There aren’t enough good targets in Somalia…
A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.
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johnpi
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abunoor
The choices one has in Somalia:
“In our country there are three paths: you can join al-Shabaab, you can join [the government forces] or you can go abroad,” said Ismael Mohamed. “Me, I don’t have money to go away so I join al-Shabaab.”
Ismael, 21, is a typical Islamist footsoldier. He is neither a jihadi nor an extremist; he loves God and Manchester United. He is a young Muslim with an education — his English is excellent — but no opportunities in a country that has been at war for as long as he has been alive.
Civil war led to the collapse of Somalia’s last Government in 1991. The rebels then turned on one another in a fight for power. Many Somali youngsters know nothing of life without war.
Al-Shabaab’s leaders are militant nationalists and Islamic extremists but the rank-and-file fighters are hired guns, conscripts or volunteers. Ismael joined up during last year’s failed rains when food was scarce and al-Shabaab was in the ascendancy — weeks earlier it had launched a fresh offensive against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). “I didn’t have anywhere to stay or anything to do.” My friends, some of them were al-Shabaab and they would tell me that TFG is not Muslim, but al-Shabaab is Muslim,” he explained.
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johnpi
A federally funded education program for Somali refugees in New Hampshire has been put on hold after accusations by another group of Somali refugees that it was teaching ‘Muslim doctrine.’
The accusations arise out of a longstanding rift in the Somali community between Somali Bantus, a minority in their homeland, and the majority.
“There’s been a lot of rumors about bad blood between the different factions, said Dan Calegari of Southern New Hampshire Services. “I work with these people daily. There’s never even been any hint of religious activity. … It really comes down to animosity between different segments of the Somali population.”
….Somali Bantus, the descendants of African slaves, are a marginalized minority in Somalia that suffered greatly during the country’s civil war. Many were evicted from their farmland by other Somalis and fled to neighboring countries. Thousands of these refugees eventually made their way to the United States.
There is a language difference between Somalis and Bantu Somalis, said Idhow, which is how the rift all started. Because some Bantu refugees were more fluent in their own tribal language than Somali, the local elders thought it best to have a group that specifically served the Somali Bantu community.
Hilariously, the folks at this website looked at this story and decided it was the sign of a left-wing conspiracy.
Last night we heard from reader Thomas in response to the Manchester Somali story I posted yesterday. He confirms for us that the Cloward-Piven strategy* to overload the welfare system with poor and angry people was well-established in radical leftwing circles 40 years ago! Thank goodness we are all catching on, I just hope it’s not too late for us.
Apparently, Cloward-Piven is to nativists what Area 51 is to the UFO people. Sadly, I’ll have to report this to my overseers back in Moscow. A black helicopter will be sent to mutilate their cattle…
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johnpi
The New York Times magazine is publishing a big profile of Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, the Somali al Shabaab militant commander, an American who grew up in Daphne, Alabama.
It’s a magazine article so there is lots of this:
Daphne sits along Alabama’s serene Mobile Bay, just north of the Gulf of Mexico. The town seems stopped in time. Colonial-style cottages and gazebos dot the bluffs. The wide, blacktopped streets are shaded by pecan trees and Southern maples. At dusk, the tide slaps the docks as fishermen loll, casting silhouettes against a golden sky.
But Hammami strikes his most dramatic pose silhouetted against the rubble of Somalia:
When Hammami engages in combat, he makes an impression on other militants, said a former Shabab commander, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamed. “He doesn’t blink in the face of the enemy,” said Mohamed, who recalled four battles in 2008 and 2009 in which he and Hammami took part. In combat, Hammami used a sharpshooter’s rifle, firing calmly and with precision, said Mohamed…
The author suggests with this quote from a poem that Hammami wrote when he was 12 that he is a glory-seeker:
“My reality is a bore. I wish, I want, I need the wall to fall and the monster to let me pass, the leash to snap, the chains to break.
….“I’ve got a taste of glory, the ticket, but where is my train?”
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johnpi
An AP article looks at the issue of extremism and al Shabaab support among Swedish Somali refugees.
“It’s a small group but they have power,” said Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip-hop artist and “110-percent Muslim” who has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter al-Shabab’s influence. “People don’t speak up against them. They don’t dare.”
