Back to Somalia?

[buglerbilly]

Pentagon eyeing drone shift to aid Somalia

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and PAULINE JELINEK (AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering dispatching surveillance drones and other limited military support for a Somali government offensive against al-Qaida-linked insurgents, U.S. officials said, part of a cautious move to increase U.S. assistance to the anarchic African nation.

U.S. diplomats are pressing Somali leaders to detail the goals of the looming assault, in order to figure out the most appropriate ways the U.S. can help.

Determined to avoid a visible American footprint on the ground or fingerprints on Somalia's shaky government, U.S. officials are struggling to find the right balance between seizing the opportunity to take out al-Qaida insurgents there and avoiding the appearance of a U.S. occupation.

Any U.S. moves in Somalia are haunted by the disastrous 1993 U.S. military assault into the Somali capital — made famous in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." The strike left 18 U.S. soldiers dead.

American diplomats have been meeting in Kenya with leaders of Somalia's embattled government, urging them to think beyond military objectives and focus more on improving their governing.

U.S. officials want the Somali government to determine how to provide services to its people once the fighting is over, and work to gain support among more moderate groups.

While American diplomats are huddling with the Somalis in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Pentagon leaders are preparing a range of options to help boost Somalia's weak security forces.

One proposal would move surveillance drones to the Horn of Africa from an island in the Seychelles, where several unarmed Reaper systems were sent last fall for counter-piracy operations in the western Indian Ocean. The move would represent a more enduring U.S. commitment, which also would be largely invisible to the population.

Armed versions of the pilotless aircraft have been used to tail and fire missiles at militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the U.S. has also used them in Yemen to monitor insurgents from the air.

U.S. defense and Western diplomatic officials spoke about the deliberations on condition of anonymity because final decisions have not been made.

While administration officials said that sending U.S. troops into the embattled country is not seen as a viable option, they say they are not ruling out the use of small numbers of U.S. commandos when necessary for specific operations — much as they have done in the past.

Right now, however, there are no American military advisers in Somalia assisting the government there, and the U.S. is not managing or planning any of the military operations. Officials said the Somali government has not yet made any specific request for military aid.

"This is not an American conflict," Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson told reporters in a recent briefing. "It will be up to the Somalis to ultimately resolve this conflict. The U.S., along with others in the international community, can contribute in a supporting role, which we do and acknowledge, but not to become directly engaged in any of the conflict on the ground there."

Officials are concerned that any taint of U.S. interference or direct military support will only fuel the Somali insurgency. Over the past year or two, al-Shabab has grown from a clan-based collection of militants to a terror organization more closely aligned with al-Qaida.

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned that battle-hardened al-Qaida insurgents are moving out of havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border into Somalia, where vast ungoverned spaces allow them to train and mobilize recruits without interference. Officials also warn that militants frequently cross the Gulf of Aden, moving between Yemen and Somalia.

At the same time, young Somalis have traveled from the United States back to Somalia to fight with the insurgents, stoking fears that they could return to plot attacks in the U.S.

The bulk of U.S. aid that has recently been sent to Somalia has been delivered to Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti. Several African nations have pledged forces to the African Union's peacekeeping force in Somalia, known as AMISOM, and there are now more than 5,000 troops stationed in the country.

But in several previous operations the U.S. has provided intelligence and surveillance information, and — as recently as last September — delivered a surgical strike against a convoy that reportedly killed powerful insurgent Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.

The Somalis have been saying for months that government troops will soon launch an offensive against al-Shabab in an effort to expand the government's area of control. But widespread problems, including corrupt officials and a lack of supplies, have delayed the launch.

Urged on by Osama bin Laden, al-Shabab is trying to topple Somalia's government and install a strict form of Islam.

[buglerbilly]

AU and moderate Islamists warn of planned terrorist attacks


Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia.

08:20 GMT, April 2, 2010 defpro.com | The African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the none-militant Somali Islamists Ahlu Sunna wal Jama'a, which has ties with Somali government, have warned of simultaneous terrorist attacks by al-Shabaab militants in Mogadishu and in some neighbouring states including Kenya and Djibouti.

The spokesman for the moderate Islamist group, Sheik Abdullahi Sheik Abdurahman Abu Yusuf, said in a press conference in the central Somali town of Dhusamareeb late Thursday that his intelligence services have gained reliable information that al-Shabaab are in the final preparations of planned terror attacks which will be carried out in the near future.

“The information we have is very serious and the attacks are planned to be carried out in the sea ports of Mogadishu, Bosasso, Mombassa, Djibouti, Aden and Nairobi’s Wilson airport” the spokesman stated.

“The attacks will be carried out from hijacked boats and the small planes that import Qad (the green narcotic leaf) from Kenya to the terrorist-administered Kilometer fifty airport in the southern Somali Lower Shabelle region” he added.

Meanwhile, the AMISOM spokesman in Mogadishu, Major Brigye Ba-hoku, said that they are fully aware of the planned terror attacks by the Islamist rebels of al-Shabaab which intended to jeopardise security in the region.

“They have many times in the past tried to use boats to attack Mogadishu sea port but failed. And now they are once again preparing terror attacks by using hijacked commercial boats. That is what we know and we will prevent it,” Major Ba-hoku said in an interview with the state-run Radio Mogadishu.

Last month at least nine commercial boats, which were carrying goods to Mogadishu, were hijacked by Somali pirates. The moderate Islamist spokesman confirmed that some of the boats are in the hands of al-Shabaab or buccaneers related to them, although al-Shabaab themselves condemn the act of hijacking boats carrying supplies for Somalia’s vulnerable people.

The moderate Islamist spokesman called on the governments of Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Yemen to be more vigilant of the imminent terrorist attacks by al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda proxy in Somalia which has already carried out many suicide attacks in the country.

“They want to cause heavy damages on the region’ security and economical sources at the same time,” the spokesman for the Somali none-militant Islamists said in his press conference on Thursday in the city of Dhusamareeb, about 550 kilometres north of the capital.

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By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar
Special Correspondent for Somalia

[buglerbilly]

Britons join the jihadist ranks to fight in SomaliaFears grow that al-Qaida is constructing a safe haven in east Africa with UK groups' help

Mark Townsend, home affairs editor

The Observer, Sunday 2 May 2010

A growing number of Britons are answering the call to jihad in Somalia and joining the ranks of militants linked to al-Qaida ahead of an American-backed drive next month to strengthen the country's army.

Sources say that the influx, which includes Britons of Pakistani origin, is heading to the Horn of Africa as the US tries to shore up Somalia's government in the face of a broadening Islamist insurgency.

Warnings have been sounded about British-based groups offering funding and expertise to individuals seeking to travel to Somalia to fight alongside al-Shabab, the militia aligned with al-Qaida's global campaign.

US State Department sources said yesterday that it had noted an influx of "foreign fighters" arriving in Somalia to swell the ranks of al-Shabab. Popular routes from Britain to Somalia involve Kenya or Djibouti, the small republic that borders Somalia on its north west. One western official said some flights to the republic had, at one stage, been dubbed the "Djibouti express" because on occasion so many young Britons were on board. The precise scale of the exodus is unclear, but "scores" of British fighters are known to have travelled to Somalia.

Concern is growing over the drip-feed of British men attending Somali training camps. Officials are keen to limit the country's potential to evolve into an alternative hideout for al-Qaida extremists from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Somalia's ungoverned spaces raise the risk, say analysts, of the country replicating Afghanistan's role as an al-Qaida safe haven when under Taliban control.

There is fresh concern over Somalia's proximity to Yemen, the Arabian peninsula base for al-Qaida. Last week the British ambassador to Yemen survived a suicide bomb attack as his convoy travelled through the capital, Sanaa. A Pentagon source said recent events meant the US was developing "significant concerns about the growing threat" in the area.

America has brought US special forces into Yemen to work with the army to try to counter the al-Qaida threat. It has also spent $6.8m in Somalia supporting training for nearly 2,000 soldiers, touted as the biggest effort to rebuild the Somalian army in 20 years.

The issue of Somalia has been repeatedly raised by Jonathan Evans, director- general of MI5. "There is no doubt that there is training activity and terrorist planning in east Africa – particularly in Somalia – which is focused on the UK," he has said.

British security sources cite the case last month of an Australian man of Somali origin who was suspected of working with al-Shabab, but who escaped from police custody in Kenya, as an example of the new wave of foreign fighters entering the country.

The movement between Somalia and the UK has led to increased efforts to detect potential terror networks linked to Islamic militants basedin east Africa. The Somali community in Britain numbers about 250,000, the largest in Europe, with the bulk of those coming to the country as refugees within the past 20 years.

Two Somali asylum-seekers were among the four men convicted of the failed attempts to bomb the London transport system on 21 July 2005.

[buglerbilly]

In Somalia's war, a new challenger is pushing back radical al-Shabab militia

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Thursday, May 27, 2010


Somalia's moderate Muslims rise up to fight extremism
A moderate Sufi Islamist militia in Somalia could offer an alternative strategy for the United States in the fight to stem a rising tide of Islamic radicalism in the failed state on Africa's east coast.

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA -- From behind green sandbags, Abdul Gader fired his rusting AK-47 down a narrow road. A Koran, its pages open, rested on the earth near his sweat-soaked body. So did a pile of bullets. Before him was territory controlled by radical al-Shabab fighters. Behind him was territory Gader and his comrades had taken away from them.

"They are the enemy of my religion and my culture," Gader, a strapping 17-year-old with a boyish face, declared after pumping another burst of bullets at his targets lurking among crumbling houses.

Four days earlier, Gader's moderate Islamist militia had accomplished what the Somali government, backed by tens of millions of dollars in U.S. assistance, could not do for two years: It pushed al-Shabab out of Sigale, a forlorn Mogadishu enclave.

The militia, a Sufi group known as Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa, is posing the strongest challenge yet to al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-linked organization. The Sufis potentially offer an alternative strategy for the United States and its allies in the struggle to stem the rising tide of Islamist radicalism in this failed state on Africa's east coast.

"There's a gap to be filled, and Ahlu Sunna is filling it," said Ahmed Haji Hassan, 22, a fighter who swaggered with confidence near the sandbagged front line of Somalia's brutal civil conflict.

The rise of Somalia's moderate Muslims often draws comparisons to the Sunni tribes in Iraq's Anbar province that rose up to fight al-Qaeda extremism in their country.

Like them, the Sufis have wider political ambitions and could bring a measure of stability and relief from the brutal thuggery of al-Shabab. But many skeptical Somalis, jaded by nearly two decades of war, fear that the Sufis are just the latest jumble of self-interested holy warriors competing for turf and power.

"They could have a positive impact. Or they could become an obstacle to Somali reconciliation," said Abduwali Nour Farah, 31, a businessman. "For now, the people are supporting their gains. But in our history, we have seen such groups rise up all the time."

For centuries, the Sufis were men of peace. They followed a spiritual current of Islam that emphasizes moral education, tolerance and a personal link to God. When Somalia plunged into clan wars after the collapse of the central government in 1991, Islam's extremist Wahhabi strain gained strength amid the anarchy.

But the Sufis engaged in neither the conflict nor politics. When neighboring Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006, with covert U.S. backing, to suppress a hard-line Islamist movement, the Sufis remained on the sidelines.

The invasion sparked the rise of the ultra-radical al-Shabab, which swiftly took control of large patches of southern and central Somalia. Al-Shabab fighters soon set their sights on the Sufis, whom they branded as heretics, assassinating Sufi clerics and burning down Sufi shrines. They opened Sufi graves and pulled the bodies out.

"In this world, they kill you. And when you die, you still cannot escape," said Abdullahi Abdurahman Abu Yousef, a senior Sufi commander.

An uprising begins

The Sufi uprising began in central Somalia last year. Sufi clans fought clans that backed al-Shabab, adding a religious dimension to a conflict shaped by ideology, power and fears that Somalia will become a haven for global terrorists.

The Sufi forces, widely believed to be backed by Ethiopia, have pushed the radicals from several key areas. Late last month, they entered the Somali capital after striking a shaky alliance with the government. They drive pickup trucks mounted with machine guns adorned with red plastic roses. Loudspeakers play eclectic Sufi songs, defying the hard-liners' ban on music.

Sufi leaders try to leverage their moral authority as the only Somali faction not to have fueled the nation's chaos.

"In 20 years, we did not participate in the civil war," said Adam Maalin Abuker, a senior leader. "Now, we want to bring back law and order."

In Sigale, they have done just that, at least for now. In Somalia's turbulent contest, territory is won back as quickly as it is lost. Residents who fled al-Shabab's savagery and harsh decrees have trickled back, if only out of curiosity.

"I haven't seen my neighborhood in two years," said Hawa Ahmed Mohamed, a stooped 70-year-old who was targeted as a "nonbeliever." But she is too afraid to visit her house. "It's on the front line," she explained.

Some of the Sufi warriors look no older than 14 or 15. Most wear traditional sarong-like garments, sandals and necklaces made from Muslim worry beads. All say they believe they are fighting God's enemies.

"When the hawaridge abused my religion, it upset me," said Ahmed Arab Abdi, 22, a fighter from central Somalia, using the Somali word for extremists. His right hand was bandaged, wounded by shrapnel in a battle the day before.

"I am happy to die," chimed in Noor Hussein, a 26-year-old from Sigale who joined the Sufis to liberate his neighborhood.

The fighters said they were unpaid. Many derided government troops and an African peacekeeping force in the capital as more interested in earning salaries and chewing khat, a leafy narcotic, than in pushing out al-Shabab.

"They have 10,000 soldiers, and all they control is 10 kilometers," Abdi said. "If they are fighting for money and khat, they will gain zero ground. "

View from the capital

The suspicions are mutual. Inside a government compound protected by African peacekeepers, Justice Minister Abdirahman Mahmoud Farah said the Sufi ranks are filled with fighters from rival clans who simply "want to use the Ahlu Sunna's war as a ladder to power." Interior Minister Abdugader Ali Omar dismissed the Sufis' successes in Sigale as "a minor operation."

The Sufis seek both officials' positions, along with other top ministries, in a power-sharing deal. But negotiations fell apart in recent days.

"To get the support of the international community, we need to play inside the political sphere," said Abuker, the senior Sufi leader. "We have earned the right to run the government one day."

But tensions between the Sufis and officials in the capital are exacerbating rifts in a government already paralyzed by internal bickering. The government is formed from clans -- some of them Wahhabi Islamist -- that are suspicious of the Sufis.

The Sufis themselves are also divided. A rival Sufi militia claims to be the legitimate representative of the nation's Sufi tradition. It is made up of clans that support the government.

On one recent humid morning in Sigale, Gader and the rest of his fighters prepared for the next battle. Clutching their guns, they lined up in formation and sang uplifting Koranic songs.

Abu Yousef, the commander, stood under a drooping tamarind tree next to a house pocked with softball-size bullet holes. He told his warriors they had a pact with God: If they died fighting al-Shabab, they would enter heaven and God would offer them water from his own hands.

At that moment, gunfire thundered from the direction of al-Shabab positions. "Our heart is telling us to move toward the danger, to free our people and our culture," Abu Yousef said. "Kill them wherever you see them. It is God's order."

The next day, the Sufis pushed al-Shabab back another half-mile.

Photo gallery here.............

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/05/27/GA2010052700149.html?sid=ST2010052605568

[buglerbilly]

Somali Government Criticises Agreement on Hiring of German Mercenaries

A Somali warlord hired German mercenaries to support his cause.


Bid to send mercenaries to Somalia by German-based Asgaard raises strong protests

05:38 GMT, May 27, 2010 defpro.com | The transitional federal government (TFG) of Somalia on Wednesday condemned the bid by the German-based military security firm Asgaard German Security Group to send mercenaries to the country at the Horn of Africa to fight for a Somali warlord. The Somali government said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday that the German security company violated the existence of the Somali government and the country’s sovereignty when it signed an agreement with a warlord.

“There is only one legitimate and internationally recognised Somali government led by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed which has the right to sign agreements with a foreign country or company. Reputable firms should not be signing counterfeit agreements on behalf of Somalia with con artists,” the Somali presidential statement added.

“The notion that a German firm is establishing a military cooperation with a bogus ‘president’ by the name or Abdinur Darman is a laughable matter. Darman is a con artist, not the Somali President,” the statement continued. The Somali government announced that German authorities, Interpol and Somalia’s international partners would be fully notified about Darman’s illicit activities and claimed he would be prosecuted for his subversive crimes.

On Tuesday, a group of opposition lawmakers in Germany condemned the move by Asgaard, describing it as a clear violation of the UN sanctions against Somalia imposed in 1992 in an effort to reduce hostilities in its long-running civil war. Furthermore, the public prosecutor's office in Münster, Germany is investigating whether Asgaard’s contract with Darman violates paragraph 109h of the German criminal code prohibiting German individuals from being hired and deployed as mercenaries to foreign countries.

Further, the association of German reservists condemned Asgaard’s activities in Somalia and is seeking to expel Thomas Kaltegärtner from its organisation. Kaltegärtner is managing director of Asgaard and may see a prison sentence of several years if found guilty of violating paragraph 109h by providing mercenaries of German origin to the Somali warlord.

The matter of a German security firm sending 100 ex-soldiers to Somalia within the framework of a contract with Abdi Nur Darman came to light this week. Darman is an opposition leader in Somalia who, since 2003, has claimed to be Somalia’s president.

Asgaard’s employees, primarily recruited from former Bundeswehr soldiers, were intended to train Somali mercenaries and, if required, to fight alongside Darman’s men. The contract had been confirmed to the press by both Asgaard and Darman. Security analysts in Somalia believe that the German mercenaries’ work in Somalia would only exacerbate the already deteriorating security situation in Somalia, which has lacked a functioning central government for two decades.

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By Shafi’i Abokar and Nicolas von Kospoth

[buglerbilly]

Lost In Translation: Security Training For Somalia

By BEN SIMON, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 28 May 2010 10:50

BIHANGA MILITARY BASE, Uganda - Somalia's fledgling army faces countless hurdles before it can claim to control its territory but the most immediate obstacle is understanding what the instructors are saying.

On the second day of a one-year program by the European Union to train Somali soldiers, both sides were still finding their feet.

A Spanish instructor shouted orders in broken English to his assistant, a Ugandan officer, who relayed the message in Swahili to a Kenyan translator, who in turn translated it into Somali to get through to the trainees.

"I want them like this, facing like this. You understand?" was the command by the officer to have the trainees run in a tighter formation.

A batch of 76 Somali government soldiers were the first in the training financed by the EU to the tune of 5 million euros ($6.2 million) and involving 150 military trainers from 14 EU states.

The program targets 2,000 Somalis to form a professional army to protect Somalia's Transitional Federal Government faced with a deadly Islamist insurgency in the lawless country's capital Mogadishu.

"The only problem we are having so far is language," said Warrant Officer Milton Opoka, one of the Ugandan trainers.

Mission commander Col. Ricardo Gonzalez Elul of the Spanish army, however, voiced optimism at the latest effort by the international community to prop up the embattled Somali government.

"(These) new trained troops will have, I think, the capacity and capability to fight against the insurgents in Mogadishu," Elul said.

Uganda, which has deployed troops to Somalia for the African Union peace force, is hosting the exercise because it will spearhead the repatriation and integration of the trained Somali troops.

But Uganda's military also knows that withdrawing its peacekeepers will be easier if the Somali government is able to defend itself.

"We believe that we have to assist the Transitional Federal Government...

to take charge of their own security because we do not foresee (our) forces staying forever," Uganda's army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said at the training base.

As Spanish, German, Hungarian, French and Irish soldiers conducted drills, one Somali trainee said he was grateful for the help.

"This training is very good. It is (more) special than other training," said 28-year-old Abdullahi Ibrahim Aden.

However, neither the European nor Ugandan military officials are certain that their students will remain loyal to a embattled government that currently controls only a patch of Mogadishu.

Aden, whose family lives in a region held by al-Qaida-linked Shebab militia, insisted that loyalty can only be guaranteed if the government pays its troops fairly and on time.

"If they are paid, people will stay and believe in what they are doing without fearing," he said, explained that the promise of money is the Shebab's most effective recruitment technique.

Elul, the mission commander, made the same plea.

"For the Transitional Federal Government, it will be easier to keep all the trained troops together as long as they can succeed in paying their salaries."

While Ugandans are responsible for much of the basic training, the EU is focusing on identifying tactics to equip Somalia's army with junior officers drilled in special skills like mine detection and close combat in crowded urban areas.

On-field training only started on May 24, but one Hungarian soldier said things were going better than predicted.

"They look very skinny and weak, but actually they are very strong," 1st Lt. Csaba Horvath said. "They are more professional than we expected."

He expressed confidence his students were taking their lessons seriously.

"I think they will remember everything," he said. "They have to, because basically their life depends on the knowledge we are teaching them."

Aden confirmed that both he and his fellow trainees are paying close attention to the lessons, largely because the stakes are so high.

"Somali children, women, all grandfathers, grandmothers... every day they are dying in the streets of Mogadishu. That's why I came to be a volunteer. To change what's happening in the country. That's why I'm here," he said.

[buglerbilly]

Foreign fighters gain influence in Somalia's Islamist al-Shabab militia


Suicide bombers struck this African Union base in Mogadishu last month. The al-Shabab militia linked the attack to events in Iraq. (Sudarsan Raghavan/the Washington Post)

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Foreign fighters trained in Afghanistan are gaining influence inside Somalia's al-Shabab militia, fueling a radical Islamist insurgency with ties to Osama bin Laden, according to Somali intelligence officials, former al-Shabab fighters and analysts.

The foreigners, who include Pakistanis and Arabs, are inspiring the Somali militants to import al-Qaeda's ideology and brutal tactics from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A significant number of Americans are also being drawn to the Somali conflict. Two New Jersey men were arrested in New York on Sunday and charged with planning to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabab.

In April, suicide bombers drove a white truck filled with explosives into an African Union peacekeepers base, mirroring recent bombings in Baghdad or Kabul. Within hours, a grainy photo emerged on local Web sites of a young, gap-toothed man clutching a sign in Arabic over the words "Distributed by al-Shabab." It declared the operation revenge for the U.S.-aided killings of Abu Ayyub al Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the top leaders of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"The foreign jihadists were once in the shadows," said Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst in Nairobi with the International Crisis Group, a conflict research organization. "Now, there is no doubt they have taken control of the movement."

Foreigners are increasingly foot soldiers in Somalia as well.

The two New Jersey suspects, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, appeared in U.S. District Court in Newark on Monday on charges of conspiring to kill, maim and kidnap people outside the United States. They told a judge they understood the charges against them, and they were ordered held pending a bond hearing Thursday, officials said. Their attorneys did not immediately return phone calls Monday. The two men face up to life in prison if convicted.

In September, a Somali American from Seattle drove a truck bomb into an African Union base in Mogadishu, killing 21 peacekeepers. In December, a Dane of Somali descent blew himself up at a hotel in the capital, killing 24 people, including three government ministers.

In February, al-Shabab formally declared ties to al-Qaeda. The militia has received praise from bin Laden and radical Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been linked to the suspect in last year's shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., and the suspect in an attempted attack aboard a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. Aulaqi has been cited as inspiration by the Pakistani American held in last month's attempted bombing in Times Square.

Al-Shabab's main rival, Hezb-i-Islam, also has proclaimed bin Laden welcome. "We are both fighting the Christian invaders in Somalia," said Mohamed Osman Aruz, a spokesman for the group, referring to the West and to Somalia's mostly Christian neighbors who back the government.

The rise of the foreign fighters suggests a growing internationalization of the conflict, part of a trend emerging from Yemen to Mali, where al-Qaeda's regional affiliates are showing increasing ambitions nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Today, U.S. officials consider the vast, ungoverned lands of the Arabian Peninsula and Africa the second-biggest terrorism threat after Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the United States focuses its military muscle in those regions, there is concern that more al-Qaeda-linked fighters could migrate to this part of the world.

"The lesson of the last 10 to 15 years of counterterrorism is that as pressure goes on the network in one place, it moves elsewhere," Michael Chertoff, former Department of Homeland Security chief, said during a recent visit to Cameroon's capital, Yaounde.

'Brainwashing our people'

Somalia is where the United States and the West are quietly engaged in the most ambitious effort outside the theaters of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to halt the spread of radical Islam and al-Qaeda's influence.

The United States and its allies are providing weapons, training, intelligence and logistical support to the fragile government. They are also funding the African Union peacekeeping force that protects -- many say props up -- the government. Yet al-Shabab, or "The Youth" in Arabic, now controls large patches of south and central Somalia. The government, divided by political infighting, controls less than five square miles in Mogadishu.

In the capital, al-Qaeda-inspired tactics have altered the landscape. Hotels are tucked behind steel gates. Peacekeepers use high-tech gadgets to frisk visitors for explosive belts. Ordinary Somalis avoid empty, parked cars.

The foreign fighters in Somalia number 300 to 1,200, according to Somali and U.S. intelligence estimates. Most are from neighboring countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen and Sudan. But they include Afghans, Pakistanis and Arabs, say former al-Shabab fighters. At least 20 Somali Americans have joined the militia, including a top field commander, Omar Hammami, an Alabama native whose nom de guerre is Abu Mansoor al-Ameriki. He has starred in propaganda videos to attract more foreign fighters.

"The foreign fighters are brainwashing our people," Mohammed Sheik Hassan, the head of Somalia's National Security Agency, said in a recent interview in Mogadishu. "They want one Islamic nation under the leadership of bin Laden. But the ambition of Somalis is only to gain power locally."

Al-Qaeda operatives who perpetrated the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds use Somalia as a haven, according to U.S. and Somali officials. "There's a parallel, converging interest between the al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa and al-Shabab," said a U.S. intelligence official. "There certainly is collusion, cooperation, probably training and some operational level of support."

'Orders from outside'

Foreigners in Somalia are the main link to al-Qaeda's central body, said Somali officials and former al-Shabab fighters. They train new recruits, both in weapons and ideology. Somalis who waged jihad in Afghanistan with bin Laden now lead the al-Shabab militia, which is loosely knit of at least 100 clan-based cells. Over cups of sweet Somali tea in Mogadishu recently, a group of clan leaders said the foreign fighters were turning al-Shabab against them, eroding the traditional authority of the clans, Somalia's most important social unit.

"All of us have been targeted," said Mohamed Hassan Haad, a senior figure of the powerful Hawije clan. "They are getting orders from outside."

Sheik Mohammed Asad Abdullahi, a former top al-Shabab commander who defected in November, said that bin Laden never gave direct orders but that al-Shabab commanders regularly consulted with al-Qaeda's central body. Literature and CDs on al-Qaeda tactics and ideology were regularly handed out to the rank and file, he said.

"I believed I was part of al-Qaeda," Abdullahi said.

He defected because he could no longer bear the suicide missions, which he described as orchestrated by the foreigners.

"If they conquer Somalia, they will not be satisfied," he said. "They will cross the borders."

With the United States expanding its counterterrorism operations in Yemen, U.S. and Somali officials said they are worried that al-Qaeda's Yemen branch and al-Shabab could join forces. Still, many Somalis interviewed said they felt a growing anger toward the foreign fighters.

At the scene of last month's truck bombing, police commander Abdi Fatah Hassan stared at the damage and lamented the violence brought by outside radicals bent on martyrdom on Somali soil. "What kind of people believe they will enter paradise by killing poor Somalis?" he said.

A few days later, Abdullahi Abdurahman Abu Yousef, a top commander of a moderate Sufi Islamist militia fighting al-Shabab, echoed that sentiment in a rousing speech to his militiamen. "They are destroying our home for the sake of Iraqis?" he bellowed. "The foreign devil is leading them."

Raghavan reported from Mogadishu. Staff writer Jerry Markon in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Twin blasts kill scores of World Cup watchers in Uganda

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, July 12, 2010; 3:57 AM

Nairobi, KENYA -- Two explosions, minutes apart, tore through two venues where crowds watching the World Cup final in the Ugandan capital of Kampala late Sunday, killing at least 64 and wounding scores, Uganda police said. At least one American was killed and several wounded, according to the U.S. embassy in Kampala.

The bombings unfolded at a rugby club and at an Ethiopian restaurant where hundreds of boisterous and cheering fans, including clusters of foreigners, had gathered to watch Spain beat Netherlands in the final.

Uganda's Police Chief Kale Kaihura immediately pointed blame at Somalia's al-Shabab, a hard-line militia with growing ties to al-Qaeda that has perpetrated several bombings in recent months inside Somalia. But as of early Monday morning, no group had claimed responsibility for the attacks in a city widely considered to be among the safest on the continent.

Last week, the militia's top leader Sheikh Mukhtar Abdurahman Abu Zubeyr accused African Union peacekeeping forces in the Somalia capital of Mogadishu of committing "massacres" against Somalis. Ugandan and Burundian troops comprise the peacekeeping force. Abu Zubeyr warned that his forces would take revenge against the peoples of Uganda and Burundi.

Uganda, a key U.S. ally, is also a training ground for soldiers for Somalia's transitional government, which al-Shabab is seeking to overthrow, in a program backed by the United States and European nations. The United States officially considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization.

