Where Have All the Somalis Gone?

Gone to jihad, every one?

Maybe. But in any case, they’re disappearing from the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul. According to the local TV news station KMSP (spelling errors and typos cleaned up by BB):

The Missing: Somali Men Off Twin Cities Streets, Back in Somalia

Somali community fears young men leaving to fight holy war

MINNEAPOLIS — Young Somali men are vanishing off the streets of the Twin Cities. More than 20 have left in the last few months, and the community fears they’ve gone back to Somalia to fight in a holy war.

They’re known in the Somali community simply as The Missing. More than 20 young Somali men, between the ages of 17 and 22, who have left the Twin Cities in the last few months, without a single word to their families.

The families and community leaders believe the men have gone back to fight in a bloody civil war, in which Al Qaeda is a major player.

“They’re concerned emotional and in shock,” Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Center said. “They’re completely grief stricken.”

We’ll hit the pause button here and take a closer look at Omar Jamal. Refugee Resettlement Watch has this to say about the spokesman for the Somali community of the Twin Cities:

Omar Jamal is the ultimate spinmeister. We first heard about him in August 2007, only a month after RRW was launched. He was spinning and defending a Somali rapist in St. Paul who had been caught on camera doing the crime. I’ll let you review our Omar Jamal archive…

I called him the Somali Jesse Jackson when he got involved in the Denver Somali Cyanide death telling the media that the Canadian found dead with enough cyanide to kill hundreds was just a nut, not a terrorist. In that post we learned Jamal had been ordered deported due to immigration fraud. He reportedly lied to get into the US. Of course, the big question now is why is he still here?

We also learned in that post that Jamal is the uncle to a Canadian Somali indicted for giving material support to Al-Qaeda in 2003.

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Then we caught site of him again in an article in which it says the Socialist Workers Party helped him fight his deportation.

[…]

Most recently he was in the middle of the mess involving a possible election fraud in a predominantly Somali community. We learned in that article that Jamal is related to the president of Somalia.

And, now here he is again telling us how distraught the families are that their young sons have gone off to Africa to fight in the Somali civil war. Or possibly they heard how much they can make from piracy, beats working in meatpacking for a living?

Back to the story of “The Missing”. Where did all the young men go? Nobody seems to know, although they didn’t go directly to Somalia:

From multiple sources in the Somali community, FOX 9 has learned eight men are believed to have left on August 1, and another ten on November 4.

Flight itineraries discovered by their families show they left Minneapolis to take the winding trip back, through Dubai, Nairobi, Malindi, Kenya, where they’re believed to have snuck in by boat to Somalia.

Then, last week, five families went to the FBI, worried their kids were part of some jihad in Somalia. For their part, the FBI would not confirm or deny whether they have an ongoing investigation.

Presumably the FBI is glad to have the “youths” out of its hair. I wouldn’t expect them to take any interest until the young men return to the USA.

Another big question: who paid for these unemployed indigent youths to fly to Africa?

Sheik Imam Abdighani Ali is on of the few religious leaders who would discuss The Missing. He believes someone is organizing the trips.

“A lot of parents coming to us asking where their kid is going,” Ali said. “We are trying to find out who financed (the trips). They are 17 years old, $1,700 dollars and most of them didn’t work.”

Some of The Missing are believed to be former gang members, escaping the street violence that’s claimed the life of seven young Somali men this year. Others are in college, and some were said to be deeply religious.

Some of them were in college. What kind of college? If they’re educated young men, what draws them into the same group as the former gang members and mujahid-wannabes?

The irony is their families risked everything to escape the violence and religious wars, yet something or someone is luring the young men back.

The article doesn’t make any mention of it, but an obvious possibility is that the young men are being lured back to Somalia by the promise of a career in piracy. If they’ve been watching the news, they know that they and a handful of like-minded fellows can divvy up a cool $15 million if they bag a Saudi supertanker. It’s just like gang violence, only with a much larger payoff. Throw in the warm climate and the fresh sea breezes, and who could resist?

Not only that, the pirate life is a form of jihad, and is fully compatible with the tenets of Islam. It’s in the Koran!

And it’s nice work if you can get it:

An estimated 25-30 million dollars has been paid in ransom to Somali pirates this year, according to a UN report released last Tuesday.

So maybe there’s an up side to all this piracy off the Horn of Africa: it’s a scum magnet, sucking away the violence-prone “youths” from the cities of America, and relocating them in a more favorable climate.

Go Pirates!


Hat tips: Anon and C. Cantoni.