ALEX BERENSON: Somalia’s clan culture helps explain Minnesota’s shocking fraud scandal

Nairobi, Kenya, December 2011:

I’m in Kenya to research my seventh John Wells novel, “The Night Ranger.” Wells chases American missionaries who are taken into the bush by Somali mercenaries. It’s a change of pace for him, lower risk than his usual job. It will be one of my favorite novels.

I visited a large Somali refugee camp in northern Kenya and on the Indian Ocean coast; here Somali kidnappers have recently captured and killed many Europeans.

Now I am back in Nairobi and talking about the Somali problem that Kenyans are facing closely. The majority of Kenya is Christian. Somalis are Muslim and poor even by African standards. Kenya needs Western safari tourism for jobs and cash. The kidnappings didn’t help. Kenyans prefer to keep their neighbors out. But the United Nations and international aid groups left them with little choice (ironically, poor countries hate open borders more than rich ones).

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Anyway, I’m having drinks in a hotel with (white) non-governmental aid workers and talking about Somalia; These NGO types are living well. And someone says:

“Here’s what you need to know about Somalia. It’s in the ocean, right? [Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, almost 2,000 miles.] But most Somalis cannot swim, fish, and have no interest in water. That’s how introverted they are, how tribal they are.”

The words stuck with me. And 14 years later, they are helping to explain the multibillion-dollar Somali corruption scandal that has become one of the biggest stories of 2025 in Minnesota.

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Somalis are a tribe, but they are not alone.

Without recognizing the importance of tribes, it is impossible to understand the vast world that stretches 6,000 miles east from Morocco to Pakistan and southern Africa. This region covers nearly two billion people, mostly Muslims, but also includes hundreds of millions of Christians. Mostly poor, but there are also rich Gulf Arab countries.

What it shares more than anything else is a commitment to the tribe as the center of identity. In Arab and Muslim countries, cousin marriage helps maintain tribal identity; Marriages between cousins ​​account for nearly two-thirds of all marriages in Pakistan, and nearly the same number in some Arab countries.

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In Somalia, the rates are slightly lower because marriages help bond “clans” and not just closely related families.

However, a book on marriage in Arab and African countries explains it this way:

“In general, in the marriage process in Somalia and Djibouti, collective interests are prioritized over the interests of the two individuals getting married.”

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I don’t think most Americans can easily grasp how alien these cultures are to our way of thinking.

A society that does not even allow its members to choose their wives or husbands is very different from Western societies that focus on individual rights and the rule of law.

Yes, in both Western and tribal societies the family is the basic unit, and so Westerners may not have seen this difference as clearly as they should.

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But in the West, every family is virtually independent. The stronger groupings are political rather than familial; Organized by population size and geography (cities, counties, states, nations).

In tribal societies, families come together to gain power, which is why cousin marriage is so important. Me against my cousin; me and my cousin against our second cousin neighbors; Our extended family versus yours; all under the leadership of a clan leader. Clans can share territory but not political leadership.

In the West, nation states derive their legitimacy – at least in theory – by providing equal justice before the law to all citizens.

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Tribal societies do not have a similar overarching philosophical foundation. While in practice tribes compete and cooperate, they sometimes operate in relatively calm equilibrium, sometimes under the autocratic leadership of the most powerful tribe and its chiefs.

And sometimes there are open conflicts that escalate to civil war, as in the wars that have devastated Somalia for decades.

When families from tribal societies come to Western countries, they have little choice but to adopt Western hoarding mechanisms, accept the rule of law and independent political jurisdiction. Many individual Somalis did this.

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But when they arrive en masse, as Somali immigrants in Minnesota did, they may try to keep their tribal structures at least partially intact.

In November, an independent newspaper, County Highway, published a remarkable article about the Somali scam in Minnesota, describing how easily the community reestablished itself along clan lines:

“The community is the result not of a voluntary movement of ambitious people seeking a new life in America, but of the US government’s mass relocation of entire families at once…

“Somalis brought the language, culture, and complex clan system of their fragmented homeland to Minnesota…The cultural forces that allowed Somalis to continue a version of their previous life also had the effect of walling them off from other Minnesotans.”

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“The historical Somali society is a kind of Janus-faced society,” said Ahmed Samatar, a political scientist at Macalester College in Saint Paul and founding editor-in-chief of Bildhaan: International Journal of Somali Studies, speaking from his skylit campus office.

“On the one hand, there is the closeness of the local community, the family subgroup, and the kin group. There is reciprocity, responsibility, and respect… But civic culture was not part of this tradition.”

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In other words, many Somalis believe they owe their tribes hard work, integrity, and honesty.

Their tribe – and no one else.

So when Minnesota Democrats decided to abandon any guidance and effectively open up federally funded programs to mass looting (a decision that was both clearly cynical and oddly naive), a striking number of Somalis benefited.

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As the County Highway explains:

“The scam spread so widely and quickly that it appeared to have no real architect…[ing] Through the Somali community, which keeps the secret of non-Somali Minnesota with strict discipline. The clan system served as both a conduit and protection for fraud…”

Somali society displayed what Professor Samatar described as the “solidarity of thieves” in each case of fraud. Bad actors within the community can approach potential collaborators without fear of betrayal.

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Honor among thieves!

No, not every Somali in Minnesota can or should be charged with this fraud.

However, this does not mean that the decision to accept large numbers of immigrants from tribal society en masse did not pave the way for this.

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Europe has experienced a similar crisis with Syrian and Afghan refugees in the last decade; but Europe suffered more violence because it accepted large numbers of young, single men.

In 2025, it became clear that the post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States was now over.

President Donald Trump has proven false the Democrats’ claim that the United States cannot protect its borders. It has proven that new illegal immigration can be reduced to almost zero with reasonable and politically acceptable steps.

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For at least several presidential terms, I doubt any serious Democratic Party candidate will call for allowing in mass waves of unskilled immigrants (whether illegally or through questionable programs concocted by the Biden administration).

But at some point—perhaps a decade, perhaps a generation from now—the pendulum will swing again and the United States will be ready to accept attacks in large numbers. immigrants once again.

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When he does, I hope he remembers the lessons of the last decade and disallows large groups from tribal societies and encourages them to collectively recreate their clans on American soil.

We cannot be sure that all our new immigrants will accept the American ideal.

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But we can do our best to make sure they don’t come with fragmented loyalties.

Editor’s note: This column first appeared on the author’s Substack, “Unreported Facts“

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