The militia, which seeks to create an Islamic emirate and has imposed Taliban-like dictates, has banned playing soccer in many areas and prohibited broadcasts of the World Cup, describing the sport as "a satanic act" that corrupts Muslims.

If the militia was behind the attacks on Sunday, it would represent a significant escalation in its efforts to sow chaos in the region. The militia controls much of southern and central Somalia. In recent months, it has staged cross-border raids into neighboring Kenya, but has never attacked another nation on a scale seen on Sunday. Nevertheless, Somalia's neighbors have long feared that Somalia's civil war could spill across their borders.

Foreign jihadists trained in Afghanistan are gaining influence inside al-Shabab and inspiring the militants to import al-Qaeda's ideology and tactics from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Somali intelligence officials, former al-Shabab fighters and analysts. Last month, two New Jersey men were arrested in New York and charged with planning to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabab.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the United States was prepared to assist the Ugandan government in any manner, as both President Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attacks and offered their condolences.

"The United States stands with Uganda. We have a long-standing, close friendship with the people and government of Uganda and will work with them to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice," Clinton said.

[buglerbilly]

Uganda Suspects Al-Qaida Group in Blasts

July 12, 2010

Associated Press



KAMPALA, Uganda -- Explosions tore through crowds watching the World Cup final at a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant, killing at least 64 people. Police feared an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group was behind the attacks, as Uganda's president declared Monday "we shall get them wherever they are."

The blasts came two days after a commander with the Somali group, al-Shabab, called for militants to attack sites in Uganda and Burundi, two nations that contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

A California-based aid group said one of its American workers was among the dead. Police said Ethiopian, Indian and Congolese nationals were also among the injured and dead, police said.

Ugandan government spokesman Fred Opolot said Monday there were indications that two suicide bombers took part in the late Sunday attacks, which left nearly 60 others wounded.

Blood and pieces of flesh littered the floor among overturned chairs at the scenes of the blasts, which went off as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands. The attack on the rugby club, where crowds sat outside watching a large-screen TV, left 49 dead, police said. Fifteen others were killed in the restaurant explosion.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni toured the blast sites Monday and said that the terrorists behind the bombings should fight soldiers, not "people who are just enjoying themselves."

"We shall go for them wherever they are coming from," Museveni said. "We will look for them and get them as we always do."

Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said it was too early to speculate about any military response to the attacks.

Kampala's police chief, Kale Kaihura, said he believed Somalia's most feared militant group, al-Shabab, could be responsible for the attack. Al-Shabab is known to have links with al-Qaida, and it counts militant veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts among its ranks. Simultaneous attacks are also one of al-Qaida's hallmarks. The U.S. State Department has designated al-Shabab a terrorist organization.

If those suspicions prove true, it would be the first time that al-Shabab has carried out attacks outside of Somalia.

Invisible Children, a San Diego, California-based aid group that helps child soldiers, identified the dead American as one of its workers, Nate Henn, who was killed on the rugby field.

"From traveling the United States without pay advocating for the freedom of abducted child soldiers in Joseph Kony's war, to raising thousands of dollars to put war-affected Ugandan students in school, Nate lived a life that demanded explanation. He sacrificed his comfort to live in the humble service of God and of a better world, and his is a life to be emulated," the group said in a statement on its website.

Kony heads the Lord's Resistance Army, which has waged one of Africa's longest and most brutal rebellions, in northern Uganda.

Several Americans from a Pennsylvania church group were wounded in the restaurant attack including Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. He said from a hospital bed afterward that he was "just glad to be alive."

Uganda's government spokesman said the first blast occurred at the Ethiopian Village restaurant at 10:55 p.m. Two more blasts happened at the rugby field 20 minutes later, he said.

Officials said the attacks will not affect the African Union summit being held in Uganda from July 19-27. Many African leaders are expected to attend.

"The summit will go on. The AU and African countries have the resolve to fight terrorism with the international community," said Ramtane Lamamra, the AU's peace and security commissioner.

Al-Shabab's fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia.

Ethiopia, which fought two wars with Somalia, is a longtime enemy of al-Shabab and other Somali militants who accuse their neighbor of meddling in Somali affairs. Ethiopia had troops in Somalia between December 2006 to January 2009 to back Somalia's fragile government against the Islamic insurgency. Ethiopia later withdrew its troops under an intricate peace deal mediated by the United Nations.

In Mogadishu, Somalia, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press early Monday that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda. Issa refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible for the bombings.

"Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah's anger be upon those who are against us," Sheik said.

In addition to Uganda's troops in Mogadishu, Uganda also hosts Somali soldiers trained in U.S. and European-backed programs.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the U.S. was prepared to provide any necessary assistance to the Ugandan government.

President Barack Obama was "deeply saddened by the loss of life resulting from these deplorable and cowardly attacks," Vietor said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Obama in offering condolences and added, "The United States stands with Uganda. We have a long-standing, close friendship with the people and government of Uganda and will work with them to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Al-Shabaab: Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants

A deadly series of blasts in Uganda has been blamed on al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group which claims to have links to al-Qaeda.

Published: 10:40AM BST 12 Jul 2010


Al-Shabaab fighters Photo: AP

Here are some details about the group:

Al-Shabaab, which means "youth" in Arabic, has taken control of large areas of south and central Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has been mired in anarchy since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The interim government's attempts to restore central rule have largely been paralysed by infighting and the Islamist-led insurgency. Fighting has killed more than 21,000 people since the start of 2007 and uprooted at least 1.5 million civilians. The chaos has also helped fuel kidnappings and piracy offshore.

Al-Shabaab's hardline militia was part of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) movement that pushed US-backed warlords out of Mogadishu in June, 2006, and ruled for six months before Somali and Ethiopian forces ousted them.

In June 2009, al-Shabaab officials in one of the group's Mogadishu strongholds ordered four teenagers to each have a hand and a leg cut off as punishments for robbery.

Al-Shabaab's interpretation of Islamic law has shocked many Somalis, who are traditionally more moderate Muslims. However, some residents give the insurgents credit for restoring order to the regions under their control.

The Somali government claims hundreds of foreign fighters have joined the insurgency from countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Gulf region and Western nations such as the United States and Britain. Some of the foreign jihadists have taken up leadership positions in militant groups including al-Shabaab.

One American national of Somali origin was killed while fighting for al-Shabaab in Mogadishu last July.

Also last July Australian police arrested four men linked to the group, raising concern it may be seeking targets outside Somalia.

In Sept 2009, al-Shabaab insurgents struck the main African Union military base in Mogadishu with twin suicide car bombs and killed 17 peacekeepers. Rebels said the bombing was revenge for the US killing of Kenyan-born Salah Ali Saleh Nabhan, a most-wanted al-Qaeda militant.

Two French security advisers were kidnapped by Shabaab last July but one escaped a month later. The group issued a statement of demands in September, which included an immediate end to French support for the Somali government and the withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers.

Al-Shabaab has threatened to strike Uganda's capital Kampala and Burundi's capital Bujumbura because both nations contribute troops to the 6,100-strong AU peacekeeping force AMISOM.

The UN's World Food Programme suspended its work in much of southern Somalia in January due to threats against its staff and unacceptable demands by al Shabaab rebels controlling the area.

[buglerbilly]

Once an Extremist Importer, Somalia Now Exporting Terror

By David Axe July 12, 2010 | 5:38 pm



For most of its more-than-decade-long existence, Somalia’s Al Shabab Islamic group was a threat only to the weak, American-backed Transitional Federal Government … and to everyday Somalis caught in the crossfire as Shabab fought to take over this lawless East African country. If anything, Shabab was a terror importer, drawing in recruits from the U.S., Yemen and other countries. It’s for that reason that many observers, myself included, downplayed the threat Al Shabab posed to other countries.

All that changed on Sunday when two bombs exploded in Kampala, the capital of Somalia’s neighbor Uganda. The blasts, targeting a restaurant and a rugby club, killed 74 people and wounded many more as they were watching the World Cup finale. Shabab promptly claimed responsibility. The attack was retaliation for Uganda sending peacekeepers to support the moderate Islamist TFG, a Shabab spokesman said. “The explosions in Kampala were only a minor message to them,” Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage said. “We will target them everywhere if Uganda does not withdraw from our land.”

To be fair, Uganda’s troops in Somalia aren’t your typical, lightly-armed peacekeepers. Equipped with tanks, mortars and machine guns, they provide the heavy firepower that allows the TFG to hold onto a handful of key positions in Mogadishu. And Rage’s claim that the Ugandans are “massacring” Somalia — there’s some truth to that. Mortar and cannon duels between the peacekeepers, pictured, and Shabab fighters account for many of the hundreds of civilian combat deaths that occur annually in Mogadishu.

That Shabab was able to organize a complex attack outside Somalia’s borders is worrying, to say the least. Uganda has been a relative safe haven for Somalis fleeing the fighting in their own country. After Shabab assassins wounded my friend, the Somali radio reporter Ahmed Omar Hashi, we were able to evacuate him to Kampala. There he joined thousands of Somali refugees awaiting resettlement abroad. Sunday’s attacks are likely to result in even tighter border controls — and less opportunity for civilians to escape Somalia’s slow unraveling.

The attacks are unlikely to cow Kampala. “Al Shabab is the reason why we should stay in Somalia,” Ugandan spokesman Lt. Col. Felix Kulaigye said. And covert U.S. operations targeting Shabab and other Islamic extremists in Somalia will surely escalate, now that the threat is clearer.

Photo: David Axe

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/once-an-extremist-importer-somalia-now-exporting-terror/#more-27448#ixzz0tW7lsPHh

[buglerbilly]

Deadly Uganda bombings could indicate new roles for al-Qaeda affiliates


Twin blasts kill scores of World Cup watchers in Uganda
The Ugandan capital of Kampala was rocked by two explosions Sunday at venues where hundreds had gathered to watch the World Cup final, killing at least 64 and wounding scores.

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

KAMPALA, UGANDA -- The bombings orchestrated by Somalia's al-Shabab militia that killed at least 74 people watching the World Cup finals on television Sunday night are the latest sign of the growing ambitions of al-Qaeda's regional affiliates outside the traditional theaters of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The attacks, intended to inflict maximum damage on civilian targets, mark the first major international assault by Somali militants in a region where the United States and its allies are attempting to stem the rise of Islamist militancy. At least one American was killed and several were wounded in Sunday's strikes.

The United States has provided millions of dollars in military and economic aid, training, equipment, logistical support and intelligence to regional counterterrorism allies such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya. Uganda is a training ground for soldiers for Somalia's transitional government, which al-Shabab is seeking to overthrow, in a program backed by the United States and European nations. Troops from Uganda and Burundi make up a U.S.- and Western-backed African Union peacekeeping force in the Somali capital of Mogadishu that protects the fragile government.

A top spokesman for al-Shabab, speaking from Mogadishu, said the militia carried out the bombings, and he alluded to the group's aspiration to use Somalia as a launching pad for international attacks. Ali Mohamud Raghe, the spokesman, threatened further attacks if Uganda and Burundi continue to supply troops to the African Union force.

A Ugandan military spokesman vowed that his nation's soldiers will not leave Somalia. "It increases our resolve to make sure Somalia is pacified. These criminals cannot have room to expand and grow because they are a threat to regional and international peace," said Felix Kulayige, the spokesman. "If they have hoped this cowardly act will make us leave Somalia, they are totally mistaken."

Importing violent tactics

Al-Shabab's new boldness comes as foreign fighters trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan are gaining influence inside the movement and importing their violent tactics. Suicide bombers, including foreigners of Somali descent, have in recent months staged several attacks in Mogadishu. The militia also continues to attract Americans to the Somali conflict, including two New Jersey men arrested last month by U.S. authorities and charged with intending to join al-Shabab. The United States has deemed al-Shabab a terrorist organization.

Sunday's attacks come seven months after al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen -- al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- showed its global aspirations with its failed Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. Another group with al-Qaeda links, the Pakistani Taliban, helped orchestrate the botched attempt to bomb Times Square in May.

Top al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abdurahman Abu Zubeyr last week accused the African Union forces of committing "massacres" against Somalis. He warned that his forces would take revenge against the people of Uganda and Burundi.

Banning soccer

The militia, which seeks to create an Islamic emirate and has imposed Taliban-like dictates, has banned soccer in many areas and prohibited broadcasts of the World Cup, describing the sport as "a satanic act" that corrupts Muslims.

The explosions in Kampala tore through the Kyadondo Rugby Club and the Ethiopian Village restaurant, where boisterous soccer fans, including clusters of foreigners, had gathered to watch Spain beat the Netherlands in the World Cup final.

Among the dead at the rugby club was Nate Henn, 25, of Wilmington, Del., a worker for Invisible Children, a California-based aid group that helps child soldiers, the organization said on its Web site. Emily Kerstetter, 16, of Ellicott City was injured, according to WMAR-TV in Baltimore. She was in Kampala with her grandmother's church group from Pennsylvania.

Joanne Lockard, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, said there were no directives for embassy staff members or other U.S. citizens to leave Kampala, which is widely considered one of the safest capitals on the continent. Unlike neighbors Kenya and Tanzania, where al-Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in 1998, Uganda had never been a target of international terrorism.

During a visit to the rugby club Monday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni vowed to pursue those responsible. "If you want to fight, go and look for soldiers. Don't bomb people watching football," he told reporters.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attacks and offered their condolences.

"The United States stands with Uganda," Clinton said. "We have a long-standing, close friendship with the people and government of Uganda and will work with them to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice."

At the rugby club, witnesses and police said two explosions killed at least 43 people who had gathered on the rugby field to watch the soccer final on a large-screen television. As people went to help the victims of the first blast, a second, more powerful bomb detonated, witnesses said.

"It sounded like a massive tire blowout. There was dust and smoke everywhere," said Simon Peter Lubagasa, 28, who operates a motorcycle taxi and was at the club. "People were on the ground crying. Some had cracks on their heads. I saw one person with his ear blown off."

Police said they suspect that a suicide bomber set off the second blast. A police official said investigators found the head of a man who appeared to have Somali features.

As of Monday afternoon, cars belonging to the victims were still parked on the field, where organizers had set out rows of white plastic chairs.

"I was picking up bodies until 7 a.m.," said Alphonse Motebasi, a police commander whose pants were splattered with blood.

At the Ethiopian Village restaurant, crowds of Ugandans gathered Monday, peering over the walls at the carnage inside as police stood guard and investigators combed through debris that looked like the aftermath of a tornado. Onlookers shook their heads at the overturned tables on the restaurant's patio, the shattered glass and shreds of clothing.

"How can someone kill innocent Ugandans?" demanded Godfrey Ivimba, 34, the owner of a printing business. Residents said the restaurant was popular with Ethiopians and Eritreans, as well as other foreigners.

At Mulago Hospital, Betty Nbagire, 37, lay on a bed, eyes closed, tubes attached to her body, struggling to survive. She was at the rugby club. Her sister Salome sat next to her. She said Uganda's soldiers should pull out of Somalia.

"If that was the cause of this attack, our soldiers should come home," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "They should be here to protect us and not to protect those people in Somalia."

Special correspondent Yusuf Hagi Hussein in Mogadishu contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Suicide vest is vital clue after Uganda blasts

BEN SIMON

July 14, 2010 - 5:54PM

A suicide bomber carried out at least one of the two bomb attacks that killed 76 people as they watched the World Cup final in Kampala restaurants and arrests have been made, a minister said Wednesday.

A Somalian Al-Qaeda inspired group has claimed the attacks and police have already found an unexploded suicide vest at an another site, seen as evidence of a botched plan for a third bomb strike.

One militant blew himself up at an Ethiopian restaurant in Kabalagala, a southern Kampala district, where crowds had gathered to watch the football match on Sunday night.

"We can confirm at least for the case of Kabalagala that it was a suicide bomber," State Minister for Internal Affairs, Matia Kasaija, told AFP.

"We have arrested some suspicious characters. These are people of interest. Some are Ugandans, some are Somalis," he added.

The second attack at the same time was on a crowded bar in the Ugandan capital. The blasts have been claimed by Shebab insurgents in Somalia, who said it was in retaliation for the presence of Ugandan troops in an African Union force in Somalia.

US President Barack Obama said that groups like Al-Qaeda did not care about African lives as he condemned the Kampala attacks.

Obama, leveraging his African heritage, took direct aim at Shebab and Al-Qaeda over the attacks.

"What you?ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself," Obama told the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

"They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains," said the US leader, whose father was Kenyan.

Ugandan police have not given details of the identities of those arrested.

But national police chief Kale Kayihura said Tuesday that a suicide vest -- laden with explosives and fitted with a detonator -- had been found packed in a black laptop bag at a club in Kampala's Makindye district on Monday.

"We have established that what was found at the discotheque was in fact a suicide vest, and it could also be used as an IED" or improvised explosive device, he told reporters.

While the bombers' actions appeared to support the Shebab's claim of responsibility, the police chief pointed a finger at a homegrown Muslim rebel group known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

"Shebab is linked with ADF," he said. "ADF is composed of Ugandans, Shebab and ADF are linked to Al-Qaeda."

Ismael Rukwago, a senior ADF commander based in Democratic Republic of Congo, denied any involvement. "We are not part of this thing, we are absolutely denying. We have no reason, these are innocent people," he told AFP by telephone.

The bombings were the deadliest in East Africa since Al-Qaeda attacks against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1988.

They were the first by the Shebab outside Somalia, marking an unprecedented internationalisation of Somalia's 20-year-old civil conflict.

Shebab's top leader had warned in an audio message this month that Uganda and Burundi would face retaliation for contributing to an African Union (AU) force supporting the western-backed Somali transitional government.

The Shebab accuse the AU force (AMISOM) of killing civilians during its operations around the tiny perimeter of Mogadishu housing President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's embattled administration.

The Ugandans were the first to deploy to Somalia in early 2007.

Many of the injured from the Kampala attacks remain in hospital and not all of the bodies have been identified. It is known that a US national and an Irish woman were among the dead.

© 2010 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.

[buglerbilly]

In Kenya's capital, Somali immigrant neighborhood is incubator for jihad


Worshipers gathered at Eastleigh's Masjid Sahabi mosque, where clerics preach a moderate message. Imams at other neighborhood mosques, however, have become increasingly radicalized, praising and recruiting supporters for Somalia's al-Shabab militia. (Sudarsan Raghavan/the Washington Post)

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post

Sunday, August 22, 2010

NAIROBI -- Behind the blue gates of his Islamic school in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighborhood, Ahmed Awil cannot escape his country's civil war.

Schools and mosques where extremist views are taught are reshaping this Somali immigrant community that for years has lived peacefully in the capital of this predominantly Christian country. Moderate imams now compete with hard-line preachers pushing a strict interpretation of Islam. Bookstores sell anti-Western literature. Residents speak fearfully of militant spies, and children like Ahmed are taught to praise al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-linked militia, for waging jihad in Somalia against the U.S.-backed government.

"My teachers tell us al-Shabab is fighting for our religion and for our country," said Ahmed, a skinny 11-year-old who fled Somalia after al-Shabab fighters slaughtered his neighbor and tried to recruit him. "Sometimes they ask us if we would like to go there and fight."

Eastleigh, a run-down enclave where tens of thousands of Somalis live, has become an incubator for Islamic extremism, Kenyan officials and community leaders say. It has also emerged as a micro-battlefield in the war on terrorism, attracting American funds.

"What most worries me is that this extremist ideology will continue to grow," said Dualle Abdi Malik, the director of Fathu Rahman, a moderate Islamic school. "We have to confront it before it is too late."

Somali immigrant communities across the Horn of Africa and Yemen have come under greater scrutiny since twin bombings last month targeted World Cup soccer fans in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. Al-Shabab asserted responsibility for the attacks, its first major international operation since it rose to power several years ago in Somalia.

Members of al-Shabab, which in Arabic means "The Youth," and other Somali militants freely travel to Nairobi to raise funds, recruit and treat wounded fighters, according to U.N. and Kenyan security officials. Somali-American jihadists have met contacts in Eastleigh before heading to Somalia to fight with al-Shabab.

"Eastleigh is a copy of Mogadishu," said Mohamed Omar Dalha, Somalia's social affairs minister, referring to the Somali capital. "Everything that happens in Mogadishu happens in Eastleigh, except the fighting."

Fertile ground for radicals

At the al-Huda Islamic bookshop, a closet-sized stall nestled near one of Eastleigh's radical mosques, several youths browsed the fare on a recent day. Koranic tomes pack the shelves. Recordings of lectures and debates that glorify the neighborhood's radical Somali preachers are sold openly.

"Our religion calls on us to kill everyone who does not believe in Allah and his Prophet Muhammed deeply," Abdulrahman Abdullahi, a black-clad imam, declares in one DVD.

Al-Shabab has long threatened to attack Kenya, which has been targeted by extremists over the years. In 1998, al-Qaeda operatives bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and in Tanzania; in 2002, an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa was bombed. Earlier this year, protests erupted in downtown Nairobi over the arrest of a radical Islamic preacher from Jamaica.

Eastleigh, community leaders say, is an ideal breeding ground for radicalism. The neighborhood is poor and isolated; few Kenyans enter it. Local authorities have ignored it: Roads are unpaved, muddy and covered with trash. The smell of raw sewage wafts across the terrain.

Kenyan police have long harassed Somalis, demanding bribes under threat of arrest or deportation, generating resentment. Since the Kampala attacks, police have rounded up hundreds of people in Eastleigh and other areas, including four Kenyan Muslims who human rights activists say were illegally extradited to Uganda for interrogation.

"The community is suffering," said Abdufatah Ali, an Eastleigh representative on the Nairobi City Council. "The police stop you and take your phone, and say 'You are al-Shabab.' They enter your house and rape you, and say 'You are al-Shabab.' "

Radical preachers are filling the void, playing a key role in recruiting and fundraising for al-Shabab. They operate the largest mosques in the neighborhood, providing ideological leadership and a resource base for militants, according to a U.N. report on Somalia in April.

"They have a very big influence in terms of radicalization," said Nicholas Kamwende, Kenya's anti-terrorism police chief. "Eastleigh provides the best grounds for recruitment."

Influencing young minds

At the Ansaaru primary school, where Awil attends classes, boys and girls study biology, chemistry and geography. In religion class, they are taught that it is every Muslim's duty to "liberate" Jerusalem and its sacred al-Aqsa mosque, Awil and three other students said.

Sometimes, the students said, the teachers show them video clips of jihadists fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

"They tell us that al-Shabab hates Western countries like America," said Zakeria Omar, 11, a student. "And that it is all right to cut the throats of every citizen of these countries."

Ali Jama'a, a Koranic teacher at the school, asserted that the teachers do not discuss jihad or al-Shabab. "Those classes may happen in the mosques, but not here," Jama'a said.

Moments later, the imam of al-Hidaya mosque, which U.N. investigators and community leaders describe as among the most radical in Eastleigh, arrived at the school. He was there to teach a class.

He declined to be interviewed by a Washington Post journalist.

Moderate clerics fear what will happen to their community. One well-known imam tells young people not to be enticed by militancy and speaks out against suicide bombings as un-Islamic. "We have a war on our hands to stop our youth from being taken to the battlefield," said the imam, who asked that his name not be published because he had been threatened.

Shine Abdullahi's hip-hop group, Waayaha Cusub, or "The New Generation," is fighting back. The artists -- both men and women, all Somalis, most of whom once lived in Eastleigh -- released a CD in February with the help of funding from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

This year, the United States has allocated $96,000 for job creation, education and tolerance programs, mostly directed at youth, to bolster moderate views of Islam in Eastleigh.

Waayaha Cusub's song "No to al-Shabab" has become a hit in Somali communities, including those in Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia. The group has handed out 7,000 free copies in Eastleigh.

"Our goal is to show that al-Shabab has neither a Somali nor an Islamic agenda," Abdullahi said. "They are nothing but a militia run by al-Qaeda's chiefs."

In June, Abdullahi received the first of many death threats in the form of a text message from a Kenyan cellphone number: "You work with the infidels and Americans. You are a spy for them. Do you want to stop that work or do you want to die?"

Today, the group does not play large shows, fearing an attack by suicide bombers. None of the members live in their old neighborhood anymore.

"It's very easy for them to kill us in Eastleigh," Abdullahi said.

[buglerbilly]

Six MPs among 32 killed in Shebab hotel carnage

Mustafa Haji Abdinur

August 24, 2010 - 10:44PM

Two extremist insurgents disguised as government soldiers went on a shooting rampage in a Mogadishu hotel Tuesday, killing 30 people, including six MPS, before blowing themselves up.

The brazen attack by the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab just a stone's throw from the presidential palace marked a new escalation on the second day of clashes that had already left 29 civilians dead across the war-ravaged Somali capital.

"Thirty people died in this ambush. Six of them are members of the Somali parliament and four are Somali government civil servants," Deputy Prime Minister Abdirahman Haji Adan Ibbi told reporters.

"The 20 others are innocent civilians who died in this horrible incident."

An AFP reporter who managed to enter the Hotel Mona compound said the doors of every single room and even the toilets had been smashed open by the two attackers.

Officials visiting the scene of the carnage held their noses because of the stench of burned flesh and smoke.

Witnesses and hotel staff said the attackers were wearing government security uniforms and shot dead security guards at the gate to the compound as they rushed into the three-storey building.

"They rained gunfire on everybody. Nobody stood a chance. I was lucky because they aimed at me but I jumped out of the window and survived," hotel employee Adan Mohamed told AFP.

"People were screaming, there was total panic. When they decided they had finished killing everybody, they climbed to the balcony and started opening fire on government forces outside the hotel," he added.

One government soldier who took part in the fighting and refused to give his name said one of the bombers detonated his suicide vest on the balcony when he saw they were surrounded.

"These two guys were on the balcony, close together, shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest). It seems one of them failed to detonate his vest but the other did and that probably killed both of them," he said.

"One of them was blown to pieces, only the head remains. The other one's body is completely burned, he is all black," the soldier added.

Shebab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage claimed responsibility for the attack during a phone press conference.

"Our commando units carried out this attack," he said.

The bloodbath at Hotel Mona, which lies in the small area of Mogadishu firmly under government control and provides accommodation for dozens of MPs and other officials, came on the second day of a deadly battle in the city.

The government condemned the attack.

"They have no motive other than to terrorise the Somali people. This is a deplorable act in this holy month of Ramadan. It shows their brutality and lack of respect for humanity," Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman Yarisow said in a statement.

The Shebab on Monday launched a major offensive against government army barracks in several Mogadishu districts, sparking clashes that left at least 29 civilians dead, according to Ali Muse, head of ambulance services.

"This operation is meant to eliminate the invading Christians and their apostate government in Somalia. The fighting will continue and, God willing, the mujahideen will prevail," Rage said Monday as the offensive was launched.

The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has deployed more than 6,000 troops in Mogadishu to protect the TFG and support its anti-insurgency operations, also condemned the Mona Hotel suicide attack.

"It is unfortunate that those opposed to the peace process continue to kill innocent civilians even during the fasting month of Ramadan which is one of the key pillars of the Islamic faith which they claim to profess," it said.

The Shebab claimed responsibility for multiple suicide attacks in Kampala on July 11 that killed at least 76 people.

They said the blasts were in retaliation for Uganda's leading role in AMISOM, which is effectively their last impediment to seizing control of the presidency.

Uganda, hosting an African Union summit days later, responded by vowing to deploy more troops and mustering continental support for AMISOM.

© 2010 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units

[buglerbilly]

Somalia and Shabaab


Islamist fighters of Shabaab in Somalia.

09:43 GMT, October 5, 2010 The stalemate in Somalia provides an environment in which Islamic radicalism thrives, but Shabaab’s decision to export terror to Uganda may end up backfiring as the Somali diaspora comes under scrutiny and increasing pressure from abroad.

Somalia’s capital Mogadishu has been ravaged by a protracted battle between the Somali jihadist group Shabaab and a counterterrorism alliance backing the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for years. Armed clashes and suicide bombings have intensified since the summer of 2010, but the battle lines have remained remarkably stable during the past two years.

Since mid-2008, Shabaab has controlled nearly all of southern Somalia and most of the capital Mogadishu, leaving the TFG confined to a few districts of the capital, protected, to varying degrees, by an African Union peace operation (AMISOM) now numbering 7,000. The TFG has been utterly unable to mount an offensive and hold territory; its security forces defect or fail to fight. For its part, Shabaab has successfully harassed the AMISOM forces and the TFG with suicide bomb attacks, roadside bombs, and mortar attacks, but has lacked the capacity – or perhaps the will – to overrun AMISOM positions.

The result has been a very costly stalemate in which the main victims have been Somali civilians caught in the crossfire. Whole neighborhoods of the capital have been emptied as desperate residents flee the city.

The logic of stalemate

The prolonged stalemate in Mogadishu has at times raised suspicions that both sides benefit from the stand-off. Shabaab benefits from perpetual mobilization in many ways. Endless jihad attracts foreign funding and recruits, postpones potentially treacherous decisions about how it would govern the country were it to consolidate control, and uses AMISOM’s continued presence to frame the struggle as 'Somali versus foreign occupier'.

