform, or teachers, nurses and doctors going to work. The victims would be left lying on the street naked and beaten up, her clothes taken away. And as the militant left her there, they would throw a black Burka at her, signalling that this was the only clothing she should wear from now on. This terror and public humiliation were to spread fear in the women’s hearts and force them to adapt to the Islamic dress code. And so, it spread outwards within months until the Hijab became the Somali women’s uniform. Today any Somali woman who does not wear the Hijab is considered a whore.

Today when a Somali mother gives birth to a girl, she buys a Hijab for the newborn.  If you were to ask her why she wants to cover a new born baby’s hair, she would answer:  ‘The Hijab would protect her from all evil, and she has to adapt and learn to wear the Hijab from a young age, or else she’ll be ruined and lost.’ 

The ‘Peacekeepers’

Darood, Isaak and Hawiye are the three major Somali tribes who fought against each other during the civil war. 

But Somali men weren’t the only ones who abused and raped Somali women and children. The so called UN Peacekeeping Army and African Union PeaceKeeping Army, as well as many different charity organisations who went to Somalia with the pretence of establishing peace and order in the country or delivering humanitarian aid to impoverished Somali people, have abused and raped Somali women and children on an extensive scale. Most were young men working for unregulated and corrupted institutions where no one would be held accountable for their crimes; another detrimental consequence of an absent government in Somalia.

Even those who fled the violence and chaos were not safe from rape and abuse.  Wherever Somali women travelled, rape and abuse followed them.

Rape was an epidemic in refugee camps, as those running the camps were sexual predators. The refugee camps were teeming with human organ salesmen, pimps, paedophiles and corrupted police extortionists. Children would disappear overnight and women were forced to exchange sex for food and water. 

When the exodus of Somalis poured into Europe, women and children were kept in temporary refugee accommodation, vulnerable to local paedophiles and sexual predators. Some of these predators even worked directly for the aid organisations, gaining privileged access to the most vulnerable refugees, who were completely unaware of the dangers in the midst.

Modern Somali Society

Eventually, these militia men also fled to Europe by claiming to be innocent refugees. Unable to act as they did back in Somalia, they moved from raping strangers in the streets to their own family members. 

According to the Orthodox Islamic tranditions which rule over every aspect of Somali society today, the biggest reward that a man can get in the afterlife is sex. Upon dying a death that pleases God as well as living your life as religion bids, men will be rewarded with 72 teenage virgins who have the power to regain their virginity once deflowered, a never ending existence of youthful virility and sexual violation of ‘female purity’.  

This is what thousands of Somali Islamic preachers have been teaching Somali young men since birth. Taking advantage of modern technology, these preachers have their own channels on YouTube to spread their ideology to not only young people living in Somalia, but the whole world. There are hundreds of infuriated Somali preachers on YouTube saying that Somali women who use makeup, or hair extensions are whores and criminals and they should be punished. On the one hand a woman’s body is seen as a sex shop that must be hidden from good men’s eyes, yet on the other hand, sex is the most coveted award for any pious man. 

How can this motivation be justified and so wholly accepted in the 21st century and unchallenged for so long?