In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, Sheikh Abdirahman bin Isma’il al-Jabarti, a descendant of Muhammad’s uncle Aqeel Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib, fled his homeland in the Arabian Peninsula following an argument with a family member and settled in a region today known as Sanaag, which is claimed by both Somalia and Somaliland. Since then, the clan that Abdirahman established in the region has grown to become one of the largest and most influential Somali clans in the Horn of Africa, called the Daarood. Why does this matter to Americans?

Because the Horn of Africa is dominated by a series of Somali clans: chief among them are the Daarood and the Hawiye. British and Italian colonization in the 1880s fostered discord between the clans, creating artificial borders and leading to struggles between the Daarood and the Hawiye for land and labor. Italy’s alliances with the Hawiye in the south of the region, which was perpetuated following World War II by the United Nations, marginalized the Daarood and fostered resentment.

In 1969, Somali military commander Maxamed Siyaad Barre staged a coup and became the region’s dictator. A member of the marginalized Daarood clan, Barre initially pledged unity across the region, but ultimately favored his own clan, promoting members of the Daarood to positions of power, especially within the military and the police. The Hawiye, however, came to dominate commerce and the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Following rumors of dissent from the Hawiye-led United Somali Congress, Barre began bombing Hawiye neighborhoods and enclaves in Mogadishu in 1982. Brigadier General Maxamed Faarax Xasan Garaad led a coalition of Somali rebels against Barre, eventually toppling his regime in 1991.

Once Garaad captured Mogadishu and forced Barre to flee, the region devolved into civil war, with Hawiye militias roaming the streets, raping and murdering Daarood clan members. Despite Garaad’s calls for restraint and unity, as many as 50,000 Daarood were displaced and executed. Hawiye further controlled many of Mogadishu’s ports, as well as ports further up the coast, and were accused of intentionally starving their Daarood countrymen. An estimated 300,000 died due to the resulting famine, further fueling Daarood grievance claims against the Hawiye factions dominating Mogadishu. However, Garaad’s death in 1996 left the Hawiye factions largely leaderless, and the state collapsed into warlord factions, further exacerbating intra-clan violence and strife. The 2000s saw conditions worsen, with further bloodshed and rivalry over which clan should claim Somali’s presidency, with each clan smearing the rival’s political leader as a foreign puppet.

All of this, though perhaps interesting to some, once again prompts the question: Why does this matter to Americans?

From Mogadishu to Minnesota

After Barre’s government collapsed in 1991, approximately two million Somalis fled, mostly to neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, but nearly 10% (approximately 170,000) made their way to America. Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, serving at the time under then-President George H.W. Bush, designated Somalis fleeing their homeland’s violence and chaos eligible for temporary protected status (TPS). (Currently, the Homeland Security Secretary designates which countries are eligible for TPS, but at the time, just a year after TPS was created by the Immigration Act of 1990, the attorney general was in charge of designations.) Somalia’s TPS eligibility has been renewed and redesignated ever since and is not slated to expire until March of 2026. The exact number of Somalis brought into the U.S. under TPS is difficult to gauge but numbered in the thousands. In 1997, after extending Somalia’s TPS designation five times, then-President Bill Clinton and his Attorney General, Janet Reno, redesignated Somalia as eligible for TPS and expanded the terms of the designation, allowing even more Somalis to enter the U.S.

Many more Somalis were taken in via refugee and asylum programs. By 2004, nearly 60,000 Somalis had settled in the U.S. Another 12,000 were admitted over the next five years, until the Somali population in the U.S. was over 100,000 by 2011. Under then-President Barack Obama, nearly 60,000 more Somalis were brought into the U.S. Initially, non-government organizations working on refugee resettlement helped disperse Somalis throughout the country, but federal programs eventually began to “cluster” Somali refugees in particular areas. During the Obama years, Minnesota became a top destination for Somali refugees, who were shuttled to the typically-cold state from whatever port of entry they arrived in. Close to 100,000 Somalis live in Minnesota alone. Many Somalis have also settled in Maine, Ohio, and Washington.

