Category: Somalia

Thinking About Mogadishu

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Last night, I was inspired to watch Black Hawk Down again, although I’ve seen it many times before, including during its original 2001 release. Perhaps you’ve forgotten this from 2022:

Staff Sgt. Robert McCain wanted to be in the Army for as long as his mother can remember. But McCain remembers exactly when he knew he’d be a soldier someday: The first time he watched “Black Hawk Down.”
“I was like nine and I saw that movie — which you should not show a nine-year-old that movie — and I wanted to join the Army from then on,” he told Task & Purpose on Sunday.
Not only did McCain go on to be an infantryman in the Army like he’d dreamed, but over the weekend he competed in the 2022 Best Ranger Competition, a brutal battle of grit and skill among elite Airborne Ranger-qualified service members. . . .

That story still makes me smile. The intensity of that movie, which I took Bob and his twin brother Jim to see when it first came out, sort of caught me by surprise at the time. I grew up watching war movies like The Longest Day, and the TV series Combat, and playing with G.I. Joes, and so the thought of taking my kids to see a war movie seemed like a great idea. The graphic realism of Black Hawk Down was, as Bob later told that reporter, maybe too much for a 9-year-old, even if it did inspire his future career ambitions. In case you haven’t subscribed to my Substack newsletter yet, you may not understand why I bring that up now, given that I start today by talking about the war in Ukraine:

How closely have you followed the war in Ukraine lately? There was as a time, in 2022 and 2023, when I regularly kept track of developments in that war, but then it settled down into a de facto stalemate — trench warfare, with little change in the front lines — and I lost interest. Most Americans were even less interested in the war than I was, except perhaps as a partisan talking point for the kind of people with Ukrainian flags in their social-media profiles. After the dramatic events of early 2022, when Ukraine defeated the initial Russian effort to capture Kyiv, there just wasn’t enough battlefield news to maintain public interest. Incidentally, nobody has any idea how many casualties there have been in the Russia-Ukraine war. Propaganda by both sides has made it impossible to ascertain how many troops have been killed and wounded, although it seems certain that the death toll is in the tens of thousands.
Just this past week, however, I happened to see a report that Ukraine has driven the Russians out of Kupyansk, a city straddling the Oskil River, nearly 400 miles east of Kyiv. . . .

You can read the whole thing at Substack, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so now. Also, please pray for peace.



 

Red States, Blue Cities: Minnesota, Somalia and ‘The Great Replacement’

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In an appearance Friday on Fox News, Trump strategist Stephen Miller said the Somali welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota could end up “being the greatest financial fraud scandal in American history.” The complete scale of this fraud has yet to be fully calculated, but the total amount certainly appears to be in the billions of dollars. The underlying question is why and how the situation in Minnesota developed, and was allowed to continue for so long, and the basic answer is Democrats — or, as they call themselves in Minnesota, the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL).

The one thing we know about Democrats is that they crave political power like a junkie craves heroin. They have no actual principles other than winning elections. If winning an election requires them to appear “moderate,” Democratic candidates will espouse middle-of-the-road views, and even position themselves to the right of their Republican opponents. Such was the case, for example, during much of Joe Biden’s career; seeing which way the political winds were blowing in the 1990s, Biden vehemently expressed “tough-on-crime” views that make Donald Trump seem soft by comparison. Biden also talked tough on immigration back in the day, and this brings us to the question of why Democrats are now rallying in defense of illegal aliens, including millions who flooded into the country during Biden’s failed White House tenure. Quite simply, this was about Democrats importing future Democratic voters.

This is the presidential election map of Minnesota in 2020, when Biden got about 1.7 million votes (52%) to Trump’s approximately 1.5 million votes (45%). Biden won 13 counties, while Trump won 74 counties. And the important point is that Biden’s winning margin came entirely from Minneapolis-St. Paul. The official statewide vote total was 3,277,171 and nearly one-third of those votes (1,051,946) came from Hennepin County (Minneapolis) and Ramsey County (St. Paul). Biden got more than 70% of the vote in those two counties, with 532,623 votes in Hennepin and 211,620 votes in Ramsey — a combined 744,243 votes in the Twin Cities. These votes were 43% of Biden’s statewide total, and his total vote in Hennepin/Ramsey was more than three times larger than his statewide margin (233,012 votes) over Trump. Outside of Hennepin and Ramsey counties, there were 2,225,225 voters cast; in the non-Twin Cities counties, Trump got 1,200,716 votes (54%) to Biden’s 972,834 (44%). Even winning the rest of the state by a 10-point margin isn’t enough to overcome the Democratic urban vote in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

