Terrorists look to Somalia as an emerging safe haven

[General Duke]

Terrorists look to Somalia as an emerging safe haven

 

GLOBAL jihadists have picked Somalia as a potential new safe haven for al-Qaeda, sparking concern among security agencies already overstretched in fighting terrorism around the world. In effect without a functioning government for 15 years, Somalia has long been racked by chaos and has recently witnessed the rise of Islamist groups, especially in its capital, Mogadishu.

 

The new anxiety about Somalia - strategically located in the Horn of Africa - follows the arrest of eight members of an alleged terrorist cell in Yemen, including three Australians. Yemeni security services have said the men were al-Qaeda members planning an arms smuggling operation to Somalia across the Gulf of Aden.

 

The director of terrorism studies at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, Rohan Gunaratna, cited a convergence of interests between Somalia's rising Islamist groups and what he termed the "global jihad movement" of al-Qaeda members and sympathisers. "Somalia is an emerging training ground for jihadis and Yemen is a very important launching pad for al-Qaeda operations," he told the Herald this week.

 

"After having suffered the loss of Afghanistan, they want to control a state and it's likely Somalia will be the next venue." After more than 10 years of feuding warlords and ethnic groups, the Union of Islamic Courts this year took control of Mogadishu, surrounding regions and the south and centre of the country.

 

Washington says the leader of the Islamic Courts' policymaking body, Hassan Dahir Aweys, has terrorist links. Mogadishu has threatened to invade neighbouring, mostly Christian, Ethiopia. There is some dispute over the extent of direct links between al-Qaeda and the Islamic Courts, but they undoubtedly share an ideology and there is a wide and well established al-Qaeda network in East Africa.

 

Sudan was Osama bin Laden's safe haven during the 1990s, until he was forced to leave for Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

 

Yemen, somewhat reluctantly, has agreed to help the US in cracking down on jihadists infiltrating Somalia but has concentrated its efforts on foreign fighters rather than locals.

 

"Somalia is a new theatre for foreigners, including Australians, to experience fighting and the jihad," Dr Gunaratna said. "In the past, they went to Chechnya, Algeria, Afghanistan and the Philippines to fight jihad. Now, they are going to Somalia."

 

No formal charges have been laid against the eight people arrested in Yemen last month: the Australians Abdullah Ayub, Mohammed Ayub and Marat Sumolsky, and a German, a Dane, a Briton and a Somali.

 

There are reports that the German has already been freed and that Sumolsky will also be released. The Herald understands that their arrests were part of a much larger investigation that is continuing.

 

Source: SYdney Morning herald