The Terrorist Next Door (15 page)

Ask most Americans what they know about Somalia and they will likely respond with three words:
Black Hawk Down
. That 1993 incident, which inspired a bestselling book and a hit Hollywood film, represented one of the most frustrating, painful, and ultimately heroic episodes in the history of the American military. Eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed and more than seventy-five were wounded after a raid to capture two senior henchmen of the Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid turned into a massive firefight that raged through the streets of Mogadishu for nearly an entire day.
¹
Thousands of heavily armed Somalis—including civilians, Aidid militiamen, and yes, Islamic jihadists—cornered a team of U.S. Special Forces soldiers in a cramped section of the city. Meanwhile, Somali militiamen used rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters, and the lifeless bodies of U.S. soldiers were subsequently mutilated and dragged through the streets by a frenzied Somali mob. Broadcast internationally, these images shocked, appalled, and infuriated Americans. Weren't these the same downtrodden, starving Somalis that our entire military presence in Somalia was dedicated to feeding? And this is how we were repaid?

Looking back, perhaps the incident in Somalia should not have been surprising. Over the past thirty years or so, when a majority Muslim country has been in trouble—whether the result of a natural disaster or internal repression or unrest—the United States has frequently lent a hand, financially and often militarily as well. From Lebanon and Somalia, to Kuwait and Iraq, to Bosnia and Afghanistan, from earthquakes in Pakistan and Iran to tsunamis in Indonesia, America—more than any
nation on earth, including the oil-rich Saudi kingdom—has been there to help Muslim peoples.

Our reward has been ever greater anti-American vitriol and increased international terrorism against U.S. interests. And if you think American generosity to Muslim nations will be returned in kind the next time, God forbid, some natural disaster hits our shores, keep dreaming, you foolish infidel. In the eyes of many Muslims, we are “kaffirs”—unclean unbelievers—cursed in this life and the next and not worthy to breathe the same air as Muslims, let alone merit their assistance.

With such a mindset, is it any wonder that Somalis would turn violently against U.S. troops—a Christian crusader force on Muslim land, and a living symbol of the greedy Western oppressor of Islamic and brown-skinned peoples everywhere? This narrative has long been pushed by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, so it also came as no surprise when bin Laden admitted in later interviews to helping fund and train Aidid's forces for their assault against U.S. troops in Mogadishu. In his book
Holy War Inc.
, journalist Peter Bergen, who has met and interviewed bin Laden, writes:

So the Battle of Mogadishu had, in at least some capacity, al-Qaeda fingerprints, according to bin Laden himself. In the end, the greatest impression that al-Qaeda gleaned from the events of October 3 and 4, 1993, was not of the bravery and fighting skills of the U.S. military, epitomized by a group of severely undermanned and outgunned Special Forces soldiers
killing, by most estimates, upwards of 1,000 enemy fighters in a legendary display of battlefield courage and proficiency. No, what bin Laden took from the Battle of Mogadishu, he would later say, was that the United States is a “paper tiger” that would cut and run rather than stand and fight. He was referring to President Clinton's hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia in the wake of the battle. As we'll hear from a former bin Laden associate in a later chapter, al-Qaeda's view of the United States as a paper tiger was later reinforced on several occasions during the Clinton administration, emboldening the terror group as it planned the 9/11 attacks.

To say that Americans were left with a bad taste in their mouths following the Black Hawk Down incident would be an understatement. Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government since 1991, was rightly viewed as a backward, violent, and barbaric place that was hostile to America and to Judeo-Christian, Western values. And today, eighteen years after the Battle of Mogadishu and in the wake of two decades of non-stop war, famine, lawlessness, and crushing poverty, Somalia is frequently referred to as the most dangerous place on earth.

These days, large swaths of the country—including Mogadishu—are ruled by an Islamic terrorist group called al-Shabaab (
The Youth
), which has aligned itself with al-Qaeda and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Like clockwork, al-Shabaab has made sharia the law of much of the land, predictably resulting in stonings, beheadings, amputations, the degradation of women, and bans on music and TV. In addition, the group claimed responsibility for a July 2010 suicide bombing in neighboring Uganda that killed seventy-eight people who were watching a World Cup soccer match.
²
This attack, combined with al-Shabaab leaders' repeated threats against Israel and the United States, shows that the jihadist militia's ambitions now extend outside the Horn of Africa.

Under the Shabaab's guidance, several terrorist training camps are currently operating in Somalia and have attracted scores of Western Muslims, including Americans. The most notorious of these jihadists is
an Islamic convert from small-town Alabama named Omar Hammami. Now known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, Hammami is the son of a Caucasian mother and Syrian father who was raised in his mother's southern Baptist faith until turning to Islam in high school. He grew increasingly radical and ultimately traveled to Somalia in 2006, where he has now become a top military commander and recruiter for al-Shabaab.

His main value to the group, though, is as a propagandist. He has appeared in several slickly produced al-Shabaab videos—including one showing him leading fighters into battle against a hip-hop beat—encouraging Western Muslims to leave the comforts of home behind for the noble, romantic life of a
mujahid
, or holy warrior, in Somalia. Hammami's pale skin, fluent English, and use of hip-hop terminology have had their desired effect, inspiring young Islamists in the U.S. like Zachary Chesser, a 20-year-old white convert to Islam from Virginia who idolized Hammami and re-posted his videos online. Chesser was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport in July 2010 while boarding a plane to Africa to join al-Shabaab.

