We’ve been following the story of the Somali missing youths who have reportedly returned to Somalia for terrorist training with Al-Shabaab (an Al-Qaeda affiliate) since the story broke in November, but this is the first time I have seen any mention that Somali youths (former refugees) have been gone since 2007!
Although I could care less about all this touchy-feely yakking about whether these guys missed their McDonald’s and Starbucks, this interview with three Somali young women was revealing and I commend Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) for getting the story.
I guess this MPR timeline needs to be updated!
After some of the men left for Somalia in 2007, they kept in touch by cell phone. Every couple of weeks, Mohamed said she and other friends would get a call from one of the missing men.
“The conversations were never about serious political things,” Mohamed recalled.
The young men asked for news and sounded homesick.
“I remember one of guys complaining about the food situation over there,” Mohamed said. “He told me that he’d do anything to get a fast-food restaurant, like a McDonald’s.”
Or a Frappacino.
“One guy was caffeine-addicted,” said Mohamed, “and when he came there, he just had headaches all the time and he wanted to get a Starbucks.”
Somalia was a shock to their systems. Some complained of malaria.
They were calling friends back home and no one said anything to authorities.*
In 2006, Somalia was invaded by neighboring Ethiopia, triggering a patriotic response from Somalis worldwide. Mohamed thinks her friends saw themselves as “freedom fighters” but became disillusioned with their mission.
“I remember one of them kind of saying that he hated the weather, and he hated the place … and he wanted to come back home and he didn’t know how his parents would take it because he didn’t tell them anything. He just ran off,” Mohamed said.
[…..]
That was in February of 2008. Shortly after that, the U.S. State Department designated Al-Shabaab, the hard-line Islamic militia the men were believed to have joined, as a terrorist group.
The three women say that’s about the time the phone calls ended.
Let’s see, do we cover for our terrorist kids or inform US authorities? Obviously the answer was cover for their kids because we didn’t learn about any of this until late fall 2008!
“If their kids are being labeled as terrorists, it kind of makes the parents step back and say, ‘Should we have told? Or should we have just kept our mouths shut?’ And ‘What would have been better for our kids?'” Qaxiya said.
[….]
Mohamed said she hasn’t heard from any of the men since last May. A Facebook message she sent to one man who has reportedly returned from Somalia went unanswered.
Well, so much for us taking comfort that the FBI has been on top of this case, they and Homeland Security apparently didn’t even know we had Somali-American men leaving for terrorist training as early as 2007. Some have even been trained and returned to the US before the FBI began investigating in the fall of 2008. FBI, where are they?
* I have another post planned, watch for it later today, on the issue of Somalis not telling authorities. Update: Here is the promised post only two days late!
For new readers, the US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.