# Young men vanish into Somalia, stirring fears of terrorist recruitment



## old medic (18 Jan 2009)

Young men vanish into Somalia, stirring fears of terrorist recruitment

Anguished Minnesota families say a group of seven youths who vanished on Nov. 4 may have gone to join an Islamist militia. They aren't the first to leave.
By Bob Drogin
January 18, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/africa/la-na-missing18-2009jan18,0,7782853.story

The bold and underlines are my own highlights.  OM




> *Reporting from Minneapolis* -- Tall and lean, with a wispy mustache and shy smile, 17-year-old Burhan Hassan chalked up A's last fall as a senior at Roosevelt High School, vowing to become a doctor or lawyer.
> 
> After school and on weekends, he studied Islam *at the nearby Abubakar As-Saddique mosque*. He joined its youth group.
> 
> ...


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## jollyjacktar (18 Jan 2009)

Now this is the sort of thing that worries me.  We have large Somali communities here in Canada as well.  I'll bet there have been youngsters sucked into this mindless shit here too.  
Another reason why I hold my beliefs.


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## midget-boyd91 (18 Jan 2009)

There was a reason for Japanese communities in North America having 'eyes and ears' on them during WW2. Everybody knew then and knows now that the vast majority weren't 'plotting,' but when searching for crap, you don't ignore the @ss and look at the belly button....

Today is a different time with a different and much more complex 'foe.'
 We know that the vast majority of mosques and Madrasahs here are by and large a peaceful place of worship, but when you get that whiff of something that just doesn't smell right, it's time to take a look and open the ears regardless on whether or not they know they're being watched.

But that's just my opinion anyhow.

Midget


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## Yrys (25 Jan 2009)

Same subject, another article :

Recruited For Jihad? , Newsweek, 24 January
About 20 young Somali-American men in Minneapolis have recently vanished.

It didn't trouble Burhan Hassan's mother that her son had been spending more time 
at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, Minneapolis's largest mosque. A 17-
year-old senior at Roosevelt High, Hassan and his family had fled civil war in Somalia 
when he was a toddler. Some of the other Somali immigrants in the Cedar-Riverside 
housing project where he lived got drawn into gangs with names like Murda Squad 
and Somali Mafia. But Hassan was getting good grades and talking about going to 
college, says his uncle Abdirizak Bihi. When the boy didn't come home from school 
on Nov. 4, his family assumed he was at the mosque. By evening, his mother had 
searched his room and found his laptop was gone and clothes were missing. Later, 
she discovered his passport had been taken from a drawer she kept locked. "That's 
when we realized something serious had happened," says Bihi.

Hassan, his family later found out, had boarded a chain of connecting flights to 
Amsterdam and Nairobi and a boat to Kismaayo in Somalia. The city is a stronghold 
of al-Shabab, which is one of the country's most hard-line jihadist groups and has 
close ties to Al Qaeda. He traveled with at least two and up to five other young 
Somali-Americans from Minneapolis, according to others in the community and 
law-enforcement officials. Within a day, Hassan phoned home to report he was 
safe—but when probed, he said he couldn't divulge more and hung up. The call 
and the circumstances of his sudden disappearance led his family to suspect the 
worst—that Hassan had somehow been persuaded to join Islamic militants fighting 
for control of the lawless country.

That suspicion is now shared by counterterrorism officials and the FBI, who are 
probing whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups are actively recruiting 
in a few cities across the United States. The officials say as many as 20 Somali-
Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 have left their Minneapolis homes in 
the past 18 months under suspicious circumstances. Their investigation deepened 
when one of the missing men, Minnesotan Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up alongside 
other suicide bombers in Somalia last October, killing dozens of al-Shabab's political 
opponents and civilians. Ahmed had also prayed at Abubakar, and within weeks the 
FBI put the imam of the mosque, Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed, on a no-fly list. Among 
the questions investigators are asking: Who persuaded the young men to go? Who 
paid for their flights? And what role, if any, has the mosque played in their alleged 
recruitment?

Since al-Shabab is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, traveling 
to Somalia to train or fight with the group is illegal. But security officials involved in
 the investigation have a bigger concern—that a jihadist group able to enlist U.S. 
nationals to fight abroad might also be able to persuade Somali-Americans to act as 
sleeper agents here in the United States. Al-Shabab has no history of targeting the 
U.S. But the group has grown closer to Al Qaeda since the American-backed invasion 
of Somalia by Ethiopia in 2006. Al-Shabab has since been working with a number of 
non-Somali operatives wanted by the United States, including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, 
an architect of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, according
to intelligence officials.