What is true in Minnesota is true of many other similar states, including all the “blue wall” states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) where Trump edged out Kamala Harris in 2024. Philadelphia dominates statewide politics in Pennsylvania, as Detroit does Michigan and Milwaukee does Wisconsin. In almost any other state where Democrats are at least competitive at the statewide level, their hopes for victory rest on racking up lopsided margins in urban areas, sufficient to overcome the Republican advantage among suburban and rural voters.

Red States, Blue Cities — that’s the fundamental reality of politics in America today, and it explains why Democrats have dug in their heels to prevent the deportation of illegal immigrants. Because liberals have lower birth rates than do conservatives, Democrat-controlled jurisdictions would be losing population (and hence, political influence) compared to Republican-controlled jurisdictions. Because immigrant voters historically favor Democrats, the importation of masses of foreigners helps Democrats overcome the advantage Republicans hold among native-born Americans. Because the presidency and the Senate are both determined by statewide votes, and because the census redistributes House seats (and thus, Electoral College votes) every 10 years according to the population of states, demographics is destiny in American politics.

Minnesota hosts the largest Somali population in the U.S., with recent estimates placing the number of Somali residents around 80,000 to over 100,000, primarily concentrated in the Twin Cities area, making it a significant cultural and political force in the state.

That’s the AI summary from Google, and while 80,000 may seem a trifling number in a state where more than 3 million votes are cast in presidential election years, their numbers are sufficient to ensure Rep. Ilhan Omar’s election to Congress. The revelation that Somalis in Minnesota were engaged in a gigantic fraud — potentially “the greatest financial fraud scandal in American history,” as Miller said — casts a new light on the policy and politics of immigration. As I wrote about the next mayor of New York City last week for The American Spectator:

Analysis of polls in the mayoral election showed a curious anomaly. Among those born in the United States, only 31 percent supported Mamdani, who was favored by 62 percent of immigrant voters. After Mamdani won, exit polls showed that he got only 34 percent of the vote among those who had been born in New York City, but 83 percent among those who had lived in the city for five years or less. It’s said that “The Great Replacement” is a racist conspiracy theory, but in New York, it’s an accurate description of the Democratic Party strategy for victory — drive out the native-born population and replace them with immigrants who vote for Democrats.

In other words, just because it’s a “racist conspiracy theory” doesn’t mean it’s not actually happening. The nature of American politics, where Democrats use urban votes to obtain power in ways that negate the political influence of non-urban voters, makes this a legitimate concern when Democrats then use immigration policy to add to their urban constituency. The fact that these new-minted Democratic voters may also be swindling billions of dollars from taxpayers is just toxic icing on the poisonous cake, and there are still five A’s in “RAAAAACIST!”



 

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Is the ‘Baseless Rumor’ True? Why Don’t Journalists Do Some Actual Journalism?

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The question of whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) married her brother is an interesting question and, earlier this year at CPAC, I covered a press conference by bloggers who said the answer is “yes.” The persistent accusations that her marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a fraud finally prompted the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to investigate, and they could not rule out the possibility that Elmi is indeed her brother:

New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.
Omar has denied the allegations in the past, dismissing them as “baseless rumors” first raised in an online Somali politics forum and championed by conservative bloggers during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota House. But she said little then or since about Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the former husband who swept into her life in 2009 before a 2011 separation.
The questions surfaced again this month in a state probe of campaign finance violations showing that Omar filed federal taxes in 2014 and 2015 with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while she was still legally married to but separated from Elmi.
Although she has legally corrected the discrepancy, she has declined to say anything about how or why it happened.
The new documents also detail the Omar campaign’s efforts to keep the story of her marriage to Elmi out of the press, arguing that detailed coverage would legitimize the accusations and invade her privacy.

Well, if the Star-Tribune could find nothing to debunk the “baseless rumors,” how do we know they’re baseless? And the investigation raises questions about the purpose of this marriage, which appears to have existed only as a matter of paperwork and might have constituted fraud.