….Hussein, the hip-hop artist, said youth who were approached by al-Shabab told him they were shown videos of al-Qaida suicide bombings and urged to become jihadists in their ancestral homeland.
As his worries worsened, he started going public to Swedish media on the issue last year. Since then, resistance to the extremists has grown and last month dozens showed up for a rally against al-Shabab in Rinkeby.
The singer’s campaign has also prompted Swedish politicians to talk about the spread of extremism in immigrant suburbs, something that in the past might have drawn charges of being hostile to Muslims.
“He is a real hero,” said Nalin Pekgul, a leading politician for the opposition Social Democrats said of Hussein. Pekgul, a Kurdish immigrant, is an outspoken critic of the radicals.
But Hussein has paid a price. In September he was attacked on the street by a masked man who slashed his forehead with a sharp object – he has an inch-long scar – and warned him in Somali to “leave us alone or we’ll kill you.” Police haven’t found a suspect.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab launches offensive in Somali northern region of Puntland.
Having consolidated its power in the Deep South along the Kenyan border, Shabaab has launched a terror offensive in the northern self-declared state of Puntland. It is a Mexican drug gang-style campaign, with an aggressive string of targeted assassinations and low profile bombings in a Somali region that had been relatively safe and prosperous.
….In its quest to overrun Puntland, Shabaab will have to confront two strong groups. The first is Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, a pro-government Somali Islamist militia that follows the religious tradition of Sufism. Shabaab has targeted Sufis for practicing a different strain of Islam, and has destroyed Sufi shrines, cemeteries, and other symbols. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is strong in the central regions of the country and has fought back against Shabaab’s incursion on its turf.
The second group standing in Shabaab’s way is the Puntland security forces.
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johnpi
In the wake of threats by al Shabaab to send fighters to Yemen to assist Al Qaeda there, the Yemeni government is cracking down on Somali refugees and keeping them locked in camps.
This follows reports earlier this week in Kenya that authorities there swept through Somali neighborhoods and rounded people up by the hundreds after protests on behalf of Abdullah al Faisal.
Apparently, Somali refugees are being unfairly tainted with the reputation of al Shabaab and viewed more widely in Africa with suspicion and mistrust. Consequently, they are being targeted for greater persecution.
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johnpi
A Somali militant group, Hizbul Islam, has denounced the mass arrest of hundreds of Somali immigrants in Kenya after protests over the treatment of Abdullah al Faisal. The group issued no threat of retaliation.
Hizbul Islam was aligned with al Shabaab until October when the two groups turned on each other.
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johnpi
Kenyan police detained 300 Somali immigrants and a leading Muslim activist as tension mounted between the authorities and the nation’s Muslim minority following a deadly protest last week.
As the government scrambled to find countries willing to take in hardline Jamaican preacher Abdullah al-Faisal, whose botched deportation sparked the unrest, police vowed to deal firmly with a new protest planned on Friday.
The elite paramilitary General Service Unit and the anti-terrorism police raided Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood late Sunday and detained 300 people said to be illegal Somali immigrants.
Related: Kenya says Muslim cleric to be deported in two days.
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johnpi
Al Shabaab flogs one man for flirting, another for having a “secret marriage.”
“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, said from Kismayo.
“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.
The flogging took place over the weekend.
Youths in some Muslim countries where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive sometimes resort to secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.
The custom, which keeps the matrimony secret from the couples’ parents and sometimes from another wife, is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.
So by this particular interpretation of the Shariah, its purpose is to prevent those who are too poor to afford a wedding from getting married. And they say capitalists are cruel…
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johnpi
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johnpi
Somali Islamists: A potential ally?
There are three key points that the international community must now understand about Somalia’s Islamist groups.
The first is that they are not homogenous.
The second is that Islamic values play a central role in how this Muslim society is run.
And the third is that the overwhelming majority of Somalia’s Islamist movements have a Somali agenda – they want a peaceful and prosperous homeland.
Thus in order to build a functioning state, they should be considered an ally.
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johnpi
Abdullah al Faisal’s forced hijrah to Somalia.