The jihadi onslaught in Somalia, combined with the continued proliferation of gangs, warlords, and piracy on Somali soil, has created a hellish state of affairs that comes as no surprise to anyone who watched the events of October 1993 unfold. Yet while most Americans decided back then they wanted to stay as far away from Somalia as possible, the U.S. government thought it would be a grand idea to bring a slice of Somalia to the American heartland. Other Western governments have followed in kind, dismissing the obvious perils of allowing waves of largely uneducated, third-world Muslims from a primitive tribal culture to settle in advanced, industrialized, non-Muslim societies.

Over the past twenty years, the Somali population in the United States, Canada, and Europe has gone from virtually zero to being one of the fastest growing immigrant blocs in the West. Their numbers are steadily increasing in far-flung places that, like in the case of Shelbyville, may surprise you. For example, it is no great shock that there are, according to some estimates, up to 250,000 Somalis living in the Islamo-asylum
haven of Great Britain, a country that seems hell-bent on committing national suicide.
³
But who would have predicted back in 1993 that more than 50,000 Somalis would settle in Sweden?
⁴
Or that more than 25,000 Somalis would lay down roots in Norway,
⁵
and another 20,000 in the Netherlands?
⁶
How about close to 17,000 Somalis living in Denmark?
⁷

It seems that frigid, remote Scandinavia—where suicidal, open-door immigration policies for Muslims are every bit as prevalent as in Great Britain—suits warm-blooded Somalis just fine. The same goes for Canada, where close to 40,000 Somalis currently reside (although unofficial estimates place that number much higher).
⁸
And it doesn't get more far-flung than Australia, yet some 20,000 Somalis have settled Down Under in recent years, with 10,000 alone living in Melbourne, a city that boasts one of the world's largest concentrations of Somalis outside of Africa.
⁹

In the United States, where their population now numbers some 200,000 thanks to a State Department refugee resettlement program, Somalis have settled in cities from coast to coast since first arriving in large numbers in 1992.
¹⁰
That they reside in Atlanta, Seattle, San Diego, Boston, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles comes as no great surprise. But the fact that the frozen tundra of Minneapolis/St. Paul has become the undisputed mecca of Somali America, with some 100,000 Somali residents, is telling.
¹¹
So, too, are the large Somali influxes to Portland, Columbus, Cedar Rapids, Nashville, and Lewiston, Maine. These are all small and mid-sized cities that, until recently, had little experience with immigration, let alone of the third-world, Islamic variety—that is, until our government's irrepressible social engineers decided it would be prudent not only to inundate traditional “gateway” cities like New York and Los Angeles with Muslim immigrants, but to spread the wealth, as their current boss might say, to flyover country.

As a result, a southern, Bible Belt city like Nashville has become a kind of mini-Ellis Island, with tens of thousands of Somalis and Iraqi Kurds being directed there by the State Department in recent years. This has spawned a new reality that has “culture clash” written all over it.
Government officials, however, don't bother taking into account pesky distractions like the potential for social unrest or refugees' lack of adaptability when deciding who to resettle and where to resettle them. Their single-minded goal seems to be placing Muslim refugees in as much of the United States as possible, encompassing every region of the country, regardless of its predominant ethnic, religious, or economic makeup. Ironically, in its quest to bring sharia to America, the Muslim Brotherhood pursues this very immigration strategy.

This means no longer will large, diverse metropolitan areas like New York City or Los Angeles, with long histories of absorbing immigrants, be the default landing points for government-sponsored Islamic refugees. While some may settle in large cities initially, after a few months in America they are free to move around and resettle wherever they please. These “secondary migrations” have seen droves of Somalis pick up and move, suddenly and en masse, to sleepy small towns like Shelbyville and Lewiston. They are often drawn by work opportunities and cheap housing, which sounds like the American dream in action—until you see the statistics showing that Somali unemployment and illiteracy rates are through the roof across the United States, with taxpayers footing the bills for the inevitable welfare checks.

In March 2009 Senate testimony about al-Shabaab recruitment in America, the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, Andrew Liepman, painted a bleak picture of Somali prospects in the United States:

Hello, Shelbyville! Liepman continued,

For the State Department, the solution to this failed sociology experiment is obvious: more Somalis, of course. While State may not control secondary migration, it does decide who gets to enter the country since it, after all, runs the refugee resettlement program. The way it all works is quite simple. The refugees are chosen from UN camps in their home countries—UN involvement being the first red flag that something is not right with the program. They undergo four days of “cultural orientation” and are then on their way to America. Just like that. This means, in some cases, that a nomadic Somali Muslim tribesman who has never seen a toilet, a light bulb, or running water is suddenly plopped down into middle America and expected to make do for himself. The federal government contracts with social welfare groups like Catholic Charities at the local level to help the refugees find apartments and jobs and generally ease their transition. But after a few months, they're on their own and free to move.