For its part, the TFG leadership has approached the enterprise of transitional governance as a short-term profit-taking venture, pocketing customs revenue and foreign aid while making little effort to govern or push back against Shabaab. They do not need to win to continue this lucrative enterprise; they simply have to avoid losing.

It could also be argued that key foreign interests are served by the prolonged stalemate. According to this line of argument the current situation is not optimal for anyone, but represents a minimally acceptable outcome for many. Not surprisingly, some Somalis have concluded that the state of perpetual low-intensity war in Mogadishu amounts to a 'fixed game'. After many years of warlord politics, in which battles were waged not to win but to create conditions of disorder within which armed groups could loot and plunder civilians, Somalis are all too familiar with this approach to armed conflict.

Exporting the conflict

Shabaab’s suicide attacks in Kampala, Uganda in July 2010, and its sustained offensive inside Mogadishu in the past month, appear to be challenging this interpretation. For whatever reason, the group’s leadership seems to have concluded that prolonged stalemate is no longer in its interest, and that it must drive AMISOM and the TFG out of the capital. If so, this is a risky gambit for the group.

One of the risks Shabaab faces is blowback from powerful interest groups within Somali society. It’s best hope in driving AMISOM out of Mogadishu is to take the war to the states contributing troops to AMISOM or providing other support to the TFG (Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Kenya, among others), in the hopes of producing a public backlash in those countries against their governments’ commitments in Somalia. This was the apparent logic behind the suicide bomb attacks in Kampala.

But the Kampala attack has also had the effect of intensifying already significant law enforcement scrutiny of Somali populations around the world. The large Somali diaspora – now thought to number 1.5 million or more – is the economic lifeline of Somalia, the source of an estimated $1 billion or more in annual remittances to the country. Anything that compromises that remittance system constitutes an existential threat to millions of Somalis.

The diaspora also holds millions of dollars of investments in places like Nairobi, Kenya. Both the business investments and the remittance system are vulnerable to disruption in the event of a law enforcement crackdown targeting Somali communities. There is already considerable anxiety in the Somali diaspora over the growing legal restrictions on remittance companies.

The coming blowback?

In the aftermath of the Uganda bombings, the US and other governments made a point of reassuring Somali communities abroad that they would not be victims of collective punishment. Western governments took care not to respond in ways that would drive Somalis into the arms of Shabaab. But additional terrorism abroad by the group will unavoidably raise the level of law enforcement scrutiny on Somalis abroad and their remittance companies.

As Somali communities feel the squeeze, the critical question is whether they will blame Shabaab or their host countries. Shabaab will be counting on Somalis to view legal crackdowns as yet another instance of persecution of Somalis by western and African governments, but it is at least as likely that the group could face blowback from Somali interest groups that conclude they can no longer tolerate the damage done to their livelihoods and investments by Shabaab’s actions. Put another way, Shabaab may be overplaying its hand in a context of growing Somali anger and frustration with the group.

To date, few Somalis have dared to openly oppose the group for fear of assassination. Violence and threats against any source of opposition and criticism has led to a devastating exodus of civic leadership out of Mogadishu and the silencing of a once-vibrant private media. In the absence of any viable alternative to Shabaab, most Somalis have understandably kept their heads low, despite their strong aversion to the group’s radicalism. That could change if Shabaab pushes already desperate Somalis any closer to the brink.

In the end, the pivotal question is whether Shabaab needs to concern itself with the impact of its actions on Somali interests. If it does – if it sees itself first and foremost as a Somali Islamic-nationalist movement – that will serve as a deterrent to additional terrorist attacks abroad. But if the group’s leadership embraces the globalist vision of al-Qaida, in which the impact of its behavior on Somalia is of little consequence, then we can expect to see more terrorist attacks abroad. This tension between global and local agendas represents a major fault line within Shabaab and could easily unravel the group. But even the al-Qaida inspired jihadis among them understand that the group will be hard pressed to continue to operate in Somalia if reckless acts of terrorism abroad mobilize Somali business, clan and other groups against it. Shabaab’s best friend in Somalia is the current climate of passivity and fear among Somalis.

----
By Ken Menkhaus*

--
* Dr Ken Menkhaus is Associate Professor of Political Science at Davidson College and former special advisor to the UN operation in Somalia.

[buglerbilly]

A Somali teen's path to jihad

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, November 27, 2010; 12:00 AM

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA -- Abdul Qadir Mohammed remembers the imam's powerful voice bouncing off the mosque's white walls. It was 2001, a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a decade into Somalia's anarchy. "Our religion must dominate until we die," the preacher declared.

On that day in the mosque, his heart pounded as he joined the worshipers in thunderous chants of "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great.

"It was the day I was born," Mohammed recalled.

Mohammed was 13 years old. He had never picked up a gun. But boys like him would soon be asked to sacrifice their lives for Islam. Mohammed felt no fear, only a sense of divine calling. "Everything in my life was about jihad," said Mohammed, now 22, who has a boyish face, faint mustache and walks with a slight limp.

"Everything still is."

Mohammed is part of a generation of young Somalis who, seeking solutions to their chaos, have embraced a messianic brand of Islam that today drives a brutal struggle for power and identity in the Horn of Africa. His path opens a window on the forces that have altered Somalia, a failed state and one of the world's most lethal post-Sept. 11 battlegrounds outside the theaters of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Mohammed and his peers came of age when Somalia's Islamist transformation was already underway. But it was Sept. 11 and its aftermath that gave the Islamist message new weight, shaped by U.S. counterterrorism policies and the animosity they have generated in the Muslim world.

His journey would take him from the mosques to an Islamist revolt against Somalia's secular warlords to al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda. He would fight in battle after battle, driven less by clan loyalties or politics than a conviction that his religion, and his nation's soul, was under siege. Ultimately, he would question al-Qaeda's role in his country, a progression experienced by many militant Muslims since Sept. 11.

Mohammed, two sisters and a brother grew up in Jowhar, a south-central town founded by an Italian duke in the 19th century. His father was a cattle herder who often vanished for months at a time.

When Mohammed was 3, the socialist government of President Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed. Clans and warlords began fighting for control of territory.

As their country fractured, many Somalis sought comfort in a fundamentalist Islam that called for society to repent and rededicate itself to Allah's divine principles. Money from Saudi Arabia flowed in to build ultraconservative Wahhabist mosques, weakening the influence of the nation's moderate brand of Sufi Islam. Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a militant group loosely linked to Osama bin Laden, emerged in the early 1990s.

Against this backdrop, Mohammed's perceptions were colored by religion from an early age. He remembers his neighbors describing the American troops that led a 1993 United Nations peacekeeping mission as "nonbelievers." He did, too.

Mohammed's mother died when he was 6. He and his siblings moved to Mogadishu, Somalia's whitewashed, war-scarred capital, to live with their uncle. Most of the city's public schools had been destroyed or shuttered, and like most families, Mohammed's was too poor to send their children to private school.

So Mohammed attended a free Koranic school run by religious leaders and al-Itihaad members. The Islamists had founded a system of Islamic courts that dispensed sharia law and provided social services such as health care and education, filling the void left by a shattered state system.

In addition to memorizing the Koran, he learned Arabic. He never missed the obligatory five prayers a day and attended Friday prayers at the mosque with devotion.

"I opened my eyes inside the Koranic school," Mohammed said.

He grew distant from his family and spent more time at the mosque. He listened to conversations about the plight of the Palestinians and shared the anger over the support of Israel by Washington and its allies.

"The world seemed to him black and white," recalled Abdiraheem Addo, a former spokesman for the Islamic courts who is now a military commander in Somalia's transitional government.

'He had my heart'

On Sept. 11, 2001, Mohammed said he felt empowered as he stared at the television screen. He was proud that Muslims had learned to pilot planes to target America and defend Islam.

"I was like any other young Somali who was happy with striking the nonbelievers," he said. "Osama bin Laden was my hero. He had my heart."

In the aftermath, the Bush administration declared al-Itihaad a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda. U.S. officials had implicated the group in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Money-transfer networks that Somalis depended on were also shut down as concerns grew that they were being used to move money for al-Qaeda. At Mohammed's mosque, anger punctuated the sermons and people grew more resentful of the United States.

For the first time, Mohammed said he felt that the United States and its allies were directly targeting him and his countrymen.

"America's response after September 11 was too aggressive," he said. "That created anger and only added fuel to the fire."

As U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, Mohammed was tormented by the deaths of fellow Muslims in airstrikes and bombings. "I was convinced they were victims of an oppressive invasion," he said. "I felt America wanted to occupy the whole Middle East."

Mohammed began to view Somalia's own history through the prism of Sept. 11. He was happy that American soldiers had been killed here in 1993, some brutally, their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

"It was wrong of them to come here," he said. "The sense that America was the enemy was growing inside me."

'The right path'

One day in the summer of 2005, when Mohammed was 16, a group of men approached him at the mosque. They wanted him to join a new militia called the Islamic Courts Union. "They were interested in children like me," Mohammed said. "I didn't have much knowledge. I had no idea where to find a job."

By then, the Islamic Courts was fighting a coalition of warlords that many Somalis believed was being covertly financed by the United States. The warlords presented themselves as a counterterrorism alliance determined to root out radical Islam and al-Qaeda in Somalia. But to the Islamists, the warlords were puppets of Washington.

And that's how the men, over cups of hot sweet tea, convinced Mohammed.

"They told me I was joining a jihad to liberate my country and my religion," he said. "Eventually, I decided this was the right path."

His uncle was devastated.

"I felt like my heart was taken away from me," Ali recalled. "They tricked him."

Six weeks after learning how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle and rocket-propelled grenades, Mohammed was dispatched to the front line. In mid-2006 he helped to wrest his home town of Jowhar from the control of a powerful warlord widely thought to be on the U.S. payroll.

"We overwhelmed his fighters," Mohammed said with pride. "I felt no fear. I was hearing the sound of the bullets, nothing more."

Mohammed quickly earned a reputation as a fierce fighter. Ali Abdirahman Abukar, an Islamic Courts fighter, remembered how Mohammed single-handedly defended a position for more than an hour during a clash in Mogadishu.

But what Abukar and other comrades remember most about Mohammed was his extreme devotion to Islam, how he gravitated to the group's radical factions. "He was a hard-liner," said Abukar, now 20 and a soldier with Somalia's transitional government.

Mohammed's mentor, Aden Hashi Ayro, was a veteran of al-Itihaad who had trained in Afghanistan and had ties to al-Qaeda. He allegedly orchestrated the assassinations of 16 people, including four Western aid workers, according to the International Crisis Group, a respected think tank.

In December 2006, Ethiopian troops, with covert backing from the Bush administration, invaded Somalia to oust the Islamists. Somalis viewed Ethiopia as "the Israel of Africa" because it received support from Washington despite its aggressive policies, said Sheik Mohammed Asad Abdullahi, an al-Shabab commander who defected.

Many Islamists believed they were engaged not only in a nationalist struggle but also in a larger clash between Islam and the West.

"It was very clear that we were not only fighting the Ethiopians but also the Western world," Mohammed said.

In a fierce battle outside the coastal town of Baidoa, a bullet tore through Mohammed's leg. He crawled away from the battlefield. Two weeks later, he returned to the front lines.

The Ethiopian forces pushed the Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu. A few months later, a rift broke apart the Islamists; two militias, al-Shabab and Hezb-i-Islam, emerged as independent forces, more radical than ever. Some of Somalia's powerful clans backed al-Shabab to counter the Ethiopians and an African Union peacekeeping force that replaced the Ethiopians last year.

Ayro became a top leader, and Mohammed was among the first to be recruited as a commander in charge of 60 fighters. Most were younger than he was. He was paid $400 a month, a princely sum here.

"He believed in al-Shabab's ideology," said Abdul Rashid Noor, 23, a former Islamic Courts member who now fights for the government. "We knew we were different from each other."

Many al-Shabab fighters believed they were waging jihad against America and its allies who backed Somalia's transitional government and the peacekeepers, Abdullahi said. "Many were brainwashed by September 11 and the events after."

Within months, al-Shabab had taken over much of south and central Somalia, nearly a third of the country. The militia imposed a harsh interpretation of Islam, carrying out public amputations and banning movies, soccer, even bras. Mohammed witnessed the beheading of two men accused of being informants. Their heads were posted on poles in a market to serve as a warning. It didn't upset him, he said.

Nor was he troubled when a young woman accused of adultery was stoned to death. "When a woman commits adultery, she will be killed by stoning. That's the law under Islam," he said, adding that her partner should have been stoned to death, too.

Then on May 1, 2008, an American airstrike killed Ayro inside his home. "They killed our hero," Mohammed said. "I knew the Americans were interfering in Somalia all the time after that."

Another date also haunts Mohammed: Dec. 3, 2009.

On that day, an al-Shabab suicide bomber dressed as a woman detonated explosives during a medical school graduation ceremony at the Shamo Hotel. The attack killed 22 civilians and three government ministers.

"Many students and their parents died. Many young doctors died," Mohammed said. "That was the turning point."

In the weeks before the bombing, he had begun to notice that more foreign al-Shabab fighters were attending meetings for the militia's senior leaders. "Decisions are being taken by foreigners, not Somalis," he said.

Mohammed said he was startled by the militia's severe tactics. He was fighting to get rid of American and Western influence in Somalia, to enshrine a pure brand of Islam - not to indiscriminately kill innocent Somali civilians. "Those who have direct contact with al-Qaeda want to export jihad to the West," he said. "But I know that many Shabab only want to liberate their country from the foreigners."

In February, al-Shabab publicly declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. While he still considered bin Laden a hero, Mohammed was conflicted by the development. Nearly a decade after Sept. 11, many in the Muslim world were questioning bin Laden's philosophies and tactics. In Somalia, al-Shabab's harsh measures and al-Qaeda-like attacks were increasingly alienating the population.

"I thought we would lose the support of the normal people of Somalia," Mohammed said.

Some of his former comrades, who now worked for the government, encouraged him to leave the militia. Four months ago, he hopped into a taxi, crossed into government-controlled territory and defected.

In July, al-Shabab orchestrated bombings in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, killing more than 70 World Cup fans. It was the militia's first international attack.

'I am a warrior'

Mohammed moved to Villa Somalia, a compound of buildings that includes the home of Somali President Sharif Ahmed, a moderate Islamist who once led the Islamic Courts. Government security officials placed Mohammed there, in part to protect him, and in part to make sure he's not a spy or a double agent.

Two camouflage uniforms hung on a clothesline in his room. In one corner were his life possessions: a small radio, a bar of soap, a bottle of body lotion and a green bag stuffed with clothes.

He has no plans to settle down. "I am a warrior. I do not need a wife," he said.

In another corner, a stack of Somali news clippings, downloaded from the Internet, were scattered. They were about al-Shabab's brutality; the most recent was dated Aug. 16, 2010. It was about a man whose tongue had been cut off for speaking out against the militia. "Any bad thing they do, I collect it," Mohammed said. "I am their enemy now."

His ideology, though, has not changed. Mohammed said, "You can't be Muslim without accepting sharia." He approved of al-Shabab's ban on soccer, arguing that youth would join the militia as an alternative and help liberate their country. He said he believed that women should cover their face and that limbs of convicted thieves must be hacked off.

"My religion does not allow music. It is forbidden for Muslims," Mohammed said. He added that "our religion forbids" racy Bollywood films, too. And women should not wear bras.

"Bras are like creams to whiten skin. They are a trick. You should be normal," he said. "That's what it says in our religion."

Mohammed refuses to believe allegations of Ayro's brutality. Instead, he said, Ayro was "merciful" and those who led al-Shabab after his death "are merciless and more radical than he was."

He said he no longer considers America "a legitimate target." But when asked by this journalist, an American, what he would have done if he had met him a few months ago, Mohammed replied without hesitation: "I would have slaughtered you. And they would have promoted me."

Few trust Mohammed. A few days earlier, a mortar landed in the compound, near his building, killing four African Union peacekeepers. Shortly after he allowed this journalist to visit his room, Ugandan peacekeepers threw Mohammed in prison for breach of security. Somali security officials secured his release, but Muhammed was summoned that night for interrogation. He was later asked to leave the government compound.

On a recent day, Mohammed passed through a desolate patch of Mogadishu. He walked fast. His eyes darted left, right. Then he glanced behind his back. He knew al-Shabab spies worked in government-controlled areas.

Since his defection, his former comrades have delivered death threats. He has no salary. His life hinges on his only skill.

"I am ready to fight," he declared. "I am ready for anything."

[buglerbilly]

Well-Funded Somali Mystery Militia Rises

December 02, 2010

Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya -- In the northern reaches of Somalia and the country's presidential palace, a well-equipped military force is being created, funded by a mysterious donor nation that is also paying for the services of a former CIA officer and a senior ex-U.S. diplomat.

The Associated Press has determined through telephone and e-mail interviews with three insiders that training for an anti-piracy force of up to 1,050 men has already begun in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia that is believed to hold reserves of oil and gas.

But key elements remain unknown -- mainly who is providing the millions of dollars in funding and for what ultimate purpose.

Pierre Prosper, an ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues under former President George W. Bush, told AP he is being paid by a Muslim nation he declined to identify to be a legal adviser to the Somali government, focusing on security, transparency and anti-corruption.

Prosper said the donations from the Muslim nation come from a "zakat fund," referring to charitable donations that Islam calls for the faithful to give each year. The same donor is paying for both training programs.

Somalia hasn't had a fully functioning government since 1991 and is torn between clan warlords, Islamist insurgent factions, an 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force, government forces and allied groups. Given that mix, the appearance of an unknown donor with deep pockets is troubling, said E.J. Hogendoorn, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"We don't know if this unknown entity is operating in the interests of Somalis or their own self-interest," he said in an interview. "If it's a company, there has to be a quid pro quo in terms of [oil and gas] concessions. If it's a government, they are interested in changing the balance of power."

The new force's first class of 150 Somali recruits from Puntland graduated from a 13-week training course on Monday, said Mohamed Farole, the son of Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole. The son, who is a liaison between the government and journalists and diplomats, told AP the new force will hunt down pirates on land in the Galgala mountains.

The range lies 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of the nearest main pirate anchorage but is home to an Islamist-linked militia that complains it has been cut out of energy exploration deals.

The Islamist militants led by Mohamed Said Atom have clashed with government forces several times this year. A March report by the U.N. accuses Atom of importing arms from Yemen and receiving consignments from Eritrea, including mortars, for delivery to al-Shabab forces in southern Somalia. Al-Shabab is Somalia's biggest insurgent group and has ties with al-Qaida.

The president's son emphasized the force was dedicated to anti-piracy, but said that he hoped greater security in the region would bring more investors into "public-private partnerships" with the government.

"You cannot have oil exploration if you have insecurity," Mohamed Farole said. "You have to eliminate the pirates and al-Shabab."

Energy exploration has started mainly just south of the mountains, although the amount of estimated reserves is unknown, or at least not publicly divulged.

Michael Shanklin, who was the CIA's deputy chief of station in Mogadishu 20 years ago, told AP he is employed by the unidentified donor country as a security adviser and liaison to the Somali government. Prosper said he is encouraging the Muslim donor nation, which insists on keeping its identity secret, to become more transparent.

The new force will be equipped with 120 new pickup trucks -- which have already arrived -- and six small aircraft for patrolling the coast, Farole said. No other force in Somalia, including the Mogadishu-based central government or African Union peacekeepers, has air assets.

Prosper said the Muslim nation is also donating four armored vehicles. A photo provided by diplomats and taken at Mogadishu's airport show two armored trucks made by Ford with gunner's turrets.

In recent weeks, Shanklin and Prosper met several Nairobi-based diplomats to discuss the contract between the Puntland and Mogadishu governments and a private security company called Saracen International, Prosper said in written replies to questions from AP. Prosper said Saracen is doing the military training and is being paid by the unnamed Muslim nation. Saracen is not providing the militia with any weapons, he said.

Uganda-based Saracen International was named in a March letter written by the Somali president's former chief of staff, Abdulkareem Jama, and obtained by AP that described training for the presidential guard. And it was named in a Nov. 18 statement from Puntland's government announcing the anti-piracy training. Bill Pelser, the chief executive of Saracen International, said it is "definitely a mistake or a misrepresentation."

Pelser denied being involved in the training program in Puntland or the one for the presidential guard in Mogadishu, saying he merely made introductions for another company called Saracen Lebanon. Lebanese authorities have no record of a company called Saracen. Pelser did not respond to requests for contact information for Saracen Lebanon.

Pelser is a former South African special forces soldier. Like many of his staff, he used to work for Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary outfit credited with helping defeat rebel forces in Sierra Leone in return for mineral concessions.

Prosper declined to say how much the donor country has spent on the programs. Two Nairobi-based security analysts calculate it has already spent around $10 million on equipment, salaries and other costs. The analysts asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

Somalia's vast swaths of lawless territory host training camps for hundreds of foreign fighters aiding al-Shabab. Lying across the narrow Gulf of Aden from Yemen, Somalia is a haven for figures seeking to escape a U.S.-funded crackdown on terrorist networks in Yemen.

Whoever controls a well-trained, well-equipped and consistently paid military force is in a strong position to make a bid for filling the power vacuum in Somalia.

Farole declined to comment on his father's political future but noted that since his father became Puntland's president, he chased many pirates out of the region and ensured regular payments for soldiers in a country where many desert because the central government is too disorganized or corrupt to pay them.

The U.N. is quietly investigating to see if the creation and outfitting of the new military force violates an arms embargo, according to a U.N. representative who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly.

The embargo forbids the importation of arms, military equipment or any support to any armed group in Somalia, including to any Somali government, without authorization from the U.N.'s sanctions committee. There is an exemption for support for counter-piracy operations, provided the Security Council was notified and gave permission. In the case of the new military force, the Security Council was not notified.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

MAY 12, 2011.

Somalia Would Embrace U.S. Strike

By JOE LAURIA

NEW YORK—Somalia would welcome a U.S. special-forces attack on al Qaeda-affiliated militants on Somali soil, similar to the strike that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, said Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed on Wednesday.

"I would prefer training so we can do it ourselves," Mr. Mohamed said in an interview. "But in the absence of that, if there is a target or a threat to dismantle, I would welcome it." U.S. officials declined to comment.

The remarks from Mr. Mohamed, a U.S. citizen who heads a weak interim government, stand in contrast to Pakistan, which blasted Washington over a breach of its sovereignty after the U.S. didn't inform Islamabad in advance of its raid to kill bin Laden.

A U.S. strike in Somalia wouldn't be without precedent. In 2008, a U.S. military airstrike killed a man believed to be al Qaeda's top commander in the country.

Bin Laden's death could weaken Somalia's al Shabaab, the al Qaeda-affiliated movement, by depriving it of funds and financing, he said. But "the movement is far from over" especially in Somalia, because al Qaeda is "not a one-man show," he said.

Mr. Mohamed warned that al Shabaab has the capability to strike outside of Somalia, including Western targets. "We are the first line of defense," he said.

The group carried out an attack in Uganda last year and vows to continue foreign strikes. "But if we push and pressure them in Somalia, they may not have the time and luxury to prepare for outside attacks," Mr. Mohamed said.

That is why, he said he tells Western leaders "we are not only doing this to protect ourselves and our people, we are protecting you, too," said To help defend the West from possible attacks organized by al Shabaab, Mr. Mohamed, adding that Somalia needs "the same attention as Afghanistan and Iraq" from the West. "You have to fight Somalia and Afghanistan at the same level and intensity," he said.

"If supposedly NATO wins the war in Afghanistan, do you know where [the militants] will go?" he asked. "They will go to Somalia." The Horn of African nation is attractive to jihadists because like Afghanistan, it is Muslim, has a tribal political and a very weak central government that does not control all of its territory, he said.

Mr. Mohamed said 1,000 foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaeda had helped local Islamist militants take control of 90% of Somalia's southern region. In the past six months he said Somali and African Union forces had been able to regain 20% of the country from the militants, mostly because his government had started regularly paying its troops.

Asked if he sought NATO intervention, the prime minister said the country had 8,000 Somali soldiers, backed up with 9,000 African Union troops, with another 4,000 on the way.

"What we need is air power," he said. "Sometimes you have places where you cannot fight them in conventional way. You need some high-tech weapons to fight them."

But Mr. Mohamed said he was not ready to ask NATO for such help until his own ground troops were first properly trained and equipped. While Somalia "may not need American or NATO boots on the ground" it did need the resources for the Somalia and African Union troops to fight the jihadists.

"I think together, we will be able to face the enemy," he said. "Because if we don't face this group, in my opinion, they will not stay there. They will come after the rest of the nations."

Write to Joe Lauria at newseditor@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Al-Qaida bomber Fazul Abdullah Mohammed killed

Terrorist was behind the 1998 attacks on two embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds of people

Jason Burke and James Orr

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 June 2011 22.31 BST


An undated FBI photograph of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who was reported killed. Photograph: AP

The terrorist behind the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa – the attack that brought al-Qaida to global attention – has been killed in Somalia. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who had a $5m price tag put on his head by American authorities, was one of the most wanted Islamist militants in the world.

The embassy attacks – in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania – killed more than 200 people and injured several thousand. The majority of the casualties were local African staff or passersby caught in the multiple explosions that destroyed the buildings.

Mohammed also organised the 2002 attacks on two Israeli targets, including the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya, which killed 13 people, and an attempt to shoot down a passenger plane on a flight to Israel.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who was on a visit to Tanzania as news of the death broke, described the killing as a "significant blow to al-Qaida, its extremist allies, and its operations in east Africa".

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere – Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis and our own embassy personnel," she said.

A senior American official in Washington said that his killing removed one of the group's "most experienced operational planners in east Africa and has almost certainly set back operations".

News of Mohammed's death comes just six weeks after the death of the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, in a US special forces raid in Pakistan. Last week Ilyas Kashmiri, another senior terrorist with ties to al-Qaida, was also reported to have been killed.

Kenyan police, who cited Somali officials, said Mohammed had been shot dead when he and an associate refused to stop at a checkpoint north-west of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, earlier this week. The dead man, thought to be aged 38, had a false passport and $40,000 in cash it was reported.

"We have confirmed he was killed by our police at a control checkpoint this week," Halima Aden, a senior national security officer in Somalia, told Reuters. "He had a fake South African passport and other documents. After thorough investigation, we confirmed it was him."

No independent confirmation of Mohammed's death was immediately available but the AFP news agency published images of the face of the dead man which resembled those previously published by American investigators. There was also some confusion over what had happened to Mohammed's remains, with reports saying they had been buried and others claiming they had been handed over to the American authorities.

Born in the Comoros Islands, off the coast of Mozambique, Mohammed was educated in Saudi Arabia before travelling to Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He is also thought to have been in Mogadishu in 1993 during fighting there. He narrowly escaped death in an American air strike in Somalia in 2007. American authorities have steadily tracked down almost all those responsible for the 1998 bombing attacks. Many were brought to trial in America in 2001.

The death of Mohammed will be a loss for al-Qaida in east Africa but is unlikely to have a significant impact on the overall capabilities of the hardline leadership element based in Pakistan. Like most regional branches of al-Qaida, even those violent Islamist extremists in east Africa who have sworn allegiance to Bin Laden have remained largely autonomous.

Various local factions have allied with al-Qaida, often for short-term pragmatic reasons, but few have built solid links. Mohammed was one of the few terrorists based in Africa who followed a genuinely global agenda and was willing to launch attacks on international targets.

[buglerbilly]

'Partner' Airstrike Hits Somali Militants

June 24, 2011

Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An airstrike from military aircraft hit a convoy carrying al-Qaida-linked militants in southern Somalia, and a defense official said Friday that foreign fighters were among those killed in an attack carried out by a "partner country."

Military aircraft struck a militant convey as it drove along the coastline of the southern port city of Kismayo late Thursday, according to a resident there, Mohamed Aden.

A leader inside the insurgent group al-Shabab, Sheik Hassan Yaqub, confirmed the strike and said two militants were wounded. Aden, said he saw three wounded militants in the Kismayo on Friday.

Abdirashid Mohamed Hidig, Somalia's deputy defense minister, said the attack was a coordinated operation that killed "many" foreign fighters.

"I have their names, but I don't want to release them," he told The Associated Press.

No nation immediately took responsibility for the attack, though U.S. aircraft have attacked militants in Somalia before. A U.S. airstrike killed a senior al-Shabab leader in 2008, while a U.S. commando raid in 2009 killed the militant wanted for the 2002 car bombing of a Kenyan beach resort.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in neighboring Nairobi, Kenya, said all questions on the issue needed to be referred to the Pentagon.

Hidig said a "partner country" carried out the attack. He called it a successful military operation.

"The target was one of their (al-Shabab's) most important fortresses where foreigners were staying," he said. "It's not only that attack but there will be further military attacks targeting them. There are casualties inflicted to them but we shall release that information later."

The overnight strike near Kismayo occurred near a militant camp, leading some residents to say the camp was being attacked.

"We heard bangs of explosions first and again after minutes, more loud blasts," said Ali Abdinur, a resident, said by phone. "I don't know what happened but the place was an al-Shabab camp."

Yaqub, the al-Shabab leader, talked to a militant-run radio station after the attack.

