Somali-American students say hawala shutdown hurts them
Sharif Farah said supporting his family in Somalia — including seven young children — inspires him to get up and go to work every day.
But he said his motivation and ability to support them has quickly faded over the past month.
Farah is a manager at one of the 15 Minnesota money wire businesses — known as hawalas — that stopped accepting money transfers to Somalia during the last week of December.
He said now he can only send emergency funds with small dollar amounts from Somali-Americans in the neighboring Cedar-Riverside community to their families in the war-torn country in the midst of a six-month, drought-induced famine.
Somalia has been without a functioning government or banking system for more than two decades, so members of Somali diasporas use hawalas to send their earnings home.
But following a recent U.S. crackdown on terror financing and the trial of two Minnesota women found guilty of providing support to al-Shabab — a terrorist group at the center of violence in Somalia with possible ties to al-Qaida — many big banks have stopped handling the transfers.
Now Farah said business is dwindling. He is making less and sending less to his family, and he is not alone.
“This affects everybody in the community,” he said through an interpreter. “When people come to you and ask to send money to their families and you have to turn them away, it’s frustrating.”
‘The least we can do’
Less than a mile from where Farah spends his workday, Faduma Abdulle is settling into a new semester of classes at the University of Minnesota.
But she said it’s hard for her to think about her coursework with the needs of her family in Somalia also on her mind.
“Sending money is the least we can do. Now the least we can do is being taken away,” she said. “It’s like we’re forcefully being disconnected from our community back home.”
Abdulle, vice president of the University’s Somali Student Association, explained that for her and most of her Somali-American classmates, setting aside money to send to family members in Somalia is an obligation and a source of pride.
She said many families have a system where all working members pool their money to cover rent, food, health care or other needs for relatives.
In addition, she said she and her friends have been fundraising for victims of the drought and famine in the country, and are now left without a way to send the money.
Her college-aged cousins in Somalia are “concerned and confused” because they don’t know why the blocks have been imposed, Abdulle said.
Sunrise Community Banks, the institution that handles most of the money transfers from Minnesota to Somalia, discontinued the service at the end of last year because it feared it could be at risk of violating the government’s terrorism financing regulations.
Abdulle said many people don’t tell their families in Somalia that the blocks stem from U.S. fear that the funds will go to terrorism because their situation is “already very heartbreaking.”
“All the dominos are falling, one by one,” she said. “First the drought, then the famine — this could not come at a worse time.”
Farah said customers have told him that without the money at the beginning of the month, Somali refugees in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia — also affected by the block — couldn’t pay rent and have been living on the streets.
He said the owners have stopped coming into the store to avoid having to turn people down, and some days they don’t even open for business.
“When I came to America in 1996, they told me this was the land of opportunity,” he said. “Now they’re telling me I can’t send money home to my family in need. What happened to those rights I was promised?”
‘Suffering for the actions of a few’
Farah welcomed Fadumo Jama into his office on Tuesday afternoon.
On the verge of tears, Jama explained that she could “hear the pain in her family members’ voices” when she spoke with them over the phone. She said she hoped the $100 she planned to send would help.
Like many hawalas, Farah’s office re-opened to allow small money transfers for emergency reasons.
Before the hawalas re-opened, Jama joined community members in a scramble to find a new way to send money.
Like Abdulle, she sent money to another state so it could be re-wired to Somalia or a neighboring country and sent a larger amount at the end of December.
Jama, a 66-year-old mother and grandmother, said the shutdowns are punishing the wrong people.
“They don’t keep families from sending money to Mexico or Cuba because they fear the cartel will get it,” Farah said. “This is unfair to the whole country. A lot of people are suffering for the actions of a few.”
‘Protest creates change’
Abdulle said young people are organizing as they have in the past to support their relatives in Somalia.
“I know protest creates change, so that’s what I’m hoping will happen,” she said.
Sunrise Community Banks released a statement on Jan. 5 saying their “commitment to the Somali community has not waivered” and that they “continue to work with determination and hope to discover a solution” that the bank, the government and the community can agree on.
Abdulle attended a Jan. 6 rally and protest and began sending emails and putting out calls to encourage people to contact politicians and spread word about the issue.
She said she is hopeful, but the situation has put many young Somali-Americans in a compromising position.
“I consider America my country now,” she said. “But now my country is taking away my ability to help the country I come from and love. It’s way too much.”