So far, three countries have refused al Faisal a transit visa: South Africa, the UK and Tanzania. Human rights activists say that because of the fact that “no country with a functional government is willing to allow him to fly over their airspace,” Kenyan authority’s only option may be to “dump” him to a “lawless country” like Somalia, which the activists are calling ‘rendition.’
After living his entire life in the West, al Faisal will finally get a chance to live in the particular version of paradise he has been preaching about.
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johnpi
A friend of Omar Hammami has been keeping tabs on him through Somali contacts and gave the Toronto Star on update.
Hammami – who grew up in Daphne, AL and is now known as Abu Mansour “Al-Amriki” – became the leader of a 180 member foreign fighter unit of Al Shabab in September after the former leader was killed in a US helicopter raid. And the latest info:
Abdi says he heard in October that Hammami had been fighting near the Ethiopian border, and is recovering in hospital from bullet wounds and mental problems.
War will do that to a guy, Islam or no…
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johnpi
Top ten humanitarian crisis in the world in 2009 include several countries that are frequent topics here at TI: Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan.
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johnpi
The Asia Times excellent correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad, who recently had a face-to-face interview with Ilyas Kashmiri proving that he was still alive after the Americans announced him dead in a drone attack, has another good feature article with a lot of new information about Al Qaeda and its plans to expand in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Remember when Lashkar e Taiba was primarily a Kashmiri independence group before being transformed into a global jihad group? Al Qaeda wants to effect the same transformation elsewhere with local resistance movements – that is, colonize indigenous movements with local nationalist grievances and transform them into global jihad/global caliphate fighters.
…al-Qaeda sources have told Asia Times Online, al-Qaeda has re-established itself in Somalia and Yemen. From Somalia, the sources say, al-Qaeda plans to further disrupt trade routes around the Horn of Africa, while from Yemen, al-Qaeda aims to make a comeback in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia and beyond. The overall goal is to take control of all Muslim resistance movements in the region, very much on the lines of al-Qaeda’s South Asian pattern.
There’s also new information about the extent to which Ilyas Kashmiri is now an al Qaeda military leader.
In South Asia, al-Qaeda’s chief of the Lashkar al-Zil (Shadow Army), Ilyas Kashmiri, sits in Afghanistan orchestrating targets, including in India. (Lashkar al-Zil is an alliance of several Pakistani, Afghan, Uzbek, Iraqi and al-Qaeda groups that carry out operations under the al-Qaeda banner.)
Kashmiri is also cited as one of two al Qaeda leaders who worked on the ground in Somalia establishing the al Shabaab militia.
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johnpi
Three Somali ministers killed in Mogadishu blast. Two journalists were also killed, among them Hassan Zubair, who founded Al Arabiya’s Mogadishu bureau.
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johnpi
Bangladesh surges in international index for fighting public sector corruption.
It was singled out as one of the nations in the Asia-Pacific region with the most improvement with a score of 2.4, up from 2.1 (from a downloaded pdf).
Bangladesh’s score of 2.4 continues to reflect perceptions of rampant corruption, but represents an improvement over its score of 2.1 in the 2008 CPI. This is the result of the caretaker governments nationwide crackdown on corruption during the 2007-08 and the introduction of institutional and legal reforms aimed at strengthening the government’s capacity to tackle corruption. Whether the improvement is to be sustainable will depend on the new government’s ability to strengthen key institutions dealing with anti-corruption, public information and human rights, as well as the judiciary, law enforcement agencies and public services.
The US dropped from 18th to 19th place over concerns about lack of government oversight of the financial sector (ie Republican ideology and “centrist” Democratic policy).
Afghanistan and Somalia were at the bottom of the list.
The index in created and maintained by Transparency International.
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johnpi
Somalis living in northern Kenya have accused the government in Nairobi of secretly recruiting and training youths from the region as soldiers to go to fight for the transitional Somali government against al-Shabaab fighters.
Local leaders have said that in the last three weeks alone, at least 200 Kenyans of Somali origin have been recruited in the town of Garissa.
The recruitment drive has also been accused of operating in other towns and the refugee camps in Dabaab.
Habiba Kosar, one of numerous parents in northeastern Kenya raising the alarm, said her 18-year-old son, Mohammed, was recruited and is being trained as a soldier at a Kenyan government security facility.
