It took about twelve hours by car, over sometimes bumpy and disintegrating roads, but when I finally made it to Laascaanood [Las Anod] five years ago, it was like entering an oasis. Brightly painted villas, many with red or blue metal roofs and reflective windows, spread out away from the city center. Hotels bustled, and crowds flocked to restaurants and patronized shops. For a relatively isolated town with little industry beyond agriculture, livestock, and trade, it clearly had money.
While not every Somali or clan member is homogeneous, clan attitudes matter in Somali society.
The secret to Laascaanood’s prosperity, however, was not in Sool, a region of Somaliland to which Somalia itself has always laid claim. Rather, it was in Minnesota and Ohio. Many of those building villas in the city were Somali Darood, Somali immigrants to the United States who worked in the home care, daycare, and other U.S. state-funded businesses.
While not every Somali or clan member is homogeneous, clan attitudes matter in Somali society. Among the most pro-American are the Isaaq, who form the majority of Somaliland. The United States also relies on the Abgal and Hawadle subclans within the Hawiye to staff the forces it trains to counter Al-Shabaab.
Among those historically most antagonistic to the West in general and the United States in particular are Hawiye around Mogadishu and the Darood. It was Hawiye who dragged and mocked the bodies of U.S. Marines in the streets of Mogadishu during the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), meanwhile, is a Darood from the Majeerteen subclan. She is not alone. Many Somali immigrants in Minnesota, especially those now entangled in the fraud scandal, are also Darood.
While the Minnesota scandal and the fleecing of the American taxpayer is bad enough, the scandal gets worse. As American Somalis from Darood pumped money into their own villas, they also worked fist-in-glove with Somali irredentists who argued that Laascaanood was rightly a Darood city and should not fall under Somaliland control, no matter what the established borders of Somaliland, as recognized by the United Nations in 1960, said.
More than 2,000 people died in Laascaanood, according to some estimates, and the fighting displaced more than 100,000 more.
Shortly after Taiwan recognized Somaliland in 2020, China began working with and arming Somali irredentists and the Darood to wage a proxy war against Somaliland with Laascaanood at its center. In 2023, armed by Turkey and China, Somali forces and the Darood-funded Khaatumo SSC forces seized the city after several weeks of fighting. In effect, the money stolen from Minnesota led directly to a war abroad that benefited Beijing on behalf of clan interests that the Minnesota Darood did not cast aside when they took their oaths of American citizenship.
The Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service are right to investigate the Minnesota fraud. Both those directly involved, those whose negligent oversight enabled the fraud, and those who punished whistle-blowers should face the full weight of the law. But as the investigation unfolds, it is important to recognize what happened in Minnesota did not stay in Minnesota. More than 2,000 people died in Laascaanood, according to some estimates, and the fighting displaced more than 100,000 more, and much of that upheaval appears funded on the back of dollar transfers by Darood to Laascaanood. During this conflict, stolen Darood dollars also funded the lobby campaigns that directly impacted State Department policy in a way that empowered China and undercut American interests and allies.
