They are all in their early 20’s and regard themselves as British, but in recent weeks a group of men have left their families in the UK to go to Somalia to fight for that country’s Islamic leaders.

These men insist they are not terrorists. They have not gone to join up with al-Qaeda or its many affiliates operating in East Africa, but have given up their jobs and studies to support the militia loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which, until last month, controlled the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

The Foreign Office concedes that it does not know how many of these young Britons went to sign up with an international brigade drawn from expatriate families across Europe.

They come from families who sought asylum from the interminable wars to blight their homeland.

Any Somali reaching Britain is almost always given automatic leave to remain here by the immigration authorities. They know that they could never be deported back to a country riven by violence.

It is unlikely there are any records of their travels because all are thought to have both Somali and UK nationality. But most will have flown to Kenya where UK passport holders can buy a visa at the airport.

From there it is easy for them to make their way to the jungles and swamplands that line the porous borders with Somalia.

While the US portrays the UIC as al-Qaeda sympathisers, many Somali families now settled in the UK , including those in the business community, believe that the Islamic coalition represented that country’s best hope for stability in years.

Community leaders in cities like Cardiff, Leicester and London that have a sizeable Somali presence, know of young men who travelled there including one who went to teach in Mogadishu and then joined the UIC militia when the fighting started.

Many of these Britons who were forced into retreat when Ethiopian-led troops took control of Mogadishu may now find themselves in territory controlled by clans sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but that is because these are the only areas where the routed UIC forces can regard as safe havens.

While the UK authorities wait for the Ethiopians to hand over the passports and other documentation they claim to have taken from their British captives, the best hope these men have to escape is to make it back across the Kenyan border before limping ‘home’ to Britain

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