Abdullahi Ali has lived a life many refugees only dream about.

He grew up in Somalia, fled to a refugee camp in Kenya as a teenager after civil war broke out in his home country, and was lucky to be placed in a resettlement program that brought him to the United States.

He arrived in Lewiston in 2009 and soon got a job as a receptionist at Catholic Charities, the state’s major resettlement organization. He enrolled in college and then graduate school and started his own business. He moved to Portland, became an American citizen and bought a house.

Others in Ali’s position might be satisfied with those accomplishments and enjoy the new lives they made. Instead, the 50-year-old has returned to Africa, where he’s working remotely in Nairobi while launching a campaign for president of his home state, Jubaland, in Somalia.

Ali said he was inspired to run for the position, similar to the governor of a U.S. state, after a 2021 return trip to Kenya and Somalia. There, he saw crippling poverty in refugee camps and widespread fear and oppression caused by the Al-Shabab terrorist group, which has a heavy presence in Jubaland.

“I never wanted to be a politician, but this isn’t just about politics,” Ali said. “It’s about saving lives. It’s about impacting future generations in Jubaland and beyond, fighting extremism and liberating communities. … And I wanted to take the lead, because if I don’t do it, who will?”

FLEEING SOMALIA

Ali was born in Kismayo, a port city in the southernmost part of Somalia. His family earned a living as farmers and tenders of livestock on the outskirts of town.

They were forced to leave for a Kenyan refugee camp when he was around 17, at the start of the Somali civil war. Ali said his uncle was killed and his family had to flee after a hostile tribal group moved into the area.

The war brought a lot of uncertainty as different political and tribal groups fought for control, and an opposing group moving into a new city posed a threat to the people who lived there. Men would be killed, women raped and businesses looted, Ali said.

“When you knew your clan is losing, people would prepare to flee,” he said. “People would always flee and go further away from wherever that was happening. That’s what we did, and the nearest place for safety was the Kenyan border.”

He spent years living at the Dadaab refugee camps but also attended school while in Kenya, studying sociology and public administration at the University of Nairobi.

In his mid-30s, Ali left for the United States through a United Nations refugee resettlement program. A brother and sister also came to Lewiston around the same time through the program.

Ali said he was permitted to work right away because of his refugee status, and he found a job as a receptionist at Catholic Charities in Lewiston. He worked there for a year before moving in 2011 to Portland, where he took a different job with Catholic Charities as a case manager for fellow immigrants who had survived torture.

Ali said he was excited to come to the U.S., but he also found it daunting. He spoke English when he arrived, but he didn’t have a driver’s license or car, which made it hard to find a job.

“The systems, the expectations, the culture – all that was completely new,” he said. “I was excited, but also anxious.”

He enrolled at the University of Southern Maine while working at Catholic Charities, and he often took on other jobs as well – sometimes as many as three at once, he said. He worked at Best Buy and did freelance translation and interpretation of the Somali and Swahili languages.

Ali graduated from USM in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and a minor in economics. He then earned a master’s degree in justice studies from Southern New Hampshire University and a doctorate in public policy from the Muskie School of Public Service at USM.

MAKING AN IMPACT IN PORTLAND

In 2015, he started Gateway Community Services in Portland and a sister nonprofit, Gateway Community Services Maine.

The for-profit provides behavioral health services, including mental health counseling and case management, as well as services for children with intellectual disabilities. The nonprofit provides similar services for people who are uninsured, along with community and leadership programs for young people. Together, the two organizations employ over 250 people, Ali said.

He said he started the organizations after his work for Catholic Charities made him realize how much the immigrant community was struggling with mental health.

“In many cases they were reluctant to seek services because they didn’t feel safe,” he said. “Because if they do share, parents think their children will be taken away or the government will know and they will be labeled as crazy. From where they came from, because of the isolation and stigma associated with mental health, they didn’t want to discuss that and they also didn’t trust the service providers.

