By Faisal Roble
Editor’s Note: Peaking into the rich WDN archives full of ten years of rare collection of historical pieces, news, commentary, opinion as well as cultural and poetry analysis and writing from across the globe, we come upon a jewel, a rarity, a genius piece of writings, honest and true and free of bias. Indeed, it could be called the past calling with glaring disappointment. We reflect and share with our readers, esteemed and staunch a series of articles from the past.
In light of the winding anti-terrorism conference in Washington DC, true to its custom, WardheerNews once again digs down its archives and finds yet another jewel pertinent to this occasion. More importantly, this piece by our own Faisal Roble touches the discordant relationship between the Somali community and the security sector in this country.
In this persuasive article simultaneously published by the Huffington Post and WerdheerNews, in 2009, at the height of Somali teenagers joining the Al Shabab terror group, Mr. Roble lays the blame on the door steps of both the Somali community and the FBI terrorists. He also raises questions of the total failure of the FBI to identify the infrastructures that enable a Somali teenager to travel from the heartland of America to remote villages in Somalia. This is a timely back-to-future analysis.
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The LA Times (January 18, 2009 – “Young men vanish into Somalia”) and Newsweek (January 24, 2009- Recruited for Jihad)ran articles on the vanishing young Somali American men who are reportedly joining jihadist groups in their home country. According to the LA Times article, “Anguished Minnesota families say a group of seven youths who vanished on Nov. 4 may have gone to join an Islamist militia. They aren’t the first to leave,” but part of a troubling trend of vanishing children.
It is believed that as many as 20 naturalized Somali Americans have recently vanished without any prior knowledge of their parents and joined the more radical Al-Shabab, “the youth” – an Islamist firebrand aligned to al-Qaeda. Al-shabab is an extremist group whose political objective is to establish a non-secular Sharia-based government in Somalia. So far, at least one naturalized American citizen had committed suicide in this past October, killing 30 people in northern Somalia. Most available evidence points at the Al-Shabab group who either train or commit the vanished youth to suicidal acts.
The US government has included Al-shabab to its foreign terrorist list on February 29, 2008, by a directive that the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, signed. The directive designated al-Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
It is disconcerting to learn that both the FBI and the Somali community did little to stop the anguish of boys disappearing from their homes. This is so because there is no meaningful cooperation between FBI and the Somali community either in Minnesota or elsewhere in the country. If any cooperation existed, protecting young Somali-American boys from exploitation by “terror networks” amongst us could have been a lot easier.
Both the FBI and the Somali community are at fault here and deserve serious criticism. For one, the FBI could be blamed for sleeping at the wheel in that it had failed to unveil a “network of terror” that has been transporting high school kids from North American cities to Somalia. It should have taken a little effort on the part of FBI to find out the adults who assist 17-year-old kids from our own American inner cities get their US passports, collect transport allowance amounting $3,000 each, a well arranged rout to Mogadishu, Somalia. But the FBI has royally failed in making any dent on a “network of terror” in our midst.
Some of the challenges the FBI faces include how to unveil the identities of all those adults involved, where they reside, and whether they are Somalis or a combination of Somalis and other nationals. Without witch-hunt, the FBI must seriously investigate the role of local mosques ran by extremist-leaning Islamist activists, if any, and the role they play in organizing infrastructural network for this particular operation. Unveiling these networks is a key component of national security as well as helping our vanishing Somali-American youths.
Read more: Somali American Youth Who Joined Jihadists: FBI Deserves Blame
Faisal Roble
Email:[email protected]
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