Omuhongo Ssemuwemba
President Iddi Amin used to say, Omukulu munange era Sseruganda
nkuwandiikidde nga nkutegeeza kubulumbaganyi Tanzania bweyakoze ku gwanga
lyange olunaku lwajjo. No this is about a simple family living in the city
of Hamilton Ontario, 61Km or 38 miles out of Toronto, it is between the city
of Toronto and Niagara falls, population 500,000 and mainly an industrial
city. There in lives a Moslem family of a mother and a couple of kids. But
amongst kids is a son called Mohamed Mahmood Mohamed. He usually calls
himself Mo-cubic. And it is that Mohamed that I need to raise to you this
morning. Mohamed grew up as any child we all have and as a good son as we
all have good sons, the family yes is Moslem but not that Moslems, so he
went to a Mosque once in a while as he so liked. Age I think 20/21. As all
kids at that age he is competitive and very successful, among the things he
competed in was to become a president of a student council and he succeeded,
so a very typical son everyone would love to have. His mother encouraged him
to go to the Mosque as all parents encourage their kids to be in a worship
atmosphere and he used to go but he was not that committed as I have stated
before. In school Mohamed is a very successful student, good in Sciences
that he aimed at becoming a Doctor. When he finished college in Hamilton he
passed so highly that he qualified for a full scholarship in York University
which is in The Greater Authority of Toronto, so he thus moved into this
city and started to study his first year at a full scholarship aiming to
become a medical doctor.
Somewhere somehow few months ago he saw a very depressing report out of
Syria and how innocent people got killed at a certain incident I am not
sure about. That killing of innocent people in Syria ticked this son so bad
that he decided to know a little more about Syria and to find out how he can
be of help to save the lives of innocent people that keep on dying. What we
roughly come to understand now, because this is just information we are
starting to piece together from those close to him, is that he got a website
and a forum of people that radicalized him. Mohamed was not radicalized by
his mosque, but he was radicalized on line by people he has never seen but
through communication on line by people in a country we do not know and
people we do not know at the privacy of his home and his computer. He
started to change his life and behaviour, he started to talk about the death
of people in Syria and it pissed him off very much. That was understandable
because if a kid sees a Utube of people blown up and gets pissed it is very
normal, what was not understood was how deep he got pissed. It is important
to realize that we have had several kids in this city radicalized, we had a
group of 18 kids that planned to blow up several buildings and to kill the
prime minister, these kids were reported by the Mosque they were attending
and they were arrested charged and some convicted. It is important to add as
well that The Moslem community and leadership in this city/country have used
a very old intelligence system to follow the kids that go into their
mosques, and if they see someone on a verge of becoming radicalized they
inform the authority and the authority follow them and if they see a reason
to arrest they so arrest them, so the Mosques have acted as a good neighbor
to monitor these kids. What Mohamed did was to go against the Mosque, he
became against the leadership of the Mosque and he called the Moslems weak
people that have refused to stand up and protect but defend the innocent
that are being killed in Syria. He closed himself off the Moslem leadership
so they could not understand what he is doing for they had now become his
enemy. The Mosque missed the part that he was in direct contact with people
on line, they failed to understand that he is being radicalized from his
computer, neither did his parents know. Being a kid but an adult you can
interfere only so much.
Few days ago Mohamed secretly decided to fly out of the country to go and
help those that are dying innocently in Syria. Somehow the family knew that
he had flown out of the country to Turkey. Now that struck a nerve of every
one and that sent a chilling message to everyone that we are about to lose a
very good kid. The parents and the Mosque started to put the dots together
and realized that the kid had been radicalized, and the little secret we
refuse to talk about in North America is that a whole whack of kids are
being radicalized out of North America and are flying into Turkey to be
recruited into Syria to defend the innocent. Whether these kids go in
understanding that they are being sent to war we have no idea, but we are
learning now that there is a very complex network in Turkey which takes them
underground to have a very basic training and straight into the front line.
Many end up in war when they are not even prepared let alone trained enough
for it and many actually die. The family became frantic and contacted a
lawyer who is a family friend in Hamilton who is also a Moslem, who
escalated this to the highest-level of intelligence in the country. The
Royal Canadian Mountain Police was involved, CSIS {Canadian Security
Intelligence Service} was involved, Canadian Boarder Services was involved,
and every single agency was involved, to frantically stop this kid from
landing into Turkey and crossing to Syria. His passport was immediately
cancelled, every single immigration agency out there, every airline out
there, every boarder agency out there got his photograph with direct
instruction to arrest him and throw him on a flight back into this country
as a detainee. As messages kept on going out there, Mohamed kept on being
missed by 5 minutes. Reports kept on coming back he has just cleared here,
he has just cleared here, and at the end of the pursuit the following of
Mohamed ended with he has just cleared the Turkey immigration into Turkey.
The fighters in the region have such an underground network that when a kid
lands in Turkey, just forget it you will not see him again for you have no
clue where he goes.
All this happened in about ten last days, at that point the hunting down of
Mohamed ended for there was no way to track him anymore. Somehow he posted
a photograph on face book from somewhere when he was holding a machine gun
and his friends saw it, and that is the only way his radicalization became
stamped. Last Saturday or Sunday, someone we do not know and from a country
we do not know, posted a message on face book that Mohamed went to the
mountains to fight with/against the Kurds, I am not clear about that, but
during that fight in the mountains, the American drone attacked, dropped a
bomb where many people died including Mohamed. Now here is the situation the
family is into today, is this message from a reliable person? Is Mohamed
really dead? Will he post something on face book and we know he is alive?
Will that door one day open and Mohamed is on the other side of it? Why did
he drop every success and every great future he had laid in front of himself
including a full university scholarship? Who radicalized him? And yet all
these questions come back with a very standard response, I do not know.
Ssebo we have a huge problem with kids getting radicalized, cities like
Minnesota are now a breeding ground, we have it here we have it in Western
Canada. Whether these kids understand that they are being taken to fight we
have no idea, whether they go thinking it is for volunteer work and they
will be protected and will come back we have no idea, but bottom line they
are sneaking out. They do not have to go to Turkey straight they can fly to
any country and then Turkey. We need to raise up as parents and hold this
discussion and very publicly, we ned to make it a water cooler discussion
because those taking these kids are way ahead of the game. Governments
standing up and cancelling the passports for them not to come back is not
the solution, threatening them is not the solution, it is education to both
the kids and we the parents. How do you know your kid has been radicalized?
What are the pointers? What do you do? Who do you talk to? What expertise do
you need but how do you reach it? We do not know. Let me end this long
rumbling with an appreciation that the American government has at minimum
started a program to educate the kids on what happens when you go out there.
The American government has started electronic media to the kids to show
them what is inside Syria, that is the way to go, we need to back off
threats, because when we threaten them we play exactly into hands of those
radicalizing them. And we need to educate our agencies to stop criminalizing
the parents of kids on the edge because parents are not in this, many have
no idea what is happening, but when a parent gets a question about his kid
he has to have a right to access the agencies and ask for help for we simply
do not know let alone understand how to handle this and they do. And always
remember kids do not go for they are bad kids, they go because they are very
good kids so stop to think that your kid is safe for he is a good kid, it is
actually a good kid that is targeted.
Thank Goodness it is Friday !!!!!! {TGIF}
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni
katika machafuko"
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