"Two enemy aircraft attacked our mujahedeen fighters at a time they were conducting a security patrol near Kismayo" he told the radio station.

Aden, the Kismayo resident, said aircraft flew over Kismayo and that there were then two loud bangs. Militants immediately cordoned off the area and ferried the wounded - and possibly any dead - to the city.

Aden said he visited the scene of the attack and saw two destroyed pickup trucks and a third heavily damaged car.

"The damages to the cars indicate that there may have been deaths, but it is hard to confirm because the attack took place immediately after sunset and no one was allowed to access it until Friday morning," he said.

Aden said that al-Shabab fighters fired at the aircraft, including a helicopter.

The airstrikes came less than two weeks after a Somali soldier killed al-Qaida's top leader in Somalia, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who was wanted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Mohammed was carrying sophisticated weapons, maps, and correspondence when he was killed, a potential treasure trove of intelligence about militant activity in Somalia.

The U.S. has a military base in the small nation of Djibouti, which lies directly to the north of Somalia. The U.S. Navy also patrols off East Africa as part of the international anti-piracy effort.

U.S. officials believe that al-Shabab counts several hundred foreign fighters among its ranks, including militant veterans of conflicts in Iraq and Pakistan. An American who joined al-Shabab - Omar Hammami, known as Abu Mansur al-Amriki, or "the American - is among the foreign fighters military officials have said they would like to see killed or captured.

Somalia has not had a functioning government for 20 years, the reason militancy and piracy have been able to flourish in the country.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. drone targets two leaders of Somali group allied with al-Qaeda, official says

By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Thursday, June 30, 11:34 AM

A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday.

The strike last week against senior members of al-Shabab comes amid growing concern within the U.S. government that some leaders of the Islamist group are collaborating more closely with al-Qaeda to strike targets beyond Somalia, the military official said.

The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.

Al-Shabab has battled Somalia’s tenuous government for several years. In recent months, U.S. officials have picked up intelligence that senior members of the group have expanded their ambitions beyond attacks in Somalia.

“They have become somewhat emboldened of late, and, as a result, we have become more focused on inhibiting their activities,” the official said.“They were planning operations outside of Somalia.”

Both of the al-Shabab leaders targeted in the attack had “direct ties” to American-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, the military official said. Aulaqi escaped a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in May.

The White House declined Wednesday night to respond to questions about the attack.

But Obama administration officials have made repeated references to al-Shabab in recent weeks, indicating that the group has expanded its aims and its operations. In a speech Wednesday unveiling the administration’s new counterterrorism strategy, senior White House aide John O. Brennan included Somalia among the countries where the administration has placed a new focus on al-Qaeda affiliates.

“As the al-Qaeda core has weakened under our unyielding pressure, it has looked increasingly to these other groups and individuals to take up its cause, including its goal of striking the United States,” said Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. “From the territory it controls in Somalia,” he said, “al-Shabab continues to call for strikes against the United States.”

And earlier this month, in a hearing to confirm him as Obama’s new defense secretary, CIA Director Leon Panetta told senators that the agency had intelligence on al-Shabab “that indicates that they, too, are looking at targets beyond Somalia.” Panetta said al-Qaeda had moved some of its operations to “nodes” in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa. The CIA, he said, was working with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command in those areas “to try to develop counterterrorism.”

The Special Operations Command carried out last week’s Somalia strike, the military official said, and it has been flying remotely piloted planes over Yemen for much of the past year. It has taken the lead in operations in Yemen, where Aulaqi, a senior figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is based.

U.S. aircraft and Special Operations commandos have carried out other attacks in Somalia against militants linked to al-Qaeda, but the strike last week appears to have been one of the first U.S. drone attacks in Somalia.

It was not immediately clear what kind of unmanned aircraft was used in the attack or where the drone originated.

The airstrike appears to be one piece of a larger effort to step up offensive action against al-Shabab militants with ties to al-Qaeda in Somalia. Somali media have reported numerous rumors in recent months of U.S. airstrikes on militant camps.

On April 6, an al-Shabab commander was reported to have been killed by an airstrike in Dhobley, a border town in southern Somalia, according to the Web site Long War Journal.

This month, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, was killed in a shootout in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, Somali officials said. Mohammed was a founder of al-Shabab and was considered the most-wanted man in East Africa.

The United States conducted a DNA analysis to confirm Mohammed’s demise, a U.S. official said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described it as “a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies and its operations in East Africa.”

In last week’s attack, local officials told the Associated Press that military aircraft struck a convoy carrying the militants as they drove along the coastline of the southern port city of Kismaayo late Thursday. Other local residents told journalists that an air attack had taken place on a militant camp near Kismaayo, an insurgent stronghold. Several residents were quoted as saying that more than one explosion had occurred over a period of several hours and that they thought that at least helicopters had taken part in the attack.

An al-Shabab leader confirmed the airstrike and said two militants were wounded. Abdirashid Mohamed Hidig, Somalia’s deputy defense minister, said the attack was a coordinated operation that killed “many” foreign fighters.

“I have their names, but I don’t want to release them,” he told the AP.

In the early days of the Obama administration, officials became concerned about Somali extremists and debated whether al-Shabab, despite some ties to al-Qaeda,posed a threat to the United States or was primarily focused on Somalia. Some administration and intelligence officials said the group’s objectives remained domestic and argued against any preemptive strike on its camps.

Over the past year, al-Shabab has focused more openly outside Somalia in its statements and targets. In July, the group carried out suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76 people, including one American. Uganda is one of the countries providing troops to a peacekeeping force that protects the U.S.-backed government in Somalia.

In August, the Justice Department charged 14 people in this country with providing support to al-Shabab. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the indictments “shed further light on a deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters to al-Shabab from cities across the United States.”

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Somalia: US Took Militants Bodies After Strike

July 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Malkhadir M. Muhumed

NAIROBI, Kenya - U.S. military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a U.S. drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia's defense minister told The Associated Press on Friday.

The operation is at least the second time U.S. troops have landed in Somalia after a targeted strike, though no forces have been stationed there since shortly after the "Black Hawk Down" battle that left 18 Americans dead in 1993.

Defense Minister Abdulhakim Mohamoud Haji Faqi called on the U.S. to carry out more airstrikes against the al-Qaida-linked militants, though he admitted that Somali officials appear not to have been informed about the June 23 operation near the southern coastal town of Kismayo beforehand.

"But we are not complaining about that. Absolutely not. We welcome it," Faqi told AP. "We understand the U.S.'s need to quickly act on its intelligence on the ground," he said. "We urge the U.S. to continue its strikes against al-Shabab because if it keeps those strikes up, it will be easier for us to defeat al-Shabab."

U.S. officials have increased their warnings that the threat from Somalia's al-Shabab militant group is growing and that militants are developing stronger ties with the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

New Pentagon chief Leon Panetta told lawmakers last month that as the core al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan undergoes leadership changes, with the killing of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. needs to make sure that the group does not relocate to Somalia.

The only American military base in Africa is in the tiny nation of Djibouti, which lies on Somalia's northern border. U.S. troops can also operate from Navy ships moving through the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

In 2009, U.S. helicopters swooped over a convoy carrying the al-Qaida fugitive Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was killed in the U.S. raid. Elite commandos rappelled to the ground and collected two bodies.

Faqi said the June 23 attack was carried out by a U.S. drone, and that after the attack U.S. forces picked up militants who were either killed or injured. Residents in Kismayo reported hearing helicopters hovering overhead the night of the operation.

"We have intelligence reports from our own sources that the U.S. army picked up militants after the strike," Faqi said, declining to disclose them. He said that the Somalia government would release the militants' names when they're confirmed by DNA tests.

In late 2009 the U.S. deployed drone aircraft to the island nation of Seychelles. A U.S. official said then that the drones were primarily for anti-piracy efforts but that he couldn't rule out their use over Somalia.

Rashid Abdi, a Somali expert with the International Crisis Group, said if the drone strikes are conducted with "sensitivity" they would cripple al-Shabab without causing a public outcry over civilian deaths.

"Any increased foreign military involvement carries its own risks. However, short, sharp and surgical strikes to take out foreign jihadists or degrade al-Shabab may not be a bad thing," he said. "Due care must be taken to avoid civilian deaths."

The approximately 9,000 African Union forces in Somalia - led by troops from Uganda and Burundi - have gained ground in an offensive this year against al-Shabab fighters.

The Pentagon is sending nearly $45 million in military equipment to those two nations to help their troops in Mogadishu. The aid includes four small, shoulder-launched Raven drones, body armor, night-vision gear, communications and heavy construction equipment, generators and surveillance systems.

Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the AU peacekeepers, welcomed the U.S. assistance, saying it will help the force increase its surveillance abilities. "With the help of drones, we can locate insurgents in real time and deal with them decisively," he said.

He also urged the U.S. to increase its strikes against militants to destroy insurgents' command and control capabilities. "If you eliminate al-Shabab leadership, you are limiting their power to conduct successful military operations," Ankunda said.

Even as the U.S. says it will increase its focus on al-Qaida and its affiliates, Faqi said al-Shabab fighters make an easier target than militants in Pakistan or Yemen, because Somalia has few mountainous areas that can serve as hideouts. He said he didn't believe militants in Somalia are as experienced as in other parts of the world.

Still, U.S. officials have said they believe that al-Shabab counts hundreds of foreign fighters - including veterans of the Iraq and Pakistan-Afghanistan conflicts - among its ranks. A Somali soldier last month killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a top al-Qaida operative and the mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Somalia hasn't had a functioning government since 1991, a state of chaos that has allowed militancy and piracy to flourish. Faqi said the U.S. pays the bulk of the army's salary, along with Italy, and that his government gets logistical and capacity building supports from America. He said his government is grateful but needs even more help with hospitals, communication equipment and vehicles.

Faqi said al-Shabab is in a "very, very difficult situation nowadays, financially, militarily and morally," and that any sustained aerial strikes would further weaken the militants, who control large swaths of the country's southern and central regions, including portions of the capital, Mogadishu, despite the success of the African Union offensive.

"There is mistrust among its top leaders, and between Somalis and foreigners. So I believe that new aerial strikes against its leaders will be another nail in the coffin of al-Shabab," he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. indicts Somali on terrorism charges

By Karen DeYoung, Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe, Wednesday, July 6, 6:48 AM

The U.S. military captured a Somali terrorism suspect in the Gulf of Aden in April and interrogated him for more than two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship before flying him this week to New York, where he has been indicted on federal charges.

The case represents the Obama administration’s attempt to find a middle ground between open-ended detentions in secret prisons, as practiced by the George W. Bush administration, and its commitment to try as many terrorism cases as possible in civilian courts.

With the capture of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, the administration appeared to split the difference, with military and intelligence officials interrogating him secretly for two months before bringing in law enforcement officials to question him for purposes of an indictment. He is the first foreign terrorism suspect captured by the administration outside the United States and moved to this country for trial.

In flying Warsame to New York before announcing his capture, the administration circumvented likely congressional objections to his transfer here. Congress has barred the administration from moving detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial.

The administration has increasingly utilized counterterrorism tactics, such as attacks from drone aircraft, that have killed an unprecedented number of militants. But there have been no known foreign captures outside the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, leading critics to charge that valuable intelligence information was being lost. Some lawmakers have questioned where the administration, which has vowed to close the Guantanamo facility, would send any new detainees.

A senior administration official said that no opportunity for capture had been passed up “when the risk to U.S. personnel was deemed acceptable” and that “a long list of terrorists” had been captured by other countries as a result of U.S.-provided intelligence and other assistance.

The nine-count indictment, which was returned under seal by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York late last week, does not accuse Warsame of carrying out or plotting attacks against U.S. targets. It charges him with conspiracy and providing material support to two groups the United States considers terrorist organizations: al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group opposed to Somalia’s weak, U.S.-backed government, and Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Warsame is also accused of weapons offenses related to both alleged conspiracies; conspiracy to teach and demonstrate explosive-making; and receiving military training from AQAP.

The administration has described AQAP as the most “operationally active” affiliate of Pakistan-based al-Qaeda, responsible for the Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound airliner and last year’s cargo plane bomb plot. In recent months, administration officials have described increasing ties between AQAP and al-Shabab, and indications that al-Shabab was expanding its ambitions to target the United States and its allies.

Warsame, said to be in his mid-20s, “clearly served as an important conduit between the two organizations,” which are “directly engaged in plotting against the United States or our interests,” the senior administration official said. Warsame “was in Yemen last year, and this year . . . and helped facilitate contacts between the organizations,” the official said. The White House made available three senior officials Tuesday to brief reporters on the case on the condition that they not be identified by name.

Other U.S. officials, interviewed separately, said Warsame and another individual were apprehended aboard a boat traveling from Yemen to Somalia by the U.S. military’s Joint Operations Command. The vessel was targeted because the United States had acquired intelligence that potentially significant operatives were on board, the officials said. Court documents said the capture took place April 19.

One of the senior administration officials who briefed reporters said that the other suspect was released “after a very short period of time” after the military “determined that Warsame was an individual that we were very much interested in for further interrogation.”

According to court documents, Warsame was interrogated on “all but a daily basis” by military and civilian intelligence interrogators. During that time, officials in Washington held a number of meetings to discuss the intelligence being gleaned, Warsame’s status and what to do with him.

The options, one official said, were to release him, transfer him to a third country, keep him prisoner aboard the ship, subject him to trial by a military commission or allow a federal court to try him. The decision to seek a federal indictment, this official said, was unanimous.

Administration officials have argued that military commission jurisdiction is too narrow for some terrorism cases — particularly for a charge of material support for terrorist groups — and the Warsame case appeared to provide an opportunity to try to prove the point.

But some human rights and international law experts criticized what they saw as at least a partial return to the discredited “black site” prisons the CIA maintained during the Bush administration.

“What we’re seeing in this case is a government that is conflicted about the legal nature of its counterterrorism operations,” said John Sifton, a human rights attorney with extensive experience in detainee cases.

“On the one hand, it detains persons indefinitely, without access to counsel, using questionable Bush-era interpretations of the laws of war. On the other hand,” he said, “it embraces a more sophisticated approach, by indicting suspects, knowing that the Justice Department is better suited to prosecute them than the military.”

“It is not exactly satisfactory, from a legal point of view,” Sifton said.

Initial reaction from Congress was also critical. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the transfer contradicted the intent of Congress, which “has spoken clearly multiple times — including explicitly in pending legislation — of the perils of bringing terrorists onto U.S. soil.”

“It is unacceptable that the administration notified Congress only after it unilaterally transferred this detainee to New York City,” McKeon said in a statement.

Warsame was questioned aboard the ship because interrogators “believed that moving him to another facility would interrupt the process and risk ending the intelligence flow,” one senior administration official said.

The official said Warsame “at all times was treated in a manner consistent with all Department of Defense policies” — following the Army Field Manual — and the Geneva Conventions.

Warsame was not provided access to an attorney during the initial two months of questioning, officials said. But “thereafter, there was a substantial break from any questioning of the defendant of four days,” court documents said. “After this break, the defendant was advised of his Miranda rights” — including his right to legal representation — “and, after waiving those rights, spoke to law enforcement agents.”

The four-day break and separate questioning were designed to avoid tainting the court case with information gleaned through un-Mirandized intelligence interrogation, an overlap that has posed a problem in previous cases. The questioning continued for seven days, “and the defendant waived his Miranda rights at the start of each day,” the documents said.

The indictment against Warsame alleges that he aided and conspired with a U.S. national “and an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on the reference. One administration official said it did not refer to Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen who is a leading AQAP figure sought in Yemen. In recent years, more than 30 individuals — many of them U.S. citizens or immigrants with Somali roots — have been charged in federal courts in connection with al-Shabab.

Last month, a U.S. aerial drone fired a missile at two al-Shabab leaders who had been involved in preparing plots to strike Europe, U.S. officials said. At least one of the two militant leaders had been in direct contact with Aulaqi.

One senior administration official said the intelligence Warsame provided was “very valuable,” but declined to say whether it was the basis for the drone attack.

U.S. Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven alluded to the captures in testimony before a Senate committee last week in which he lamented the lack of clear plans and legal approvals for the handling of terrorism suspects seized beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

At one point in the hearing, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, referred to “the question of the detention of people” and noted that McRaven had “made reference to a couple, I think, that are on a ship.”

McRaven replied affirmatively, saying, “It depends on the individual case, and I’d be more than happy to discuss the cases that we’ve dealt with.”

Staff writer Peter Finn and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Obama under fire over detention of terror suspect on US navy ship

Somali man taken to New York to face criminal court trial after being questioned for two months without a lawyer

Ed Pilkington

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 July 2011 21.17 BST


The militant Somali group al-Shabab is one of the organisations Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame is said to have joined. Photograph: AP

The Obama administration approved the secret detention of a Somali terror suspect on board a US navy ship, where for two months he was subjected to military interrogation in the absence of a lawyer and without charge.

The capture and treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame has rekindled the debate within the US about the appropriate handling of terror suspects. Republicans in Congress have objected to Warsame being brought to New York this week to be tried in a criminal court – an attempt by the Obama administration to avoid sending the prisoner to Guantánamo Bay, which it has promised to close.

From the opposite viewpoint, civil rights groups have objected to the secret questioning of Warsame on board a navy vessel, an innovation that they fear could see a new form of the CIA's widely discredited "black site" detention centres around the world.

There is some evidence that the US government is turning to detention at sea as a way of avoiding legal and political impediments in the treatment of terror suspects, both domestically and on the international stage.

Last week Admiral William McRaven, soon to become head of US Special Operations Command, told his confirmation hearing that militants captured outside Afghanistan were often "put on a naval vessel" to be held until they could be sent to a third country or a case was compiled against them for prosecution in the US courts.

Legal documents show that Warsame was captured on 19 April on a boat between Yemen and Somalia. Administration officials told the Washington Post that they had intercepted the boat after being given information that it might be carrying important terrorists.

Warsame was flown to New York on Monday and now faces nine charges, including conspiracy and providing support to two groups closely monitored by the US: the militant Somali group al-Shabab and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. He is also accused of weapons offences including conspiracy to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives, and having been given military training by the al-Qaida group.

Warsame, who faces life in prison if convicted, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Officials told the Washington Post that Warsame was interrogated on "all but a daily basis" on board the ship. The rules governing the questioning were those set out in the army field manual which prohibit controversial techniques used by the CIA after 9/11 such as waterboarding.

But the right to a lawyer was withheld along with other habeas corpus rights known in the US as Miranda rights. Officials claimed Warsame did not need to be given those because he was being interrogated for intelligence purposes rather than in preparation for his prosecution.

Civil rights groups have said the secret interrogation was a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions that prohibit prolonged detention of suspects at sea. Article 22 of the third Geneva convention states that combatants can be kept at sea only for as long as needed to transfer them to land.

Had Warsame been taken to Guantánamo, he would have immediately been entitled to a lawyer and to benefit from the other rights that were withheld from him on board the ship.

Wells Dixon, a senior lawyer at the Centre for Constitutional Rights who has represented several Guantánamo detainees, said the Obama administration, like the Bush one before it, was selectively borrowing principles from the laws of armed conflict. "And it is always to the detriment of the detainee."

Officials in Washington said they gave Warsame a four-day "break" from interrogation to separate the intelligence from the criminal part of his questioning. The intelligence portion, they said, had been "very, very productive".

After the interlude, he was questioned with an eye to preparing a criminal case against him. At this stage he was read his rights before each session, though officials said he waived them voluntarily.

The justice department hopes this separation will avoid legal difficulties further down the line. Specifically, it wants to prevent crucial information being deemed inadmissible to the New York criminal courts on the grounds that it was obtained from the defendant without his having been given his full rights.

But Dixon said the distinction between portions of the interrogation was spurious. "We know from experience representing detainees in Guantánamo that it is very easy to break an individual who is held incommunicado. It is, by contrast, very, very difficult to undo the damage, so providing a person with a 'few days off' in no way establishes that they voluntarily waived their rights."

Leading Republicans have also objected to the handling of Warsame, accusing the Obama administration of attempting to bypass the will of Congress.

The Republicans have blocked the transfer of detainees in Guantánamo for trial in civilian courts on the US mainland, claiming that to import terror suspects poses a risk to the American public. "The administration has purposefully imported a terrorist into the US and is providing him all the rights of US citizens in court," said Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the Senate. "This ideological rigidity being displayed by the administration is harming the national security of the United States of America."

[buglerbilly]

Eritrea accused of planning terrorist attacks on its neighbours

Eritrea was on Thursday night accused of plotting coordinated car-bombs designed to cause ‘mass civilian casualties’ during an international conference in its neighbour and enemy Ethiopia in January.


Some of that money is believed to end up being transferred via Dubai and Nairobi to pay al-Shabaab in Somalia Photo: REUTERS

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi

9:16PM BST 28 Jul 2011

The tiny Red Sea state is also allegedly bankrolling Somalia’s pro-al-Qa’eda Islamists and using British bank accounts to fund an increase in clandestine aggression across East Africa.

The claims were made in a new United Nations report released on Thursday night that went on to warn of a rising threat of “large scale” terror attacks in Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa from freshly-recruited jiahdists.

Three years of planning went into the plot to detonate a series of bombs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, during an African Union summit in January. It was foiled by security forces.

Ethiopian rebels were blamed, but the plan was “conceived, planned, supported and directed by the external operations directorate of the Government of Eritrea”, said the report, from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.

The anticipated mass civilian casualties and use of explosives to spread terror “represent a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics”, the report’s authors said.

Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 but the two countries soon plunged back to war. It has supported any armed group which opposes Ethiopia’s government.

Proxy conflicts between the two enemies spread most recently to Somalia, where Ethiopia is the main regional backer of the internationally-recognised administration in Mogadishu.

Eritrea is now sending an average of GBP50,000 a month from its embassy in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, to agents of al-Shabaab, al-Qa’eda-linked insurgents battling Somalia’s government, the UN report said.

That money is transferred from Dubai, where there are significant investments and deposits of Eritrean government funds.

Because his country exports almost nothing, President Isaias Afewerki taxes the 1.2 million Eritreans living abroad two percent of their income.

These funds were “the most significant source of revenue” for the ruling party, the UN report said.

One of the main routes for this diaspora cash is through Ericommerce, a British-based firm which banks with Natwest and which handles procurement for Eritrea’s state-owned food import company.

Through its diaspora tax, the report said, “the Government of Eritrea is estimated to raise tens — and possibly hundreds — of millions of dollars on an annual basis”.

Some of that money is believed to end up being transferred via Dubai and Nairobi to pay al-Shabaab in Somalia.

“The means by which the leadership in Asmara [Eritrea’s capital] apparently intends to pursue its objectives are no longer proportional or rational,” the report stated.

“Moreover, since the Eritrean intelligence apparatus responsible for the African Union summit plot is also active in Kenya, Somalia, the Sudan and Uganda, the level of threat it poses to these other countries must be re-evaluated.”

Attempts to reach Eritrea’s government spokesman were unsuccessful on Thursday night.

The report’s authors separately found fresh evidence that al-Shabaab was extending its reach into Kenya, and had made “functional linkages with jihadist groups in northern, western and southern Africa”.

Leaders of a Muslim youth centre in Nairobi were found to have links to the al-Shabaab cell which killed 79 people in coordinated bombs in Uganda during the World Cup final last year.

The same people were now helping send radicalised Kenyans to fight for the Islamists in Somalia, where there was now a Kenyan-staffed militia of between 200 and 500 troops preparing for more attacks outside of Somalia.

“This disturbing trend, highlighted by the Kampala bombings, suggests that Al-Shabaab…is giving rise to a new generation of East African jihadist groups that represent a new security challenge for the region and the wider international community,” the report said.

The UN Monitoring Group was established to investigate violations of international arms embargoes in place on both Somalia and Eritrea.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Weapons Now in Somali Terrorists’ Hands

By David Axe August 2, 2011 | 8:41 am



Bad news in America’s five-year-old proxy war against al-Qaida-allied Somali insurgents. Half of the U.S.-supplied weaponry that enables cash-strapped Ugandan and Burundian troops to fight Somalia’s al-Shabab terror group is winding up in al-Shabab’s hands.

The kicker: it’s the cash-strapped Ugandans who are selling the weapons to the insurgents.

This revelation, buried in U.N. reports and highlighted by controversial war correspondent Robert Young Pelton at his new Somalia Report website, raises some unsettling questions about Washington’s plans to out-source more wars in the future.

Shabab is back in the headlines, for some downright evil actions during Somalia’s growing humanitarian crisis. The terror group is “blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory,” the New York Times reports.

The Pentagon has been striking at al-Shabab since at least early 2007, with special forces, armed drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by Navy ships. But most of the fighting against the Islamic terror group, which has lured as many as 50 Somali-American kids to Mogadishu and even sent one on a suicide mission, is done by the roughly 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers belonging to the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, codenamed “AMISOM.”

In exchange, Washington pays the troops and sends them regular consignments of guns, rockets and ammo. Between 2007 and 2009, the bill for U.S. taxpayers came to around $200 million — and has probably doubled since then.

The problem is, the Ugandan army withholds most of the peacekeepers’ $550 monthly paychecks, keeping the money in bank accounts in Uganda accessible only by the troops’ families. Considering “limited shopping opportunities for embattled AMISOM troops, you would think that makes sense to keep their money at home,” Pelton wrote. “Except that the AMISOM payment debacle leaves thousands of troops surrounded by tons of weapons with no way to buy even ’small small’ things like personal items, sweets or mobile phone recharges to call home.”

So the Ugandans sell their excess weaponry to intermediaries who then sell it on to al-Shabab. And to keep up their racket, the peacekeepers make sure to shoot at every opportunity, burning through “an extraordinary amount of ordnance” to justify continued arms shipments from Washington.

How bad is it? “In April of 2011 the U.N. determined that 90 percent of all 12.7 x 108 millimeter ammunition was from an AMISOM stock created in 2010,” Pelton revealed. “An RPG captured from al-Shabab was analyzed and determined to have been delivered by DynCorp to the Ministry of Defense in Uganda. The contract was to supply weapons and ammunition to the Ugandan forces in Mogadishu.”

With the U.S. effectively arming both sides of the conflict, the Somalia fighting could go on … well, forever, absent major reform. This at a time when war-torn Somalia desperately needs some peace in order to cope with the worst drought in decades.

This sort of thing has happened before, and is still happening with U.S.-paid truckers in Afghanistan. Even so, the Mogadishu arms racket casts into doubt plans for more military out-sourcing.

Weary from two long, costly Asian land wars, the Pentagon is mulling an “off-shore” strategy for future conflicts, where U.S. proxies “partners” do most of the hard fighting. Sure, the U.S. Army and Marines would help with training assistance, and the Navy and Air Force would provide high-tech support. But it would be foreign armies actually pulling the triggers.

But if, like the Ugandans, these armies end up arming their own opponents, how can we count on them to actually win their sub-contracted war?

[I]Photo: David Axe

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Hires Shady Mercenary for Somali Proxy War

By David Axe August 11, 2011 | 10:48 am



A French-born mercenary with a criminal record and possible ties to several African coups and at least one murder is the latest agent of the U.S. government’s out-sourced war in Somalia, according to The New York Times‘ ace Africa reporter Jeffrey Gettleman and others.

Richard Rouget, alias “Colonel Sanders,” works for Bancroft Global Development, a Washington, D.C.-based “private security company” that maintains an approximately 40-man team of self-described “mentors” in Mogadishu, Somalia’s embattled capital city.

Rouget and the other mentors — a mix of former French, Scandinavian and South African soldiers — help train the 9,000-strong, U.S.-funded Ugandan and Burundian peacekeeping force that doubles as the heavy army of the Somali Transitional Federal Government in its long war with the al-Shabab Islamic terror group.

Al-Shabab, the latest in a long chain of Somali insurgent groups, has allied itself with al-Qaida and last year pulled off a bloody twin bombing in Uganda. Al-Shabab actively recruits disaffected Somali-American teenagers to sneak into Somalia to fight. In 2008, one of these young recruits became the first known American-born suicide bomber when he blew himself up outside a Somali government building.

Uganda and Burundi have paid Bancroft $7 million since 2010 for counter-insurgency training, according to Gettleman and his co-writers. Washington refunds the two African countries for their training expenses. The D.C. company’s assistance has helped “turn a bush army into an urban fighting force,” one adviser told Gettleman — and is partly responsible for the transitional government’s big advances in Mogadishu and across Somalia in recent weeks. The Associated Press credits Rouget’s bomb disposal experts for the drastic reduction in African Union troops lost to roadside explosives.

But the battlefield success comes at the cost of American moral credibility. First, there were reports that the U.S.-backed transitional Somali government employs child soldiers as young as 12. And now America has endorsed, however indirectly, a man who for years has allegedly fought against stability, justice and self-governance in Africa.

The photos accompanying Gettleman’s piece depict the “husky,” 51-year-old Rouget accompanying Ugandan soldiers onto a Mogadishu rooftop to observe a gunfight between peacekeepers and al-Shabab troops. ”Give me some ‘technicals’ and some savages and I’m happy,” Rouget joked, using the slang term for pickup trucks fitted with heavy machine guns. The Associated Press calls Rouget “a cigar-smoking, poetry-quoting, whiskey-drinking former big game hunter” with “a long scar on his thigh from getting shot in Somalia last year.”

