MINNEAPOLIS: Like many Somalis displaced by decades of civil war, Mohamoud Elmi felt he had a duty to use what he learned in America to help rebuild his homeland. After getting a business administration degree in Ohio, he fulfilled that calling and returned to Somalia in 2008 to work in government.
Elmi, a dual Somali-US citizen, was among at least 358 people killed in the Oct. 14 truck bombing in Mogadishu. He was one of the countless members of the Somali diaspora who have returned to the Horn of Africa country in recent years to work as contractors, entrepreneurs, humanitarian workers, government leaders and more, despite the threat of violence.
Many say they will not be deterred by the recent bombing, which was the deadliest attack in Somalia’s history and one of the world’s worst attacks in years. Some say the bombing, which also left 228 people injured and dozens missing, will actually energize rebuilding efforts.
“We don’t want this country to go down the tubes,” said Jibril Afyare, a Minnesota software engineer who is visiting Mogadishu. He went on to add: “I’m an American citizen, but this is my homeland and I won’t let my fellow Somali citizens suffer like this.”
Afyare was among a group of diaspora members invited to Somalia by the government to assist in the country’s progress. He was on his way to meet three relatives when he heard the blast from a couple of blocks away. His relatives died, as did friend and fellow Minnesota resident Ahmed Eyow, who had arrived in Mogadishu just hours earlier.
Afyare stayed in Somalia to help the hurt and needy. He spoke to the AP last week by phone while volunteering at a hospital where many of the injured were being treated.
“Somali-Americans, or Somalis everywhere, should... contribute their skill sets to help this country come out of the ashes,” Afyare said.
Somalia began to fall apart in 1991, with warlords ousting dictator Siad Barre before turning on each other. Years of conflict and attacks by the extremist group Al-Shabab, along with famine, shattered the country of some 12 million people. Somalia now has its first fully functioning government in 26 years, including a new generation of leaders who hail from the diaspora of about 2 million people.
Among those who have returned to their country to help is President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a dual Somali-US citizen from New York.
Roughly one-third of Somalia’s Parliament — 105 of 329 members — are dual citizens from the diaspora, said Sadik Warfa, who is a Somali-American from Minnesota and was elected to Parliament last year. Twenty-nine are from the UK, and 22 are from the US. Countless others have returned to Somalia to work in the private sector or advise the new government.
“This country must rise up as a whole nation,” said Warfa, who is now in Somalia. “And who can do better at that than its own people. People need to wake up and realize it is now or never.”
Warfa said for too long Somalia has been known for terrorism, piracy, tribal clashes and lawlessness. He believes the Oct. 14 attack was a turning point and will reaffirm the commitment to create a better country.
“Somalia has been sliding a long time, and I think we realized this is the generation that can turn the page and start a new page for Somalia,” he said.
Some Somali-Americans in Minnesota have assisted in other ways, by helping out businesses, putting their efforts toward more humanitarian causes or working as consultants.
Saciido Shaie, a community advocate in Minnesota, traveled to Somalia last spring to document the horrors of a drought that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. After her trip, she collaborated with groups to get food and medical supplies to those in need. Hashi Shafi, also in Minnesota, is working on an ongoing effort to connect Somali-American investors to businesses in Somalia.
“We want to make sure we are part of the solution, we are not part of the problem,” Shafi said.
Mohamud Sheikh Farah, also a dual Somali-US citizen from Minnesota and a member of Parliament, said it is important that educated people who fled during the civil war return to help.
“It is not easy. But we are going in the right direction,” he said by phone from Mogadishu. “We have the confidence that if we work hard and... try to bring all our best people on board, we can bring a lot of great change.”
Elmi was serving as director-general of Somalia’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management when he was killed in the attack. His brother, Sade Elmi, said Mohamoud had just left the office and was in traffic when the explosion happened.
“He always believed that you get educated here, you have to go back and help,” Sade Elmi said of his brother. “He was a humanitarian guy and he really loved what he was doing.”
Somali diaspora: Blast will not stop effort to rebuild homeland
Somali diaspora: Blast will not stop effort to rebuild homeland
OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens
“The act is considered an extension of organized terrorism and continuous genocide that has been ongoing for more than fourteen months against the Palestinian people,” the organization said in an Arabic statement.
The attack, which the OIC called “horrific,” was on a post office in Nuseirat and follows a long list of Israeli attacks which have killed civilians in dense makeshift camps in the Gaza Strip. Israel claims to be targeting Palestinian militants in the strikes.
