{"id":1779,"date":"2018-07-29T22:19:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T22:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2018-07-30T05:25:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T05:25:43","slug":"former-refugee-returns-to-war-torn-somalia-to-serve-as-mp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2018\/07\/29\/former-refugee-returns-to-war-torn-somalia-to-serve-as-mp\/","title":{"rendered":"Former refugee returns to war-torn Somalia to serve as MP"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOGADISHU (SOHA) –<\/strong> From the day a young Mohamud Siraji landed in Dadaab after fleeing war-torn Somalia in 1992, his only goal was to make it out of the massive refugee camp, no matter what it took.<\/p>\n

A scholarship to come to Canada to study at York University in 2009 finally gave him a ticket out after 17 years of living with no hope and the constant fear of being forced to go back to the conflict zones he fled as a toddler and barely knew.<\/p>\n

Almost a decade after arriving in Toronto, Siraji, now a Canadian citizen, has left behind his comfortable life, young family and a successful career as an accounting analyst and returned to Somalia with a new goal \u2014 to help rebuild his embattled homeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew I would go back to Somalia. That\u2019s where I came from,\u201d said the now 30-year-old Siraji, who became a member of Parliament in Somalia in February.<\/p>\n

The MP for the district of Jubbaland, close to the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya, spoke to the Star during a recent visit to see his wife, Sarah Hassan, and their 11-month-old daughter, Fowzia, in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very tough decision. Somalia is not the safest place,\u201d continued Siraji, who has four armed security guards as escorts in Jubbaland. \u201cSo many men and women have died, but I feel the responsibility to go back to rebuild the country. Someone has to make the sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in the port city of Kismayo, Siraji and his 10 siblings followed their parents to Kenya in 1992 after Somalia\u2019s clan-based civil war broke out and the military regime under Siad Barre was overthrown.<\/p>\n

He and other children in the camps gathered \u201cunder trees\u201d to attend classes run by the United Nations and CARE International, a major humanitarian agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no classrooms, no chairs, no textbooks. Hundreds of kids all just learned outdoors, but it didn\u2019t matter because we all knew education was the best option out,\u201d recalled Siraji, who was among a minority of students who got to complete his studies at one of the three high schools because of his good grades.<\/p>\n

Although he was admitted to an American university program designed for refugee students abroad in 2008, the scholarship was rescinded as a result of the U.S. financial crisis.
\nCanadian expatriates working at the Dadaab camp recommended Siraji apply for the World University Service of Canada\u2019s Student Refugee Program, which offered him a scholarship at York, where he began his bachelor of commerce degree in 2009.<\/p>\n

Since the scholarship covered only his first year of tuition and living expenses, he had to work multiple jobs to support himself to complete his education, while sending money to his family and paying for the university education of two brothers in Kenya. After he finished at York in 2014, he got a job as an analyst at an accounting software company and later married Hassan, who studied social work at York.<\/p>\n

Siraji\u2019s older brother Abbas, with whom he grew up in Dadaab, was a rising star and a cabinet minister in President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed\u2019s government in May 2017, when the 31-year-old was shot dead by soldiers in Mogadishu. Tensions in the capital remain high between the fragile government and the terror group Al Shabab. Just this month, Al Shabab fighters killed 27 soldiers in a raid in Kismayo by detonating a suicide car bomb.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the U.S. on a business trip when Abbas was killed. I couldn\u2019t believe what happened to him. The pictures of the attack were so graphic to look at,\u201d recalled Siraji, who immediately flew to Nairobi to be with his family. \u201cI didn\u2019t have enough time to think straight. I was just overwhelmed by the news.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a baby on the way, it was hard for the young couple to talk about Siraji\u2019s return to Somalia and his run to replace his brother for the same Jubbaland federal seat, but Hassan knew she couldn\u2019t stop her husband. For safety reasons, they decided Siraji would go alone. He returned to campaign to replace his brother in a byelection last August and won the seat in February. His term will end in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the toughest to leave my wife and girl behind when I went back to Somalia last August for the election campaign,\u201d said a still emotional Siraji. \u201cWe were all literally crying.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an MP in Somalia, Siraji is paid $3,700 (U.S.) a month, but a good portion of his wages goes to paying his personal guards \u2014 all government officials are Al Shabab targets, he says \u2014 and airfare to visit his wife and child in Toronto three to four times a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf none of us would go back to Somalia, the country would never have a chance to rebuild,\u201d noted Siraji, who has made education for young people a priority of his mandate and uses his connections in Canada to find resources for classrooms back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my daughter grows up and asks me, \u2018What did you do for Somalia?\u2019 I would like to tell her I have helped rebuild Somalia and make it a better place,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, I still fear for my safety every day but someone has to do it. It\u2019s worth the sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: THE STAR<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOGADISHU (SOHA) – From the day a young Mohamud Siraji landed in Dadaab after fleeing war-torn Somalia in 1992, his only goal was to make it out of the massive refugee camp, no matter what it took. A scholarship to come to Canada to study at York University in 2009 finally gave him a ticket …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-displacement-and-asylum","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}