Warriors from the North

Somali Abukar lives a life at the very bottom of the Danish society. His son, Mohammed, has joined Al-Shabab, perhaps to avoid a life like his father’s, a man who has no real power over anything at all. Abukar now fears that Mohammed will be the next suicide bomber to carry out his mission, a fear that seems very reasonable, as two out of the seven Danish-Somali men, that Mohammed was recruited together with, have already become “martyrs”. One carried out a suicide attack at a graduation ceremony for doctors in Mogadishu – killing 24. The other attempted an attack at Mogadishu’s airport but failed to kill anyone but himself. A fourth young man from this terrorist cell, “The Shadow”, got away just in time. Originally, he joined Al-Shabab in order to fight against the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia but the focus of the organization shifted when the Ethiopian troops retreated. ”The Shadow” didn’t support their new mission: the killings of his fellow-countrymen in an attempt to overthrow the government.”The Shadow” is the narrator of this film. While Abukar tries to reach his son, Mohammed, ”The Shadow” looks back upon the recruitment process of Somalis in the West. In Warriors from the North, a group of young Danish-Somali men revolt against their resigned and despondent fathers by becoming suicide bombers for Al-Shabab in Somalia.