Rouget’s mercenary career began soon after he left the French army in the early 1980s. Around 1985, Rouget, then answering to his “Colonel Sanders” alias, reportedly joined the “presidential guard” of the Comoros, a tiny island-group nation in the Indian Ocean.

The presidential guard was, in fact, the personal army of Bob Denard, a notorious French mercenary and agent of French colonialism in Africa after World War II. (The Associated Press calls Rouget Denard’s former “right-hand man.”) The Comoros were Denard’s favorite target. In a 20-year period beginning in 1975, Denard backed no fewer than four coups in the Comoros, while also accumulating wives, properties and power on the islands.

From his Comoros base, in the 1980s Denard began working for the South African apartheid government in its campaign against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, which advocates for equal rights for blacks and whites. Denard and Rouget have both been mentioned in connection with the 1988 murders of ANC officials Godfrey Motsepe and Dulcie September — but never charged. In 1992, the Belgian government dropped its investigation of Motsepe’s murder, citing weak evidence.

After a stint organizing safaris, Rouget returned to the gun-for-hire business. In 2003, a South African court convicted him of illegally recruiting mercenaries to fight in the West African nation of Ivory Coast.

Oh, but Bancroft doesn’t employ mercenaries, company founder Michael Stock told The New York Times. “Mercenary activity is antithetical to the fundamental purposes for which Bancroft exists,” Stock said, adding that the company “does not engage in covert, clandestine or otherwise secret activities.”

But Rouget has engaged in covert, clandestine, secret (and possibly worse) activities. And now the U.S. government has indirectly put its stamp of approval on Rouget’s past, by paying countries to pay him to train their armies in pursuit of shared goals.

Make no mistake: Al Shabab is bad, bad, bad — and beating the terror group is a worthy goal that will benefit the whole world. But does this end justify hiring a shady soldier of fortune like Rouget?

Photo: David Axe

[McFriday]

I feel a movie coming on! Who can 'do' a French accent- Damon?..DiCaprio?..How old is VanDamme??? LOL

"Make no mistake: Al Shabab is bad, bad, bad — and beating the terror group is a worthy goal that will benefit the whole world. But does this end justify hiring a shady soldier of fortune like Rouget?"

Absolutely. Sounds more cost effective than other efforts.

Mac

[buglerbilly]

Yeah I thought it was a stupid question as well.............when are we going to get out of this PC BS and kill the ferkers, its the only thing that ultimately counts and I really don't care how we do it~!

[buglerbilly]

US Group Trains Troops in Somalia

August 11, 2011

Associated Press|by Katharine Houreld



This is an AP report on the same group..............the tone of the content is completely different to Axe's :doh

MOGADISHU, Somalia - On the front lines of Mogadishu's streets, Islamist militants battle African Union troops. Standing alongside the peacekeepers are members of an American-run team of advisers, former military men who play a little-known but key role in the war against al-Shabab.

Aside from covert raids by special operations forces, the U.S. government has not been involved militarily in Somalia since the intervention almost two decades ago that culminated in the Black Hawk Down battle. But a Washington-based company has been quietly working in one of the world's most dangerous cities to help an AU peacekeeping force protect the Somali government from al-Qaida-linked Islamist insurgents.

While troops struggle to get control of this shattered capital that has been filling with refugees fleeing famine in southern Somalia, The Associated Press got rare access to the military advisers, providing a first look into their work.

The men employed by Bancroft Global Development live in small trailers near Mogadishu's airport but often go into the field. It's dangerous work - two Bancroft men were wounded last month.

Among the advisers are a retired general from the British marines, an ex-French soldier involved in a coup in Comoros 16 years ago, and a Danish political scientist.

Funded by the United Nations and the U.S. State Department, Bancroft has provided training in a range of military services, from bomb disposal and sniper training to handing out police uniforms.

Michael C. Stock, the American head of Bancroft, said his men share information with the FBI about bomb materials and the DNA of suicide bombers, who sometimes turned out to be Somali-American youths from the Midwest. Stock said his company receives no recompense for sharing information with the FBI.

Stock strongly objects if "mercenary" is used to describe his men. Instead he describes Bancroft as a non-governmental organization dedicated to finding permanent solutions to violent conflict. His men say they are trying to stabilize a country ravaged by 20 years of civil war and now a famine estimated to have killed 29,000 children in the past three months.

"We take calculated risks to be side by side with our protegees," said Stock, who visits Mogadishu only intermittently and for short periods of time, believing it is best not to have Americans working in Mogadishu. "It gives us credibility with them. They know we know what we are talking about."

At their beach-side camp in Mogadishu, diplomats, journalists and aid workers swap tip-offs by the bar. Stories fly through the air faster than the bats that hunt in the shadows, a way to unwind after a day of tense work.

Richard Rouget, a cigar-smoking, poetry-quoting, whiskey-drinking former big game hunter and right-hand man of French mercenary Bob Denard, has a long scar on his thigh from getting shot in Somalia last year. Another round slammed into the chest plate of his body armor.

Much of Mogadishu in recent years has been held by al-Shabab, militants who have denied many aid agencies access to their territory which is the epicenter of the famine. The AU force, which supports the weak U.N.-backed Somali government, only took full control of the bombed-out capital after the Islamists withdrew from their bases there on Saturday.

"They have gone from their bases but their fighters are still around. We're probably going to see them using bomb attacks, assassinations, a type of guerrilla war," said AU force commander Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha.

The Bancroft advisers camp out with AU soldiers on the front lines, training them to fight in urban areas and dispose of bombs. When the AU first arrived in 2008, there were dozens of bomb attacks. Nearly 100 soldiers died in such attacks in that first year, and around 20 in the second. The AU hasn't lost a soldier to a roadside bomb in over a year.

The U.S. State Department has funded the company's training in Somalia of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, who comprise the AU peacekeeping force, in marksmanship and bomb disposal. Other funding has come from the U.N. The contracts have totaled $12.5 million since 2008, the year the company started working in Somalia, Stock said.

Earlier this week, Martinus "Rocky" Van Blerk swept the road to Mogadishu's port for bombs, blew up a grenade found in a newly taken al-Shabab base and answered two calls about suspected bombs. The defused mortar shells and bomb components lie rusting in a pile near the airport; interesting or unusual devices and remains from suicide bombers are sent to the FBI for analysis.

"That's where I blew up the bodies of those two suicide bombers last week," Van Blerk told AP at a newly taken al-Shabab base, pointing to a dip in the sand and a charred wall spattered with dark residue. The bombers were shot before they could detonate their suicide vests.

Wearing government uniforms, they had attacked with machine guns. They shot one of Van Blerk's South African Bancroft colleagues as well as a contractor from a demining company and 10 Ugandan soldiers trained in bomb disposal. The demining contractor and six of the Ugandans died. Dark trails of blood smear the floor inside the house where the trainer crawled for cover. Another Bancroft employee was shot in the stomach the day before but survived.

Militants have carried out three such "forced entry" attacks by men wearing suicide vests and firing small arms in the last two months. It's a relatively new tactic by Somali insurgents, used successfully elsewhere by al-Qaida.

"See here?" Van Blerk waved at to a row of roofless, bullet-scarred buildings in Mogadishu. "This is where they rammed my vehicle with a car bomb," referring to an attack in 2008.

In June, Van Blerk's men found their first explosively formed projectile - or EFP - a type of bomb commonly used in Iraq and seen in Afghanistan that can penetrate armored vehicles. It had never been seen in Somalia before June and is evidence of foreign fighters training Somalia's Islamist militants. Western intelligence has long feared that terrorists sought to use the lawless nation as a training ground.

The Bancroft team this week was discussing their marksmanship training program. Their idea was to encourage the peacekeepers to use sharpshooters instead of mortars, which sometimes hit residential neighborhoods and kill civilians. They train the Burundian and Ugandan soldiers in the AU force in marksmanship. Now a list of no-fire zones is pinned to the wall of their office.

"We had a problem with indiscriminate indirect fire, so we encouraged the AU to use snipers instead," said Rouget, referring to weapons like mortars. "It's discriminate, accurate."

Lt. Julius Aine, one of the Ugandan soldiers trained by Bancroft, said the training has helped his men be more professional.

"The major lessons have been about fighting in built-up areas," he said, looking out at the smashed ruins of houses so full of bullet holes they resembled concrete lace. "We are used to the bush, not fighting in the streets. This has really helped us."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Foreign Fights Need Training, Not Troops: Hadley

By MARCUS WEISGERBER

Published: 12 Aug 2011 15:32

The U.S. is more likely to increase foreign assistance to nations such as Yemen and Somalia in the future rather than deploying troops, according to President George W. Bush's top national security adviser.

"I think we're going to use a different model in places like Yemen and Somalia, and it's going to be about training and equipping and supporting local forces," Stephen Hadley said during an Aug. 12 panel discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Related TopicsAmericas

U.S. assistance could come through sharing intelligence, the use of unmanned and manned aircraft, or special forces.

"I think that's the model of how we're going to wage the war on terror over the next 10 years," he said.

Hadley's comments come as funding for the U.S. Defense Department and foreign assistance programs run by the State Department are in the crosshairs of lawmakers tasked with cutting federal spending to reduce the federal debt.

An agreement reached by Congress and signed by the president earlier this month to increase the country's debt ceiling calls for $350 billion in national security spending cuts over the next decade. A 12-member congressional super committee - equally split between Democrats and Republicans - must now make recommendations for $1.2 trillion in additional cuts by November. If the panel cannot agree, automatic, across-the-board cuts divided between DoD and other government agencies would go into effect.

The initial round of cuts has grouped a lot of different departments, such as DoD, the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, under the national security umbrella. Hadley said grouping these State and DoD efforts is appropriate, but that it opens both up to cuts.

"I would hope that, in some instances, we may cut defense and we may actually add some money on the nondefense national security side," Hadley said.

Funding for security initiatives in Yemen and Somalia - which serve training grounds for terrorists - is critical, according to Hadley.

"[A]s we face other challenges in places like Somalia and Yemen … a lot of that nondefense national security spending becomes even more important," he said. "It's also a lot cheaper to do things through that sector than it is deploying American combat troops."

[buglerbilly]

Somali Islamists thrive as children die in the dust

Despite driving the people under its control into famine and destitution, Somalia's al-Shabaab militia is still thriving, reports Mike Pflanz.


A stricken Somali child at a refugee camp. As well as the human tragedy, families face seeing their livelihoods threatened as livestock is lost to drought and militias Photo: REUTERS

By Mike Pflanz in Tullo Amiin, Somalia

8:00AM BST 14 Aug 2011

For the thousands of people fleeing famine to squat here in rag-and-stick shelters pitched on a sloping plain bleached of colour, this village is known as Beladul Amiin, or "the safe place".

To an outsider, it appears far from that. Gunmen - in uniform and not - saunter past skinny cows lying listlessly under a dull sky. Giant storks pick at rubbish pinned by the hot wind to leafless thorn bushes. In the distance, the mosque is scarred by mortars from battles last month between government forces and Islamist militia.

But to the 18,000 people who have fled here from deep in rural Somalia, plagued by a spreading famine and the rapacious extortions of murderous fundamentalist fighters, this truly is a sanctuary. Here, there is water. There are increasing food deliveries from aid workers cautiously crossing the border from Kenya for the first time. There is a hospital, over the border, to treat children who would otherwise starve to death.

The villages these people left behind are now deserted, emptied as al-Shabaab, Somalia's Islamist insurgents, stole food and livestock, executed dissenters and forcibly abducted young men to fight.

"They are killing and raping people there, whole villages are being burnt, all of the animals have been taken," said Hawa Hassan, a middle-aged mother who walked for 10 days to reach Tullo Amiin. "My brother was shot and killed in his home. It is the same for everyone. There is no peace there. They are forcing people into recruitment to fight. We had to run to save our lives."

Across the border in Kenya, in Mandera town's district hospital, Kursha Mohamed Ali sat on a thin mattress in an emergency ward cradling her two-year-old son.

The 28-year-old fled her village in al-Shabaab-controlled Bakool region at the beginning of the year, after the militia chased out all foreign aid workers and looted stores full of relief food.

"That was all that we had to depend on," she said. "They are bad people. They will take food from you even if you are starving. They will take tax from you if you sell your animals."

Al-Shabaab has only survived because it has run these extortion schemes, often under the guise of collecting Muslim "zakat" payments intended under Islam to be used to help society's destitute. Instead, the group has bankrupted and now forced into famine the majority of people living in the areas it controls.

Yet al-Shabaab is still managing to lure fresh fighters into its ranks, many of them from over the border in Kenya, clan elders and government officials warned. Again, it is drought and a lack of income and opportunity that is pushing Kenya's young sons and brothers into the arms of Islamist fundamentalists.

"There is nothing else for them to do," said Haji Mohamed, one of a group of two dozen elders gathered last week in El Wak, another town lying on the border between Kenya and Somalia, 300 miles south of Mandera.

To nods from his peers, Mr Mohamed said: "Our able-bodied men are being lured very easily to al-Shabaab. So many of our youths are there fighting for them now.

"They are told they will earn £60 or £100 a month. Of course they will go."

Haroun Sheikh Ali, another of the town leaders in the meeting, told of a young man whose had lost almost all of his 300-strong herd of goats.

"One day, he just disappeared. We came to know later that he had joined al-Shabaab, he told his father who went to rescue him that he would stay, and that there were so many boys from his village there with him," Mr Ali said. "This is something very common now. Before the drought, it was not there."

Global efforts to fight the famine and drought now threatening 12.5 million Kenyans, Somalis and Ethiopians with starvation are accelerating, with appeals gaining momentum and new refugee camps opening to cope with the continued exodus of people away from the worst-hit regions.

But Jeremy Hulme, the CEO of the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (Spana), a British charity, says the international community is "missing the big picture" in its response to the drought.

"We are doing a great job of feeding hungry people," Mr Hulme said on a visit to his organisation's projects in northern Kenya. "But by allowing all their livestock to die we are denying them a future and we will surely have to feed them forever.

"If we can just keep a nucleus of animals alive over the next two months, people will be able to pick up their lives again when the rains come."

Without livestock to sustain them, families forced into desperate decisions.

Mothers are abandoning their children even when they arrive to the safety of Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps, according to Save The Children. Four times as many 'unaccompanied' children have been registered in July than in a normal month, the charity reveals today. Others are leaving behind their ancient lifestyle as nomadic herders and settling in towns, relying on handouts.

Far better to keep as many animals alive now as possible, the elders in El Wak said. "Everyone who comes here ask if we are hungry, if we humans have enough food," said Mr Mohamed.

"That is important, but for us more important at this time is feeding the last remaining animals that have survived these years of drought."

Sitting a row in-front of him at the meeting, Aden Kala Dido added: "When the last animal goes, then it is time to start waiting for the humans to begin dying too."

To head off this threat of the famine-level of hunger spreading across the border from Somalia into Kenya, Spana is trucking animal food and livestock vaccines to remote communities across northern Kenya. It may seem counter-intuitive to be carrying fodder for goats, cows and camels when people are streaming to feeding centres to find food aid.

But already herders are sharing the few supplies they are given with their animals, denying their families the rations that have been carefully calculated by aid agencies and the Kenyan government.

"That is the measure of how important the animals are to these people," said Lenkai Ole Tutui, the district commissioner in charge of the area around El Wak.

As repeated droughts hammer the Horn of Africa, however, an increasing number of people here are beginning to see that a complete reliance on owning livestock to make a living is not enough.

"There was a time when a man could marry well if his bride's family saw he owned many animals," said Abdi Aziz Aden, a 60-year-old former herder who now runs a small mobile telephone money-transfer business in El Wak.

"Now, the bride's father wants to know, does the boy have a donkey-cart, to make business? Does he grow mango trees down by the river, to earn more money?

"This is the only future for us people. Business that does not depend on the rains coming. Instead of the West sending us food aid, why can you not change the system. Send me a bank loan, then I know I will survive when the next drought comes."

[buglerbilly]

Charity president says aid groups are misleading the public on Somalia

Médecins Sans Frontières executive says charities must admit that much of the country can't be helped

Tracy McVeigh

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 September 2011 22.42 BST


A man holds his three-year-old daughter at a camp for displaced persons in Mogadishu. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

I have supported Médecins Sans Frontières for years now and continue to do so on a monthly basis for the simple fact every dollar I give them, most if not all of that dollar goes to the people working at the front so to speak, they are apolitical and they do try and tell the truth as they see it, which is often counter what people like UNHCR are telling us. The less said about UNHCR the better.............

The head of an international medical charity has called on aid agencies to stop presenting a misleading picture of the famine in Somalia and admit that helping the worst-affected people is almost impossible.

The international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Dr Unni Karunakara, returned from Somalia last week and said that, even though there was chronic malnutrition and drought across east Africa, hardly any agencies were able to work inside war-torn Somalia, where the picture was "profoundly distressing". He condemned other organisations and the media for "glossing over" the reality in order to convince people that simply giving money for food was the answer.

According to Karunakara, agencies have been able to provide medical and nutritional care for tens of thousands in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, which have been receiving huge numbers of refugees from Somalia. But trying to access those in the "epicentre" of the disaster has been slow and difficult. "We may have to live with the reality that we may never be able to reach the communities most in need of help," he said.

Karunakara said that the use of phrases such as "famine in the Horn of Africa" or "worst drought in 60 years" obscured the "man-made" factors that had created the crisis and wrongly implied that the solution was simply to find the money to ship enough food to the region.

He described Mogadishu, the Somali capital, as dotted with plastic sheets supported by twigs, sheltering groups of weak and starving people who had walked in from the worst-affected areas in southern and central Somalia. "I met a woman who had left her home with her husband and seven children to walk to Mogadishu and had arrived after five days with only four children," he said.

"MSF is constantly being forced to make tough choices in deploying or expanding our activities, in sticking to our principles of neutrality with the daily realities of people going without healthcare, without food. Our staff face being shot. But glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the great difficulties in addressing them will not help resolve the crisis. Aid agencies are being impeded in the area.

"MSF has been working in Somalia for 20 years, and we know that if we are struggling then others will not be able to work at all. The reality on the ground is that there are serious difficulties that affect our abilities to respond to need."

He said charities needed to start treating the public "like adults". He went on: "There is a con, there is an unrealistic expectation being peddled that you give your £50 and suddenly those people are going to have food to eat. Well, no. We need that £50, yes; we will spend it with integrity. But people need to understand the reality of the challenges in delivering that aid. We don't have the right to hide it from people; we have a responsibility to engage the public with the truth."

Chronic malnutrition, said Karunakara, is not new in east Africa and needs long-term action. "The Somali people have been living in a country at war, with no government, for 20 years, with several long periods of hardship, of famine and drought. This harvest failure is just what has tipped them over the edge this time, a catastrophe made worse," he said.

A brutal war between the transitional government, which is backed by western nations and supported by African Union troops, and armed Islamist opposition groups, notably al-Shabaab, is ongoing in Somalia. Fierce clan loyalties keep independent international assistance away from many communities, meaning that Somalis are trapped between various forces, depriving them of food and healthcare for political reasons.

"We face constant difficult challenges over simple things like a new nurse or getting a car," said Karunakara. "When we need to be saving lives with a fully fledged medical response, we constantly need to be communicating with both sides in a war, reminding them what humanitarian aid is. One needs only to look at how few charities are working in Somalia."

Ian Bray, a spokesman for Oxfam, said it was unhelpful for aid agencies to be seen to be arguing with each other.

"We're being honest with donors and we have always been honest," said Bray. "A drought is a natural occurrence; a famine is man-made. We don't go around to people saying we have a magic wand, give us £5 and we will make Africa feed itself. We do say give us £5 and we won't use it to give you a history of Somalia, but we will use our expertise to save lives. This is what the bargain is we make with our donors. If you support us, we will do our level best to alleviate the distress for those people in most dire need."

[buglerbilly]

New American Ally in Somalia: ‘Butcher’ Warlord

By David Axe September 8, 2011 | 7:38 pm



If you thought it was bad that Washington is paying a shady French mercenary to do its dirty work in Somalia, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait to you see our latest ally: an admirer of Osama bin Laden with a gory past.

Richard Rouget, a notorious gun-for-hire who uses American funds to train African Union soldiers fighting in the ruins of Mogadishu, has been mentioned in connection with at least one murder. But U.S.-backed Somali government general Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a.k.a. “Indha Adde,” a.k.a, “The Butcher,” once ruled an entire region of Somalia with a bloody fist.

The U.S.-led international intervention in civil war-torn Somalia is unlike any of America’s other wars. Where the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought by tens of thousands of U.S. troops, in Somalia Washington pays others to do most of the fighting. These proxies include merc firms, regional bodies such as the A.U. and local allies including the nascent federal government.

That means less direct danger to American lives. But in another sense it means more danger. The more that the U.S. relies on proxy armies to do its fighting, the more it risks those proxies usurping American support and directing it towards their own dubious ends. That’s the subject of ace reporter Jeremy Scahill’s latest piece in The Nation and also of my own feature for The Diplomat.

“As one of the main warlords who divided and destroyed Somalia during the civil war that raged through the 1990s, he brutally took control of the Lower Shabelle region,” Scahill wrote about Siad. “There are allegations that he ran drug and weapons trafficking operations from the Merca port.” Siad also readily admits providing protection to al-Qaida operatives and speaks fondly of the late Osama bin Laden.

Mind you, this is one of the top generals in the army of one of our closest allies in Somalia.

For years, Siad resisted CIA efforts to lure him and his hundreds of militiamen to the American side. It took a lot of sweet-talking plus seismic shifts in Somali politics and U.S. strategy to draw in Siad. In 2008, Washington backed Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist and former ally of Siad’s, for Somali president. Just two years prior, Ahmed had been co-leader of the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamic group that birthed al-Shabab, pictured, a terrorist and insurgent group and today the main threat in Somalia.

Ahmed and Siad both changed sides as Al Shabab grew more extreme and foreign governments organized to destroy it. For the moment, the U.S. and its shady Somali allies share a common enemy. It’s not clear how long the alliance will last — or how strong it is even today. “Ahmed claims that Indha Adde [a.k.a., Siad] and other warlords have sworn allegiance to the government,” Scahill wrote, “but it is abundantly clear from traveling extensively through Mogadishu with Indha Adde that his men are loyal to him above all else.”

“The warlords being backed by you [America] have only a conflict of interest with the Shabab, not of ideology,” another former warlord told Scahill. “That’s why [arming and supporting them] is a dangerous game.”

With Al Shabab on the run following relentless international attacks from the ground, air and sea, Washington soon could find itself in an uneasy relationship with U.S.-armed Somalis who, just a few years ago, were its enemies — and who no longer have a greater enemy to focus on.

What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

Photo: Flickr/Abdurahman Warsame

[buglerbilly]

Briton killed and wife kidnapped from Kiwayu Safari Village resort, Kenya

Gunmen suspected to be from Somalia have killed a British tourist holidaying at an exclusive Kenyan beach hotel and kidnapped his wife.


Kiwayu Beach, Kenya Photo: ALAMY

By Mike Pflanz, in Nairobi

4:23PM BST 11 Sep 2011

At least five men stormed the ocean-front lodge, situated less than 30 miles from Kenya's border with Somalia, shortly after 2am.

It is understood that the British holidaymaker, believed to be in his 40s, tried to protect his wife and was shot dead. The gunmen then abducted his wife and escaped.

Eric Kiraithe, spokesman for Kenya's police, said that a "massive" search and rescue operation involving military boats, helicopters and ground forces had begun soon after first light yesterday.

"We are hoping that we will be able to at least find the lady," he said.

There are fears that the attackers had crossed into Kenya from Somalia, and that they were interested more in kidnapping than routine burglary.

The stronghold of al-Shabaab, Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, lies at Kismayo town, less than 80 miles north of the lodge where the couple, who have not been named, were staying.

Diplomats and security officials are concerned that it will become extremely difficult to rescue the woman if she is taken over the border.

Unlike Somalia's pirates, who kidnap for ransom only, Islamists in the country's south are more interested in anti-Western political statements.

There have been occasional reports of increased security threats against tourists visiting the area around Kiwayu, but it is understood that there was no current specific warning in place.

The lodge was opened by Alfredo Pelizzoli, an Italian big game hunter who lived in Kenya, and his British wife Lisa in 1973.

It is still managed by the same family, and reassures visitors on its website that it takes security "very seriously" and describes "a number of systems and measures in place which are designed to give you maximum security".

It has 18 individual thatched cottages strung along a mile of sheltered private beach, and is known as a high-end destination for well-heeled tourists.

Rooms cost from £280 per person per night. It is believed that the attack took place on the couple's first night there.

"It has been said in the past that they're more vulnerable up there because they're on the mainland, and people could come in over land or by boat," said the owner of a lodge on Lamu, another popular tourist destination on an island 50 miles south of Kiwayu.

"But they've gone to great lengths with their security, and there's been no problems there for years. It is a shock to everyone around here."

The Foreign Office reported the attack on its website and stressed that it advises against all but essential travel to within 20 miles of the Somali border.

There have been previous attacks by Somali militia into Kenya. Three aid workers were kidnapped in July 2009, and two Italian nuns in 2008.

"There remains a high threat of clashes between the Kenyan military and armed Somali groups along the border," the Foreign Office said. "There have been recent attacks on the border town of Mandera by Somali militias."

Attacks on visitors are however rare in Kenya, which welcomed more than one million tourists in 2010 and is famed for its safaris and beach resorts.

The destination is a favourite of celebrities and backpackers alike.

Artist Tracey Emin has visited the resort and talked of her love of the area.

In 2008 she wrote in The Times: "There's a tiny little spot in Kenya called Kiwayu, near the Somalian border, which has to be one of my favourite places on earth.

"It's so tranquil. You just lie on the beach and thousands of pink crabs cover the whole shoreline - you have the combination of the aquamarine sea and the pink crest of the crabs."

Actress Imelda Staunton is another past guest and wrote about Kiwayu in the Telegraph two years ago: "It was very nice lying there on the beach, but it all seemed a bit tame - and then suddenly about 50 monkeys came over the dunes, and wandered over to have a look at us, before heading down to the sea to get crabs for their tea."

The Kiwayu resort's website states it takes "security and safety very seriously".

It says: "Our relationship with the local community, its fishermen and the local authorities is positive and mutually beneficial.

"We regularly review our security and safety to ensure it is both comprehensive and current."

It currently charges 445 US dollars (around £278) per adult per night to stay in its beach bungalows, which boast locally carved furniture and hammocks.

[buglerbilly]

Kenya kidnap victim being held on Somali island

Investigators hunting the kidnapped British tourist Judith Tebbutt were last night considering claims that Islamist extremists were planning to use her as a human shield.


David Tebbutt and his wife Judy were staying at the Kiwayu Safari Village near the Kenya Somali border

By Andy Bloxham, and Mike Pflanz in Kiwayu

7:49AM BST 15 Sep 2011

A Somalian group called Ras Kamboni, with links to Al Qaeda, reportedly claimed she was being held to deter further attacks after a US drone bombed their base 11 days ago, killing dozens of suspected terrorists.

The Islamists also threatened to demonstrate their captive as a trophy at a press conference, it was reported.

It is understood that the group is formed from members of the Ras Kamboni Brigades, an insurgent group which has been active for about four years and is now part of the 17,000-strong Al Shabaab fundamentalist organisation.

The reports are contrary to other claims about who is responsible for the high-profile kidnapping.

A senior official from Al Shabaab told a reporter from the Reuters news agency: "Al Shabaab has not abducted any Briton from Kenya. We believe bandits carried out the attack."

Mrs Tebbutt, who was kidnapped from her exclusive Kenyan lodge, is being held on an island in southern Somalia by armed pirates who are expected to issue a ransom demand within days, The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday.

The 56-year-old social worker, whose husband David was shot dead by the gang during a raid on their beach hut on Saturday night, is understood to be unhurt and being held by a gang made up of Kenyan and Somali pirates.

A team of Metropolitan Police officers have travelled to Kenya to assist the authorities there with the investigation.

Shebwana Bwana, a Kenyan village chief, who spoke to a member of the hotel staff, revealed details of how the attack unfolded.

He explained that the eight-strong gang – two Somalis and six Kenyans – set off under the cover of darkness and travelled to the village of Rubu, just north of the Kiwayu Safari lodge.

Mr Bwana said they then forced a resort guard at gunpoint to reveal which beach huts were occupied.

The gang then attempted to kidnap the couple, who had only just arrived at the secluded resort several hours earlier, shooting Mr Tebbutt in the head when he tried to resist.

Mr Bwana said the gang were extremely ruthless, but were only interested in money.

He said: “The gang even tried to shoot the guard so that he should not tell people the news. But as the gang boarded the boat he ran away. They fired on him but he managed to escape.”

The Daily Telegraph has learned the identity of the leader of the gang – who is originally from Kenya but now lives in southern Somalia – and has passed the details to officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Mr Bwana said: “These are the same people who are attacking ships and who say we’re not releasing them until you bring us money. I think they will not hurt her. They just want money.”