Yesterday, Donald Trump challenged reporters to pursue this story:

President Trump on Wednesday repeated the claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar committed immigration fraud by illegally marrying her brother.
Trump made the statement while responding to a question from a reporter from the One America News Network before leaving for a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina.
Reporter Emerald Robinson asked the president “if the administration was looking into possible immigration fraud committed by Ilhan Omar for possibly marrying her brother.”
“Well, there’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it,” Trump said.
“I hear she was married to her brother. You’re asking me a question about it. I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s somebody who will be looking at that,” he added.
Trump’s statement comes amid his ongoing feud with a group of freshman congresswomen known as “the Squad,” which includes Omar. . . .
The claim that Omar illegally wed her brother so he could gain American citizenship first surfaced on conservative blogs in 2016, when she was running for the Minnesota state legislature.
In a statement that year, Omar called it “baseless rumors” that “are absolutely false and ridiculous.”
Omar then said she had married her current partner, Ahmed Hirsi, in the eyes of her Muslim faith in 2002 — but never legally married him. Their partnership ended in 2008.
Omar then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, but that union ended in 2011, according to her statement.
“Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive,” she said at the time.

The question is not whether the “insinuations” are “offensive,” but whether they are true, and why couldn’t the staff of the Star-Tribune determine this question one way or the other? It would seem simple enough: Who are Ahmed Nur Said Elmi’s parents? But good luck finding a definite answer to that question, because Somalia is notoriously a failed state, destroyed by civil war and Islamic fundamentalism, and a reporter can’t simply book a flight to Mogadishu, stroll into a government office and walk out with a Xerox copy of a birth certificate for Ahmed Elmi — or Ilhan Omar, for that matter. We are told that she was born in 1982, and that her mother died when she was 2, and while I’m not saying I doubt any of the specifics about her early life in Somali as related by Wikipedia, I’d suspect that finding documentary evidence to verify these details would be difficult. What we know is that she arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1992, when Somalia was being torn apart by rival warlords, and that her subsequent career as a politician puts her on the extreme left-wing fringe of American politics. But let us ask a very simple question: Where is Ahmed Nur Said Elmi now?

If reporters want to debunk the “baseless rumors,” wouldn’t Ahmed Elmi be the obvious source to put an end to this controversy?

Go ask Brian Stelter or Jake Tapper: Where is Ahmed Elmi? Why can’t CNN reporters find this mystery man who once married Ilhan Omar? Wouldn’t it be the biggest scoop of the year if CNN could locate this man, interview him on camera and thereby vindicate Ilhan Omar’s innocence?

What explains the mainstream media’s lack of curiosity about Ahmed Elmi? Why isn’t a crew from 60 Minutes doggedly trying to find him? Doesn’t it seem like these journalists don’t want to know the answer?

Or perhaps they’ve just been “hypnotized.” Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.



 

Democrat Ilhan Omar Sure Hates Jews — and the Media Sure Are Protecting Her

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Ace of Spades calls attention to the fact that CNN “reporter” Manu Raju is a Trump-hating partisan Democrat propagandist, and one of the examples of Raju and CNN’s dishonesty is how they’re making excuses for Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism:

Freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is defending her controversial views on Israel as they come under scrutiny in Washington, telling CNN that “it’s not surprising” her positions are generating attention and that she finds it “exciting” to be sparking debate.
“It’s not surprising. I think it is actually exciting because we are finally able to have conversations that we weren’t really willing to,” Omar told CNN on Tuesday. “It is really important for us to get a different lens about what peace in that region could look like and the kind of difficult conversations we need to have about allies.”
Omar along with Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, are indeed changing the conversation on Capitol Hill over the United States’ long-standing relationship with Israel by speaking out critically against the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians.

Yes, her “controversial views” are “changing the conversation,” so now Jew-hating conspiracy theories are OK, according to CNN.