As if to underscore the danger, early last week the FBI and Department of Homeland 
Security warned in a bulletin for the first time that al-Shabab might try to carry out an 
attack in America—timed to disrupt the presidential inauguration. A government official, 
who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive intelligence, tells NEWSWEEK the information 
came from an informant who notified security officials that people affiliated with al-Shabab 
might already be here. The tip-off proved to be a false alarm. Still, security officials view
the bulletin and the disappearances in Minnesota as a warning that Somalia's brew of 
lawlessness and radicalism might rebound on the United States. "You have to ask yourself, 
how long is it before one of these guys comes back here and blows himself up?" says 
a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who also wouldn't be quoted on the record discussing 
intel.

Hassan, like several of the other boys who have gone missing, was raised by a single mother; 
his father was killed in an accident before the family immigrated. The morning after his 
disappearance, his family searched for him at hospitals in Minneapolis and then went to 
the police. Osman Ahmed, another of Hassan's uncles, says by then at least two other 
Somali families had complained to police that their children had not come home. (The 
Minneapolis Police Department referred NEWSWEEK to the FBI, which would provide only 
general information.) In a search of one of the missing boys' rooms, family members 
found an itinerary issued by a Minneapolis travel agency.

The itinerary, obtained by NEWSWEEK, lists two other travelers in addition to Burhan 
Hassan and charts a punishing five-leg journey to Mogadishu departing Nov. 1 (the 
reservations were later changed to Nov. 4). The document is significant because it 
suggests sophisticated planning. Instead of leaving Minneapolis on the same plane, 
each young man was to travel alone—one to Chicago and two to Boston on separate 
flights. The counterterrorism official familiar with the investigation says the staggered 
departures could be evidence of terrorist "tradecraft." Financing of the trips has also 
raised suspicions. The multiple flights would have cost at least $2,000 for each traveler 
and were probably paid for in cash. Osman Ahmed says his nephew had no job and 
could not have accessed such a large sum.

The disappearances have focused unwanted attention on Abubakar and sown tensions 
within the community. To date, no one has produced evidence that recruiting was 
underway at any mosque in the city. But several of the young men who left their 
homes attended prayers and youth programs at Abubakar, and some family members 
and community organizers believe there's a connection. The most outspoken of them 
is Omar Jamal, who runs the Somali Justice Advocacy Center. "Someone at the mosque 
was getting into the minds of these kids," he says.

Abubakar is wedged between modest single-family homes in a residential neighborhood 
of Minneapolis. On Fridays, several hundred people gather in the carpeted main hall to pray 
and hear Imam Abdirahman's sermon; at least 40,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, with the 
majority concentrated in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. Though most of the worshipers 
on a recent Friday appeared to be Somali, the imam delivered his 20-minute sermon first 
in Arabic, then in English and, finally, in Somali. The topic that day was injustice—more 
specifically, the injustices Muslims must refrain from committing. The list included suicide. 
"Don't kill yourself," he exhorted the crowd. "Anyone who does is unfair to himself, and 
Allah will put him in hellfire."

NEWSWEEK found a small number among those who have worshiped at Abubakar and a 
recently closed sub-branch known as Imam Shafii Mosque who believed the tone was 
sometimes extreme. Yusuf Shaba, who writes articles for the Warsan Times, a Somali-
English newspaper in Minneapolis, says he and his teenage sons attended a lecture at 
Imam Shafii Mosque in November by a visiting speaker who had fought in Somalia. His 
presentation turned into a rant. "He talked about the need for jihad," Shaba says. "He 
got very emotional." Shaba has since kept his children away.

Imam Abdirahman tells NEWSWEEK that he recalls seeing some of the missing young 
men at the mosque. But none talked about returning to Somalia. "The youths did not 
consult their imam, just as they did not consult their elders," he says. He denies that 
any fighters from Somalia (or other countries) lectured at the mosque, and says 
Abubakar focuses solely on the community, religion and family: "We give the religious 
perspective." Asked about the possibility that outsiders might have used the mosque 
to scout recruits, he says, "Mosques are always open to the public … but I don't know 
anyone of that kind who recruited [here] or talked to the young men."

The imam says he learned the FBI had placed him on the no-fly list when police at the 
Minneapolis airport prevented him from traveling to Saudi Arabia in November for the 
hajj. About the same time, FBI agents began coordinating the return to Minnesota of 
the remains of Shirwa Ahmed, the young man who blew himself up in Somalia a month 
earlier. His family buried him at a cemetery in Burnsville, south of Minneapolis. As for 
Burhan Hassan, his uncle Bihi asks, "How does a child who's been in the U.S. since he 
was 4 or 5 become convinced to leave his parents and go to war in Somalia?" A number 
of families across Minneapolis are wondering the same thing.

_With Michael Isikoff And Scott Johnson_


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## Yrys (14 Mar 2009)

US men 'joined Somali Islamists', BBC News, Thursday, 12 March 2009







US officials say several cases of US citizens of Somali origin returning to their homeland 
to join the Islamist al-Shabab militia are being investigated. A Senate committee heard 
most of the young recruits came from Minneapolis city in the US state of Minnesota.