“We wanted to create a center they could come to where they would feel safe and work with people from their communities, people who look like them and who have gone through the same experiences.”

The organizations later expanded to serve the broader population, not only immigrants. “We have realized that to ensure integration, there has to be interactions between different communities and that has to start with us,” Ali said.

Reza Jalali, a consultant on immigrant issues and former executive director of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center, got to know Ali through their mutual work at organizations led by and serving immigrants.

“He’s done amazing work here in Maine in terms of advocacy and starting his nonprofit, which has become a leading immigrant-founded, immigrant-run organization, but that’s not enough for him,” said Jalali, a former refugee from Iran. “He wants to work harder and create a safer and better world for all of us, not just new Mainers.”

In recent years, it’s become more common for immigrants and new Mainers to run for office locally; several now hold seats in the Maine Legislature and on their local city and town councils. And while it’s not uncommon for immigrants to return to their home countries, Jalali said, it is unusual for a new Mainer to return home and run for office there.

“It is quite unique and wonderful to see someone trying to not only help people here but help communities that are left behind, in particular if they are in need of that type of leadership,” Jalali said. “He came here as a young man. He gained so much knowledge and so many skills … and now he wants to share his gift with the other communities he has belonged to. It is magical, and I hope more of that happens.”

After coming to Maine in 2009, Ali didn’t return to Kenya or Somalia for years except for a trip in late 2018 to visit a sick aunt. But in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to return to Africa, work remotely and visit friends.

Being back at the refugee camp and seeing the conditions in which Somali refugees were living made him want to do something.

“I could see the poverty. I could see the struggles of people in their faces and their homes, the places they go to and what they do,” he said. “I felt so bad for people.”

‘THE WHOLE PROCESS IS ABNORMAL’

Ali said he is seeking to succeed Ahmed Mohamed Islam, who was elected in 2013. But if and how that could happen is unclear in a country where the transfer of power looks very different than it does in the United States.

“I am so hesitant to use the word ‘elections’ because that conjures in the mind of the reader a certain degree of political normalcy that we understand here in the United States,” said Abdi Samatar, a professor of geography and the environment at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, who researches democracy and development in Africa.

Minnesota, Maine, Ohio and Washington are among the states with the largest concentrations of Somali people in the U.S. As of 2020, about 221,000 Somali immigrants were living in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“The names (we have in the U.S.) don’t fit the processes on the ground in Somalia,” Samatar said. “When we talk about elections, we think of normal people going to vote and authorities being held accountable. None of those things exist.”

At the national level, Somalia has a bicameral parliament that elects a president. A prime minister is nominated by the president and then voted on or endorsed by the parliament.

States such as Jubaland in theory are supposed to mirror the larger structure, though it doesn’t necessarily work that way, Samatar said. And at both the national and state levels, ordinary people don’t vote, he said. Instead, a small group of people selected by those in power are the ones who vote for the parliament.

“It’s small groups of people who select them, basically. There’s no election,” Samatar said.

Ali said the federal government and Jubaland’s current administration have agreed to a November election, but he’s uncertain if that will happen. Already the state parliament and president have extended their terms in a move that many people see as unconstitutional, he said.

Normally, he said, an election commission announces a timeline for an election and the application process for candidates. But the administration has not yet named the commission, which is supposed to be done in agreement with the opposition.

“Right now, we are at a point where we are fighting for elections to happen,” Ali said. “We are not even talking about a timetable or qualifications. We are talking about elections happening, and the current administration is not clear about what the plan is.”

While getting on a ballot in the U.S. typically includes gathering signatures from voters, Ali said, that’s not something that is done in Somalia. Applications typically ask for a candidate’s credentials, payment of a fee and a background check – but sometimes the background check is manipulated for political reasons to exclude certain candidates.

Samatar said the system is “deeply corrupt,” the commissions are not legitimate because they’re typically appointed by the regional or national president, and the timelines for a turnover of power are not dictated by any particular law or standard.

“The whole system is abnormal,” he said.

