{"id":448890,"date":"2011-06-27T16:49:47","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T16:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/27\/my-encounter-with-american-somali-jihadist-in-nairobi\/"},"modified":"2011-06-27T16:49:47","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T16:49:47","slug":"my-encounter-with-american-somali-jihadist-in-nairobi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/27\/my-encounter-with-american-somali-jihadist-in-nairobi\/","title":{"rendered":"My Encounter With American- Somali Jihadist in Nairobi"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nairobi Star<\/a> (Nairobi)<\/p>\n

Fatuma Noor<\/p>\n

27 June 2011<\/p>\n

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Many Somali refugees would die to have the supposedly good life abroad. However, some young men from the Diaspora are now returning to fight for Al Shabaab in Somalia, rated as one of the most dangerous countries on earth. Our investigative writer FATUMA NOOR recently met with some of these Mujahideens from the US, Canada and Sweden and this is her gripping report.<\/em><\/p>\n

It all started when a mother called to inquire about the whereabouts of her 18-year-old son Nuno Ahmed whom she believed was in Nairobi and had plans of going to Mogadishu. “He left with his three friends and l have just found out that they are going back home,” she told me when she called from her home in Minnesota, US. “I would rather he is arrested and stays in a Kenyan prison than let him go back to Mogadishu and die there,” she says as if pleading for my help.<\/p>\n

She said Nuno got in touch with his family and assured them that he was fine and they should not worry. “He would say things like, we should not worry and he would be back if God had intended it to happen,” said a worried Sophia Ahmed who is Nuno’s mother.<\/p>\n

When l eventually track down Nuno, I find him at a hotel in Eastleigh, where he and other young men from the US have been hiding out since their arrival. After much persuasion, Nuno agrees to meet with me at a restaurant in the city centre, Nairobi.<\/p>\n

Like most of the young Somalis who have grown up in the West, Nuno speaks very little Somali. We end up conversing in English, his heavily inflected with an American twang. “Your mother tells me that you have plans of going to Mogadishu, Why?” I ask Nuno once we are done with the small talk.”Young people like me are needed there to protect our country. I can do something important over there compared to what I was doing back in the US,” he says.<\/p>\n

The five foot six inch tall, slender, 18-year-old Nuno is a far cry from the media’s stereotype of a terrorist. His trendy clothes, leather jacket and hip sneakers do not differentiate him from the many young men passing by outside the coffee shop where we are meeting. “This is my choice and no-one has made me come here as my mother would like to believe. They have lived in Minnesota for too long and now they want to forget about home. But not me,” he says quietly and with deep conviction.<\/p>\n

Later during another meeting in Eastleigh, Nuno introduces me to four of his friends- all from Minneapolis and all in the last stages of finalising their plans of travelling to Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

Abikar Mohamed’s story<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It feels good to be back. We are so used to life back in the US that we are forgetting where we were born. Eastleigh reminds me so much of Mogadishu!” says 23-year-old Abikar Mohamed.<\/p>\n

The last time Abikar was in Mogadishu was when he was seven years old. His family fled to Kenya after the fall of the Siad Barre government, languished in the Dadaab refugee camp before they were relocated to the US. It was his first time back to Kenya since those days when he was living here as a refugee. “We are all here to defend what we believe in. We are all here to protect Islam and we are going to do that at all cost,” says Abikar to partially explain why he and the others in the group would surrender a life in the US where many in the refugee camps can only dream about.<\/p>\n

This is the same reason the others give when asked why they would leave their country of asylum to fight for a home majority of them know little about. “Moving to the US was a dream for us. I mean we had nothing left back home. The camp wasn’t the best place to live and after finally getting repatriated to the US, it meant a better future and life for all of us,” says Abikar who speaks with a strong American accent.<\/p>\n

Once in the US, Abikar and his family lived on government support and assistance for eight years before they were finally granted citizenship. Abikar and his siblings got citizenship as his parents continue to live as refugees. “This was it for me. I thought I would enjoy the same treatment and rights as any other US citizen, but that was never to happen,” he said. Abikar says it was impossible to get a job or even a scholarship to further his education after high school. “In as much as we are citizens, we are never treated equally. What is the use of granting us citizenship if they don’t treat us equally?” he says. Abikar explains that he finished his high school at Sixth Street, Minnesota, and emerged among the top five students. “All the rest got scholarships to go to college; most of them did not deserve because they come from rich families. I was in need and I did not get it even when it was clear I deserved the scholarship,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said this incident opened his eyes to the flagrant discrimination that the system meted out to Somali Americans and other refugee minorities. “I even went with my family to school to ask why I was denied the scholarship but they did not have any real reason for denying me the opportunity,” said Abikar. Abikar had wanted to go to college to study literature, become a lecturer and also a writer. This will not happen now.<\/p>\n

