Minnesota hawalas under siege

Many innocents get squashed by the elephantine steps taken in the never-ending war on terrorism. Some showed up outside the Wells Fargo bank at 2600 E. Franklin today, protesting the closing of hawala accounts, which means they are left with no way to send money back to hungry families in Somalia.

Hawalas are the money transfer system used by Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community to send money home (see below.) Somalia has no functioning banking system (and a barely-there government.) The informal money exchange system is the only way that people can support their families. Hussein Samatar wrote in an op/ed in the Star Tribune:

What Somali-Minnesotans cannot understand is why they have to take the brunt impact from the Patriot Act’s expansion of the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions (signed on Oct. 26, 2001, by President George W. Bush and recently given a four-year extension by President Obama).

Somali-Minnesotans are Americans, and are law-abiding members of the community. Therefore, it is their right to conduct their banking business without the addition of these great difficulties.

The TC Daily Planet will have more coverage of the local hawala situation early next week, in an article by Lolla Mohammed Nur.