Al-Shabab leaders have admitted having links to al-Qaeda but the officials said there was 
no evidence of Somali-Americans planning to attacks the US. The US state department 
considers al-Shabab as a terrorist organisation.





Al-Shabab is now fighting against an 
Islamist president

The radical Islamist guerrilla group now controls much of southern and central Somalia.
The group continues to fight even though moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad 
has been elected president by parliament. He has said he will introduce Islamic law, 
or Sharia.

Andrew Liepman, deputy director for intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, 
said: "They are going to Somalia to fight for their homeland, not to join al-Qaeda's jihad 
against the United States, so far."He told the Senate Homeland Security committee 
al-Qaeda did not have strong organisational links to al-Shabab, despite the group's leaders 
admitting to links.

Somali-American recruits to al-Shabab have included a 27-year-old college student from 
Minneapolis who blew himself up in Somalia last October.

FBI national security official Philip Mudd said: "Some get there and become cannon-fodder.
"A lot of them are being put on the front line and some of them, I think, have been killed 
on the front line, from the United States." Up to 200,000 Somali-Americans live in the US 
and other population centres for the ethnic group include Seattle, San Diego, Atlanta and 
Columbus.

Analyst Gregory Pirio, who has written a book on Somalia called The African Jihad, told 
the BBC's Network Africa programme there was "a lot of distress" in Somali-American 
communities about these recruits. "People came here [to America] in large numbers from 
Somalia in 1991 when Siad Barre's government fell and there was no central government 
in Somalia and they came for opportunity," he said.

"They came for a better life and this really counters their participation in what is the 
American Dream and what people think of it."


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## Journeyman (14 Mar 2009)

Before we start chucking any Somalis into internment camps, let me re-emphasize the assessment by the National Counterterrorism Center, from Yrys' post: *"They are going to Somalia to fight for their homeland, not to join al-Qaeda's jihad."* And NCTC _definitely_ has people who believe there are bin Laden clones under every bed!

Yes, Liepman included the caveat "so far." But "so far" I haven't gone postal against old drivers hovering in the passing lane. Is the potential there? You bet, but I haven't so far.

Somalia is chaos -- an internecine squabble written in huge font -- and these American kids are going to fight for nationalistic reasons; Islamist al-Shabaab is fighting against one al-Qaeda group, with the support of another. Somalia can't even be legitimately called a civil war, it's anarchy. An almost perfect example of Hobbesian "war of all against all"? Yes. A Muslim country with an al-Qaeda presence? Yes, tucked in amongst the smugglers, pirates, hijackers and murderers. An al-Qaeda nerve centre? No.

A good Somalia overview is provided by Jeffrey Gettleman's article, "The Most Dangerous Place in the World," in the current edition of Foreign Policy magazine.


Yes kids, there _are_ bad people out there actively plotting against our lifestyle, but I don't think Canada should be dragged into another iteration of McCarthyism....so far.


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## Yrys (14 Mar 2009)

Somalia: Cabinet Votes to Adopt Islamic Law, NY Times, March 10, 2009

ISLAM The cabinet voted Tuesday to make Islam the basis of Somalia’s legal system.
The move, which still must be approved by Parliament, was an attempt to isolate more 
extreme elements of an Islamic insurgency by agreeing to a demand supported by 
moderate elements and much of the population.


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## Journeyman (14 Mar 2009)

As much as I'd like to latch onto this report as something backing up my comments...(especially the bit about the Somali Parliament attempting "to isolate more* extreme elements of an Islamic insurgency...*") 

...at the end of the day, the Somali government's authority extends no more than about 10 blocks from the parliamentary building,


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## Dog (3 Aug 2009)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8173079.stm

Excerpt:

"Hundreds of Somali youngsters are recruited and trained in camps in southern Somalia by al-Shabab, according to a senior police officer.

map showing areas under Islamist control

Meeting al-Shabab
Somali justice, Islamist-style

"The people involved in training children are foreigners who speak English or Arabic and they use translators to help them," says Colonel Abdullahi Hassan Barise.

"They are from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya and other countries." "

More on link

Swell, just swell...


*Edited to correct typo*


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## Dennis Ruhl (3 Aug 2009)

A jihad against Muslims?  At least it's democratic.  Theocratic rule seems to create a lot of dead people.  Christians used to love killing each other until someone figured out that the net effect was bad.  Perhaps millions died in the Thirty Years War.  The last person executed for heresy in Britain, in 1697, was a Scottish student at Edinburgh University, Thomas Aikenhead.  The Blasphemy Statute of 1698 was repealed in 1967.

http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p290B.html


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## dustinm (5 Aug 2009)

If these Somali's are recruited into terrorism why do they stay in Somalia? If they bitterly oppose the United States' backing of Ethiopia's invasion something tells me you'd have a bigger effect by detonating multiple car bombs in a busy US street instead of a Somali one.


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