On their arrival from the US, the four lived at different hotels and guest houses in Eastleigh as they waited to be joined by other young men, most of them in their late teens, who were coming from different parts of the world.<\/p>\n

All of them had the same agenda: to travel to Somalia and join the Al Shabaab- the militia group loosely associated with Al Qaeda which is fighting to remove the transitional federal government (TFG) which they believe is a western imposition.<\/p>\n

Al Shabaab seized control of much of Somalia in 2006 until Ethiopian forces at the request of the TFG and with the backing of the US invaded the country. The militia group was pushed out but has since been fighting to regain control and oust the government. This ‘invasion’ prompted the political awakening among young Somalis in the Diaspora.c”We know there is another group from Minneapolis, California and Minnesota but we have also been told others are coming from Norway and Sweden,” Abikar and his colleagues tell me.<\/p>\n

Later that day, at 4pm, Nuno Ahmed calls saying all his friends had arrived and they were agreeable to an interview.<\/p>\n

At the agreed venue, I meet up with Nuno and nine other young men- the youngest at 17 while the oldest was 24 years old. All of them are convinced that their reasons for making the perilous journey to Somalia are right.<\/p>\n

None of them were born in the US or any of the European capitals from where they are from. They started their journey as refugees from Mogadishu and spent several years at the Daadab refugee camp, established in the early 1990s to take the waves of Somali refugees who streamed into Kenya after the fall of the Siad Barre government and the start of the civil war which has continued since then.<\/p>\n

Abdirahman Gullet’s story<\/p>\n

“From 2008 when Burhan went back to Mogadishu, we have all been seen as terror suspects. Police regularly storm our houses and conduct searches without permission,” says 19-year-old Abdirahman Gullet.<\/p>\n

Abdirahman recalled several instances when he was walking on the street and had been forcefully taken away by men claiming to be FBI. The men would interrogate him for several hours about what he knew about Al Shabaab and demand to know whether he was a member.<\/p>\n

“It never crossed my mind to join up with the Al Shabaab. Even when Burhan went, I thought it was a stupid thing he did. Now I understand why. I have had first and experience,” he said.<\/p>\n

Burhan Hussein Ahmed, known as Little Bashir, was only 17 when he disappeared from his home in Minneapolis in 2008 and in November that year, called his family to say he was in Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

The family received a call from Mogadishu informing them that he had died. The family still believes that Burhan was murdered by the Al Shabaab when he refused to carry out a suicide bombing.<\/p>\n

A month earlier, 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed became the first known American suicide bomber when he drove a car loaded with explosives into a government compound in Puntland in October 2008 killing 30 people. He had left Minneapolis for Saudi Arabia before making his way to Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

Shirwa was one of 20 Somali Americans who left Minneapolis for Somalia in a trend which became the focus of a large terrorism investigation in the US. Some of these fighters are suspected to have made their way to Mogadishu through Kenya. “We came to Nairobi just like any American citizen. None of the officials at the airport suspected anything,” Abdirahman said.<\/p>\n

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\nMy Encounter With American- Somali Jihadist in Nairobi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nairobi Star (Nairobi) Fatuma Noor 27 June 2011 Many Somali refugees would die to have the supposedly good life abroad. However, some young men from the Diaspora are now returning to fight for Al Shabaab in Somalia, rated as one of the most dangerous countries on earth. Our investigative writer FATUMA NOOR recently met with some of these Mujahideens from the US, Canada and Sweden and this is her gripping report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":413342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-448890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"yoast_head":"\nMy Encounter With American- Somali Jihadist in Nairobi - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/27\/my-encounter-with-american-somali-jihadist-in-nairobi\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"My Encounter With American- Somali Jihadist in Nairobi - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Nairobi Star (Nairobi) Fatuma Noor 27 June 2011 Many Somali refugees would die to have the supposedly good life abroad. 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