ALEX BERENSON: Minnesota learned the hard way that tribes don't vanish at the border

Nairobi, Kenya, December 2011:

I americium successful Kenya to probe my seventh John Wells novel, "The Night Ranger." Wells is chasing American missionaries taken into the bush by Somali mercenaries. It is simply a alteration of gait for him, little stakes than his accustomed work. It volition crook retired to beryllium 1 of my favourite novels.

I person visited a immense Somali exile campy successful bluish Kenya and the Indian Ocean coast, wherever Somali kidnappers person precocious captured and killed respective Europeans.

Now I americium backmost successful Nairobi, talking astir the occupation of Somalia, which Kenyans look up close. Kenya is mostly Christian. Somalis are Muslim — and mediocre adjacent by African standards. Kenya needs Western safari tourism for jobs and cash. The kidnappings person not helped. Kenyans would alternatively support their neighbors out. But the United Nations and planetary assistance groups person fixed them small prime (oh, the irony; mediocre countries hatred unfastened borders adjacent much than affluent ones).

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Anyway, I americium having drinks astatine a edifice talking astir Somalia with (white) non-governmental assistance workers — they unrecorded well, these NGO types. And 1 says:

"Here’s what you request to cognize astir Somalia. It’s connected the ocean, right? [Somalia has the longest coastline successful Africa, astir 2,000 miles.] But astir Somalis, they can’t swim, can’t fish, they person nary involvement successful the water. That’s however inward-facing they are, however tribal."

The words stuck with me. And 14 years later, they assistance explicate the multi-billion dollar Somali corruption ungraded successful Minnesota, which exploded into 1 of the biggest stories of 2025.

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The Somalis are tribal, but they are not alone.

It is intolerable to recognize the monolithic chunk of the satellite that runs from Morocco 4,000 miles eastbound to Pakistan and southbound crossed Africa without realizing the value of tribes. This country covers astir 2 cardinal people, mostly Muslim — but includes hundreds of millions of Christians too. It is mostly poor, but it besides has the affluent Gulf Arab nations.

What it shares much than thing is simply a committedness to people arsenic the halfway of identity. In Arab and Muslim countries, relative matrimony helps prolong tribal identity; marriages betwixt cousins relationship for astir two-thirds of each marriages successful Pakistan and astir arsenic galore successful immoderate Arab countries.

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Rates are somewhat little successful Somalia, due to the fact that marriages assistance hindrance "clans" — not conscionable already closely-related families — to each other.

Still, arsenic a publication connected matrimony successful Arab and African countries explains:

"Overall, successful the people of the matrimony process successful Somalia and Djibouti, corporate interests are enactment earlier the interests of the 2 individuals getting married."

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I bash not deliberation astir Americans tin easy wrapper their heads astir however overseas these cultures truly are to our mode of thinking.

A nine that does not adjacent let its members to take their husbands oregon wives has a precise antithetic operation than Western societies that absorption connected idiosyncratic rights — and the regularisation of law.

Yes, successful some the West and tribal societies, the household is the halfway unit, which whitethorn beryllium wherefore Westerners person not seen this quality arsenic intelligibly arsenic they should.

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But successful the West, each household is efficaciously independent. More almighty groupings are political, not familial, organized by colonisation size and geography — cities, counties, states, nations.

In tribal societies, families stack unneurotic to summation power, which is wherefore relative matrimony matters truthful much. Me against my cousin; maine and my relative against our second-cousin neighbors; our extended household against yours — each nether the enactment of a clan leader. The clans whitethorn stock territory, but not governmental leadership.

In the West, nation-states stitchery legitimacy from — astatine slightest successful mentation — providing each citizens adjacent justness nether the law.

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Tribal societies bash not person a akin overarching philosophical foundation. They enactment successful signifier arsenic tribes vie and cooperate, sometimes successful comparatively calm equilibrium, sometimes nether the autocratic enactment of the strongest people and its chiefs.

