Month: September 2009

American might have been Somali suicide bomber in deadly attack on African Union peacekeepers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve seen mention of this over the last few days, but, hey, if the New York Times is reporting it, it must be true.  Well, maybe, maybe not.  But, here is what the NYT said yesterday.

NAIROBI, Kenya — A Somali Web site is claiming that one of the suicide bombers who attacked an African Union base last week in Somalia was from the United States, which, if true, would make him the second known American to carry out a suicide attack.

According to Dayniile.com, a mostly Somali-language Web site, the bomber lived in Washington State until 2007, when he left the United States to join the Shabab, a terrorist group with growing ties to Al Qaeda. Several suicide bombers penetrated an African Union base in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, Sept. 17, killing more than 15 peacekeepers, including the second in command of the 5,000-strong African Union mission in Somalia.

The bombers used United Nations trucks to slip into the base; they apparently had inside information because they struck precisely at a time when high-ranking Somali officials were meeting with African Union commanders to plan an offensive. Some witnesses said the bombers spoke English.

The Shabab took responsibility for the attack. But on Thursday, Shabab officials, when asked about the possible Somali-American connection, said they would not reveal the bombers’ identities.

At least 20 former Somali refugees have left the US and the good life to fight for Allah in Africa.  If this bomber is one of them he would make the 7th American jihadist to die in Somalia (so far!).  See this post in which I had been keeping track of all of the stories on the Somali missing youth case since last November.  Sorry I haven’t kept it up since July, but one of these days I’ll get it updated.  Frankly, I was getting sick of the story!

Iraqis making a beeline for Detroit

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Time magazine has a story this week that we have reported previously, but as an old friend reminds me—repeat, repeat, and repeat some more!   Come to think of it, that’s what the mainstream media does too—just repeat the same old stories—and that’s how a couple of twentysomethings scooped them on the ACORN scandal (I guess you can tell those two are my heroes). 

Back to my reason for writing:  according to Time, 1/3 of the population of Dearborn (on the outskirts of Detroit) now is of Arabic descent and the children of Arab heritage make up 2/3 of the school-age population.

For Wasan Aljanaby, the journey from her native Iraq to the U.S. was long and convoluted: with her husband and young son, she fled first to Jordan, then Turkey, Argentina and Ecuador. Everywhere they went, inhospitable immigration rules prevented them from even trying to put down roots. It wasn’t until they were finally granted asylum in the U.S. last year that the Aljanabys could finally unpack their lives and settle down.

The easiest part of it all was deciding where in the U.S. they would settle down. “From the beginning, our destination was Detroit,” says Aljanaby.

It didn’t matter that Motown was experiencing the nation’s highest rates of unemployment or that Aljanaby’s skills as an Arabic-English translator might be more valuable in states with concentrations of defense contractors. More important was the fact that her husband had some relatives in Dearborn. “We knew we’d get shelter, food and the chance to build our lives,” says Aljanaby.

Detroit may be the poster child for urban flight, but there’s one group that still regards it as a city of hope: Iraqi refugees. Like previous waves of Arabs fleeing violence and political upheaval — or merely seeking new economic opportunity — thousands of Iraqis have been arriving in the Detroit metropolitan area since 2007, when the Bush Administration began accepting refugees from Iraq.

The U.S. will admit 17,000 Iraqi refugees this year, an increase from 14,000 in 2008. Mindful of Michigan’s unemployment burden, the State Department, working with nongovernment refugee-resettlement agencies, places most of the newcomers in other states, like Arizona, Maryland and Virginia. Michigan got around 3,000 last year, and that number is expected to shrink by a third in 2009.

But once they’ve got their bearings, many Iraqis placed elsewhere in the country make a beeline for Detroit.

I wondered when I read this story if many Iraqis, like the family above, are coming as asylees.   Generally asylum seekers get here on their own steam then use one of the hundreds (thousands!) of immigration lawyers ready and willing to file their asylum applications.   Once approved they receive the same benefits as refugees, except of course the airfare loan.

170 Bhutanese resettled in New York City

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The New York Times reported this week about the new lives of Bhutanese/Nepalese refugees resettling in the Bronx.   These 170 resettled by the International Rescue Committee are a tiny fraction of the 60,000 the US will be taking over 5 years.

All of the newcomers are Bhutanese of Nepalese ethnicity who had migrated to Bhutan or were descended from immigrants. In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled tens of thousands of Nepali Bhutanese, most of them from poor farming families, accusing them of immigrating illegally. The majority ended up in seven refugee camps in Nepal, where they lived in bamboo-and-thatch huts and were cared for by international aid agencies.

