US Somalis fear backlash over terrorist attack

When the news hit the US East Coast that terrorists had attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last weekend, few would have anticipated that the events unfolding in faraway Kenya would have a Twin Cities angle.

But a tweet, whose origin is unclear, stirred curiosity when it claimed that among the dozen or so al-Shabaab attackers in Nairobi were a Minneapolis and a St Paul resident of Somali origin.

By Sunday evening, cable news channels had dispatched teams to Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota. A week later, the news crews have left and the Westgate siege has ended, but life for the Somali community in the Twin Cities may never be the same again.  

“We have been under attack by the media and law enforcement agencies who have been going around asking questions. It is traumatising and unsettling to be under such scrutiny and harassment,” Mr Abdi Noor, a Kenyan Somali who lives  in St Paul, the city across the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, told the Sunday Nation.

Community leaders said on Wednesday that they feared a backlash after the Nairobi attack that left at least 70 people dead. But they acknowledged that al-Shabaab has in the past recruited from the Somali-American community in Minnesota, the largest in the United States.

US media reports indicate that at least 20 young Somali men from the state have since 2007 travelled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. One was a suicide bomber who died in Mogadishu. The Minnesota Somali community has been the focus of a federal investigation ever since.

The first group of recruits left the state for Somalia between October and December 2007, according to intelligence and court documents. As of May this year US authorities had charged 18 people with providing al-Shabaab with material support in the form of cash, airline tickets or arranging fake itineraries for recruits headed to Somalia training camps.

According to Reuters, eight were convicted while the remaining 10 either became fugitives or had been killed in Somalia where at least two men blew themselves up in attacks.

Last week, Congressman Peter King of New York, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News that US citizens were among those involved in the Nairobi attack. This was later echoed by Kenya’s Foreign secretary Amina Mohammed who said “two or three” American teenagers from “Minnesota and one other place” were thought to be involved.  

King called al-Shabaab “an extremely deadly organisation – very well trained – and it’s one of the only al-Qaeda affiliates which actively recruited here in the United States.” he said at least 40 to 50 Somali-Americans have gone to Somalia to be trained.

“It’s important right now for the FBI to go to communities such as Minneapolis and St Paul, to Portland, Maine — this is where the Somali-American community is based.”

AMERICAN CONNECTION

Mr Omar Jamal, an activist and former head of the Somali Justice Advocacy Centre in Minneapolis, says every time al-Shabaab causes such death and destruction, people are always keen to find a Somali- American connection.

“This attack has generated a real concern among the Somali community here and fear of backlash,” he told journalists.

Concerns have also emerged that those intending to travel outside America, including going to Mecca for the Muslim pilgrimage, may undergo added scrutiny and harassment. 

“All the media attention is making things very bad for us, and it is bound to get worse if the FBI can prove that indeed some men from here were involved in the Westgate attack,” said Mr Jamal Mohammed.

It’s partly because of these fears that other Kenyans living in Minnesota on Wednesday came together to give reassurances to the local Somali community. In addition to Somalia, major ethnic Somali communities are found in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.  

 “To see this act of unspeakable terror upon our citizens reminds us all that we live in a world where others seek to destroy our way of life,” Pastor Zipporah Bogonko told the Star Tribune.

ERODE GAINS

However, some fear that suspicion of links with al-Shabaab may erode gains made by Somalis in the US.

“A blooming presence of the Somali community in Minneapolis held economic promise for young Somalis. However, sharp international scrutiny may turn these fortunes into a disaster,” says Mr Jacktone Ambuka, a Kenyan scholar in State College, Pennsylvania.

Figures from the 2010 census indicate that Minnesota’s Somali population has increased in the last two decades to more than 50,000. This, according to Prof Abdi Samatar of the University of Minnesota, may be in part due to generous social services, decent schools and a low cost of living.

The fact that Minnesota is seen as a focus of al-Shabaab recruiting could be due to the size of the community, Prof Samatar explains.

The academic says some in the Somali community become alienated and disillusioned after failing to fit into the American system. He suggests that more resources are needed to create opportunities for young men who might be soft targets for recruiters.

Al-Shabaab has also been known to recruit other Americans outside the Somali community. A prominent one was Alabama-born Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki (“the American”), who played a prominent role in the terror group until he was killed this month in a power struggle in Somalia. US intelligence had singled him out as a key recruiter and fundraiser.  

WHITE WIDOW

Britain has also not been spared. Samantha Lewthwaite, nicknamed the “White Widow”, from Buckinghamshire, is suspected of involvement in multiple terror attacks. Investigators are yet to confirm if she was involved in the Westgate attack. Ms Lewthwaite is the widow of London 7/7 bomber Germain Lindsay, who died in the 2005 attack.

Germaine Grant, another British citizen from East London who is alleged to be a member of al-Shabaab, is facing terrorism-related charges in a Mombasa court.

But the full horror of extremism played out in London in May when Nigerian-born Michal Adebolajo and an accomplice hacked off-duty soldier Lee Rigby to death, in a gory incident captured on video.

It later emerged that Kenyan authorities had in 2010 arrested Mr Adebolajo on the border with Somalia and charged him in court. He was released in unclear circumstances, supposedly after the intervention of British intelligence officials.      

In June, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an investigation into the reasons for “an extremist ideology that perverts and warps Islam to create a culture of victimhood and justified violence”. Focus was to be turned to universities, prisons, Muslim charities and the Internet.