Somali terror vacations?

Wall Street Journal:

Federal agents are investigating whether young men from Somali immigrant enclaves in the U.S. are traveling back to their parents' homeland to fight on the side of Islamist terror groups.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is following the trail of more than a dozen young men missing from Somali communities in several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, Boston and Columbus, Ohio, according to people familiar with the probe. Counterterrorism officials in Europe and Australia also are investigating similar reports in their countries.

Families of three teenagers earlier this month went public in Minneapolis, home to the largest Somali enclave in the U.S., saying their teenagers had disappeared in recent months and then turned up in Somalia. The families were spurred to action in part after twin October terror bombings in their homeland. One of them is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by an American, according to U.S. law-enforcement officials.

Somali community leaders say the families are assisting authorities to find out how the young men, some of them immigrants and others American-born, were recruited. "Two of the mothers received phone calls from kids saying that they were in Somalia, in Mogadishu city, saying that they cannot talk and that they will see them in heaven," says Omar Jamal, executive director of Minneapolis's Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

Nearly two decades of civil war have ripped apart Somalia, including an invasion two years ago by troops from neighboring Ethiopia that ousted an Islamist government that U.S. officials say was allied with al Qaeda. Ethiopia has said it plans to withdraw, which would likely make way for the loose coalition of Islamist insurgents threatening to retake the central government's seat in Mogadishu.

U.S. Somali community leaders estimate that as many as 20 men may have left the U.S. to fight in the past two years.

The reports have raised concern among counterterrorism officials about immigrant youths being recruited by radical groups. For years, terrorism experts have believed that better assimilation of immigrants in the U.S. than elsewhere makes the threat of radicalization of young Muslims less than it is in Britain and other countries with large immigrant communities beset by high unemployment and less opportunity. The Somali case could cause that view to be reassessed.

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This report puts the recent post on the interrogation of Somali illegals at a South Texas detention facility in context. There is something going on in this community and we need to keep an eye on it.