Canadians in faraway places

To begin with, a success story. The slow Canadian takeover of the planet continues: first, it was the sixth President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga; now it's the new Prime Minister of Somalia, Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, a Carleton University graduate twice over. A pesky clause in the US Constitution precludes one of our own from being President--for now--but we still control the American airwaves.

However, we are also making a habit of marooning ordinary Canadians in far-off lands, with no such prospects of success. I have written before about Abousfian Abdelrazik, Omar Khadr and Bashir Makhtal. Now we can add another name to the list: Abdihakim Mohamed, the autistic son of Canadian Anab Mohamed Issa.

Mohamed has been stranded in Kenya for three years, while the benighted bureaucrats running Passport Canada have been making one wild excuse after another for refusing to issue him a passport. No, he didn't "lose" his original one: his mother, worried that something might happen to it, brought it back to Canada with her--and it was promptly confiscated by Canadian officials at the Ottawa airport. (It is illegal to carry a passport that does not belong to you.) And that passport has now expired.

Read the whole miserable story here. Odd how this sort of thing never seems to happen to white Canadians, isn't it?

But if we keep exporting our citizens to run other countries, perhaps we can close the circle. Starting in Somalia: Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, meet your fellow Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik.* He can use a little help right about now.

UPDATE: Reader Raphael Alexander comments: these people aren't real Canadians--look at their funny names! Alexander, a Blogging Tory, currently writes for the National Post.

______________
*Er...no. I can't believe no one else picked this up, but I must with some embarrassment note that Somalia and Sudan are obviously different countries, separated by Ethiopia. While I have no reason to suppose that the new Somalian President's generosity of spirit would preclude a 1,000-mile journey to visit Mr. Abdelrazik in Khartoum, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Mea culpa.