Did five Torontonians join jihad in Somalia?
Darwin always wins. Here are a couple more who selected themselves out of the gene pool. | blockquote>Mahad Dhorre, Mustafa Mohamed, Mohamed Abscir and a fourth we know only as Ahmed vanished the first week of November. A fifth, Ahmed Elmi, left his home in Scarborough about three months ago. A sixth man, an Afghan, who worshipped at the same mosque, is also reportedly missing.
Their passports are missing and they haven't called home. The overwhelming fear is that -- like at least 20 young Somali-American men in Minneapolis who have disappeared in the past two years, and others from Australia, Sweden and Britain -- the young men are en route to Somalia to fight alongside al Shabaab, an Islamist youth militia aligned with Al Qaeda.
The Shabaab, which is fighting the government, is often called Somalia's Taliban. Its increasingly savvy online presence is being blamed as a possible reason for the disappearance of the five Canadians. And Somali community leaders fear other young people will be targeted as long as they feel alienated in this country, and embraced by another.
"These people can speak in their language and lure them from right under our nose," said Ahmed Hussen, the Ottawa-based president of the Canadian Somali Congress, adding people in the community have told him chat rooms were also used to lure the missing men. "We won't even know what's going on."
Posted by: Fred 2009-12-13 |