Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:25:56 +0000

Created: 02/23/2010 9:22 PM KSTP.com | Print |  Email By: Robert Moses and Becky Nahm

U of M experiencing student housing crunch

So many University of Minnesota students wanted to live on campus this year, that the school could not accommodate them all.

Before classes started last fall, the university told 500 students they would not be allowed to live on campus and placed 300 other students in makeshift dorm rooms.

Now into the second semester, most of the 300 students have moved into traditional rooms that opened up. But about 30 students remain in makeshift rooms.

Ashley McDonell and Emily Cich live in a converted study lounge at Frontier Hall.

McDonell said, "We do not have a closet. And, for two girls, that's a little much to ask."

Mannix Clark, of the university's Housing and Residential Life Department said, "As more students want to live on campus, we want to allow them the opportunity to live on campus. And this is our way of increasing as we continue to try to look at new housing options both on campus and off campus."

The Housing Department will report to university officials next month about student housing needs in the future.

The school does not have any plans to build new dorms.

Indeed. The Somali jihadists have already threatened Kenya, Uganda and Burundi, and even Israel, and will eventually attempt an attack outside of Somalia. All of this activity points ultimately to the global nature of the jihadist agenda, above and beyond what are all too often written off as "regional" or "nationalistic" squabbles. In one al-Shabaab figure's own words, "We will attack them once we unite the Somali Holy fighters, then we will unite with our brothers in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya to help them in their war against the infidels."

"Somalia, Again," by Alex Perry for the March 1 issue of Time:

On the night of Sept. 21 last year, U.S. diplomatic staff in South Africa were telephoned at home and told not to go to work the next day. A State Department official refused to explain the warning, but a Western intelligence officer in Africa told TIME the alarm was raised after a phone call from an al-Qaeda operative to a number in Cape Town was intercepted -- a call in which an attack on U.S. government buildings in South Africa was discussed. No attack took place, and after three days, the embassy in Pretoria and three consulates reopened. But with South Africa expecting half a million fans for the soccer World Cup this June and July, security officials are understandably jittery. Especially because of the origin of the phone call. It came, TIME was told, from Somalia. [...]

If Somalia's extremists are becoming an international threat, that's partly because of their cosmopolitan leadership. One sure result of war is refugees, and decades of fighting in Somalia have seen the rapid growth of a large Somali diaspora in places from Cape Town to Minneapolis. But not all who have been forced to make new lives far away from Africa have done so easily. The past few years have seen the arrival in Somalia of 200 to 300 young ethnic Somali men from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden, migrants' children returning to their ancestral homeland, according to diplomatic and intelligence sources in East Africa. A Western soldier working in Somalia says these foreign-born Somalis now dominate al-Shabab. "All their cells are commanded by a foreigner," he says. "All tactical and strategic decisions are taken by foreigners."

To extend their reach overseas, al-Shabab's leaders in Somalia are thought to circle back to the diaspora, looking for those who can be recruited to extremism. The FBI is tracking more than a dozen Somali Americans who disappeared from their homes and are suspected of joining al-Shabab, and in November, 14 Minnesota men with connections to Somalia were charged with offenses like aiding a terrorist organization; four have pleaded guilty. In August, Australian police arrested five men from the Somali community in Melbourne on suspicion of plotting to attack an army barracks outside Sydney. The September call to Cape Town was picked up because a group of ethnic Somalis in the city were already under surveillance on suspicion of raising funds for al-Shabab, according to the intelligence officer. "If you've been waiting for a moment to declare Somalia a priority threat, what else do you need?" asks the Western soldier in Somalia. "There's no longer a serious risk that southern Somalia could become a jihadi operational deployment facility. It already is."...