ALI’S VISION FOR JUBALAND

Ali doesn’t just want to win, he has a vision for Jubaland. It’s laid out on his campaign website and in a 39-page manifesto that outlines his goals for the presidency. The cover of the manifesto features a portrait of Ali towering over a cityscape, with the words “Light of Jubaland, The Future, Dr. Abdullahi Ali for President of Jubaland” in bold letters.

Inside, the manifesto talks about liberation from Al-Shabab, bringing more transparency and accountability to government, building up the economy and improving infrastructure.

Other goals are to strengthen the food system to make it more resilient to climate change and to standardize access to health care.

The manifesto also mentions Maine as a place where Ali learned to have hope.

“Many may have thought that a refugee boy could not build a life of inspiring purpose, let alone a fulfilling career,” it says. “But with the strength of my family, the support of my community, and the education that became my lifeline, I built businesses. I founded organizations dedicated to healing, empowerment, and lifting up the most vulnerable among us.”

Freeing Somalia from Al-Shabab is his biggest priority, Ali said.

The insurgent group has for years sought to establish an Islamic state in Somalia and has been a source of security challenges and conflict with the government and civilians. According to Amnesty International, Al-Shabab was responsible for the death or injury of 312 civilians in Somalia between February and October 2023.

Al-Shabab also was behind the 2013 attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi that left 71 people dead.

“I want to see the territories liberated,” Ali said. “I want to see Al-Shabab out of Jubaland. I want a return of normalcy in those parts of the country and making sure people are getting services, including security but also basic needs like water, education, health care.”

Ali is in Nairobi now, and said he hasn’t been to Jubaland since March. Even then, he said, the presence of Al-Shabab limited where he could travel. Nairobi is a strategic base for him because it’s home to many Somalis and Ali can meet there with business and community leaders from Somalia, he said. He also uses social media and interviews to get his message out.

He’ll stay in the region for at least the next few months and will move back to Somalia if he gets the chance to run for and win the presidency.

He said he thinks most people in Somalia will see his time spent in Maine as an asset, even if the political establishment tries to label him as an outsider.

“I think the everyday person wants to see something different,” Ali said. “They want to see new ideas and new people with different mindsets. They want to see people who can connect with them on a personal level. … The fact I have lived and worked outside (the country), they associate that with experience, innovation and bringing back things I have learned.”

Maine state Rep. Deqa Dhalac, a Democrat who in 2021 became the first Somali-American mayor when she won the top elected post in South Portland, agreed that Ali’s education and career in Maine could be positively viewed by people in Somalia, but cautioned that the political process doesn’t work the same way.

“It’s a good question,” Dhalac said when asked about Ali’s chances. “In Somalia, they don’t have what we have in the U.S., with clean elections and one person, one vote.”

Dhalac said Ali is a leader in Maine’s Somali community and described him as smart and engaging, the type of person who organizes a Ramadan celebration and collects money for family members when someone dies.

“I think it’s very noble what he’s doing,” she said. “There are a lot of bad things going on in Somalia. He’s an educated leader and someone who cares about the Somali people, not just in Jubaland but in Somalia in general. … He has a big dream to make Somalia better.”

Ali said many people in Somalia admire the United States’ democracy and political stability and would like to see those things in their own country. Others disagree with American foreign policy and response to conflict, such as the war in Gaza, and they view the U.S. as anti-Muslim – though he said that perception has changed as more Somalis have settled in America.

He said the differences between Maine and his homeland can be overwhelming sometimes. Yes, it would be easier and more comfortable to stay in the U.S., but that would mean ignoring the other country and people that he cares so deeply about.

“I see it as being about something bigger than me,” he said.

And if his campaign doesn’t work out, he has Maine.

“I don’t see myself without Maine, honestly,” Ali said. “I also love Somalia. It’s my home country. I have so much love for it, and I want to work (there) and make an impact. But it’s like my mom and my dad. I love both of them. I can’t cut ties with either.”

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