Relatives of the deceased wept and read verses of the Qur’an as they gathered at Al-Awda Hospital before burying their loved ones on Friday.
“Every time things happen and we say there will be a truce and we will rest... After that, they change their minds, they change their minds, we don’t know why,” Mattar said.
“They have killed the hope and optimism,” said Suheil Mattar, whose grandchildren and daughter-in-law were killed.
Gaza health officials said Friday that at least 44,875 people had been killed in more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants. Over 105,454 people have been wounded during the same period, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?
- Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials & a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport
BEIRUT: After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.
For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country’s notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham insurgent group — which led anti-government fighters who forced Assad from power — has vowed to bring those who carried out such abuses to justice.
“We will go after them in our country,” said HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani. He added that the group will also ask foreign countries to hand over any suspects.
But finding those responsible for abuses could prove difficult.
Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials and a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Most of those are presumed to be regular people, and Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said earlier this week that no Syrian official entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing.
In an apparent effort to prevent members of Assad’s government from escaping, the security officials said a Lebanese officer who was in charge of Masnaa was ordered to go on vacation because of his links to Assad’s brother.
But Rami Abdurrhaman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says several senior officers have nonetheless made it to neighboring Lebanon using travel documents with fake names.
Here’s a look at Assad and some of the officials in his inner circle.
Bashar Assad
The Western-educated ophthalmologist initially raised hopes that he would be unlike his strongman father, Hafez, when he took power in 2000, including freeing political prisoners and allowing for a more open discourse.
But when protests of his rule erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to brutal tactics to crush dissent. As the uprising became an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.
He has fled to Moscow, according to Russian state media.
Maher Assad
The younger brother of the ousted president was the commander of the 4th Armored Division, which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers. He is under US and European sanctions. He disappeared over the weekend, and Abdurrhaman said he made it to Russia.
Last year, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Maher Assad, along with his brother and two army generals, for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk
Mamlouk was a security adviser to Assad and former head of the intelligence services. He is wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in the northern city of Tripoli in 2012 that killed and wounded dozens.
Mamlouk is also wanted in France after a court convicted him and others in absentia of complicity in war crimes and sentenced them to life in prison. The trial focused on the officials’ role in the 2013 arrest in Damascus of a Franco-Syrian man and his son and their subsequent torture and killing.
Abdurrahman said Mamlouk fled to Lebanon, and it is not clear if he is still in the country under the protection of Hezbollah.
Brig. Gen. Suheil Al-Hassan
Al-Hassan was the commander of the 25th Special Missions Forces Division and later became the head of the Syrian Special Forces, which were key to many of the government’s battlefield victories in the long-running civil war, including in Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus that long held off Assad’s troops.
Al-Hassan is known to have close ties to Russia and was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin during one of his visits to Syria. Al-Hassan’s whereabouts are not known.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Luka
Luka, head of the General Security Directorate intelligence service, is not well known among the wider public but has played a major role in the crackdown against the opposition, mainly in the central city of Homs that was dubbed the “capital of the Syrian revolt.”
Luka has been sanctioned by the US and Britain for his role in the crackdown. It’s not clear where he is.
Maj. Gen. Qahtan Khalil
Khalil, whose whereabouts are also unknown, was head of the Air Force Intelligence service and is widely known as the “Butcher of Daraya” for allegedly leading a 2012 attack on a Damascus suburb of the same name that killed hundreds of people.
Other officials
— Retired Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence service, is also suspected of bearing responsibility for the attack in Daraya. Hassan was among those convicted in France this year along with Mamlouk.
— Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Abbas and Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej Al-Hassan, head of Bashar Assad’s office and the man in charge of his security, are accused of human rights violations.
Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push
- Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said
ANKARA: Turkiye said Friday it had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily to support Bashar Assad’s forces as Islamist-led rebels mounted their lightning advance on Damascus that ended with the Syrian strongman’s ouster.
“The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians to ensure that they didn’t enter the equation militarily. We had meetings with (them) and they understood,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Turkiye’s private NTV television.
He said if Moscow and Tehran, both key Assad allies since the start of the civil war in 2011, had come to the Syrian president’s aid, the rebels could still have won but the outcome could have been far more violent.
“If Assad had received support, the opposition could have achieved victory with their determination, but it would have taken a long time and could have been bloody,” he said.
Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said.
