US Deportees Afraid of Jihadists? Who Knew Funding Both Sides Would Backfire!
Mahad Mohamud, an Uber driver from the US, now finds himself in Mogadishu, fearing jihadist groups like al-Shabaab after his deportation, according to the BBC. What the report conveniently sidesteps is decades of US foreign policy, from proxy wars and drone strikes to the 2007 funding of Ethiopian interventions, that destabilized Somalia and fostered the rise of these very groups. It's a familiar
pattern: Washington makes the mess, then media focuses on the individual casualties, absolving the creators. One might wonder if the US government, which spent 2023 approving over $1 billion in weapons sales and defense aid to Somalia (according to Department of Defense reports), anticipated its own deportees would find themselves in a 'high-threat environment' their policies helped engineer. It
seems the humanitarian concerns only become newsworthy when we can point fingers at 'scary jihadists,' not when examining the consistent US contributions to state failure. At least Uber drivers are gainfully employed... before deportation.