Monday’s press release from the ADL:

The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) today called on the leadership of the House of Representatives to take action in response to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s statements yesterday suggesting that Jewish influence and money was the reason for strong bipartisan support for Israel.
On Sunday night, Rep. Omar tweeted, “it’s all about the Benjamins baby” in response to a tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald saying that “it’s stunning how much time U.S. political leaders spend defending a foreign nation,” referring to Israel (“Benjamins” is slang for 100-dollar bills). Later, when asked via Twitter by another journalist who she thought was paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, Rep. Omar responded, “AIPAC.”
“As Americans and Jews, we expect our politicians to condemn bigotry, not to fuel it. Words matter. At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S. and abroad, Rep. Omar is promoting the ugly, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews have an outsized influence over politics. The notion that wealthy Jews are controlling the government is a longstanding anti-Semitic trope and one of the pillars of modern anti-Semitism, a retread of ideas spread by bigots from David Duke to Louis Farrakhan. As the people’s House, the House of Representatives must not tolerate any bigotry against any community in our nation. We call on the House leadership to take immediate action, so that the message is clear: anti-Semitism will not be tolerated,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of ADL.
“Unfortunately, making insensitive statements toward the Jewish community is not new for Rep. Omar. These tweets are part of a disturbing pattern of behavior that must end. The Congresswoman needs to understand that these comments promote dangerous stereotypes and are hurtful to her Jewish constituents and Jewish-Americans throughout the country,” Greenblatt continued.

Omar’s anti-Jewish attitudes were notorious before she was elected to Congress, so much so that when she served in the Minnesota state legislature, local Jews — including Democratic state Sen. Ron Latz — tried to have what they called an “intervention” with Omar:

“We wanted to reach out to her,” Latz recalled. “We were a bit troubled about several things she had said.”
Among their concerns was a 2012 tweet in which Omar wrote: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” The language evokes an anti-Semitic trope of Jews as practicers of some type of sorcery that allows them to control others. . . .
“Over the course of about two hours [Latz said], we shared with her our concerns for things, including language that has references and meanings beyond just the meanings of words. Tropes, dog whistles — call them what you will. We explained to her how hurtful, and factually inaccurate, they were.
“Most of us came out of that conversation very troubled by the answers we received. I was not convinced she was going to give a balanced approach to policy in the Middle East, and I was not convinced … where her heart is on these things.
“But we were glad she met with us, and we were hopeful she would be more careful about what she tweeted and she said if she got elected. Frankly, I was hopeful she’d grow in office a little, and understand the media platform she has. Instead, she keeps repeating her mistakes, if you can call them that.”

That’s just it, isn’t it? Her offensive statements aren’t “mistakes,” but expressions of her sincere hatred of Jews. Because she is a Democrat, and because media organizations like CNN are acting as partisan propagandists for Democrats, Omar receives sympathetic media treatment in a way that would not be extended to any Republican who repeatedly engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is one thing, as Latz said, to criticize Israel or to question U.S. policy in the Middle East, but Omar’s rhetoric goes far beyond that. And although Democrat leaders in Congress forced Omar to issue a half-hearted “apology,” she is still scheduled next month to address a $500-a-ticket “fundraiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a terror-tied organization that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.” Where is the accountability?



 

The Intifada at Ohio State Proves the Immigration-Terrorism Connection

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William Jacobson describes Monday’s Islamic terrorist attack in Columbus in which a “Somali legal immigrant rammed his car into pedestrians on the sidewalk, then attacked with what is variously described as a butcher knife or machete.” NBC News reports:

An Ohio State University student posted a rant shortly before he plowed a car into a campus crowd and stabbed people with a butcher knife in an ambush that ended when a police officer shot him dead, a law enforcement official said.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, wrote on what appears to be his Facebook page that he had reached a “boiling point,” made a reference to “lone wolf attacks” and cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah [community]. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said. . . .
A police officer was on the scene within a minute and killed the assailant, likely saving lives, university officials said. “He engaged the suspect and eliminated the threat,” OSU Police Chief Craig Stone said.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News that Artan was a Somali refugee who left his homeland with his family in 2007, lived in Pakistan and then came to the United States in 2014 as a legal permanent resident.

Further analysis from Professor Jacobson:

When I heard the story of the car ramming and knife attack, my mind immediately went back to the recent so-called Knife Intifada in Israel, in which car rammings played a prominent role . . .
The Ohio State attacked reminded me in particular of [an October 2015] attack where a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem rammed a bus stop with his car then got out with a meat cleaver and started slashing a man. It took several shots from a passerby to stop the attack . . . .

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.) President-elect Trump repeatedly during the campaign referenced the connection between immigration and the threat of Islamic terrorism. For this willingness to speak the unpleasant truth, our President-elect was condemned as a bigot by Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself). Let the record show that President-elect Trump was right, and his critics were wrong. And don’t forget:

Women’s Studies Professor Accuses
Trump Supporters of ‘Terrorism’

Would anyone care to remind Professor Siobhan Senier of her words?



