Ecoterra - Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor. XXX (Part 2)

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

[ Posted On: 2009-05-07 ]

No real peace yet

The making of a Minnesota suicide bomber
By Richard Meryhew, Allie Shah and James Walsh, Star Tribune staff writers

His remains lie a few hundred yards from a bustling highway, in a section of the Burnsville cemetery reserved for Muslims called the Garden of Eden. There is no marker. Only dirt and small rocks cover the final resting place of Shirwa Ahmed, who lived most of his life almost as anonymously.

But the manner of the 26-year-old Minneapolis man's death has put him at the center of one of the most far-reaching U.S. counterterrorism investigations since 9/11.

Nobody knows for sure why Ahmed left Minnesota in late 2007, or how he wound up obliterated in a bomb crater in Somalia a year later. Did the once passive teenager who came of age at Roosevelt High School shooting hoops, wearing hip-hop fashions and hanging out at the Mall of America volunteer for Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of Al-Qaida? Did his self-described transformation into a "God man'' lead him to return to fight in his homeland's civil war, or become a recruit for jihad? Most frightening, was he or any other Somali ever a candidate to return home and strike within the United States?

His remains lie a few hundred yards from a bustling highway, in a section of the Burnsville cemetery reserved for Muslims called the Garden of Eden. There is no marker. Only dirt and small rocks cover the final resting place of Shirwa Ahmed, who lived most of his life almost as anonymously.

But the manner of the 26-year-old Minneapolis man's death has put him at the center of one of the most far-reaching U.S. counterterrorism investigations since 9/11.

Nobody knows for sure why Ahmed left Minnesota in late 2007, or how he wound up obliterated in a bomb crater in Somalia a year later. Did the once passive teenager who came of age at Roosevelt High School shooting hoops, wearing hip-hop fashions and hanging out at the Mall of America volunteer for Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of Al-Qaida? Did his self-described transformation into a "God man'' lead him to return to fight in his homeland's civil war, or become a recruit for jihad? Most frightening, was he or any other Somali ever a candidate to return home and strike within the United States?

So far, more than two dozen local Somalis have been subpoenaed to tell a grand jury in Minneapolis what they know of Ahmed and up to 20 other missing men.

While the community anxiously awaits the investigation's outcome, those who knew Ahmed are left to wonder. "I don't know where things went wrong, but to be honest with you, I wish I could find out myself", said Sahal Warsame, his high school best friend. "And if he was still alive, I'd probably ask him why and how. ... I know he didn't put himself in that situation".

A startling discovery

At midmorning on Oct. 29, 2008, a car packed with explosives smashed through the doors of the Ethiopian Embassy in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway region of Somaliland, killing 20 people. At the same time, other suicide bombers hit targets across northern Somalia, including two bomb-filled vehicles that plowed into an intelligence headquarters in the port town of Bossasso.

In all, 28 people were killed and dozens more injured. Within hours, Somali officials asked the FBI to send teams to comb the blast sites.

In Bossasso, investigators were surprised to discover the fragmented remains of an American.

They had found what was left of Shirwa Ahmed.

Days later and a world away in Minneapolis, Nimco Ahmed glanced at the newspaper and was stunned to see a familiar face.

She immediately called a mutual friend, Nicole Hartford, who had been Shirwa Ahmed's high school prom date eight years earlier.

"Are you positive it's him?" Hartford asked.

She was. But it was hard to reconcile the person she knew with the person she was reading about.

Blending in

It had been about 10 years since a skinny and quiet 15-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, raised by a single mom and living with three brothers and a sister, first showed up at Roosevelt High School, where many Somali immigrants attended. There Ahmed, only a few years removed from a refugee camp, honed his English skills and took steps toward U.S. citizenship.

Repeated attempts to reach Ahmed's relatives were unsuccessful. But a teacher at Roosevelt recalls that Ahmed didn't distinguish himself as a student.

"He was not high in grades and not low in grades. He was average", said Mohammed Osman, who taught social studies. "He was very respectful to me as a teacher".

Where Ahmed excelled was at making friends.

Afternoons were for pickup basketball at one of several parks near the school or at the Brian Coyle Community Center in the shadows of the Cedar-Riverside high rises.

Weekends were for girls.

Often, Ahmed and friends would hop the bus to the Mall of America, where they'd gather on the top floor near the movie theaters to scope out the girls four floors below in Camp Snoopy. When they saw one they considered pretty, they'd dare each other to try to get her phone number.

"The ultimate goal was to see who could collect [the most] numbers", said one of his closest friends, who is now a Minneapolis businessman and spoke on the condition that he not be named. "But Shirwa could never do it. He was shy. He'd say 'That's a kid's game'".

In all, 28 people were killed and dozens more injured. Within hours, Somali officials asked the FBI to send teams to comb the blast sites.

