Tag: Somali refugees

Kenyan officials say Westgate slaughter planned from refugee camp

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. It would be pretty easy to hide out here and plan more attacks on Kenya. Some of the refugees arriving in America come from Dadaab.

Kenya is home to the largest number of Somali ‘refugees’ anywhere in the world.  Security officials are pointing a finger at refugee camps within their border as the planning area for the Somali slaughter of innocents at Nairobi’s upscale Westgate mall last month.

Readers may remember that we reported last December that Kenya told the UNHCR to get out and take their Somalis with them.  This article mentions that and reports that a Kenyan high court stopped the plan which initially only said that illegal Somalis in Kenya needed to get back to the camps (some are living freely throughout Kenya).

From AP at Kentucky.com (hat tip: Robin)

NAIROBI, Kenya — Some refugees fleeing insecurity from neighboring countries have abused Kenyan hospitality by planning terror attacks against the country, Kenya’s internal security minister said Friday, in an apparent reference to last month’s terrorist attack on an upscale mall which killed more than 67 people.

Joseph Ole Lenku said Kenya’s government started repatriating Somali refugees as part of remedial steps to prevent repeat attacks. Refugees from war-ravaged Somalia make up the most of the 600,000 refugees in Kenya, he said.

“We have welcomed with open arms refugees fleeing from insecurity from neighboring countries but as it turned out some of these refugees have abused our hospitality and kindness to plan and launch terror attacks from the safety of refugee camps. This cannot and shall not be allowed to continue anymore,” he said.

Westgate attack planned from refugee camp:

Last week, Asman Kamama, the chairman of parliament’s Administration and National Security committee, said that it was confirmed that the Westgate Mall attack was planned from a refugee camp in Kenya. He spoke after a meeting with Kenyan security chiefs.

This is edict from December after Somali crime and violence throughout Kenya was escalating (it was subsequently over-turned by a Kenyan court):

A government statement said that due to that “unbearable and uncontrollable threat to national security,” the government decided that all refugees and asylum seekers from Somalia must return to the large refugee camp complex known as Dadaab, a seemingly endless expanse of refugee housing on the sands of Kenya close to the Somali border. More than 400,000 refugees live in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world.

We wrote about Dadaab earlier this month, here.

Just a reminder, the US resettled 7,608 Somalis to the US in FY2013.

Norway: authorities concerned as two more Somali refugees give up good life for Jihad

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This time it is two Somali girls and they went to Syria to join the Jihad.

Product of Norwegian refugee program—hunting in Nairobi!

Stories like this one in the Washington Post (‘Norway’s Somali community rattled by reports of young members joining jihadist groups’) like to put a spin on the story with a title like that one—the “Somali community” is worried! It is a subtle way to send the message that there are only a few bad apples in the bunch, and leaders of the “Somali community” and the mainstream media want to be sure you understand that (even if you only read the headline).

This piece might well have been titled:  ‘Norwegian intelligence concerned that 30-40 Norwegians have joined Jihad in Syria; could bring terror-training back to Norway.’

Here is AP at the WaPo (emphasis is mine):

OSLO, Norway — Somali immigrants in Norway fear that violent extremism is taking root in the community after reports of young Somali-Norwegians traveling abroad to join jihadist groups.

One of the gunmen in the Nairobi, Kenya, mall attack that killed 67 people last month has been identified as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Norwegian citizen who returned to his native Somalia in 2010.

Norway’s Somali community was still coming to terms with that news when it was struck by another startling development: Two teenage sisters — 16 and 19 — had left their family in Norway to join the civil war in Syria.

“It is very shocking,” said Mohamed Husein Gaas, a Somali-born East Africa expert at the Fafo research foundation in Oslo. “No one thought two young girls would travel to a place where they don’t have any connection.”

It’s not clear how exactly the sisters from suburban Oslo, who have not been named, planned to participate in the Syrian war. But they told their family they wanted to take part in jihad, said Bashe Musse, a Somali community leader and local politician in Oslo.

Norwegian newspaper VG said they flew to Turkey and made their way to the Syrian border, without telling their family until they had left Norway.

There’s Turkey again!—is the Erdogan government facilitating the movement of Islamists through Turkey?  See Bulgaria here a few days ago.

Then this:

…..the vast majority of Somalis in Norway don’t support violent extremism. About 30,000 people in Norway were either born in Somalia or have Somali parents. The wealthy Nordic country is one of the most popular destinations for Somali immigrants in Europe along with Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The Syria conflict has attracted hundreds of foreign fighters from European countries, many of whom have joined Islamic militant groups. An estimated 30 to 40 people — and possibly more — have left from Norway alone, according to the domestic intelligence service PST. Security officials are concerned that they could pose terror threats once they return home combat-hardened and traumatized by war.

Are we raising Muslim armies?

We’ve often noted that Somalis/other refugees come to the West and we raise the kids (with your tax dollars), grow them into healthy and educated adults who then have no interest in the Western “good life.”  Had we left them in their own hellholes in Africa and the Middle East they may well have never survived to become Jihadists!

Aljazeera: Meat giant Cargill, refugees, and the town folk of Ft. Morgan are one big happy family

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is a pattern to these stories that even Aljazeera understands.  The formula goes something like this:  struggling immigrants arrive in an American town, townspeople are mean and unwelcoming (examples are given), but hardworking immigrants overcome and are ultimately accepted with everyone living happily ever after in multicultural nirvana.  So, the point is, you don’t have to read most of this article about Ft. Morgan, Colorado.