A local man was was being questioned by police in relation to the attack, amid fears that a worker at the Kiwayu Safari lodge may have tipped off the gang.

Last night it also emerged that Mr Tebbutt, 57, a finance director at the publishers Faber & Faber, was considering retiring from his job in the near future.

A former neighbour said: “David and Jude used to send us a letter every year to tell us all their news. It usually arrived around about Christmas time but this year it was a bit late and came in April. In it they said David was thinking about retiring in a couple of years and they said how much he was looking forward to that. It is all so sad.”

[buglerbilly]

No news yet on the poor woman that was kidnapped above............more shyte from the UK............

Britons accused of trying to join Somali militants

Three British men have been arrested by counter-terrorism police in Kenya amid fears that Britons are heading there to join terrorists linked to al-Qaeda.


Members of the Al-Shabaab Islamist rebel group parade through the streets of Somalia's capital Mogadishu Photo: REUTERS

By Duncan Gardham

7:00AM BST 26 Sep 2011

In recent months, MI5 and MI6 have become aware of an increasing number of young British men arriving in the African country in order to cross into Somalia, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

In Somalia, they have been joining up with al-Shabaab, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda in East Africa and there are concerns that they could return to Britain to launch attacks.

The latest arrests involved three men who were detained for questioning in the port of Mombasa last week.

A team of specialist forensic officers were examining laptops belonging to the suspects, sources said.

Kenyan counter-terrorism police were said to have become suspicious about the men and tracked their movements before arresting them on Thursday.

Ambrose Munyasia, head of Kenya’s Coast Province police force, said: “They were seen acting suspiciously. We trailed them for a day after suspecting their movement within the town. Although they told us that they are tourists, some of their actions have given us cause to believe that they are not.”

Three suspected British al-Shabaab members were arrested in north east Kenya in May.

The men were of Bangladeshi origin but holding British passports, according to reports.

They were arrested when the Land Rover they were travelling in was stopped at a police checkpoint on a road linking Kenya and Somalia.

Philip Ndolo, the North Eastern regional deputy police chief, said the suspects claimed to be heading for the tourist island of Lamu, thousands of miles from where they were picked up.

He said investigations showed that the three used complex routes to avoid police checkpoints to get to the village where they were eventually arrested.

In November 2002 terrorists tried to shoot down an Israeli-chartered Boeing 757, firing two missiles which narrowly missed the plane as it took off from Mombasa airport and killing 15 people in a bomb explosion at the nearby Paradise Hotel.

[buglerbilly]

British 'terrorists' in Kenya actually work for private security firm

Three British men arrested by counter-terrorism police in Kenya were private security workers trailing a couple suspected of having an affair and leaking company secrets, it has emerged.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent

9:21PM BST 26 Sep 2011

Oops!

The couple were employed by rival companies, one of which called in Intelligere, a branch of the British private security firm XFOR, to investigate.

A three man surveillance team was put on the case but their cover was blown and they were arrested by police.

Initial reports had suggested that they could be Britons trying to join the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia.

The company has named the men as Nick Cryne, 30, from Manchester, Niall Young, 34, from Cheltenham, Gloucs, and Ben Hope, 27, from Birmingham.They are expected to appear in court on Monday.

Gary Lincoln-Hope, chief executive of Intelligere, said: “We have spent the weekend in contact with the British Embassy in Kenya and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They have been tremendously helpful.

“We hope to see our three employees released from jail tomorrow. Their activities conducted prior to being arrested and put in jail were wholly legal. They are not linked to terrorism.”

Mr Cryne was described as a former Royal Marine who was leading the team. He is said to be single, has worked extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently off the coast of Somalia on counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations.

A source said both companies being investigated were “international, blue-chip organisations.”

The terrorism charges have now been been dropped and the three Britons have now been charged with Visa offences.

[buglerbilly]

Gunmen kidnap two Spanish aid workers from Kenyan camp

By Daud Yussuf, Friday, October 14, 12:03 PM

GARISSA, Kenya — Gunmen kidnapped two Spanish women working for the aid group Doctors Without Borders at a refugee camp in Kenya on Thursday, the third abduction in a month of westerners in the country by attackers linked to Somalia.

Kenyan police said they suspected that Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab insurgents were behind the kidnapping and added that security forces had chased the abductors toward the border between the two countries, which has been sealed.

“Two female aid workers working for MSF were . . . kidnapped by suspected al-Shabab militants in the Dadaab refugee camp,” North Eastern Province Police Cmdr. Leo Nyongesa said, using the initals for the aid group’s French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres.

“We’ve mobilized all the officers and alerted those at the border to ensure that no vehicle exits the country to Somalia,” he said. “The whole border area is now sealed.”

No group has asserted responsibility for the attack.

Doctors Without Borders said a driver was wounded in the attack on its staff.

“He’s currently hospitalized and stable. Two international staff are missing. A crisis team has been set up to deal with this incident,” the group said in a statement.

A spokesman at the Spanish Foreign Ministry confirmed that the missing women were Spanish.

Thursday’s incident took place within weeks of two separate incidents in which Somali gunmen seized Western female tourists from beach resorts in northern Kenya.

Analysts and diplomats in the region had warned that pirates were likely to turn to softer targets, such as tourists in Kenya, in response to much more robust defense of merchant vessels by private security guards.

Security experts say they fear that Islamist militants fighting to topple the Western-backed Somali government could increasingly conduct copycat attacks inside Kenya, the region’s biggest economy.

Dadaab, located about 60 miles from the Somali border, was set up in 1991 to accommodate Somalis fleeing violence and famine in their country. It has since grown to become the world’s biggest refugee camp, with more than 400,000 residents.

Britain has issued a travel advisory warning against all but essential travel within about 95 miles of the Somali border, which includes the popular Lamu archipelago where a French woman and a British woman were seized in recent weeks.

— Reuters

[buglerbilly]

British men arrested in Kenya trying to cross border into Somalia

Two British men were arrested in northern Kenya apparently trying to cross the border into Islamist-controlled Somalia, police said last night.

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi

12:22AM BST 18 Oct 2011

The pair, who are believed to be from Cardiff and are understood to be of south Asian and Somali origin, were stopped by officials in Kiunga, the northernmost town on the Kenyan coast.

"There was reason to believe that the two men, who had British passports, had ulterior motives to be in northern Kenya and to go to Somalia," said Frederick Mwangagi, the chief of police in Kiunga town.

"They were taken for questioning and although I was not present at the interrogation, I know that their answers were not satisfactory and we have arrested them and sent them to Mombasa [the main city on Kenya's coast]." He gave no further details.

The men were with a Kenyan national. It is unclear why they were trying to reach Somalia, but there are regular reports of jihadist sympathisers wanting to join al-Shabaab, Somalia's Islamist rebels.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London said that they were "investigating reports of two British nationals being arrested in Kenya".

A spokesman for South Wales Police said: "South Wales Police are currently in liaison with the Kenyan authorities in respect of two British nationals who have been detained near to the border with Somalia.

"The identities of these persons have yet to be formally confirmed, both are believed to be from the Cardiff area. The families of these persons have been notified."

Police were also in contact with the Foreign Office and British embassy in Nairobi.

[buglerbilly]

Somali rebels reinforce Afmadow, residents flee

Written by Reuters Tuesday, 18 October 2011 14:45



Residents fled the Islamist-held town of Afmadow in southern Somalia and al Qaeda-linked rebels rushed in reinforcements to hunker down for battle with advancing Kenyan and government troops.

Kenya launched an offensive with Somali forces on Sunday in a high-stakes bid to secure its porous border with its anarchic neighbour after a wave of kidnappings by gunmen thought to be linked to the rebels. The operation is a major escalation that risks dragging Kenya deeper into Somalia's two-decade civil war.

Warplanes swooped low over the rebel stronghold and a senior commander of a militia group allied to the Western-backed Somali government said his fighters were stationed about 12 km outside Afmadow as pounding rain slowed the advance, Reuters reports.

"Most residents have been fleeing since yesterday towards Dhobley," Afmadow resident Hussein Osman Roble told Reuters by telephone, referring to the border area which Kenyan military sources say has now been cleared of militants.

"Jets have flown low over Afmadow, terrifying the residents, while al Shabaab is digging trenches and tunnels for defense inside and around Afmadow," Roble said.

It was not immediately possible to determine how far Kenyan and Somali government forces were from Afmadow. They had been reported passing through Qoqani, about 30 km to the west, on Monday. The rebels said Kenyan forces were 100 km (62 miles) inside Somali territory.

Al Shabaab, which is waging an insurgency to topple a government it sees as a puppet of the West, urged Somalis to pick up arms and threatened retaliation against Kenya for the military operation.

A Somali army general said rebels were holding two Spanish aid worker hostages, and had moved them north to their coastal stronghold Kismayu as Kenyan and Somali forces closed in.

"Al Shabaab is holding them in Kismayu," General Yusuf Hussein Dunmaal, who commands Somalia's southern forces, told Reuters by telephone.

The militants have denied responsibility for the kidnappings of the Spaniards, seized from from a refugee camp in Kenya where they were assisting fleeing Somalis, or for two other kidnappings of Westerners in Kenya. They say the kidnappings are being used as a pretext to launch the cross-border operation.

"FLAMES OF WAR"

Al Shabaab threatened to take the "flames of war" back across the frontier if Kenya did not withdraw its troops.

"The Mujahideen and all Somalis should fight back (against the) Kenyan troops that have invaded us," a pro-Shabaab website quoted Sheikh Hassan Abdullahi Hirsi, a senior Al Shabaab official, as saying.

A senior commander in the Ras Kamboni militia that is nominally allied to the internationally backed government said their advance was being slowed by heavy rains.

"We are in the village of Cag Libaax, 12 km to the west of Afmadow. We are heading to Afmadow but we are slowed by rains and muddy soils," said Abdinasir Serar.

Al Shabaab has scrambled columns of fighters and dozens of battle-wagons mounted with heavy machine guns as remaining residents in Afmadow braced for fierce clashes.

Separately, Kenya arrested two British citizens suspected of ties to Somalia's al Qaeda-linked rebels as they crossed the border into the Horn of Africa country close to the coastline.

East Africa's biggest economy has long looked nervously at its anarchic neighbour and its troops have made brief incursions into Somali territory in the past. The latest incursion, on a larger scale, could invite reprisals.

"Al Shabaab has avoided attacks (inside Kenya) so far because it benefits too much from the illegal shipment of goods from Kismayu into Kenya and from financial supporters in the Somali community in Kenya," said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia.

"Al Shabaab may conclude that the Kenyan action must be responded to, however, and the easiest way to do this is to carry out terrorist attacks inside Kenya. This would really ratchet up tension in the Horn," he said.

[buglerbilly]

French woman kidnapped by Somali militants dies

Marie Dedieu, who was taken from Kenyan holiday resort, probably died due to lack of medication, French officials say

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 October 2011 10.42 BST


Marie Dedieu, who was believed to have been kidnapped by Somali al-Shabab militants Photograph: Reuters

A French woman who was kidnapped from a Kenyan holiday resort and taken to Somalia has died, France's foreign ministry said.

The date and circumstances of Marie Dedieu's death were unclear, but the ministry said unspecified "contacts" had confirmed her death, and that the kidnappers "probably refused to give her the medication we sent her".

Dedieu, who French officials said was in her 60s, was captured from an island resort near the northern Kenyan town of Lamu on 1 October. Kenya blamed the kidnapping on Somali militants from the al-Shabab group.

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 20, 2011.

Kenya Bombs Bases in Somalia

By SOLOMON MOORE

NAIROBI—Kenyan helicopters launched airstrikes in neighboring Somalia on Wednesday, striking at bases of al Shabaab, the Islamist militant group blamed for a string of abductions and suicide bombings in east Africa.


Reuters
Al Shabaab's military spokesman speaks Wednesday near Mogadishu.

The Kenyan attacks entered their fourth day as France announced that one of its citizens, a 66-year-old woman who had been abducted last week from her home on the Kenyan coast and taken to Somalia, had died in captivity. Al Shabaab militants are also believed to be connected to last week's abductions of two Spanish medical workers.

Officials in Kenya, east Africa's biggest economy, said Wednesday they were pursuing the Somali militants to protect Kenya's people as well as its economy, where tourism is vital as drought hammers the key agricultural sector. Kenyan officials also said they hope to establish a security buffer between Somali militants and their own border.

Kenya's military coordinated the aerial attacks with its ground troops as well as with forces allied with Somalia's Transitional Federal Government. Kenyan troops pressed about 75 miles into Somalia.

Kenyan military officials declined to say how many troops are involved in the operation, but said they had fanned out along Somalia's central border region and would go as deep into its territory as necessary to pursue al Shabaab.

"The objective is to diminish al Shabaab so that they cannot fire a single round, and to allow the Somali federal government to take over security for the people of Somalia," Kenyan military spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir said.

Al Shabaab militants vowed to take revenge for the Kenyan incursion. Analysts warn Kenya could find itself on the defensive again. "It will be a tough fight on the ground," said Andrews Asa Attah Asamoah, a senior researcher for the Institute for Security and International Studies, an African think tank.

Kenya's attacks came as France's government announced the death of Marie Dedieu, a cancer-stricken French woman who was kidnapped last week. Kenyan authorities say a group from Somalia abducted Ms. Dedieu from Manda Island in Kenya's Lamu archipelago on Oct. 1, leaving behind her wheelchair and medication.

French authorities didn't offer specifics on how they had learned of Ms. Dedieu's death. The cause and location of her death also remained unclear.

"This was an act of unqualified barbarism, violence and brutality," said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé. "We condemn this in the strongest possible terms. We did everything possible to try to obtain her release. We tried to send medication by numerous different channels, and apparently these savages could not care less."

Ms. Dedieu's kidnapping followed the abduction of two South African sailors from their yacht a year ago. On Sept. 19, militants kidnapped a British tourist from a resort near Lamu after killing her husband. On Oct. 13, two Spanish logistical staffers with Doctors Without Borders were abducted from a refugee camp just south of the Somalian border. Their Kenyan driver was shot and wounded. Those attacks prompted the Kenyan military to launch its strikes.

"It had gotten so intolerable and unacceptable that something had to be done," Macharia Kamau, Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday in New York. "What's the point of having a military if we can't even protect our own border?"

Joseph Kinyua, a high-ranking official in Kenya's Ministry of Finance, said the military action was going to be expensive, but not as costly as allowing militants to continue to infringe upon Kenyan sovereignty.

As Somali militants vow revenge, Kenyan authorities have stepped up security. The Kenyan national police said two British teenage subjects were deported Wednesday from Kenya after they were investigated on suspicion that they were al Shabaab recruits.

Relations between Kenya's government and Somalia's provisional government have often been tense, but so far the two governments appear to be cooperating. In a joint statement, Kenya and Somalia vowed "to pursue any armed elements that continue to attack both countries."

Al Shabaab, which has pledged its allegiance to al Qaeda, has been working to expand attacks beyond Somalia to countries that are seen as supporting a government it is fighting to overturn. In July 2010, al Shabaab-supported militants set off multiple bombs in Uganda's capital, Kampala, killing dozens. Uganda's military is among those in the region supporting a Somalia government that still controls only parts of the country.

Al Shabaab controls much of southern Somalia. It ceded most of Mogadishu after offensives in recent months by the Mogadishu-based peacekeeping force, the African Union Mission in Somalia. The city, Somalia's largest, was a profit center for the fundamentalist armed group, where it taxed merchants and ran smuggling and protection rackets.

The militants have also been hurt by the killings of several of their leaders by recent U.S. airstrikes and by the revolutions in Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, which are among countries in the Middle East and North Africa where diplomats say al Shabaab militants have drawn funding.

In the wake of such setbacks, al Shabaab appears to have teamed up with Somali pirates to hold foreign vessels and their crew hostage as a way to raise revenue through ransoms. In recent months, these abductions have taken place on land.

[buglerbilly]

Somalia kidnaps: how the country is splitting into self-ruled enclaves

Somalia, which has had no central government ruling its territory since 1991, is facing an increasing Balkanisation as several regions break away to form their own self-ruled enclaves.


A woman casts her ballot in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-proclaimed state of Somaliland, last year Photo: GETTY

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi

9:30PM BST 25 Oct 2011

To the northwest, Somaliland was the first to declare its independence from what was the sovereign state of Somalia, within months of the collapse of the last national administration 20 years ago.

Today, it holds regular elections which are internationally praised for their democratic transparency, has a parliament and a government which staffs schools, runs hospitals and fixes roads, with increasing international aid support.

To its east, Puntland is aiming to follow suit. It lies on the eastern tip of Africa – the Horn – and is attempting to introduce increasing rule of law despite being beset by challenges including hosting many of Somalia's pirate gangs in its far south.

But in the last two years, several new regions have declared their autonomy from the latest attempt to unite the country under a central authority in the capital, Mogadishu.

Himan and Heeb, Galmudug and areas of north-western Galgaduud are now all busy declaring independence and electing provincial rulers.

To the south, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa, a militia allied to the Transitional Federal Government but operating unilaterally is taking increasing territory from al-Shabaab.

And close to the Kenyan border, the latest area to break off is Azania, also known as Jubaland.

There are fears that as each administration grows in power – which will happen only if they manage to govern and keep the Islamists at bay – attempts to unify Somalia for the first time in two decades are doomed to failure.

But diplomats and analysts privately admit that the best way to win popular support show for alternatives to al-Shabaab is to support these regional authorities, as long as they show evidence they are committed to efficient and inclusive government.

[buglerbilly]

New Somalia Attack Could Jeopardize U.S. Shadow War

By David Axe October 25, 2011 | 6:59 pm



Five years after the U.S. backed a disastrous Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, Washington is considering supporting another ill-conceived incursion into the war-torn East African nation — this one by neighboring Kenya. Meanwhile, the U.S. has escalated its drone campaign against Somali insurgents, apparently coordinating the aerial strikes to take advantage of the Kenyan advance.

If Ethiopia’s experience in Somalia is any indicator, the Kenyan invasion could quickly backfire. A popular backlash against the Kenyans could set Somalia back by years, and undermine recent U.S. efforts to craft a strategy for Somalia that balances surgical counter-terrorism and strong support for the embryonic Somali government.

In 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia and occupied the country, Uganda and Burundi sent peacekeepers to Mogadishu in 2007 and since 2008 more than a dozen nations have deployed warships to patrol for Somali pirates. Through all this, Kenya played only a background role, allowing naval vessels to refuel and resupply in its harbors and playing host to a small contingent of U.S. Special Forces launching periodic raids on al-Shabab, the main Somali insurgent and terror group.

That all changed in recent weeks as al-Shabab agents sneaked into Kenya and kidnapped several aid workers and tourists, including a cancer-stricken French woman who later died. Last Sunday Kenya sent troops, helicopters and jet fighters into southern Somalia, vowing to punish al-Shabab. France provided logistical and air support, continuing its tradition of lethal retaliation for Somali kidnappings.

The Kenyan assault caught the U.S. “on its heels,” one American official told The New York Times. The official said Kenyan authorities provided “zero” information to their U.S. counterparts before the attack began. But a week into the offensive, Washington was tentatively offering support, in apparent acknowledgment of America’s historically close ties to Kenya. “We are talking with the Kenyans right now to figure out where they need help,” said Scott Gration, the U.S. ambassador in Nairobi.

In any event, U.S. counter-terrorism agents were apparently already taking advantage of the disruption caused by the Kenyan invasion. With al-Shabab fighters flushed out into the open, on Wednesday an American drone apparently attacked, killing as many as 46 insurgents. (U.S. officials have denied any American air strikes took place — a claim Kenyan officials reject.) The U.S. used a similar tactic during Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia, striking insurgents as they fled Ethiopian tanks.

The fledgling Somali government, whose troops are trained by U.S.-paid mercenaries, also took advantage of the Kenyan offensive to launch an operation of its own. But that doesn’t mean Somali president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is thrilled about the latest attack on his country. “The Somali government and its people will not be pleased with Kenya’s intervention,” Ahmed said. And the escalated U.S. drone strikes do not mean that the Kenyan attack is ultimately beneficial to U.S. efforts in Somalia — especially if the incursion metastasizes into a long-term occupation.

The Ethiopian invasion and occupation between 2006 and 2008 provoked a major backlash that empowered al-Shabab and persuaded Washington that a more hands-off approach to Somalia was preferable. The U.S. “shadow war,” involving drones, Special Forces, mercenary trainers and logistical support for peacekeepers, deepened as the Ethiopians retreated — and by early this year appeared to be making a real difference in Somalia. Al-Shabab leaders were dropping like flies. And Ahmed’s forces along with the peacekeepers — both with U.S. support — managed to force insurgents out of Mogadishu.

But those American efforts to wage war in Somalia quietly, on the cheap and through the right proxies could be threatened by this Kenyan incursion. There is already evidence things are turning. One person has died and 23 have been injured in two grenade attacks in Nairobi in the past week that have been blamed on al-Shabab. If the terror attacks draw Kenya into a self-defeating occupation that the U.S. feels compelled to support, the Somali conflict could get bloodier … and even more difficult to resolve.

[buglerbilly]

Relief groups fear for aid efforts in Somalia as military tension rises

Clashes between Kenyan troops and al-Shabaab threaten to further complicate difficulties surrounding humanitarian access

Mark Tran

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 October 2011 12.39 BST


Somalis gather around an Africa Union peacekeeping mission soldier at a camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty

One hundred days since famine was declared, relief groups fear that rising military tension will jeopardise aid efforts in central and southern Somalia, where humanitarian access is already difficult.

Those areas remain under the control of al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgents, who have restricted access to those affected by famine because they view western aid agencies with suspicion.

Sporadic clashes between the Transitional Federal Government – backed by African Union allies – and the Islamist militia al-Shabaab broke out throughout September and October, despite al-Shabaab's "tactical" withdrawal from the capital, Mogadishu, in August. Instability in Somalia now threatens to draw in Kenya, which sent troops into southern Somalia last week after the kidnapping of tourists and aid workers on Kenyan soil by suspected al-Shabaab militants.

Kenya described the kidnappings as a serious provocation by al-Shabaab, with negative effects on its tourism industry. Its military operation is designed to prevent kidnappings of foreigners by pirates and extremists and to drive al-Shabaab from its main base, the port city of Kismayo, a smuggling point for weapons and contraband.

Uncowed, al-Shabaab warned that it would hit back. Four people were reportedly killed in an attack on a vehicle near the Kenya-Somali border on Thursday, following grenade attacks in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, earlier this week.

Amid fears that conflict in Somalia will spill over its borders, the Food and Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit in Nairobi warned in its latest briefing that the security situation is more likely to worsen in south and central Somalia in the coming two months given the mobilisation of forces among the warring parties. Relief agencies are also alarmed.

Barbara Stocking, the head of Oxfam, warned that military action risks worsening the effects of famine and pushing more people beyond the reach of aid agencies.

"Somalia is at a turning point, and the next three months are critical if three-quarter of a million lives are to be saved from the ravages of famine," Stocking said ahead of a UN ceremony to mark World Food Day and the food crisis in east Africa. "Oxfam and other humanitarian agencies have increased our efforts to provide relief and prevent more deaths, but the situation now risks going beyond our reach. The international community must make a dramatic change in approach to ensure humanitarian aid can be safely distributed throughout Somalia."

Stocking called on the League of Arab states, the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and the Somalia diaspora to continue to use their influence to ensure that humanitarian aid agencies have secure access to deliver aid to those who need it most.

The fighting has already caused a sharp drop in the number of people fleeing from Somalia into Kenya, which has the world's biggest refugee camp at Dadaab, where 460,000 displaced Somalis have sought refuge from war and famine. The UN said only 100 Somali refugees entered Kenya last week, down from 3,400 the week before. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, says it is possible more refugees are moving into camps in Ethiopia instead of Kenya because of heightened military activity.

Conflict and famine in Somalia have forced more than 318,000 people to flee the country so far this year, with the majority going to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia. In addition, around 20,000 have taken the risky sea journey to Yemen, with the rate more than doubling in the last two months, bringing the total there to an estimated 196,000. However, some of the nearly 200,000 Somalis who have sought refuge in Yemen are considering going back home due to worsening security there. Yemen has been torn by fighting between supporters and opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for most of this year.

Meanwhile, forecasts for the October-to-December rainy season indicate that food security may improve in Kenya and Ethiopia, where rains have recently begun. But the rains are a mixed blessing because after prolonged drought, seasonal rains increase the risk of flooding and outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera, malaria and pneumonia. Heavy rain is also affecting delivery of aid in some areas of Somalia – Gedo, Middle Juba and Bay. In all, the crisis in the Horn of Africa has left around 13.3 million people in need of help.

In Somalia itself, Unicef, the UN agency for children, said the massive humanitarian response to the food crisis has eased the suffering of thousands of people, but more resources are needed to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in famine-hit areas of Somalia.

"In Somalia the famine is not over and is expected spread even further by the end of the year without a further scale up of the response," Unicef said in a report. "The coming months will be decisive in efforts to avert the death of an estimated 750,000 people, and continuous funding support will be required to sustain and further expand operations until the middle of 2012 at the very least."

Lack of access has restricted vaccination programmes, with "grim consequences for child survival", said Unicef.

Despite the grim backdrop, the UN special envoy to Somalia believes the country has the best chance for peace in years. Augustine Mahiga said the peace process has taken a "great leap forward" with the adoption last month of the roadmap that sets out a series of tasks to be completed ahead of concluding the transition process next August.

Mahiga reiterated the UN's call for all insurgents still fighting to lay down their arms and join the peace process, but given the recent clashes, a massive truck bomb in Mogadishu that killed 70 people, and an upsurge in fighting on the Somalia-Kenya border, that seems a forlorn hope.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. drone base in Ethiopia is operational

By Craig Whitlock, Friday, October 28, 4:49 AM

The Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethiopia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, U.S. military officials said.

The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda.

Mindful of the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in which two U.S. military helicopters were shot down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu and 18 Americans killed, the Obama administration has sought to avoid deploying troops to the country.

As a result, the United States has relied on lethal drone attacks, a burgeoning CIA presence in Mogadishu and small-scale missions carried out by U.S. special forces. In addition, the United States has increased its funding for and training of African peacekeeping forces in Somalia that fight al-Shabab.

The Washington Post reported last month that the Obama administration is building a constellation of secret drone bases in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, including one site in Ethiopia. The location of the Ethiopian base and the fact that it became operational this year, however, have not been previously disclosed. Some bases in the region also have been used to carry out operations against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

The Air Force confirmed Thursday that drone operations are underway at the Arba Minch airport. Master Sgt. James Fisher, a spokesman for the 17th Air Force, which oversees operations in Africa, said that an unspecified number of Air Force personnel are working at the Ethiopian airfield “to provide operation and technical support for our security assistance programs.”

The Arba Minch airport expansion is still in progress but the Air Force deployed the Reapers there earlier this year, Fisher said. He said the drone flights “will continue as long as the government of Ethiopia welcomes our cooperation on these varied security programs.”

Last month, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry denied the presence of U.S. drones in the country. On Thursday, a spokesman for the Ethiopian embassy in Washington repeated that assertion.

“That’s the government’s position,” said Tesfaye Yilma, the head of public diplomacy for the embassy. “We don’t entertain foreign military bases in Ethiopia.”

But U.S. military personnel and contractors have become increasingly visible in recent months in Arba Minch, a city of about 70,000 people in southern Ethiopia. Arba Minch means “40 springs” in Amharic, the national language.

Travelers who have passed through the Arba Minch airport on the occasional civilian flights that land there said the U.S. military has erected a small compound on the tarmac, next to the terminal.

The compound is about half an acre in size and is surrounded by high fences, security screens and lights on extended poles. The U.S. military personnel and contractors eat at a cafe in the passenger terminal, where they are served American-style food, according to travelers who have been there.

Arba Minch is located about 300 miles south of Addis Ababa and about 600 miles east of the Somali border. Standard models of the Reaper have a range of about 1,150 miles, according to the Air Force.



The MQ-9 Reaper, known as a “hunter killer,” is manufactured by General Atomics and is an advanced version of the Predator, the most common armed drone in the Air Force’s fleet.

Ethiopia is a longtime U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the militant group that has fomented instability in war-torn Somalia and launched attacks in Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere in the region.

The Ethiopian military invaded Somalia in 2006 in an attempt to wipe out a related Islamist movement that was taking over the country, but withdrew three years later after it was unable to contain an insurgency.

The U.S. military clandestinely aided Ethiopia during that invasion by sharing intelligence and carrying out airstrikes with AC-130 gunships, which operated from an Ethiopian military base in the eastern part of the country. After details of the U.S. involvement became public, however, the Ethiopian government shut down the U.S. military presence there.

In a present-day operation that carries echoes of that campaign, Kenya launched its own invasion of southern Somalia this month to chase after al-Shabab fighters that it blames for kidnapping Western tourists in Kenya and destabilizing the border region.

Although U.S. officials denied playing a role in that offensive, a Kenyan military spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, said Kenya has received “technical assistance” from its American allies. He declined to elaborate.