In Bossasso, investigators were surprised to discover the fragmented remains of an American.

They had found what was left of Shirwa Ahmed.

Days later and a world away in Minneapolis, Nimco Ahmed glanced at the newspaper and was stunned to see a familiar face.

She immediately called a mutual friend, Nicole Hartford, who had been Shirwa Ahmed's high school prom date eight years earlier.

"Are you positive it's him?" Hartford asked.

She was. But it was hard to reconcile the person she knew with the person she was reading about.

After Ahmed took a job pushing wheelchairs and moving luggage at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, he met and became fast friends with Hartford, who worked at a couple of restaurants there. They spent their breaks together, along with Nimco Ahmed, the high school friend who also worked at the airport. The three became inseparable, often heading to the mega-mall after work to try on clothes and people watch.

The Shirwa they recall was hardly a traditionalist. He wore the latest hip-hop styles, from sagging jeans to crisp, button-up shirts and new sneakers, blending in with his American peers. Sometimes, he affected an exaggerated swagger.

"He used to say, 'Watch my swag, Nicole. Watch my swag'", Hartford said.

He even found a way to jazz up his airport uniform.

"He'll pop his collar and it wouldn't look like the regular uniform", Hartford said. "He was like, 'This is me, this is how I like to dress'".

While often quiet, he was not afraid of asserting himself.

Once, after opponents started trash-talking his friend Warsame during a pickup basketball game, Ahmed stepped in to stop the quarrel.

"He grabbed my hand and said 'No man, you'd rather walk away from this before you see a cop'", Warsame said.

'Sort of like a monk'

After graduating from Roosevelt in 2000, Ahmed made a new friend while working at the airport, Russell Burge.

Burge sometimes prayed with Ahmed and other Somalis working at the airport, and the two often talked about religion.

Burge recalled that they once had a conversation about suicide bombings, and both agreed that such attacks are wrong.

"He was very, very adamant, saying, 'No, that is not Islamic. The prophet Mohammed would frown upon a Muslim who does that'", Burge recalled.

By 2002, Ahmed's commitment to his faith was growing deeper. He and Warsame were both enrolled at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park that year, but when Warsame quit before the end of the first semester, the two began to drift apart. As Warsame hit the party scene, Ahmed turned to the mosque.

Sometimes, Warsame said, Ahmed would talk to him about making a change.
"He just used to encourage me to just pray and do good and think about life", he said.

As his religious commitment grew firmer, Ahmed's attachment to schooling became more tenuous. His stint at North Hennepin was followed by a semester at the University of Minnesota. Later, he took courses at Minneapolis Community and Technical College but didn't stick with it.

Others began noticing changes that reflected an increasingly conservative approach to his faith.

Ahmed grew a beard. He gained weight. He wore a kufi -- a Muslim prayer cap -- and traded his baggy jeans for pants cuffed above the ankle. The guy who had once crammed himself with two female friends into a photo booth to mug for the camera would no longer shake hands when he met a woman.

Nimco Ahmed said she saw him occasionally on the street and in Somali malls preaching to other Somalis and encouraging them to pray.

When another high school friend saw him at a playground near Cedar-Riverside in 2005, Ahmed told him he had become "a God man".

"He was becoming sort of like a monk", the friend said.

Ahmed worshipped at the mosque five times daily, even in the pre-dawn. Most days, he attended a small mosque near the Cedar-Riverside towers, home to thousands of Somalis. Increasingly, he'd pray at Abubakar as-Saddique Islamic Center in south Minneapolis, the city's largest mosque.

Farhan (Omar) Hurre, Abubakar's director, said Ahmed has been seen praying at the mosque "a few times".

Said another high school friend, who remained in touch with Ahmed until shortly before he left the country: "He never preached or tried to change me. He would just say that he would pray for me".

Gone, to paradise

In the fall of 2007, Ahmed went to a clinic on Bloomington Avenue to get shots in advance of a trip to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to perform the hajj, the sacred pilgrimage for Muslims.

While there, he ran into Zuhur Ahmed, a former schoolmate who worked at the clinic.

He was traveling with a group and was excited about the trip, he told her. He didn't say anything about Somalia.

About the same time he left, three other Somali men from the Twin Cities -- Zackaria Marout, Mohamed Miski, and Kamal Baniini -- disappeared, presumably overseas.

The timing of their departures, and the fact that the men all knew one another, would later prompt federal agents to investigate whether they were radicalized and recruited to return to Somalia by someone working with a terrorist group.
There would be no more news regarding Ahmed until many months later. In late 2008, while chatting on Facebook with one of Shirwa Ahmed's relatives overseas, Nimco Ahmed asked how he was doing.

The relative told her that Ahmed had gone to the Middle East to study Islam and didn't intend to return to this country.