While the number of Somalis in the U.S. is relatively small (less than 200,000, compared to nearly one million Haitian immigrants), they have not left their intra-clan rivalries behind in Mogadishu but brought them to America, where those feuds are now influencing American elections. For example, Minneapolis mayoral candidate and son of Somali immigrants Omar Fateh lost his bid to run the city last week, despite Minneapolis being home to the largest Somali diaspora in the U.S. Why? Because Fateh is a member of the Daarood clan, while many of the Somalis in Minneapolis are members of the Hawiye.

This week, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali immigrant and herself a member of the Daarood clan, berated her fellow Somalis for not backing Fateh against incumbent Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and even suggested that Somalis who will allow intra-clan rivalries to affect their politics ought to be deported. “You know who I mean, you’ve seen them. We need to get rid of these people! We will never gain power and move forward as Somalians as long as these people live among us and we don’t kick them out!” the Somali politician declared, entirely in Somali. “The same people we try to defend, they’re the ones who want to see us in jail, who spread lies about us, who make videos claiming we said things we never said. When that happens, there’s no way to defend ourselves,” she continued, referencing several instances in which she accused fellow Somalis of intentionally mistranslating her speeches in Somali.

In response to Fateh’s electoral loss, many Somalis in America faulted “qabiil,” a Somali term for “clan,” also used to refer to intra-clan rivalries. “Omar Fateh was running for mayor of Minneapolis. He asked for his people to come out and support him, to vote for him, but instead they went and they danced with a white man,” one young Somali man explained in a social media video. “I would understand if their policies didn’t match, I would understand if he just wasn’t the right fit, maybe he was just too young, but they did it because of tribalism.” Another Somali in another social media video quipped, “Imagine losing a Somali mayor because of tribalism, qabiil.” He continued, “Our community turned a city election into clan competition. We came here to be one Somali and now we’re divided into tribes in front of Americans, who don’t even know what qabiil is.”

The accusation being made is that Somalis from the Hawiye clan refused to vote for Fateh and even voted for his rival, Frey, because the Somali candidate was from the Daarood clan, and the Hawiye have not forgiven the Daarood for the sectarian discrimination and violence committed against them under Barre.

Steve Robinson, an editor for the Maine Wire and an investigative reporter for As Maine Goes, explained that members of the Daarood clan “dominate” political representation in Maine, although other clans are more populous, “but for some reasons the Darood LOVE power. People including figures like Ilhan Omar, Deqa Dhalac, Yusuf Yusuf, Omar Fateh, Safiya Khalid, Abdullahi Ali are from the same sub-clans of Darood (Ogaden and Majeeteen).” He continued, “Somali immigrants from these other clans, particularly in Minnesota’s large diaspora, have grown resentful of Darood’s rising influence in U.S. politics.”

“This intra-clan rivalry has led Hawiye, Rahanweyn, and Dir members — including those from Somaliland (which flies its own flag and seeks independence from Somalia) — to back non-Somali candidates,” Robinson noted. “They supported Jewish incumbent Jacob Frey for mayor over a Somali opponent from a different clan, prioritizing clan loyalty over ethnic or religious solidarity. So yeah … many Somalis voted for the Jew over a Muslim Somali. Go figure.”

Robinson cited the example of Nasri Warsame, who ran for Minneapolis mayor in 2021. Warsame, who is not a member of the Daarood, alleges that Daarood-aligned organizations and figures attempted to block his candidacy and instead through their support behind Pakistani-Indian candidate Aisha Chughtai. In a speech entirely in Somali, Warsame claimed that Omar and her fellow Daarood members convinced the state’s Democratic Party not to endorse Warsame and to instead back his rival, Chughtai. “They shouldn’t be teaming up to block me from ever getting the party’s endorsement, simply because I come from Mogadishu,” he said.

Securing the Homeland

So much for why Somali clan conflicts matter to Americans; the next question is: What can Americans do about it?

Already, President Donald Trump and his administration have imposed numerous restrictions in an effort to ensure that foreigners do not bring third-world tribal rivalries to the U.S. During his first administration, Trump enforced a total travel ban against Somalia, whose population is largely Muslim. While Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, scrapped the travel ban, Trump’s second administration has halted the flow of refugees from Somalia, citing the region’s return to relative stability and a more restrictive, selective criteria for vetting and accepting refugees.

However, the Trump administration has not yet moved to eliminate Somalia’s TPS designation. The president’s second administration has also made efforts to terminate the refugee programs for Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, cutting off the flow of over 200,000 refugees annually.