The U.S. military deploys drones on attack and surveillance missions over Somalia from a number of bases in the region.

The Air Force operates a small fleet of Reapers from the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, about 800 miles from the Somali coast.

The U.S. military also operates drones — both armed versions and models used strictly for surveillance — from Djibouti, a tiny African nation that abuts northwest Somalia at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. About 3,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the only permanent U.S. base on the African continent.

The U.S. government is known to have used drones to mount lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

[buglerbilly]

Somali Abduction Squad Takes American; How Will the U.S. Respond?

By David Axe October 27, 2011 | 10:23 am



A campaign of kidnapping that began at sea with Somali pirates has expanded onto land and across Somalia’s borders. Pirates and their allies in the Somali terror group al-Shabab have begun targeting tourists and aid workers in Kenya and Puntland, a mostly self-governing region in northern Somalia.

The latest victim of the abduction squads: a American woman, grabbed in Puntland apparently on Wednesday along with a Danish colleague. The 32-year-old former teacher was in Puntland to help defuse mines leftover from the region’s years of warfare. The fall-out from the kidnapping in an already tense region is yet to be seen.

Even leaving aside piracy, abduction has long been a favorite tactic of Somali extremists. But until recently, the targets were mostly Somalis and foreign journalists and humanitarians working in southern Somalia. The expansion of the kidnapping campaign into Kenya has provoked retaliatory attacks by, so far, Kenya and France — with the U.S. considering escalated intervention even before the American was taken.

A 56-year-old British tourist was the first to be kidnapped. On Sept. 11, pirates slipped into a resort in Kiwayu, in Kenya near the Somali border. The attackers seized Judith Tebbut and shot dead her 58-year-old husband David. Kenyan authorities have arrested two men in connection with the crime, but Tebbutt remains missing.

On Oct. 1, gunmen — al-Shabab agents, according to the Kenyan government — grabbed 66-year-old Frenchwoman Marie Dedieu from a Kenyan island resort. Dedieu, a tetraplegic, died in Somalia after her kidnappers deprived her of her medicine. “This was an act of unqualified barbarism, violence and brutality,” said Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister.

Twelve days later, suspected al-Shabab fighters infiltrated the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya and kidnapped two Spanish women working for the medical NGO Doctors Without Borders. Dadaab, pictured, is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Somalis.

“We are working with contacts in Kenya and Somalia to ascertain further information,” the State Department said in a statement following the American’s abduction. “The United States condemns kidnappings of any kind, and we call for the immediate release of all of the victims involved.”

What Washington might do, beyond that, is unclear at this time. Two weeks ago, Kenya invaded southern Somalia with 1,500 troops, helicopters and jet fighters, aiming to destroy al-Shabab — a move echoing Ethiopia’s disastrous two-year intervention in Somalia that ended in 2008. The French military is providing air and logistical support for the Kenyan operation.

Last week, Scott Gration, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, said Washington was also considering supporting the Kenyans, on top of its ongoing “shadow war” in Somalia involving Special Forces, armed drones and mercenaries. With Somali extremists targeting Americans, the U.S. could decide it now has enough reason to throw its weight fully behind the risky Kenyan assault.

Photo: U.N.

[buglerbilly]

Elite commandos storm lawless Somali war zone to snatch tribal leader

By David Williams and Ian Drury

Last updated at 1:58 AM on 29th October 2011

Bit of a mystery this one, there is no notice in any other newspaper?

British commandos made a dramatic amphibious landing on Somalia’s war-torn shores to seize a tribal leader, the Daily Mail can reveal.

In an extraordinary operation in a lawless area teeming with bandits and pirates, elite Royal Marines launched Viking armoured vehicles from landing craft and pushed several miles inland to pick up the clan chief.

The unprecedented covert landing comes at a sensitive time in the troubled East African country as Al Qaeda-linked groups are training terror recruits and pirates are holding more than 100 hostages after seizing their boats.


Intrepid raiders: A Viking armoured troop-carrying vehicle, similar to the one used in the daring Somali raid

The tribal elder, one of the most influential figures in the region, was whisked through bandit country by heavily armed troops from 539 Assault Squadron and taken to a ‘very important meeting’ with MI6 and the Foreign Office aboard a Royal Navy support ship anchored off the coast.

The discussions are understood to have included the location of terror training camps and the seizing of hostages by clansmen operating in the Indian Ocean off Somalia.

The operation raises the prospect of further raids against terror camps and pirate bases.

Special Forces have increasingly focused on Somalia and the Horn of Africa in recent months amid a rise in the number of ships seized by pirates for ransom, the kidnap of Western citizens and the mounting threat of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

There are also fears that Somalia has replaced Pakistan and Afghanistan as the main area of training for UK-born terrorists.

The U.S. has carried out a series of unmanned drone attacks on terror training camps, but until now there has been no confirmation of British forces operating in Somalia.

It is known that British Special Forces in the region have been involved in gathering intelligence on pirates and on Al-Shabaab, which is suspected of being behind the kidnap of Briton Judith Tebbutt, 56, from a Kenyan island resort last month.

Mrs Tebbutt’s husband, David, 58, was shot dead during the kidnap, which happened after bandits landed by boat at the resort near Somalia’s border with Kenya.

Mrs Tebbutt’s whereabouts are currently not known.


The Marines used Viking armoured vehicles similar to these to push several miles inland and pick up the clan chief

The Marines’ raid in July was the first time British troops have conducted a military operation in the troubled territory in 40 years. The swoop was part of Exercise Somaliland Cougar, a mission to train coastguards in Somaliland – a former British protectorate that broke away from failed Somalia – in anti-piracy techniques and meet MPs and tribal leaders.

'Further raids against terror camps and pirate bases'The Marines, serving on the 60-man Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Cardigan Bay, had come under fire as they sailed near the autonomous Somali region of Puntland, which is in dispute with Somaliland.

But despite the danger, a small unit from 539 Assault Squadron was sent in to pick up the tribal elder for the talks.

Under cover of darkness, they set out from RFA Cardigan Bay, a landing ship dock that allows smaller boats to send troops and equipment to shore.

The landing craft carried two armoured Viking troop-carrying vehicles protected by machine guns and smoke grenades.

The Vikings successfully left the landing craft and headed for their rendezvous with the tribal leader. Each carried up to 12 commandos.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054936/Somalia-Commandos-storm-war-zone-snatch-tribal-leader.html#ixzz1c8F4eS9Y

[buglerbilly]

Al-Qaida targets Somalia drought victims with cash handouts

Unit arrives at camp as FBI reports up to 30 US nationals have joined al-Shabaab militant group, linked to al-Qaida

Jamal Osman in Ala-Yasir in southern Somalia

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 November 2011 13.00 GMT

Al-Qaida is fighting to win hearts and minds in Somalia - Link to this video : http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/video/2011/nov/01/al-qaida-famine-somalia-video

Men claiming to be al-Qaida operatives are moving into the humanitarian vacuum in Somalia, distributing aid and cash to drought victims in an attempt to win hearts and minds, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

On a visit to the sprawling Ala-Yasir camp in the south of the country, the Guardian saw an al-Qaida unit handing out rice, flour, oil, dates and milk as well as Islamic books and clothes to some of the more than 4,000 people made destitute by this year's drought.

This was the first time the group has spoken publicly in Somalia, and the first time it has distributed aid. The unit's leader was introduced to the Guardian as al-Qaida's official envoy to Somalia.

Representatives of al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist group trying to seize power in the country, called him Abu Abdullah Muhajir, and said he was a white American. It was impossible to verify his identity or nationality.

Al-Shabaab is closely affiliated to al-Qaida and, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the group vowed to avenge his death. A number of US citizens are known to have joined al-Shabaab in Somalia, including a suicide bomber from Minneapolis who attacked African Union troops in Mogadishu on Sunday.

Reading from a prepared statement, in American-accented English, Abu Abdullah Muhajir told the crowd: "To our beloved brothers and sisters in Somalia: we are following your situation on a daily basis. And, though we are separated by thousands of kilometres, you are consistently in our thoughts and prayers."

He then handed out the contents of bags full of Somali shillings to the equivalent of $17,000 (£10,600). The al-Qaida unit also brought along a fully staffed ambulance. Al-Qaida regards the young boys stuck in the camp after being driven from their villages by the drought as potential recruits. The boys gave Abu Abdullah Muhajir a rapturous welcome: "God is great! God is great!"

Osman Hassan, 16, clutched dates, milk and the Qur'an, gifts from al-Qaida. He said: "I pray for them to win over their enemies."

Muhammad Barre, nine, said: "I ask God to make al-Qaida victorious over their enemies."

After a decade-long war that has hobbled al-Qaida in eastern Afghanistan, the west's main concern is that the movement may be able to regroup in Somalia, which has had no functioning central government for more than two decades. The Ala-Yasir camp was set up in response to the worst regional drought in 60 years, which has affected (according to the latest UN report on Somalia) 4 million Somalis. It is located in the southern part of country, an area controlled by al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab members run the camp, having banned some of the international agencies from distributing aid.

The UN World Food Programme says it pulled out of the area because of threats to staff, and demands of informal taxes by the group. Al-Shabaab denies the claims.

Among the dozens of men accompanying the American visitor were several other foreigners, including some with English accents.

Also with them was a member of al-Shabaab calling himself Abu Omar, who was directing the food distribution.

He said he was British, but it was impossible to confirm this independently.

"It's a religious obligation. It's a duty upon us," he said. "I mean, we left our countries. I left, we left our jobs [and] ... all these places just to come here and help our people. I'm an aid worker, basically … typical aid worker, as you say in the west."

[buglerbilly]

Al-Shabaab training UK residents to fight in Somalia

MI5 and MI6 believe more than 100 people from Britain have been involved with Islamist militia and end up as 'cannon fodder'

Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 November 2011 17.33 GMT


Members of al-Shabaab during a military training exercise in Mogadishu. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

Britain's security and intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, believe more than 100 British residents have been training and fighting in Somalia and about 40 are estimated to be active there now.

The militants – who have various origins, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and west Africa – are believed to be attracted to al-Shabaab and, according to UK officials, are willing to get involved in fighting and become "cannon fodder". However, there is a risk they could return to Britain radicalised and motivated, officials say, warning that Somalia is a more likely base for potential attacks on the UK than Yemen.

Judging the risk is complicated since elements of the Somali diaspora in Britain are involved in criminal, but not terrorist-related, activities. Their movements are not always easy to track because many entered the UK from other European countries and have EU passports.

MI5's website says: "A significant number of UK residents are training with al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamist militia group, to fight in the insurgency in Somalia. Al-Shabaab is closely aligned with al-Qaida. Somalia shows many of the characteristics that made Afghanistan so dangerous as a seedbed for terrorism in the period before the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There is no effective government and a strong extremist presence with training camps that attract likeminded extremists from across the world."

Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, said last year he was concerned that it was "only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab." MI5 and MI6 are both advertising for Somali speakers.

The FBI is seeking the remains of a suicide bomber in Somalia to try to determine whether it is Abdisalan Hussein Ali, one of 21 young Somali-American men believed to have left the US city of Minneapolis in recent years to join al-Shabaab. If the corpse of the man who carried out a suicide attack on Saturday against an African Union base in Mogadishu is his, it will mark the third time that someone from Minnesota has been involved in a suicide attack in Somalia. The attack killed 10 people, including the two suicide bombers, a Mogadishu-based security official said.

Over the past three years, Minnesota has been the centre of an FBI investigation into the recruitment of people to train or fight with al-Shabaab.

[buglerbilly]

Somalians revel on Mogadishu's safe beaches for first time in three years

Roads are being repaired and air and sea traffic has increased after the retreat of the militant group al-Shabaab

David Smith

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 November 2011 19.48 GMT


Somali women take a stroll at Lido Beach in Mogadishu. Photograph: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP

Hundreds of residents of the Somalian capital Mogadishu have taken respite from bombs and bullets by flocking to the beaches for the first time in three years. The revellers, who included former president Ali Mahdi Mohamed, converged on the Lido beach where they played football and swam. The African Union Mission in Somalia said the return to Mogadishu beaches on Friday showed a new sense of security since the militant group al-Shabaab, aligned with al-Qaida, retreated from Mogadishu in August. "Roads are being repaired, homes rebuilt and markets reopened," it said.

"Real estate prices along Via Moscow have doubled and there are people out in the streets late into the night, despite the ongoing threat of terrorist attack."

Thousands of people who had been prevented from returning to their homes in the city are now streaming back, it added.

"Traffic at the Aden Abdulleh International Airport has also tripled and the line of ships waiting to dock at the seaport grows ever longer. The city has played host to several high profile visitors, including Turkish prime minister, Recep Erdogan, and a number of countries have reopened their embassies."

But normality after 20 years of bloody anarchy that put Somalia bottom of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance apparently comes at a price. Growing traffic jams and rising crime rates are among everyday problems taking hold.

Al-Shabaab is still locked in a battle with the weak UN-back interim government for control of parts of the country. Kenya deployed troops inside Somalia three weeks ago to crush the militants it blames for a wave of kidnappings in Kenya and frequent cross-border attacks. Last week the Guardian revealed that men claiming to be al-Qaida operatives are distributing aid and cash to drought victims in southern Somalia in an attempt to win hearts and minds.

[buglerbilly]

Empty Threat of Drones Saved the CIA in Somalia

By David Axe November 15, 2011 | 9:00 am



The threat of drone attacks was all that protected CIA agents in the early years of the Agency’s continuing efforts to take out al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia. The thing is, the threat was a hollow one. The drones weren’t there.

That’s just one of the surprising revelations in the latest installment in Army Times reporter Sean Naylor’s investigation of U.S. intelligence operations in Somalia and Kenya.

The U.S. was heavily involved in East Africa in the early 1990s, even spearheading a large-scale humanitarian and peacekeeping operation aimed at stabilizing Somalia during the early phases of its ongoing civil war. But the deaths of 18 U.S. service members in Mogadishu in October 1993 — a tragedy explored in the book and film Black Hawk Down — ended all that. For nearly a decade, the U.S. all but abandoned Somalia. “Nobody had the stomach for it,” a Special Operations source told Naylor.

The CIA returned to Somalia in fits and starts in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks. The main goal: to track down and capture or kill the growing number of al-Qaeda operatives seeking refuge among Somalia’s extremists. Starting in 2003, small teams of CIA agents, commandos and interpreters flew into Somalia from Kenya aboard the daily flights that delivered khat, a popular narcotic.

American agents used a carrot-and-stick approach to drawing information out of Somali warlords with knowledge of al-Qaeda’s East African operations. Cash payments to warlords represented the “carrot.” U.S. air power was the “stick.”

But until recently, there weren’t any military or CIA drones over Somalia. “We really didn’t have a stick,” an unnamed veteran of U.S. intel ops told Naylor. All of America’s Predator drones were tied up in the skies over Iraq, he explained. In other words, the CIA was bluffing. “But it worked,” the intel official said.

Working with Somali warlords required a light touch and plenty of precautions. John Bennett, the CIA’s station chief in Nairobi, drew up four rules, which Naylor lists:

• “We will work with warlords.”
• “We don’t play favorites.”
• “They don’t play us.”
• “We don’t go after Somali nationals, just [foreign] al-Qaeda.”

Protected by a effective bluff and constrained by Bennett’s rules, the CIA’s Somali operations succeeded in buying up dangerous surface-to-air missiles previously in extremists’ hands. U.S. agents also developed information and targeting data that allowed the military to take out several high-profile terror leaders, including Aden Hashi Ayro, killed by a Navy cruise missile strike in 2008.

The CIA’s Somali ops are undoubtedly much more extensive today, now that the U.S. is openly pouring military and intelligence resources into Africa. For one, agents are no longer bluffing when they say there are drone warplanes overhead.

Photo: Air Force

[buglerbilly]

U.S. intensifies its proxy fight against al-Shabab in Somalia

By Craig Whitlock, Friday, November 25, 7:56 AM

The Obama administration is intensifying its campaign against an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia by boosting the number of proxy forces in the war-torn country, expanding drone operations and strengthening military partnerships throughout the region.

In many ways, the American role in the long-running conflict in Somalia is shaping up as the opposite of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: relatively inexpensive, with limited or hidden U.S. footprints.

While the White House has embraced the strategy as a model for dealing with failed states or places inherently hostile to an American presence, the indirect approach carries risks. Chief among them is a lack of control over the proxy forces from Uganda, Burundi and Somalia, as well as other regional partners that Washington has courted and financed in recent years.

All told, the United States has spent more than $500 million since 2007 to train and equip East African forces in an attempt to fight terrorism and bring a measure of stability to Somalia.

Kenya, for example, sent thousands of troops into Somalia last month to fight al-Shabab, a militia affiliated with al-Qaeda, despite U.S. concerns that the invasion could backfire and further destabilize a country ravaged by two decades of civil war.

This week, Ethi*o*pia sent its own, smaller force across the border, according to Somalis. The Ethio*pian government has denied these reports but acknowledged that it is considering a military offensive.*****

These operations are reviving painful memories of an Ethio*pian invasion in 2006 that was backed by U.S. forces and preceded by an extensive CIA operation. In that case, the Ethio*pian army — with some U.S. air support — rolled into Somalia to oust a fundamentalist Muslim movement that had taken over Mogadishu, the capital. But the Ethiopians eventually withdrew after they became bogged down by a Somali insurgency.

“That effort was not universally successful and led, in fact, to the rise of al-Shabab after [Ethiopia] pulled out,” Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters Tuesday.

Al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, has imposed a harsh version of Islamic law in parts of Somalia and organized attacks elsewhere in East Africa, including suicide bombings and kidnappings in Uganda and Kenya. While some foreign radicals — including Somali Americans — have joined the group’s ranks, U.S. counterterrorism officials say the movement is divided between those who share al-Qaeda’s global aims and others who want to confine their actions to Somalia.

The Obama administration has not directly criticized Kenya or Ethi*o*pia for entering Somalia, saying it is legitimate for both countries to defend themselves against al-Shabab attacks on their territory. But the administration has urged both to withdraw as soon as possible and instead help expand a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu that is composed of U.S.-trained troops from Uganda and Burundi.

“We have always been very cautious, prudent, concerned about the neighbors getting involved,” said a senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.

Millions in U.S. support

Over the past four years, the State Department has provided $258 million for the African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu. The Pentagon is spending $45 million this year alone to train and equip the force with body armor, night-vision equipment, armored bulldozers and small tactical surveillance drones.

In addition, the Pentagon this year has authorized $30 million to upgrade helicopters and small surveillance aircraft for two countries that border Somalia: Djibouti and Kenya.

The subsidies underpin the Obama administration’s strategy of building up regional forces so they can fight al-Shabab directly, while minimizing any visible role for U.S. troops. Mindful of the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle, in which two U.S. military helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu and 18 Americans killed, the Obama administration has steadfastly avoided deploying soldiers to Somalia, save for small clandestine missions carried out by Special Operations forces.

Instead, the U.S. military has gradually established a stronger presence around Somalia’s perimeter.

To the north, in Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa, about 3,000 American troops are stationed at Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent U.S. military base on the continent. Many are engaged in civil-affairs and training programs throughout East Africa, but the camp is also home to a fleet of unmanned Predator drones and Special Operations units that conduct Somalia-related missions.

To the south, the U.S. military has a smaller but long-standing presence at Manda Bay, a Kenyan naval base about 50 miles from the Somali border. For several years, Navy SEALs have trained Kenyan patrols on the lookout for Somali pirates.

Other U.S. forces have helped the Kenyan army train a 300-man Ranger Strike Force and a battalion of special operations forces with about 900 personnel, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Even after years of American assistance, the Kenyan armed forces still have much to learn, acknowledged another senior U.S. defense official involved in the training.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to give a frank assessment. “It is tough. It’s time-consuming. But from a relative standpoint, it’s inexpensive.

“I’m not saying, ‘Do things on the cheap.’ But we accomplish two things: We create regional stability, and we don’t have large U.S. deployments.”

Kenya’s mission

Kenya sent about 2,000 troops into southern Somalia last month to attack al-Shabab. Two senior U.S. defense officials said they did not know if any of those Kenyan forces had received U.S training. Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, a Kenyan military spokesman, declined to comment.

Obama administration officials said that they did not encourage Kenya to take military action and that the United States was not involved in the fighting in Somalia. Chirchir said Washington was providing “technical support,” but he would not elaborate. U.S. officials declined to comment.

Roba Sharamo, the head of the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi, said the United States may be sharing satellite imagery and other intelligence with Kenya. “Because of the political sensitivities around Somalia, the U.S. can’t necessarily say, ‘We are involved,’ ” he said.

Meanwhile, the United States has stepped up its aerial surveillance of Somalia. The Air Force is flying Reaper drones from the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and from a newly expanded civilian airport in Arba Minch, Ethi*o*pia.

The Reapers can be armed with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. U.S. officials have said the Ethiopia-based drones are being used only for surveillance, not airstrikes.

But they have been vague about whether the drones flying from other regional bases are armed. Part of the reason is to sow confusion in the minds of al-Shabab fighters, said Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the U.S. Africa Command. The military has sporadically conducted drone airstrikes in Somalia but without public acknowledgment.

“I like it a lot that al-Shabab doesn’t know where we are, when we’re flying, what we’re doing and specifically not doing,” Ham said in an interview. “That element of doubt in the mind of a terrorist organization is helpful, not just to us but to the Somali people.”

Peacekeepers’ victory

Since 2007, the United States has been the primary backer of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. The contingent is composed entirely of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, most of whom were trained by U.S. contractors or American military advisers.

The peacekeepers struggled for years to secure a foothold in Somalia but achieved a breakthrough three months ago when they chased al-Shabab fighters out of most of Mogadishu. The African Union force, however, is largely confined to the capital.

Some African countries are pushing for a rapid expansion of the peacekeeping force, more than doubling its size to 20,000 troops, but it’s unclear that the United States is prepared to underwrite such growth.

“I don’t see any increase,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’re already at a very high level.”

The United States has also been a primary backer of indigenous security forces loyal to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, contributing $85 million since 2007. Those forces, however, have been plagued by desertion and poor health and are widely seen as ineffective.

Analysts said that no matter how much the Obama administration invests in proxy or Somali security forces, it won’t be able to ease Somalia’s chronic instability without a political solution involving its many clans.

“The political track isn’t there to push back an insurgency,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center. Even if the Kenyan, Ethiopian and African Union troops rolled up military victories against al-Shabab, he predicted, the Islamist movement would eventually return in some form.

“It’s like the tide coming back,” Pham said.

Special correspondent Alice Klein in Nairobi contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Somali Terrorists Join Twitter #Propaganda

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author December 7, 2011 | 3:25 pm



Twitter used to be a cool place to share your succinct thoughts. Now al-Shabab, the vicious Somali allies of al-Qaida, is using it as a propaganda venue.

al-Shabab began tweeting in English on Wednesday using the handle @HSMPress. (HSM is the English acronym of al-Shabab’s more grandiose name, the Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen.) Jack Dorsey and company have yet to verify the account, but it sounds fairly authentic: one Wednesday tweet said the terrorists “welcomed” the surrender of seven Somali government soldiers after they “proclaim[ed] repentance from apostasy.”

The terrorist group is starting out slow, with just six tweets so far on opening day. It’s an oddly subdued Twitter feed: a boast about a “3-hour battle” with African peacekeepers ended with a meek declaration that al-Shabab caused “some #Amisom casualties+base burnt.” #Fail.

Joining Twitter looks like part of a broader Shabab rebrand. The group decided this week to rename itself “Imaarah Islamiyah,” or the Islamic Authority, because of… age anxiety. “Al-Shabab means ‘youth’ but many of us, including the leaders, are very old,” said spokesman Mukhtaar Robow.

So now old terrorists feel the need to use Twitter. It wasn’t long ago that al-Shabab blazed something of an online trail for terrorist groups. Its American adherent, Omar Hammami, used to upload jihadist freestyles onto internet mixtapes. Now al-Shabab’s joining Twitter half a year after the Taliban launched its own English language feed.

Not that @HSMPress is generating much buzz. Journalists, terrorism researchers and aid workers make up the lion’s share of its early followers, not eager Muslim youth. And Shabab’s adversaries are doing a much better job with Twitter, using it to warn Somalis of upcoming offensives. More #fail.

Photo: Flickr/Abdurahman Warsame

[buglerbilly]

RAF could give support in Somalia intervention

Oliver Wright, Kim Sengupta Friday 23 December 2011

The British Government is considering providing direct military assistance to international troops fighting Islamist insurgents in Somalia.

Senior Foreign Office sources said discussions had taken place about providing help – including air reconnaissance or support – to African Union troops helping Somalia's weak, American-backed, transitional government.

While the use of ground troops has been explicitly ruled out it is believed there could be some role for Britain following the successful Nato air operation in Libya. As well as air power, SAS and SBS units are stationed with the US-led Horn of Africa Task Force based in Djibouti.

The Somali government, which has been fighting insurgents known as al-Shabaab, has little influence outside the capital Mogadishu.

The number of peacekeeping troops in the country has increased significantly in recent months and British officials are examining how to extend their own influence further. "Certainly in the wake of Libya there are ongoing discussions about what assistance we might be able to provide in Somalia," said one source. "At this stage, the areas we are looking at are equipment and money."

Both the US and French have been actively involved in Somali military operations – the Americans carrying out drone strikes from the southern Ethiopian port of Arba Mich, while the French are ferrying in equipment. A French helicopter-gunship crashed at the southern port of Kismayo, while, it is claimed, providing supporting fire for Kenyans flushing out al-Shabaab positions.

A senior British officer said: "There is no appetite for boots on the ground but there are other options. Any military cost needs to be weighed against the costs of propping up a failed state which is being kept a failed state by this insurgency. Also, the African Union forces can't be there forever, and there may be a role for the UK to train the forces of the TFG [Transitional Federal Government]."

Yesterday the International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell appeared to hint at a greater British involvement. Describing Somalia as a direct threat to the UK's security because it is one of the "most dysfunctional countries in the world" he said: "It is a place from which emanates piracy, drug running, this weight of people trying to come to a more attractive economic shore.

"There are probably more British passport holders engaged in terrorist training in Somalia than in any other country in the world."

[buglerbilly]

Somali hip-hop band fighting al-Shabaab for hearts and minds

Waayaha Cusub remain defiant despite bearing the scars of the Islamist group, whose reach has extended to Nairobi

Clar Ni Chonghaile in Nairobi

guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 December 2011 19.11 GMT


Somali hip-hop group Waayaha Cusub record material in a makeshift studio in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images

Shine Ali doesn't scare easily. If he did, he would not be with his band in a basement studio in Nairobi, rapping lyrics that challenge the Islamist rebels who control much of his homeland, Somalia – and whose reach extends deep into the Kenyan capital.

Ali is well aware of the risks he is running. Three years ago, members of the al-Shabaab group broke into his home in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighbourhood and shot him.

"They said, 'Your message is anti-jihad. You are telling the youth to give up jihad,'" the 29-year-old says in halting English. Ali edges down his baggy checked shorts, pulls up his hooded sweatshirt and shows a scar on his right hip. He has another one on his left arm.

"When they shot me, I knew that if I stopped the music, they would win but if I continued, my power would win."

Ali is a founding member of Waayaha Cusub, an 11-member hip-hop group that includes Somalis, Kenyans, an Ethiopian and a Ugandan.

The band is, in its composition, a defiant challenge to the al-Qaida-linked rebels of al-Shabaab and to the thorny political realities of the Horn of Africa.

He started Waayaha Cusub, which can be translated as New Era or New Dawn, in 2004. They have produced several albums since then as well as making waves with the 2010 song No to al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab, which means "youth" in Arabic, controls much of south and central Somalia where its fighters enforce a harsh form of sharia law: they carry out beheadings and cross-amputations and in some areas have banned musical ringtones on mobile phones, as well outlawing films and football.

Waayaha Cusub's songs are recorded in Nairobi but find their way home on pirated CDs, and through the radio and internet. As well as calling for peace and condemning al-Shabaab, the band deal with traditionally taboo subjects such as Aids and clan rivalries.

Ali and his group have angered conservatives with their lyrics and because their videos show women dressed in trousers and dancing.

One of their female singers was slashed across the face in Nairobi a few years ago and is still in hiding. In the concrete-floored studio lined with the bottoms of cardboard egg boxes, Ali and fellow singers in the band, Lixle Dikriyow and Burhan Ahmed, belt out lyrics from a new song about piracy. Two women, wearing headscarves and long skirts, sit silently in a corner. They will join in later.

Other members of the band were too afraid to come to the rehearsal.

Fear is a constant companion for Kenya's Somali community these days, caught between an increasingly hostile host population and al-Shabaab.

After Kenyan soldiers crossed the border in October to push al-Shabaab back, the rebel group threatened to hit back. This has turned every Somali into a suspect in some Kenyans' eyes, despite the fact that the only attacks in Nairobi since the incursion were carried out by a Kenyan who said he was a member of al-Shabaab.