In late October, 2008, Ahmed's sister in Minneapolis got a phone call from her brother, who said he was in Yemen. He was planning to come home, according to Abdirizak Bihi, a community leader who spoke with the sister at length a few days after Ahmed's death.

Then, on Oct. 29, came the bomb blasts that rocked northern Somalia.

Somali officials and U.S. diplomats immediately blamed the blasts on Al-Shabaab -- which means "the youth" -- a group that U.S. officials have labeled a terrorist organization aligned with Al-Qaida. Al-Shabaab had been involved in frequent attacks against the interim Somali government and the thousands of Ethiopian troops that occupied the country after the ouster of its Islamic government in early 2007. Leaders of Al-Shabaab had promised to keep fighting until all Ethiopian troops left Somalia.

The timing of this attack, Somali officials said, was likely meant to coincide with a meeting between Somali government leaders and the leaders of other regional heads of state in Nairobi, Kenya.

"They wanted to convey an image that they could reach anywhere", then-Somali foreign minister Ali Ahmed Jama told Reuters.

Their reach extended to Minneapolis.

A few days after the blasts, Ahmed's sister received another phone call, according to Bihi.

A voice she didn't recognize told her, "Your brother is a martyr. He is in paradise".

Haunted by questions

On a sunny, cold day last December, Shirwa Ahmed's remains were carried from the hearse to his waiting grave site in a small wooden box.

As several men removed a white shroud containing his remains from the box, a crowd of about 20 men circled the grave. Behind them, 20 to 30 women stood by cars parked on a nearby road.

The women watched as the men lowered the remains into the ground, grabbed shovels and covered the grave with dirt. Nearby, a cemetery worker stood near a tractor, waiting to finish the job.

Nicole Hartford wasn't there to witness the end. Months later, she's still haunted by questions.

What prompted her friend to go back to Somalia? Was it something he read? Was it someone he met? Was he, as some in the Somali community believe, a victim, and not the bomber? Or had he changed so completely that those who knew him best will never understand?

"Even through my own life changes, I'm still the same Nicole that he met in 1999", Hartford said last week. "I know deep down he was the same Shirwa. What happened after we went our separate ways, I'm not for sure. But I know Shirwa was not a violent person. Shirwa was a respectful person, he was honest and he conducted himself in that manner.

I can't see it. I can't see him taking that action. Honestly, I'm like 'Somebody drugged him. Somebody tricked him.' Something happened. Something went devastatingly wrong".

Shirwa's journey

1995
Shirwa Ahmed's family comes to the United States. He is 12 or 13 years old. They first come to Portland, Ore., then to Minneapolis.

1997
He's a sophomore at Minneapolis Roosevelt High School. Mohammed Osman taught Ahmed. "He was very ordinary. ... He was not violent, a very decent character. He was unremarkable".

2000
He graduates from high school. He goes to prom with Nicole Hartford. He dances and he was a little awkward at it but he kept the rhythm, Nicole said. When the photographer asked him to put his arms around Nicole's waist, Shirwa demurred. "I kept saying 'It's OK, Shirwa'", Nicole said.

2002
He attends classes at North Hennepin Community College. He does not earn a certificate or degree. Friends say he is becoming more religious.

2003
He enrolls at the University of Minnesota's College of Continuing Education. He lasts one semester.

2004-2005
Nicole Hartford talks to Ahmed less, and eventually loses contact with him. The last time she saw him, she said: "He hugged me. It was a long hug. ... There was some pain in him that he wasn't ready to speak about at that time".

2005
He attends Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Again, he does not earn a certificate or degree. Family and friends say he spends early mornings and even overnights at the Abubakar as-Saddique mosque.

2007
He leaves the country in the fall. His sister said that Ahmed told the family he was going to the hajj in Saudi Arabia. He later calls to tell her he is studying in Yemen.

October 29, 2008
Ahmed dies in Puntland in northern Somalia in a suicide attack.

November, 2008
The FBI helps the family return the remains of Ahmed to the U.S.

December 3, 2008
He is buried in a Burnsville cemetery.

Puntland drought getting worse

Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis following poor rains that have created severe water and food shortages, officials said. "We had very little Deyr [October-December 2008] rain and we have had even less rain in the Gu [April-June 2009] season so far, which has exacerbated an already bad situation", Mohamed Said Kashawiito, the director-general of Puntland's Ministry of Interior, told IRIN on 6 May. Most of the population relies on livestock, but poor rainfall has left them struggling to make ends meet. "We are getting reports of livestock dying; in some places 30 to 40 percent of the livestock has died", he said. "What little livestock is left is so weak they cannot even sell it, much less use it for milk and meat". The situation had also forced many nomads to move to urban centers, he said. Most affected are the regions of Bari, Nugal and parts of Mudug, and parts of Sool and Sanaag, which are claimed by both Puntland and the neighboring self-declared republic of Somaliland.

