Ilhan Omar’s Father Served a Communist-Islamist Regime Before Becoming a Refugee in Minnesota | The American Spectator

Socialist Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called her father “an educator.” According to the man’s obituary, he was a distinguished colonel in the army of communist Somalia, whom the United Nations described as having “one of the worst human rights records in Africa.”

There is no evidence of her father’s direct complicity in any atrocities, but Omar has not confronted the legacy of the regime to which her father was loyal. (RELATED: The Melting Pot Myth Is Destroying America)

Somali Dictator Siad Barre sought to fuse Marxist-Leninist governance with Islamism in his two-decade-long rule of Somalia. His Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party used the slogan “social justice” and utilized tensions in the Somali clan system to govern. This effort culminated in the persecution of the large Isaaq clan. 

The Isaaq, the majority group in the northern part of the nation that later seceded to become the Republic of Somaliland, were targeted wherever found by state and paramilitary entities. The Isaaq Genocide resulted in the murder of at least 50,000 civilians, primarily between 1987 and 1989, by the communist regime of Somali dictator Siad Barre.

Colonel Nur Mohamed Omar served in the regime’s military in the late 1970s and is known to have remained in the government until it collapsed. The Somaliland Chronicle released a report last week covering the depth of the Barre regime’s atrocities, noting that the uncertain nature of Omar’s role opens questions as to where his involvement had been.

The Chronicle described the violence as patterned after other “Red Terror” campaigns by communist regimes. This included the destruction of Somaliland’s two largest cities, Hargeisa and Burao, where a Somali officer gave a now-infamous order to “kill all but the crows.” 

These campaigns culminated in the bombardment of practically every civilian home in the region, from city to village. Survivors who sought to flee were directly targeted by the regime’s planes or less formal paramilitary units nicknamed “Isaaq Exterminators.” 

There is no evidence that Colonel Omar was directly involved in any of these atrocities. However, he demonstrated enough loyalty to the regime perpetrating these atrocities to maintain a successful career in the Somali government.

Ilhan Omar mentions in her 2020 memoir This Is What America Looks Like that her family lived a “very privileged life” in a compound surrounded by armed guards. They only fled in 1991 when the last enclaves of the Barre regime came tumbling down in Mogadishu. 

Despite having worked for the communist regime, the Omars were welcomed into the United States as “refugees.” Her father’s work for a regime with a bloodstained record has been evoked in several reports. Omar has not once commented on the subject, even in her memoir covering her Somali childhood. 

During a 2022 visit to Somalia, the sitting Congresswoman was identified at an event alongside General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan. Morgan directly oversaw much of the Isaaq slaughter and is on record calling for “a campaign of obliteration” against “anti-Somali germs” who would “inherit only ashes.” 

Omar’s questionable record on human rights abuses is not unique to Somalia. In 2019, she voted “present” on a resolution to recognize the genocide of Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. 

Ilhan Omar’s roots in a regime that fused Marxism and Islamism have consistently come out in her political life. She describes herself as a “patriotic” Somali and has led the way in preventing the diplomatic recognition of Somaliland, where her father committed his crimes. While conservative analysts of the Horn of Africa consider how American policy can help America, Ilhan Omar describes Somaliland as “our [Somali] lands.” 

Americans elect our representatives for this nation and no other. Congresswoman Omar has repeatedly steered United States foreign policy towards the Somali interests her father worked for, not the American ones she was elected to serve.

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