Ali, who was born in central Somalia, came to Nairobi when he was a child, joining hundreds of thousands of people fleeing decades of violence that started when warlords overthrew President Mohamed Siad Barre after more than 21 years in power.

But the Kenyan capital is no longer the haven it once was.

"Nairobi or Mogadishu: it is the same now," Ali says. Al-Shabaab are present in Eastleigh, which is known as "Little Mogadishu".

The rapper is also worried about how Kenyans will react if their forces take heavy losses on the battlefield. He knows what he does is risky but says that the only way to fight the Islamist group is by raising awareness among the Somali youth.

He taps his head to make his point. "Awareness," he says. "These youth have bad ideology. If we give them good ideology, talk to them about life, marriage, children … If we show them these things, we can stop them.

"You cannot fight someone who wants to die, you can only save them."

Asked if he wants to perform in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, Ali pounds the table and says: "Yeah."

Mogadishu has enjoyed some respite from violence since al-Shabaab fighters pulled out in August and African Union peacekeepers extended their control across the crumbling seaside city. But there are still suicide attacks, roadside bombs and sporadic gunfights.

That is not the problem, though, for Ali and Waayaha Cusub. "If I get support, I will go to Mogadishu," he says. "It's a good time for us because we need to tell our youth that al-Shabaab is not good, we need to tell them to support their government."

[buglerbilly]

DECEMBER 31, 2011, 6:32 A.M. ET.

Ethiopian Troops Take Somalia Border Town

Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya—Hundreds of Ethiopian troops poured into a western Somalia border town on Saturday, opening a new front against the militant group al-Shabab, which now faces hostile militaries on three sides.

Resident Mohammed Abdi said hundreds of residents fled Beledweyne on Saturday after hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali troops moved in. Capt. Hashi Nor of the Somali military confirmed that Somali and Ethiopian troops had moved in.

"I saw Ethiopian troops standing at the doors of neighboring homes. Somali soldiers are also searching the homes," Mr. Abdi said. "Al-Shabab retreated back to Bulo Burte and also many of the residents fled, and those who remained are in their homes."

The military movement appears to be a third front against al-Shabab, Somalia's strongest militant group. Kenyan troops moved into Somalia in mid-October in a push against the militants in the country's south. African Union troops from Uganda, Burundi and most recently from Djibouti have mostly pushed al-Shabab fighters out of the capital, Mogadishu.

"We are in full control of Beledweyne now and our troops will move forward in the coming hours," Capt. Nor, the Somali military officer, said by phone from Beledweyne.

Mr. Abdi said the sound of gunfire could be heard in Beledweyne but that he did not believe actual battle was taking place. However, al-Shabab on its official Twitter feed said that a battle that began at 6 a.m. was still "raging" in the city as of midday.

Al-Shabab said that a "majority" of Beledweyne residents joined al-Shabab "to thwart the offensive." It claimed that dozens of Ethiopian troops had been killed, but that was impossible to verify and was likely an exaggerated claim.

U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops moved into Somalia in 2006 at the invitation of the weak, U.N.-backed Somali government. But the incursion was seen by many Somalis as an unpopular invasion and actually helped give birth to the al-Shabab movement. Ethiopians pulled out in early 2009, and there are fears that a new push by Somalia could be a propaganda coup for al-Shabab.

Ethiopia in November said it was considering whether to contribute troops to the African Union force in Somalia. Kenya's parliament recently voted for its forces to join the AU force. That move is awaiting approval by the United Nations.

The central Somalia town of Beledweyne lies about 20 miles, or 30 kilometers, from the border with Ethiopia. A commercial hub, it lies on a key road that links Mogadishu with northern Somalia. Control of the town has changed hands frequently in recent months as different militias push to seize control of it.

[buglerbilly]

Aid groups lobby US not to shut off remittances to Somalia

Banks in Minnesota – fearing prosecution under anti-terror legislation – end money transfers from American Somalis to families in Somalia, despite humanitarian crisis

Mark Tran

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 January 2012 18.00 GMT


A man gestures to supporters for calm after a federal jury found two US citizens of Somali descent, Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, guilty of conspiring to funnel money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Photograph: Jim Mone/AP

Does commonsense gat farted out of people's brains as soon as "terrorism" is mentioned...........fer Crissakes there is a HUGE difference between people funneling funds to al Queida or its affiliates and people sending money to Families, not least the amount of money sent..............

Aid groups are lobbying the US treasury to provide assurances to a community bank that it will not be prosecuted for resuming remittance services to Somalia, where 250,000 people are still affected by famine.

Sunrise Community Banks in the state of Minnesota last week announced it would stop processing remittances to Somalia because it risked violating government rules designed to block the funding of terrorist groups. The bank was a major lifeline for Somalis, and one of very few still offering remittances to Somalia.

"It is estimated that $100m in remittances goes to Somalia from the US every year. This is the worst time for this service to stop. Any gaps with remittance flows in the middle of the famine could be disastrous," said Shannon Scribner, Oxfam America's humanitarian policy manager. "The US government should give assurances to the bank that there will be no legal ramifications of providing this service to Somalis in need."

Interagency discussions are under way, Scribner said, and Somali Americans are planning demonstrations to put pressure on the US government and Sunrise to resolve the issue. "But we know from experience that these legal obstacles can take a long time to resolve," said Scribner. "The bank has said it needs assurances or a waiver that it won't be prosecuted in any way before it restarts the remittances. It is complicated and it is difficult to manoeuvre around these laws."

Sunrise's decision came weeks after two Minnesota women were convicted in October of conspiracy to provide support to al-Shabaab, the Islamist militants operating in south and central Somalia. Evidence at the Minnesota trial showed the women, who claimed they were sending money to charity, used money transfer services to send more than $8,600 to al-Shabaab, which has banned some aid agencies from operating in areas it controls.

The bank's decision came despite statements from the US treasury that "there is no assumption on the part of treasury that money transmitters present a uniform or unacceptably high risk of money laundering, terrorist financing or sanctions violations".

The US government has become the largest humanitarian donor to the region, providing more than $870m to meet urgent humanitarian needs, including nearly $205m for Somalia. Congressman Keith Ellison from Minneapolis has appealed to President Barack Obama to find a way to continue the remittances, citing the "catastrophic humanitarian situation in Somalia".

Somalia, riven by decades of conflict, has been worst hit by the drought that struck the Horn of Africa last year. Sunrise said it recognised the potential impact from the end of the money transfer services and remained in constant communication with congressional leaders and government officials to look for a solution.

"We continue to work tirelessly with the community and government officials to create a temporary legal and regulatory solution that would allow the bank to extend the account closure date," Sunrise said in a statement last week.

The Somali government has said an estimated $2bn – one-third of the country's gross domestic product – is channelled to Somalia through "hawala" or small money transfer businesses. Last week, the Somali mission to the UN appealed to Sunrise to extend the 30 December deadline. Sunrise had first planned to end the services on 15 December, but later extended the programme to the end of the month.

Sunrise said the challenges of providing aid and services to Somalia were not new and that the US government had found ways to remove legal obstacles temporarily for aid groups providing food to famine victims.

A report from the Overseas Development Institute in October said counter-terrorism laws that criminalise the transfer of resources to terrorist groups have had a chilling effect on humanitarian operations, particularly in Gaza and Somalia. Islamic charities had been hit particularly hard, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, but the impact has not been restricted to Muslim groups, according to the ODI report.

The ODI also found that the administrative burden imposed by counter-terrorism legislation has affected the timelines and efficiency of humanitarian aid, and can even deter relief groups operating in high-risk areas. In the case of Somalia, the ODI said funding had declined by half between 2008 and 2011, mainly as a result of a drop in American contributions following legislation in the US.

US legislation has had the most impact on humanitarian operations, particularly a sanctions regime overseen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Violations of Ofac sanctions are subject to both civil and criminal penalties, with the latter increasing in 2007 to a maximum fine of $1m or up to 20 years in prison.

"Through remittances, American Somalis provide a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people," said Daniel Wordsworth, president of American Refugee Committee. "With famine and drought already impacting families throughout Somalia, the cessation of bank transfers will be devastating on a national scale."

Somalis in Minnesota – home to the US's biggest Somali community – have said they will find other ways to send money, but they are more laborious. One way is to send the remittances to another country, such as Kenya or Britain, where many Somalis use the Dahabshiil company, and then have a third party pick up the money and rewire it to Somalia.

[buglerbilly]

Somalia fighting intensifies as African Union troops make gains in Mogadishu

International force pushes outwards in capital city, seeking to oust al-Shabab militants from suburbs

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 January 2012 02.27 GMT


Ugandan soldiers with the African Union's Amisom mission in Somalia prepare a tank during an advance against al-Shabab militants in the capital, Mogadishu. Photograph: Reuters

Heavy fighting has broken out in Somalia's capital with African Union peacekeepers encountering resistance as they pushed to Mogadishu's outskirts for the first time, the latest move in an offensive against Islamist insurgents.

Hundreds of residents fled a northern Mogadishu neighbourhood after waking on Friday to the sound of mortars and gunfire. AU troops have largely pushed al-Shabab militants out of the city over the last year but pockets of resistance remain.

Abdirahman Ahmed, a resident, said he was awakened by "noisy mortars" on Friday, and that al-Shabab fighters appeared to be moving back into the northern neighborhood of Heliwa. "We want to flee now," he said. "People are nervous."

Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, the spokesman for the AU force, which is known as Amisom, said it was the first time AU forces had moved outside of Mogadishu.

"We are moving out of the city now so we can defend the city from outside now. Our troops have captured strategic bases from al-Shabab," Ankunda said.

The AU force of nearly 10,000 had been confined in previous years to small parts of Mogadishu but the push to expand its territory over the last year have been largely successful. The force is working alongside Somali troops but most of the gains have been made by the better trained and equipped troops from Uganda and Burundi.

Al-Shabab is also being pressured by Kenyan military forces in Somalia's south and Ethiopian forces in the west.

East African nations want the UN security council to authorise an increase in the number of troops inside Amisom to 17,000. Kenya has asked the UN for its forces inside Somalia to be integrated with the AU contingent.

Militants continue to carry out suicide and roadside bomb attacks in Mogadishu. At least six bombs have been found or exploded in the capital since Wednesday. A blast on Thursday killed six people.

Meanwhile the AU force commander, Major General Fred Mugisha, said around 3,000 Somali troops had not received their wages for the past four months. The AU is supposed to pay them with money donated by Italy but Mugisha said the Italians had not yet sent the cash. The delay in payment had caused some soldiers to desert their posts, he said. "It will have an impact on morale."

About 7,000 other Somali soldiers are paid by the US through a separate programme.

Somalia has not had a functioning government in more than 20 years. The current transitional government, whose mandate ends in August, is paralysed by political infighting. The UN is pressing government leaders to resolve their differences and expand government services to more areas of the country.

Somalia has also been dealing with a famine of the last six months that is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people. Friday was the six-month mark since the UN declared famine in Somalia on 20 July.

[buglerbilly]

Somali gunmen kidnap American citizen

Incident comes on same day as death in airstrike of senior insurgent leader with links to al-Qaida

Reuters

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 January 2012 21.59 GMT


An African Union Mission armoured personnel carrier in Somalia. An American citizen has been kidnapped in the country, officals have said. Photograph: Reuters

Gunmen have kidnapped an American man in the northern Somali town of Galkayo, officials say, the same day an airstrike killed a senior insurgent leader with ties to al-Qaida in another part of the country.

The gunmen surrounded the man's car shortly after he left the airport, said policeman Abdi Hassan Nur, who witnessed the incident. He said they then forced the American into another vehicle.

Galkayo is on the border between the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland and a region known as Galmudug. It is ruled by forces friendly to the UN-backed Somali government.

A minister from the Galmudug administration said the gunmen severely beat the foreigner's Somali companion when he begged them not to take the man. The minister spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

A staff member at the Embassy hotel, where the man was staying, said the American had gone to the airport to drop off an Indian colleague. The hotel said that the man had both American and German citizenship.

In October, gunmen kidnapped an American woman and a Danish man working for the Danish Demining Group from the same town. They are still being held.

Kidnapping for ransom is has become increasingly common in Somalia over the past five years. Currently at least four aid workers, a French military official, a British tourist taken from Kenya and hundreds of sailors are being held captive.

In a separate incident in the south of the country outside the capital of Mogadishu, a British-Lebanese commander of the al-Shabab militant group was killed along with two others when a missile struck the car they were travelling in, al-Shabab spokesman Sheik Ali Rage said.

Rage identified the British-Lebanese commander as Bilal-Berjawi, saying he was a close associate of late al-Qaida operative Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, who was killed by a Somali soldier in June 2011.

Further south, another airstrike killed six people near the insurgent stronghold of Kismayo on Saturday, according to Sheik Mohamud Abdi, a senior al-Shabab commander. Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October amid concerns that Somalia's 21-year-old civil war was spilling over the countries' joint border.

[buglerbilly]

US special forces free pirate hostages in night-time helicopter raid into Somalia

US Navy SEALs staged an overnight helicopter raid deep into Somalia's pirate heartlands to rescue two aid workers from America and Denmark held there for three months.


American Jessica Buchanan and Dane poul Hagen Thisted have been rescued by US Navy SEALs

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi

8:14AM GMT 25 Jan 2012

Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Thisted, 60, were freed unharmed after a gun battle that left nine pirates dead, sources in Somalia said.

As many as six helicopters were involved in the operation, using the cover of darkness to fly low and land at the village where the pair were being held, landing soon after 2am.

The apparently well-planned operation took less than an hour and no US troops were injured, it is understood.

It is the first time that Washington has ordered its troops into lawless Somalia on a hostage rescue mission, and carried a huge risk of public outcry in America if it had gone wrong.

No US boots have overtly been on Somali soil since the infamous Black Hawk Down debacle in 1993.

There have been several reports, however, that agents have carried out covert missions there in recent years as part of America's campaign against Islamic terrorism.

US officials refused to comment on Wednesday morning's mission, but the Danish Demining Group, the aid agency for which the pair worked, confirmed that they had been freed.

Both were "unharmed and at a safe location" and "are on their way to be reunited with their families", the organisation said in a statement.

The US military reportedly commandeered the use of an airport at Galkayo town, the largest settlement close to the pirates' strongholds in the centre of Somalia.

Locals were warned to keep away as helicopters landed and took off in the early hours of Wednesday morning. It is understood they flew in from Djibouti, a small country on Africa's Red Sea coast which hosts a US military airbase.

The hostages are believed to have been flown there immediately after being freed and officials were coordinating their onward travel back to the US and Denmark following medical checks.

A pirate who gave his name as Bilal Hussein told the Associated Press that he had spoken to pirates at the scene of the raid and they reported that nine pirates had been killed.

Other unconfirmed reports said that five pirates were taken by the Americans during the raid. It was not clear if they were alive or dead.

Miss Buchanan and Mr Thisted were kidnapped in October as they carried out programme work for the Danish Demining Group, under contract to the Danish Refugee Council.

Security teams hired to protect them were behind their kidnap, local officials said at the time they were seized.

The US operation raises the pressure on Britain to follow suit to free Judith Tebbutt, from Bishop's Stortford, Herts, who was kidnapped by Somali pirates during a holiday on neighbouring Kenya's coast.

A second American, Michael Scott Moore, a journalist, was kidnapped last week but was not part of Wednesday's rescue. Colleagues fear that he could now face increased ill-treatment in revenge for the US operation.

[buglerbilly]

SEAL Raid in Somalia Frees 2 Hostages

January 25, 2012

Associated Press|by Abdi Guled, Kimberly Dozier and Katharine Houreld



MOGADISHU, Somalia -- The same U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness early Wednesday and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage. Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed.

President Barack Obama authorized the mission by SEAL Team Six two days earlier, and minutes after he gave his State of the Union address to Congress he was on the phone with the American's father to tell him his daughter was safe.

The Danish Refugee Council confirmed the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were "on their way to be reunited with their families."

Buchanan, 32, and Thisted, 60, were working with a de-mining unit of the Danish Refugee Council when gunmen kidnapped the two in October.

The raiders came in quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening, a pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told The Associated Press by phone. Hussein said he was not present at the site but had spoken with other pirates who were, and that they told him nine pirates had been killed in the raid and three were "taken away."

A U.S. official confirmed media reports that the SEALs parachuted into the area before moving on foot to the target. The official said SEAL Team Six carried out the mission, the same team that killed al-Qaida leader bin Laden in Pakistan last May. The raid happened near the Somali town of Adado.

New intelligence emerged last week that Buchanan's health was "deteriorating rapidly," so Obama directed his security team to develop a rescue plan, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

"As Commander-in-Chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice."

A Western official said the rescuers and the freed hostages flew by helicopter to a U.S. military base called Camp Lemonnier in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been released publicly. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Camp Lemonnier just over a month ago. A key U.S. ally in this region, Djibouti has the only U.S. base in sub-Saharan Africa. It hosts the military's Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

Buchanan lived in neighboring Kenya before Somalia, and worked at a school in Nairobi called the Rosslyn Academy from 2007-09, said Rob Beyer, the dean of students. He described the American as easy to laugh and adventurous.

"There have been tears on and around the campus today," Beyer said. "She was well-loved by all her students."

The timing of the raid may have been made more urgent by Buchanan's medical condition. The Danish Refugee Council had been trying to work with Somali elders to win the hostages' freedom but had found little success.

"One of the hostages has a disease that was very serious and that had to be solved," Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal told Denmark's TV2 channel. Soevndal did not provide any more details. oevndal congratulated the Americans for the raid.

The Danish Refugee Council said both freed hostages are unharmed "and at a safe location." The group said in a separate statement that the two "are on their way to be reunited with their families."

Ann Mary Olsen, head of the Danish Refugee Council's international department, informed Hagen Thisted' family of of the successful military operation and said "they were very happy and incredibly relieved that it is over."

The two aid workers appear to have been kidnapped by criminals - sometimes referred to as pirates - and not by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab. As large ships at sea have increased their defenses against pirate attacks, gangs have looked for other money making opportunities like land-based kidnappings.

The Danish Refugee Council had earlier enlisted traditional Somali elders and members of civil society to seek the release of the two hostages.

"We are really happy with the successful release of the innocents kidnapped by evildoers," said Mohamud Sahal, an elder in Galkayo town, by phone. "They were guests who were treated brutally. That was against Islam and our culture ... These men [pirates] have spoiled our good customs and culture, so Somalis should fight back."

Buchanan and Hagen Thisted were seized in October from the portion of Galkayo town under the control of a government-allied clan militia. The aid agency has said that Somalis held demonstrations demanding the pair's quick release.

Their Somali colleague was detained by police on suspicion of being involved in their kidnapping.

The two hostages were working in northern Somalia for the Danish Demining Group, whose experts have been clearing mines and unexploded ordnance in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.

Several hostages are still being held in Somalia, including a British tourist, two Spanish doctors seized from neighboring Kenya, and an American journalist kidnapped on Saturday.

-- Associated Press reporters Julie Pace in Washington, Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark contributed to this report. Houreld reported from Nairobi and Dozier from Washington.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

After Tense Months, New Intel Prompted SOF Hostage Rescue

January 25, 2012

Military.com|by Philip Ewing



Having been held captive for months by Somali outlaws, the two hostages rescued Tuesday by American special operators were freed because "a convergence of factors" made it the right time to act, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said fear over one hostage's medical condition, as well as "actionable intelligence" received in the past week, prompted commanders to order the raid. He confirmed the FBI and the Department of Justice had been the U.S. agencies most involved with the victims' case since their kidnapping, but they had reached the point of requesting help from DoD to resolve the situation.

Although Little did not know when Justice had asked the Pentagon for help, he confirmed that President Obama ordered the raid on Monday, setting a chain of events in motion that continued to play out in Africa as he delivered his State of the Union address.

TV cameras even captured Obama congratulating Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as he shook hands in the House chamber Tuesday night, telling him "You did a great job today." Another top Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby, said that at that moment, Obama and Panetta had learned the hostages were safe, though the special operators had not yet "buttoned up" the raid.

The White House said Obama was congratulating Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey after learning about "the success of the mission" at 6:43 that evening.

Rescued were American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and 60 year-old Poul Thisted, a Dane, who had been kidnapped Oct. 25 near Galcayo, Somalia. They were working for the Danish Demining Group, helping with humanitarian assistance, when they were abducted "by a group of armed men," the organization said.

When American officials got wind recently that Buchanan's "medical condition" might be worsening in captivity, it added a "sense of urgency for us to move ahead," Little said. He did not detail how the U.S. had learned about it or the condition itself, out of respect for her privacy.

So early Wednesday local time, or Tuesday evening in the U.S., the American special operations team landed near the hostage-takers' "outdoor encampment" outside Gadaado, Somalia, U.S. Africa Command said.

"During the course of the operation, the rescue force patrolled to the location and confirmed the presence of Mrs. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted guarded by nine captors," it said. "All nine captors were killed during the assault. After securing the location, U.S. Special Operations Forces found Mrs. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted unharmed in the outdoor encampment."

None of the American troops were hurt. Obama called Buchanan's father Tuesday night to tell him she'd been rescued, the White House said Wednesday.

Kirby and Little also did not offer more details about what took place, nor identify the units or aircraft involved, nor describe the level of involvement of Somali government officials -- such as they are. Kirby did stress that "this was very much a joint mission," meaning more than one military service was involved, but he did not go further.

According to some press reports, the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group -- the elite SEAL team that also killed Osama bin Laden -- parachuted into Somalia for Tuesday's raid, but DoD did not publicly confirm that. It's possible Kirby's "joint" emphasis could have been meant to add subtle credit to Air Force or Army special operations aviation units that then flew in to extract the SEALs and the hostages.

Little said the Somali hostage-takers were "heavily armed and had explosives," but it was not clear whether they ever fired on the American troops. Little said that Tuesday's raid had included plans for "removing the kidnappers and placing them in detention," but Kirby added: "That opportunity did not present itself."

But that line conflicted an account in the Associated Press coverage of the incident, which quoted a local Somali who said the American troops had taken three people with them when they left.

© Copyright 2012 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Kenya says hits rebel convoy with helicopter gunships

NAIROBI | Sat Feb 4, 2012 10:52am EST

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's military has struck al Shabaab targets in one of the most devastating attacks against the al Qaeda-linked insurgents since it launched an operation in Somalia to crush the rebels last October, a Kenyan army officer said on Saturday.

Colonel Cyrus Oguna said two helicopter gunships hit a convoy of al Shabaab in Dalayat village in southern Somalia on Friday evening, following intelligence that the fighters were planning to attack Kenyan forces in nearby Bhadhadhe.

"This is one of the best attacks yet ever because we got them in their vehicles before they could disembark. Several al Shabaab were killed and many more injured," Oguna told a news conference.

Military spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir said the force estimated that more than 100 al Shabaab fighters were killed in the attack.

Oguna said nine vehicles mounted with weapons, known locally as "Technicals," and nine lorries were destroyed in the attack. There were no Kenyan casualties, he said.

Kenya began its military campaign against the rebels in southern Somalia after a series of cross-border raids by al Shabaab against targets on Kenyan soil, which threatened the east African nation's tourism business.

Al Shabaab dismissed the military statements as propaganda.

"Kenya has not destroyed or even attacked al Shabaab strongholds. It is propaganda" Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's spokesman, told Reuters.

The rebels said they attacked a convoy of Somali government troops on Saturday morning, near the border and close to El Wak town on the Kenyan side.

"We ambushed Somali troops near El Wak town today, then we fought them and killed one of their soldiers," Abu Musab said.

Hospital sources on the Kenyan side confirmed they were treating injured Somali soldiers after the attack.

It was not immediately clear if Kenyan troops, who are fighting alongside their Somali government counterparts, were in the convoy. It was also not immediately clear if al Shabaab suffered casualties in the ambush.

Oguna said the capture of Bhadhadhe and Hosungow town, which was also taken this week, would remove sources of revenue for the rebels because they were used for trafficking goods.

"We expect to see more ground being ceded by al Shabaab because they are weakened," he said.

The campaign against the rebels in the south, together with another by an African Union force in the capital Mogadishu, are aimed at stabilizing Somalia after two decades without an effective central government.

(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Additional reporting by Feisal Omar in Mogadishu and Noor Ali in Isiolo)

[buglerbilly]

Jihadist Wife on Her Marriage to a Militant

Father Laments Daughter’s Marriage to Al-Shabaab Fighter

By ABDI ABTIDOON 02/01/2012


Shuuto Juuni Mohamed

When the Ethiopian military entered Somalia in 2006 to assist the former Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's government, it triggered an influx of foreign fighters, who flooded Somalia to engage the Ethiopian forces under the auspices of a holy war, or jihad. The Somali government estimated that at least three thousand foreign fighters were based in Somalia at the time, though US government estimates are much lower, at about 500.

The foreigners were warmly welcomed in Somalia by the Islamist group al-Shabaab, who viewed them as an opportunity to better confront and expel the Ethiopian forces and gain popularity among the masses.

The foreigners have had a great impact on the Somali people. Friendships and intermarriages between them increased. Many foreigner fighters managed Al-Shabaab schools, centers for mobilization and training camps, and yet were barely visible among the public.

On August 6, 2011, these foreigners were expelled from Mogadishu following heavy fighting with African Union (AMISOM) and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces. They left behind their Somali wives and children.

Shuuto Juuni Mohamed and her five friends were married to their foreign teachers, who taught in a religious center known as "Markiz." The Mujahideen left them behind when TFG and AMISOM took control of Mogadishu.

In an exclusive interview with 20 year-old Shuuto, who is mother to a two year-old baby boy, she told Somalia Report about her marriage to a foreign al-Shabaab fighter and life after his departure.

How did you get married to a foreign fighter?

In 2008, I used to go an Islamic school in Bakaara Market. I did not think that the school was run by al-Shabaab fighters. Most of the lessons were in relation to jihad and hating the west. Our teachers also encouraged us to warmly welcome the foreign fighters who were with al-Shabaab.

They advised us to obey them and get married to them so that they would be a part of us. After attending school for more than a year, our Somali teachers were replaced by foreign instructors who got involved with some of the girls and, after mutual agreements and arrangements, married them.

A Sudanese man approached me and expressed his interest in me by proposing to me and I accepted. My family was unhappy with my decision but I was content and they had to accept it. A delegation from my husband met with my father to negotiate the matter, and his proposal was approved. A few days later, our wedding took place in Mogadishu.

What compelled you to marry a foreigner instead of a Somali man?

My family did not approve of my marriage but I was convinced of it since I was a jihadist supporting Islam. My friends and I believe in the ideals of these fighters, so marrying a foreigner seemed no different from marrying a Somali man.

What is your husband’s name and nationality?

His name is Masud Abdi Rabbi and he is from Sudan. He is a trainer and commander and has taken part in certain battles in Somalia since 2006 when the Islamic Courts Union controlled south and central Somalia.

Where is your husband now?

I don’t know where he lives but he calls me sometimes, I suspect that he is still in Somalia, probably in the south of Somalia.

Have you ever taken part in fights in Somalia?

No, but several times I went to battlegrounds in Mogadishu where fights were going on, with other girl friends. We were helping the fighters by supplying water, food and ammunition.

Do you worry about the future? What will become of you if your husband disappears?

I never worry because I am a faithful Muslim and I believe that my future is predestined. Other Mujahideen have promised to help me and they will not desert me or my son. My husband has not sent us a shilling for our upkeep since he left Mogadishu but his colleagues support us, like Fu'ad Shangole (a senior al-Shabaab official).

Somalia Report also managed to conduct an interview with Shuuto’s father, Juuni Mohamed.

"My daughter was brainwashed by a group of terrorists. I did not approve of her marriage to a foreigner who would eventually leave the country. This occurred when al-Shabaab was overpowered in Mogadishu and many foreigners fled to Yemen.

How did your daughter end up marrying someone you didn't know?

Actually, I had no choice in the matter. I was obliged to permit it since many families have been harmed when they refused similar engagements. Also, my daughter was ready to marry this foreign fighter and she was loyal to al-Shabaab. I later moved to the areas controlled by the government and when they found out about this they sent me threatening messages branding me as a fugitive.

At that time al-Shabaab was in control of large parts of Mogadishu and I feared they would catch me. However, they were defeated and forced to flee from Mogadishu.

So my daughter was deserted and she called me, telling me that she was all alone without her husband. I went to pick her up, but later she secretly moved to Elasha Biyaha where her other friends live. I worry that the Somali government will learn that my daughter is here and they may arrest and seize her foreign son, perceiving him as a young terrorist. She later came to Mogadishu to visit her sick sister but will return to Elasha Biyaha, where she officially resides now.

This is a difficult situation for me and my family. We fear we are at risk because of her child. The TFG may seize him and my daughter will not give up her son. I am displeased to have links with al-Qaeda, and that al-Shabaab is in a position to hunt me.

The presence of foreign Islamist militant fighters in Mogadishu has adversely affected family relations among locals. Shifting loyalties and faith-infused propaganda has resulted in complex relations that are dictated by fear and an innate will to survive. Family members like Juuni Mohamed and his daughter Shuuto are estranged by the ideals and opinions introduced by these alien fighters.

© Somalia Report 2012. All rights reserved.