“My son was picked in the middle of the night. He is being trained for Somalia. We have never seen Somalia and have no connection with the country. I just want my son back,” she said.
“This is cheap propaganda disseminated by some militia groups in Somalia,” a Kenyan spokesperson said.
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johnpi
Somalia Sufi forces organize to fight the ‘existential threat’ of Shabaab Wahhabis.
Somalia’s main Sufi movement, Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa, on Thursday wrapped up an unprecedented conference in Nairobi to strategize its response to the rise and radicalization of the Shabaab group.
Dozens of the usually quiet religious movement’s leaders have in recent days converged on Nairobi from Somalia and from Western exile to close ranks against what they see as an existential threat.
“The Shabaab are misguided people who have misunderstood the true values of Islam,” overall chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhieddin told AFP before leaving Kenya Thursday.
Sufism is dominant in clannish Somalia, where Muslim saints are often also clan founders, but its leading clerics have voiced concern that hardline Islamist groups such as the Al Qaeda-inspired Shabaab were slowly eradicating it.
It emphasizes the mystical dimension of Islam and includes practices considered as idolatry by the followers of the Wahhabi sect adopted by the Shabaab.
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thabet
A very interesting documentary by Rageh Omaar at Al-Jazeera about America’s ‘new frontline’ in the war on terror, which was opened in Africa when the Bush administration decided to topple the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia.
Omaar, Somali-born and a former BBC reporter, travelled the width of Africa from the Horn of Africa, crossing the pan-Sahel region, through to oil-rich West Africa. The documentary pins the blame directly on the Bush administration for the current troubles in Somalia, and for letting poor countries of the Sahel region use the war on terror as a cover to violently suppress localised problems (e.g. the Tuareg in Niger).
Omaar asks whether Barack Obama can or will change course by ending his documentary in Cameroon, contrasting the earlier positive moves (e.g. Obama’s support for a Somali politician ousted by the Bush-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia), with the negative activities such as the training received by a special forces group belonging to the Cameroonian president-dictator.
Unsurprisingly, there are lots of comments by those interviewed, including some local activists, that the US is only interested in resources of these states — the Sahel region has significant deposits of uranium, and West Africa has lots of oil and gas.
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johnpi
Shell fire kills at least 18 in Mogadishu.
Artillery battles between Islamist insurgents, Somali government forces and African Union (AU) peacekeepers killed at least 18 people in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday, residents and medical workers said.
….“We have recovered 18 dead bodies and 58 other injured people from Bakara Market and the surrounding areas,” Ali Muse, coordinator of the capital’s ambulance service, told Reuters.
“I can say this was the worst such incident recently in Mogadishu. Heavy shelling was hitting civilian populated areas, including Bakara market, Holwadag and Hodan,” he said.
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johnpi
Shabaab rebels destroy Sufi religious leader’s grave and mosque in Somalia.
Witnesses said residents in the small town of Galhareeri tried to stop the al Shabaab fighters late Sunday, but the rebel gunmen opened fire in the air, forcing everyone to flee.
“They destroyed the grave of Sheikh Ali Ibaar and our mosque. They also knocked down our Islamic university,” local elder Hassan Ali told Reuters by telephone from Galhareeri.
“We are now just squatting among the trees on the outskirts of the town. We do not know where to flee.”
….Separately in the capital Monday, police displayed the body of a foreign gunman who appeared to be Arab and was killed Sunday during an al Shabaab attack on government forces.
“You see this dead Arab. He was among the members of al Qaeda who came from other countries just to destroy Somalia,” police spokesman Abdullahi Barise told reporters, standing over the corpse of a light-skinned man with several bullets wounds.
Al Shabaab have urged foreign jihadists to join their battle against what they describe as Somalia’s apostate government.
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johnpi
Sharia law meets “Girls Gone Wild” – Salon on latest Shabaab outrage.
Clearly, al Shabaab’s outrage over women’s underthings tracks with its general modesty initiative. What of the bra removal and jiggling of breasts, though? It might seem counter-intuitive to any modesty campaign, but such shaming is an essential part of keeping women’s bodies under wraps. Forcing a woman to put on such a show in public is humiliating and reputation damaging. These are just the things al Shabaab would like to associate with women’s sexuality.