When the Islamist-led HTS rebel alliance first began its offensive on November 27, Moscow and Tehran initially offered Assad military support to hold off the rebels.
But the scale of the collapse of Assad’s forces took them by surprise.
And it came at a time when both nations were caught up with problems of their own: Russia mired in the war with Ukraine, and Iran’s proxies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah taking a major battering from Israel.
They quickly realized the game was up, that Assad “was no longer someone to invest in” and “there was no point anymore,” the Turkish minister added.
Turkiye expressed support for the rebels with experts saying it even gave its green light for the offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), without being directly involved.
Many nations, especially in the region, have expressed concern about HTS, which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch and proscribed by many Western governments as a terror organization.
But Fidan said it was “perfectly normal” to have such concerns about HTS, which would “need to be resolved.”
“No one knows them as well as we do, we want a Syria without terrorism, not posing a threat to the countries in the region.”
Since 2016, Turkiye has held considerable sway over northwestern Syria, maintaining a working relationship with HTS which ran most of the Idlib area, which was Syria’s last bastion of opposition.
With open lines of communication with HTS, Turkiye was relaying such concerns directly to them, he said.
“We reflect our friends’ concerns to them and ensure they take steps. They have made many announcements and people see they are on the right track,” he said.
The message that Ankara was sending to the new administration in Damascus was: “This is what Turkiye — which has stood by you for years — expects. And this is what the world expects,” he said.
Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall
- “It will be operational as of tomorrow,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
ANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says that Türkiye’s Embassy in Syria’s capital of Damascus will reopen on Saturday, for the first time since 2012.
In an interview with Türkiye’s NTV television Fidan said a newly appointed interim charge d’affaires had left for Damascus on Friday together with his delegation.
“It will be operational as of tomorrow,” he said.
The Embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security conditions during the Syrian civil war. All embassy staff and their families were recalled to Türkiye.
The horror of Saydnaya jail, symbol of Assad excesses
- The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances
- When Syrian militants entered Damascus on Sunday after their lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates
BEIRUT: Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a notorious symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.
The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed against his opponents by ousted president Bashar Assad.
When Syrian militants entered Damascus on Sunday after their lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates.
Some had been incarcerated there since the 19080s.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), the militants liberated more than 4,000 people.
Photographs of haggard and emaciated inmates, some helped by colleagues because they were too weak to leave their cells, were circulated worldwide.
Suddenly the workings of this infamous jail that rights group Amnesty International had dubbed a “human abattoir” were revealed for all to see.
The prison was built in the 1980s during the rule of Hafez Assad, father of the deposed president, and was initially meant for political prisoners including members of Islamist groups and Kurdish militants.
But down the years, Saydnaya became a symbol of pitiless state control over the Syrian people.
In 2016, a United Nations commission found that “the Syrian Government has also committed the crimes against humanity of murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts,” notably at Saydnaya.
The following year, Amnesty International in a report entitled “Human Slaughterhouse” documented thousands of executions there, calling it a policy of extermination.
Shortly afterwards, the United States revealed the existence inside Saydnaya of a crematorium in which the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners were burnt.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022 reported that around 30,000 people had been imprisoned in Saydnaya where many were tortured, and that just 6,000 were released.
The ADMSP believes that more than 30,000 prisoners were executed or died under torture, or from the lack of medical care or food between 2011 and 2018.
The group says the former authorities in Syria had set up salt chambers — rooms lined with salt for use as makeshift morgues to make up for the lack of cold storage.
In 2022, the ADMSP published a report describing for the first time these makeshift morgues of salt.
It said the first such chamber dated back to 2013, one of the bloodiest years in the Syrian civil conflict.
Many inmates are officially considered to be missing, with their families never receiving death certificates unless they handed over exorbitant bribes.
After the fall of Damascus last week, thousands of relatives of the missing rushed to Saydnaya hoping they might find loved ones hidden away in underground cells.
Saydnaya is now empty, and Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers group announced the end of search operations there on Tuesday, with no more prisoners found.
Several foreigners also ended up in Syrian jails, including Jordanian Osama Bashir Hassan Al-Bataynah, who spent 38 years behind bars and was found “unconscious and suffering from memory loss,” the foreign ministry in Amman said on Tuesday.
According to the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan, 236 Jordanian citizens were held in Syrian prisons, most of them in Saydnaya.
Other freed foreigners included Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned home on Monday after being locked up in Syria for 33 years, and also spent time inside Saydnaya.