And sometimes successful unfastened conflict, up to and including civilian warfare — arsenic successful the wars that wracked Somalia for decades.

When idiosyncratic families from tribal societies travel to Western countries, they person small prime but to follow Western stacking mechanisms — to judge the regularisation of instrumentality and the authorization of autarkic governmental jurisdictions. Plenty of idiosyncratic Somalis person done conscionable that.

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But erstwhile they travel en masse, arsenic the Somali immigrants of Minnesota did, they whitethorn effort to support their tribal structures astatine slightest partially intact.

In November, the autarkic paper County Highway ran an bonzer portion astir the Somali fraud successful Minnesota explaining however easy the assemblage had reestablished itself on clan lines:

"The assemblage is the effect not of a voluntary question of ambitious radical seeking a caller beingness successful America, but of the US-government’s wide resettlement of full families astatine once…

"The Somalis brought the language, culture, and analyzable clan strategy of their shattered homeland to Minnesota… the taste forces that allowed Somalis to resume a mentation of their anterior lives besides had the effect of walling them disconnected from different Minnesotans."

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"The historical Somali nine is simply a benignant of Janus-faced society," explained Ahmed Samatar, a governmental idiosyncratic astatine Macalester College successful Saint Paul and the founding editor-in-chief of Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, speaking from his skylit field office.

"On 1 broadside determination is the intimacy of the section community, the household subgroup and kin group. Here determination is mutuality and work and respect… But the civic civilization was not portion of that tradition."

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In different words, galore Somalis judge they beryllium their tribes hard work, integrity, and honesty.

Their tribes — and nary 1 else.

So, erstwhile Minnesota’s Democrats decided to driblet immoderate guiderails and efficaciously unfastened federally financed programs to wide looting — a determination some overtly cynical and weirdly naive — a stunning fig of Somalis took advantage.

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As County Highway explained:

"The fraud dispersed truthful wide and rapidly that it appeared to person nary existent architect… gallop[ing] done the Somali community, which kept the concealed from non-Somali Minnesota with ironclad discipline. The clan strategy acted arsenic some pathway and extortion for the fraud…"

Through each fraud case, the Somali assemblage displayed what Professor Samatar described arsenic "the solidarity of thieves." Bad actors wrong the assemblage would attack imaginable coconspirators without immoderate fearfulness of betrayal.

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Honor among thieves!

No, not each Somali successful Minnesota tin oregon should beryllium blamed for this fraud.

But that doesn’t mean that the determination to judge ample numbers of immigrants en masse from a tribal nine didn’t acceptable the signifier for it.

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Europe has seen a akin situation with Syrian and Afghan refugees successful the past decade, though Europe has faced much unit due to the fact that it has taken successful truthful galore young, azygous men.

In 2025 it became wide that the post-1965 question of migration to the United States has present ended.

President Donald Trump has proven the Democratic statement that the United States could not support its borders was a lie. He has proven that with tenable and politically tolerable steps, caller amerciable migration tin beryllium reduced astir to zero.

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For astatine slightest a mates of statesmanlike cycles, I uncertainty immoderate superior Democratic Party campaigner volition telephone for allowing wide waves of unskilled migrants (whether amerciable oregon done dubious programs similar the ones the Biden medication concocted).

At immoderate point, though — possibly successful a decade, possibly a procreation — the pendulum volition plaything again, and the United States volition beryllium acceptable to judge ample numbers of immigrants erstwhile more.

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When it does, I anticipation it remembers the lessons of the past decennary — and does not fto successful ample groups from tribal societies, encouraging them to recreate their clans en masse connected American soil.

We cannot beryllium definite each our caller immigrants volition judge the perfect of America.

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But we tin bash our champion to beryllium definite they bash not get with fragmented allegiances.

Editor's note: This file archetypal appeared connected the author's Substack, "Unreported Truths."

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