December 17, 2009

Rahm of Terror Free Somalia featured in Seattle Weekly write-up

Jawa buddy Rahm is featured in a write-up today in the current issue of Seattle Weekly concerning the ongoing nationwide investigation into Al-Shabaab activity in the US. His blog, Terror Free Somalia, is without a doubt the best English language source for domestic and international Somali-related news and regularly features breaking news and exclusives. It's good to see his hard work recognized:

Local Somali blogger Abdirahman Warsame also doesn't object to law enforcement's investigation of his community. In fact, he'd like more of it. "I happen to believe there is a cell here," he says, although he cannot point to proof beyond the several known cases.

His blog, Terror Free Somalia Foundation, regularly broadcasts the latest horrors of Somali terrorism to an English-speaking audience. Assembling stories and pictures from other media, he chooses the most graphic descriptions and images he can find. His blog's coverage of a Dec. 3 suicide bomb at a university graduation in Mogadishu showed the limp body of a government minister drenched in blood. A September story on al-Shabaab's enforcement of Islamic law features pictures of amputated hands and feet—belonging to thieves—hanging on telephone poles.

He says he's trying to alert the West to brutalities in Somalia that are not fully appreciated. And he forecasts that this is just the beginning. "There is going to be another Taliban just like there used to be in Afghanistan—not only in Somalia but in the Horn of Africa," says Warsame, a clean-shaven 38-year-old who works at Fisher Plaza.

When Dayniile.com implicated a Seattle man in the Sept. 17 bombing, Warsame tracked down his father at a Somali store and coffee shop on Rainier Avenue. "I'm sorry about the loss," he says he told the 50ish man with a lame leg. The father confessed his grief and the FBI's recent visit to his house to take a DNA sample, to be compared with that of the suicide bomber. Warsame says he gave the father his card and told him to get in touch when he was ready to talk.

The blogger says he wants the father to explain how this could have happened. "I'm trying to figure out the face of evil," he says.

It's personal for Warsame. He says his parents ran a string of grocery stores in Mogadishu until the war. Like so many, he had to flee suddenly as thugs confiscated his family's house and stores. He escaped to Kenya by foot.

He seems settled now. He lives in a Bellevue apartment complex, near its pool, with his wife, a Macy's sales associate, and his children, a 9-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy. On a recent visit, he pulls out a picture of his kids dressed up for Halloween as a Somali pirate and an American Marine—inspired by last spring's standoff near the Somali coast, an incident apparently independent of al-Shabaab terrorism. Laughingly, he makes his allegiance clear: He's a proud American.

But now he feels that the same forces that once purged him from his home—under the guise of al-Shabaab—are haunting him in his place of refuge. "They're following me," he says. "They're taking our kids."

Congrats, Rahm! Keep up the good work!

UPDATE by Jane: YES, kudos Rahm!!! That's well deserved recognition for some darned important blogging!