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johnpi
Guns and grenades for Somali Ramadan quiz winners.
No luxury cruise but a ticket to jihad was the prize for the winners of a team quiz organised by Somalia’s insurgent Shebab group during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
“The reason the young men were rewarded with weapons is to encourage them to participate in the ongoing holy war against the enemies of Allah in Somalia,” Sheikh Abdullahi Alhaq said at a ceremony late Friday.
The radio-broadcast quiz organised by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab organisation in the southern Somali city of Kismayo lasted throughout Ramadan, which ended last month.
Five neighbourhoods of the port city entered the competition, which consisted mainly of questions on science, culture and the Koran.
The winners — a team from Farjano district — were given a first prize consisting of one AK-47 assault rifle, two hand grenades, an anti-tank landmine and office supplies at a ceremony attended by hundreds of residents.
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johnpi
Somali hardliners whip women for wearing bras.
Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al-Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said on Friday.
….Residents said gunmen had been rounding up any woman seen with a firm bust and then had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then told to remove their bras and shake their breasts.
“Al-Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,” a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.
“They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.”
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johnpi
Feature article on Sufi communities resisting al Shabaab in Somalia.
“Our Jihad is for the freedom of our religion and of Muslims’ property which Al-Shabab describes legal for them to loot,’’ Abu-Yusuf snappily said after taking a phone call from Mogadishu telling him that Al-Shabab executed two men for espionage.
“They kill anyone who does not want their crazy ideologies and fake justifications,’’ he adds.
….In contrast to Al-Shabab, there are no strict religious punishments in the group’s strongholds such as, whipping, executions and amputations, rather people are being peacefully preached to practice the religion well.
“The Sufis will forever be our religion’s clerics. They were the first ones to spread Islam in our country,’’ Somali educator Abdulle Nur told The Media Line by phone from Nairobi, Kenya.
The central region of Galgadud is the only place in which Sufism was threatened as Al-Shabab forbade the performances of spiritual ceremonies in the region while it was under their control.
But now the Sufis are in charge, and this time in Galgadud, Sufis are enforcing the law, patrolling the streets and implementing justice.
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johnpi
An American man has been arrested in northern Kenya while trying to enter an area of Somalia controlled by Islamist insurgents, police and residents said on Monday.
Lawless Somalia is viewed by the international community as a breeding ground for al Qaeda-linked groups which have been carrying out an insurgency against the U.N.-backed administration of President Sheikh Shariff Ahmed.
A witness told Reuters that the man was arrested on Sunday by police manning the immigration office at the border town of Liboi in Kenya’s North Eastern province. He was on his way to Qoqani in southern Somalia without any security escort.
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johnpi
The Sunday Tribune can reveal that the US’s closure of its offices in the country [on September 22] was because of intercepted cellphone communication detailing planned attacks on American interests here. It is unclear whether American interests necessarily include a possible visit by US President Barack Obama for the official opening of the World Cup.
Intelligence officers, according to two sources, intercepted a call made in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, to a group based in Somalia, and the conversation confirmed a plot to blow up American interests in South Africa last month.
A source said US intelligence agents, South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency and SAPS Crime Intelligence operatives launched a surveillance operation on the Cape-based group, gathering crucial information before the operation was thrown into disarray.
Could FBI director Robert Mueller’s comments about al Shabaab to a congressional hearing last week have been a reference to this attack?
“I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia,” Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
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johnpi
Somalia president condemns Minnesota terror recruiting.
The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota’s huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.
….Ahmed is in Minnesota for three days as he tries to build support for his struggling government. He’s met with scholars, university students, former Somali leaders, women, elders and others.
Sunday evening, he spoke to about 5,000 people at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The crowd cheered when Ahmed again condemned the terrorist recruiting.“Those responsible for this trouble, I am asking them to stop what they are doing,” he said in Somali that was translated.
Ahmed expressed his condolences to the parents of the young men who have been recruited and said his government would give them any assistance it could. He said he was saddened to see the men flee the U.S. to engage in violence.
“These parents brought their children here for a peaceful life,” he said.
Ahmed also plans trips to Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, another city with a large Somali population, as he continues to advocate for peace in Somalia.
