In a rugged corner of Minneapolis, youth try to reclaim their heritage
Friday, November 27, 2009
Barely a block from the Mississippi River in Minneapolis sits a neighborhood Mark Twain could not have imagined.
Men with henna-streaked beards and women in full-body hijabs stream past the Maa shaa Allah Restaurant, the Alle Aamin Coffee Shop, the Kaah Express Money Wiring stall, the storefront al-Qaaniteen Mosque and other similar structures in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.
"When I came here as a refugee in 1995, there were just a few hundred Somalis, and we were very alone," Adar Kahin, 48, a famous singer back home who volunteers at a local community center, said this week. "Now everyone is here. It's like being back in Mogadishu. That's what we call it, Little Mogadishu."
This corner of Minneapolis — the de facto capital of the Somali diaspora in America — presents many faces: hope and renewal, despair and fear. But more than anything, particularly for the young, it is a place of transition and searching for identity.
"Keeping an identity in this situation is really hard," said Saeed Fahia, who arrived in 1997 and heads a confederation of Somali organizations. "In Somali culture, all tradition is taught when you are 9 years old, and you learn all about your clan and subclan for 25 generations. There's no mechanism to learn that here and no context."
For the FBI, Little Mogadishu has become the center of an investigation into a recruiting network that sent young men to fight in Somalia for a radical Islamist group known as al-Shabaab, or "the Youth."
Investigators say poverty, gang wars and public housing produced one of the largest militant operations in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Federal officials announced terrorism charges Monday against eight local men, seven of whom remain at large. That brought the total to 14 Minneapolis men who have been indicted or pleaded guilty this year for allegedly indoctrinating, recruiting or training local youths to join a Muslim militia waging war in Somalia against the U.S.-backed government.
Family members say several young men from Minneapolis have died in Somalia in the past 13 months, including one whom the FBI believes was a suicide bomber. About 20 local youths are believed to have taken up arms there.
Fahia speculated that those who went to Somalia "are trying to reclaim their identity. They're trying to find a mission in life. They're trying to find out where they come from and who they are."
Those who left to fight prompt no unified response from those who stayed.
Outside the Brian Coyle Community Center, five young men who came from Somalia as toddlers huddled in black hooded sweat shirts. They shared smokes and spoke of those who had joined the jihad, or holy war.
"Some of them felt America is the land of the devil," said Said Ali, a jobless 20-year-old. "They were losing their culture, their language and their religion. They've got family there. They feel at home."
Ali Mohamed, also 20 and unemployed, jumped in.
"These guys are blowing up women and kids," he said. "That ain't right."
Minnesota long has put out a welcome mat for war refugees. The first wave of Somalis arrived after 1992, when the country descended into a clan-based civil war that still rages. More came to Minneapolis each year, and family members soon followed under U.S. law. Others moved here from other U.S. cities.
Many in the community started families, opened businesses and achieved financial stability.
They wired money to relatives back home, followed Somali news in ethnic media and, in some cases, invested in Somali businesses even as their children became American doctors and lawyers.
Others became mired in poverty. Many of the women were illiterate, and old men who had herded goats struggled. Unemployment and school dropout rates soared. So did perceptions of intolerance.
"We're an obvious minority here and have a different religion and culture," said Abdiaziz Warsame, 37, an interpreter and youth counselor who has worked with such local gangs as the Somali Hard Boys and RPGs. "So people feel a high level of racism."
Riverside Plaza, with its public housing towers, looms over Little Mogadishu, stuck between Interstates 35W and 94 and the Mississippi River. The grim concrete structures house more than 4,500 people, most of them Somali.
The Brian Coyle center is the logistical heart of the community. Its food pantry serves more than 1,000 families per month, and various groups help with food stamps, legal services and other needs.
But its cultural focus is the mosques and coffee shops. The young have other avenues, including the Internet.
Some members of the group that went to Somalia were said to be followers of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim firebrand who preaches on the Internet about the need to fight for Islam.
Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, had exchanged e-mails with al-Awlaki, who is based in Yemen.
Omar Jamal, director of the St. Paul-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said al-Awlaki's sermons inspired several of the youths who joined al-Shabaab.
Al-Awlaki has praised the militia, which U.S. officials say is allied with al-Qaida. "They fell under his spell of influence," Jamal said.
But in the flux of Little Mogadishu, not everyone hears the words of jihad as clearly as others.
Outside the community center, the group of young men continued their discussion about the fighters who went to Somalia.
Although Noor Bosir, 18, was close to Burhan Hasan, one of the youths killed last summer in Somalia, Bosir can't understand the alienation many young men here feel.
"All these guys who left, we looked up to," Bosir said. "When we came here to play basketball, they would go to the mosque. And somehow, they got brainwashed. And now they're dead."
Source: LA Times, Nov 27, 2009