But, I did find one section of the overlong piece interesting.  It’s the discussion about the Cargill meat packing plant.

We learn that 2/3 of its 2,100 employees are Hispanic and 1/3 are East African (Somali mostly) and a Cargill representative leads us to believe that they are not choosing immigrants over American workers.   Huh?  The trick is trying to figure out how exactly do the immigrant laborers improve their bottom-line.  Is it through cheap wages?  Tax breaks?  A combination of the two.  You know it isn’t because Cargill owners and managers are simply good people out to help the downtrodden of the world!

I found this (below) quite informative. And, what do you know—here are the Lutherans again!

Aljazeera “It takes a village!” (emphasis mine):

Mohamed [one of the stars of the Aljazeera piece—ed] works out of a new Lutheran Family Services office in Fort Morgan. The organization has long experience helping settle newly arrived refugees. The task is slightly different in Fort Morgan, where many of the refugees have lived elsewhere in the United States for years and no longer qualify for the housing and other support offered to new arrivals. Here, Lutheran services include classes to help the refugees apply for citizenship.

The African refugees’ arrival started with just a few, in 2005, according to Mary Ginther, head of human resources at the plant that Cargill has run here since 1987. Word of jobs at the plant may first have reached the large refugee community in Minnesota, where the giant agribusiness conglomerate has its global headquarters.  Ginther says Cargill officials at one point were meeting the regular bus from Minneapolis, which arrives in Fort Morgan on Sundays, to hand out welcome kits to new employees.  Managers who wanted to improve communications with the new workers also sat down with Somali elders, learning about their culture. That resulted in a workshop that Cargill, at the request of police chief Kuretich, has offered to police officers as well as to company supervisors.

Once new workers are settled, Cargill wants to keep them. From the early days when many of their workers were from Latin America, Cargill had learned that one way to retain staff  is to help newcomers settle into town and offer them a chance to learn and be promoted. For two decades, Cargill has worked with Morgan Community College to offer its employees classes in English and job and other skills. Once, students who spoke Spanish as a first language were the main target. Now, students who attend classes on their own time speak more than a dozen languages.

The plant employs more than 2,100 people. Employees come from more than 16 countries, with about two-thirds from Latin America and almost a third from East Africa.

Ginther says some in Fort Morgan cling to the myth that the plant gets federal money for employing refugees, or accuse Cargill of giving foreigners special treatment.

They obviously benefit from employing immigrants—how?

We have written often about “welcoming” Ft. Morgan and its refugee overload, here is our archive (you won’t hear about the down-side from Aljazeera America).   Remember too, Senator Jeff Sessions called out the meat packer lobbyists on the amnesty bill.

St. Cloud, MN: Battle resumes today in zoning dispute over Somali mosque

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 8th:  Contentious hearing ends with Somali Islamic Center withdrawing its plan, here.

Update:  I have just heard from the editor of the St. Cloud Times who asked me to remove their copyrighted story.  I am therefore honoring his request.

St. Cloud is a city on the Mississippi River in central Minnesota with a population of about 66,000.  Although no one seems to have the definitive answer (a published number that I could find!), I’m told the Somali population has grown to over 10,000.  Now the Somalis want a mosque, a school and an entire Islamic complex in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

St. Cloud City Hall where citizens can speak up this evening about the Somali mosque and school planned for a residential community.

Organized opposition (see below for their website) has grown and tonight the City Council could vote (after hearing from residents) to support their Planning Commission’s recommendation for the Mosque and School portion of the proposed plan.

This is the news we have removed from the St. Cloud Times  (please follow the link to the story).

Were they planning a city within a city for THEIR people?

One of the first questions I have is where is all the money coming from for this ambitious project?  Saudi Arabia? The city’s Somali population has grown rapidly in only a few years and is largely made up of ‘poor’ “refugees,”  right?  Primary employment for Somalis in the area is in meatpacking.  They can’t possibly be getting rich doing that!

How did the population grow?

And, if you are wondering how so many Somalis got there—thank the US State Department and their contractors, specifically Lutheran Social Service!  St. Cloud had originally been a secondary migration site, but in 2010 the US State Department made it a primary resettlement city, meaning Somalis were being settled there directly from Africa rather than having migrated to St. Cloud from another US city.  See our December 2010 post on the change.

Note the involvement of SASSO (an ECBO like the one in Seattle we told you about yesterday) in St. Cloud.

We have an extensive archive on St. Cloud, click here.  Be sure to take a few minutes to visit this 2010 post about how the Somalis have joined forces with the hard Left to destabilize the community with one of several aims—-to get rid of Rep. Michele Bachmann whose district includes St. Cloud.  She has recently announced her retirement from Congress.

If you want to do something, visit the website for the group (St. Cloud Citizens for Responsible Zoning) opposing the zoning change, here. 

Note they have a petition you can sign.

But, if you really want to do something more permanent—someone needs to thoroughly research how St. Cloud is being changed by Muslim migrants and write a book about it and get as much media attention as possible for its release.  

A friend asked me in an e-mail this morning about how one reaches Members of Congress on what is happening and how they are funding community organizing by Muslim groups, and I told her that they aren’t going to listen until the issue gets to the national stage.  A book would help get it there.  And, hey, the book could include several other small cities being transformed—Lewiston, ME comes to mind!  Update!  how about Ft. Morgan, CO too!

One more thing!  Read this post from 2008 about the stages of the Quiet Jihad in Minnesota.

Just because there aren’t planes flying into buildings doesn’t mean it isn’t jihad.