Ordinarily, many Puntland residents depend on Barkads (water catchments), but insufficient rains have left most of the catchments dry. The Puntland cabinet, Kashawiito added, was holding an emergency meeting to devise a plan to assist the affected populations. He called on international aid agencies to scale up their activities to help the affected population. Abdi Hirsi, the governor of Nugal, said the villages of Kalabeyr, Birta Dheer and Awr Ulus, all in Garowe district, and some others were in desperate need of food and water. "Some of the populations are no longer able to cope and need immediate intervention in terms of food", he warned. "We need urgent assistance", he said.

In a February report, the Food Security Analysis Unit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO/FSAU) for Somalia warned that Puntland had experienced a third consecutive seasonal rainfall failure (Deyr October-December 2008). At least 195,000 people were facing an acute food and livelihood crisis and humanitarian emergency, particularly in Bari, Nugal and Mudug regions, in addition to the long-term IDPs. Warsame Abdi, Puntland's information minister, told IRIN on 25 March that at least 133 localities were dependent on water trucking but the local authorities did not have the resources to address the situation. Abdiaziz Sheikh Yusuf, the district commissioner of Jariiban, in Mudug region, said 42 out of 47 townships in the district were facing major water problems.

Impacting reports from the global village

UN Human Rights Council Candidates Raise Concerns
By Joe DeCapua

Next week, the UN General Assembly decides who should be on the Human Rights Council. On May 12th, the General Assembly is expected to elect as many as 18 new members – more than a third of the council's total membership.

However, some groups are calling on UN members to block certain countries from getting a seat on the council. Freedom House and UN Watch say some of the countries seeking membership have poor or questionable human rights records.

Paula Schriefer, advocacy director for Freedom House, which is based in Washington, expressed her concerns to VOA about next week's vote.

"Our biggest concerns are [that] countries with some of the worst human rights records in the world will get re-elected to the Human Rights Council, further discrediting an institution that's already shown that it hasn't performed very well in terms of promoting and supporting human rights", she says. Freedom House conducts an evaluation that categorizes countries based on their human rights records, grading them as qualified, not qualified and questionable.

"We actually listed seven countries in the not qualified category, but I would say there's even a range within that. The ones that we're most concerned with are those that really get the absolute lowest scores that Freedom House gives out on an annual basis in terms of human rights. And those three countries would be China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia", she says.

Four other countries, including the African countries of Cameroon and Djibouti, also received poor scores, but not quite as low as the above mentioned.

"These are countries that I would put in sort of the top tier of the countries that are not qualified. Cameroon, actually of the two, has a slightly worse human rights record.… Although interestingly, it has a better voting record looking at important human rights resolutions and votes at the UN. Djibouti has a slightly better human rights record, but a slightly worse voting record at the United Nations.…Overall, they're just not qualified to sit on the council", she says.

Schriefer says membership of some of these countries on the Human Rights Council has prevented all the facts about the treatment of their citizens from being revealed. She says, "These countries not only reflect badly on the council because they've got poor domestic records of supporting human rights, but they tend to also of course to act (to prevent) the council from exposing human rights abuses in their own countries and in other countries as well".

One example she gives is Sudan. "Many of these countries have voted against taking any strong resolutions on Sudan. If you look at other countries that fall in our category of the worst – countries like Belarus… Chad…Equatorial Guinea…Somalia…Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, not a single resolution is being passed to censor these countries", she says.

Schriefer says that the countries have been "very effective in convincing other countries to vote along with them. Yes, they could be blocked. Certainly if countries with good human rights records would counter that and be more effective in terms of getting those sort of swing countries to vote along with them.… But it takes a tremendous amount of work".

Countries, such as Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Jordan and Bangladesh have "mixed" human rights records.

"They're not the lowest performers in terms of their human rights. Most of these countries fall in…in Freedom House's terminology…the partly free category of countries. And they've had mixed records", she says. Freedom House lists the countries found qualified to sit on the Human Rights Council as the United States, Belgium, Hungary, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway and Uruguay.

Russia on Wednesday expelled two Canadian diplomats working as representatives of the NATO alliance, officials said, in a further deterioration of relations between the alliance and Moscow. Canada's ambassador was summoned to Russia's foreign ministry and handed a note informing him of the expulsion of the head and deputy head of the NATO representative office in Moscow "in response to an unfriendly act by NATO against Russian envoys to NATO", the Russian foreign ministry said. The explanation was a reference to NATO's expulsion of two Russian envoys accredited at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels for alleged involvement in a spy scandal, a charge Moscow has furiously denied.

Press Contacts:

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Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 52, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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