 

Did Terrorists Defeat Navy SEALs?

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That’s what an article in the Christian Science Monitor suggests:

A commando unit from the US Navy’s Seal Team Six launched an amphibious raid on a Somali town, but failed to confirm a capture or kill of their Al Shabab target, suspected to be linked to Nairobi’s Westgate mall terror attack.
The operation could have opposite its intended result of discouraging further attacks. Analysts warn that even earlier successful targeted strikes against Al Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamist militant group, failed to curb the group’s capacity to carry out international terror attacks, and that failed missions could in fact bolster its support and recruitment.

You can read the whole thing, but I’m not buying this argument. Unsuccessful operations are just part of the calculus of anti-terror strategy and, while commanders never plan for a mission to fail, no military force in history has ever been 100% successful. Even an unsuccessful mission can have strategic benefits, e.g.,  keeping the enemy off-balance, forcing them to take defensive measures for their own security.

If this failed Somalia raid should have the short-term result of aiding Al Shabab recruitment (which is merely possible, not certain), that just means more targets for our guys to kill. Go grab an AK-47, idiots, and see how that works out when we get the crosshairs on you.

Even while the SEALs were attacking in Somalia, meaning, in Tripoli “members of the elite U.S. Army Delta Force captured Abu Anas al Libi, an al Qaeda operative wanted for his role in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.”

Delta Force? Best of the best. Fort Bragg, N.C.

Hooah.

 

 

Canadian Muslim Arrested in Somalia After Reportedly Beheading His 4 Sons

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Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugged had this story, citing the Blazing Cat Fur blog and, to be honest, my reaction was, “You’re kidding me.”

Surely, this had to be some kind of right-wing Islamophobic urban legend spread by irresponsible Internet gossip-mongers. Because I constantly watch the news — my TV is tuned to MSNBC at this very moment — and if this really happened, you would think maybe the news would mention such an atrocious act of terroristic violence. But I checked around and discovered that this is actually true:

The mother of four young boys who were allegedly beheaded by their Somali-Canadian father says she doesn’t know of any motive for the killings.
Police in Somalia arrested Omar Hassan, 60, after the children, aged 11, 9, 7 and 6, were killed Monday, Qadro Addawe told The Canadian Press.
The alleged slayings happened in the central town of Beledweyne, about 330 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu.
Speaking from Mogadishu, Addawe said Hassan was a taxi driver in Calgary and had returned home a few months ago.
She said the children had never been to Canada, but had Canadian citizenship through her estranged husband, who had migrated to Canada 30 years ago.
“They were born in Kenya, but they were Canadian because the father was Canadian,” she said.
A regional police commissioner told Agence France-Presse Wednesday that the children’s bodies were found near a village and have been buried.
The news service quoted Col. Isak Ali Abdulle as saying: “The man handed himself in and is in custody now. I think he is not mentally fit but we are questioning him.”

Children beheaded by their father? Just another random coincidence.

In related news, a Democrat finally used the word “jihad.”

But he wasn’t talking about Omar Hassan.

 

 


Cell-Phone Pornography Blamed in Rape Attacks on Somali Refugee Women

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Associated Press:

The three masked gunmen burst into Asha Muse Ali’s tent at night and grabbed every item of value they could find: $85 in cash, a cell phone and a gold ring.
Then the attackers embarked on a crime that carries a severe social stigma in this conservative Muslim country: They raped Ali and her aunt.
Ali and her family are among almost 60 000 internally displaced people in the central Somali town of Galkayo, where hundreds of families have sought refuge from violence in Mogadishu and in south-central Somalia. But once there, the women risk being raped.
Aid workers say the number of rapes are alarming and that in some cases, they are fuelled by young men watching pornographic videos. . . .
Some camp residents and aid workers blamed some of the sexual assaults on a new prevalence of pornography, which can even be seen on cell phones. The top official in Somalia for the UN refugee agency said he has received reports that youths “first heat up themselves before they go out and hunt down women”.
“It is appaling that the women in the camps are raped by youth gangs with total impunity after watching pornographic films,” Bruno Geddo said.

(Hat-tip: Pepper_10 on Twitter.)