Bhutan refused to take them back and Nepal refused to give them citizenship. In 2007, the United States agreed to resettle at least 60,000 of them. The first arrived in early 2008.

There isn’t much in this article that we haven’t reported before about how they came to be in the US, but I was interested in this report on their living conditions.  Early in the article the reporter describes a sparsely furnished apartment.

The place was furnished with a couple of bureaus, several beds that doubled as couches and little else.

The federally contracted resettlement agencies sign a contract with the US State Department and commit to supply certain furnishings.  It sounds like these folks may have not gotten everything they were supposed to get—a common complaint.

Then this really attracted my attention.  The landlord of this 60-unit building is somehow connected to the International Rescue Committee.  What is the connection?  Does anyone know?  One of those rumors we are always trying to nail down is that some landlords have ‘insider’ connections with resettlement agencies.

Through an elaborate process involving consultation between resettlement agencies, about 170 Bhutanese refugees have been placed in New York. The families at 2515 University Avenue were brought by the International Rescue Committee, an agency that has a longstanding relationship with the landlord.

Whatever the connection, the building is not without its dangers.

Mr. Tamang said that one day his elderly parents, who speak no English, were alone in their apartment when they heard loud knocking. Opening the door, the father was confronted by several young men. Although he understood none of the words the men were using, he gathered from their angry gestures that they were looking for a missing bicycle and were demanding to search the apartment.

Mr. Tamang said his father, small and mild-mannered, stepped aside to allow the group to enter, but the men eventually went away, leaving the father shaken.

“They were trying to get in,” Mr. Tamang recalled, surprise and pain in his voice. “We are very honest people.” Mr. Tamang said he would no longer leave his parents without one of their English-speaking children.

We recently told you about a Bhutanese young man killed by an African American thug in a dangerous Jacksonville neighborhood where he had been resettled, here.    It appears that another refugee in this Bronx building writes a blog and that Florida murder is one of the stories he has posted for his community here and back home.   Check out ‘Journalism in Exile’ here.

Note to new readers:  To understand why there are problems in the camps in Nepal and why a journalist might be missing there, you can go to this previous post of mine and learn about the politics of those (Maoists!) who do not want the Bhutanese to be scattered across the world.

Will Treasury Inspector General look into other non-profits?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I sure hope so!  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the can of worms opened by the ACORN scandal will focus attention on other supposed non-profits that take taxpayer money for “humanitarian” concerns while engaging in political activism.

From AP:

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is looking into the government’s oversight of tax-exempt organizations like ACORN when they engage in political activities.

The office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., disclosed the IG’s decision on Thursday amid a controversy over videotapes of ACORN employees offering advice about how to establish a brothel with underage prostitutes.

[….]

Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George says his office is undertaking a review of the Internal Revenue Service’s inquiries of tax-exempt organizations that engage in politics, as well as IRS procedures regarding fraud investigations of nonprofit organizations.

Mr. George, how about checking out all those church groups getting taxpayer dollars then lobbying for amnesty legislation among other things?  I’ve got a list you can start with!

Jordanian living illegally in Texas caught in terror plot sting operation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Related story today:  Ironically, as several Muslim terror plots are unraveled across the country, other Muslims gathered to pray at the Capital, Atlas Shrugs has a report here.

Unfortunately we probably will never hear how this jihadist got into the US in the first place, but I’ll bet he came across the border in Texas.  And, just think, if Obama gets his amnesty plan through, the likes of Hosam Maher Husein Smadi will get all the perks and privileges of American citizenship.

From the Dallas Morning News:

A 19-year-old Jordanian citizen was arrested Thursday in a dramatic FBI sting operation after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives at an iconic downtown Dallas skyscraper and attempted to detonate it, authorities said.

An undercover FBI agent monitoring an online extremist Web site discovered Hosam Maher Husein Smadi espousing jihad against the U.S. more than six months ago.

Read all about the clever sting operation!

I thought in the age of Obama this wasn’t going to happen.  I thought the Muslim world would love America now.

In conversations with agents posing as members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, Smadi said he came to the U.S. to wage jihad, or holy war.

[….]

“I want to destroy … targets … everything that helps America on its war on Arabs will be targeted,” he told undercover agents in May.

[….]

Although apparently not connected, the Dallas case comes in the wake of several recent high-profile terrorism arrests in Denver and New York and in a strikingly similar scheme in Illinois involving undercover agents providing an extremist with a fake bomb.

It’s unclear on which extremist Web site authorities encountered Smadi. Agents and private counterterrorism researchers lurk in such sites monitoring jihadist trends.

So what do the Afghan immigrants in Denver and New York caught in a terror investigation have in common with the guy in Illinois also stung this week and the Jordanian in Dallas?  Right!  They are all “extremists” and all Muslims.