Somalia on track to becoming next Afghanistan

[Jacaylbaro]

Evidence is growing that the Taliban are filtering out of havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into East Africa, bringing sophisticated terrorist tactics, including suicide attacks.

 

The alarming shift, according to US military and counter-terror officials, fuels worries that Somalia increasingly is on track to become the next Afghanistan, a sanctuary where Al Qaeda-linked groups could train and plan their attacks against the West.

 

So far, officials say the number of foreign fighters who had moved from southwest Asia and the Pakistan-Afghan border region to the Horn of Africa was small, perhaps two to three dozen.

 

A similarly small cell of plotters was responsible for the devastating 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And the cluster of extremists now believed to be operating inside East Africa could pass on sophisticated training and attack techniques gleaned after seven years at war against the US and allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, US officials said.

 

“There is a level of activity that is troubling, disturbing,” US Gen William “Kip” Ward, head of US Africa Command, told AP, adding that American officials already were seeing extremist factions in East Africa sharing information and techniques.

 

Several military and counter-terror officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, cautioned that the movements of Al Qaeda does not suggest an abandonment of the ungoverned Pakistan border region as a haven.

 

Instead, the shift is viewed by the officials more as an expansion of Al Qaeda’s influence, and a campaign to gather and train more recruits in a region already rife with militants.

 

Last month, Osama Bin Laden had made it clear in an audiotape that Al Qaeda had set its sights on Somalia, an impoverished and largely lawless country in the Horn of Africa. In the 11-minute tape released on the Internet, Bin Laden is heard urging Somalis to overthrow their new president and to support their jihadist “brothers” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iraq. Officials said in recent years they had seen occasional signs that sophisticated Al Qaeda terror techniques were gaining ground in East Africa.

 

Military and counter-terrorism officials cautioned that the movements of the Al Qaeda militants do not suggest they are abandoning the ungoverned Pakistan border region as a safe haven. Instead, the shift is viewed as an expansion of Al Qaeda’s influence in a region already rife with home-grown militants.

 

In the past, officials said, suicide attacks tended to be frowned on by African Muslims, creating something of an impediment to Al Qaeda’s efforts to sell that aspect of its terrorism tactics.

 

But on Oct. 29, 2008, suicide bombers killed more than 20 people in five attacks in Somalia, targeting a U.N. compound, the Ethiopian Consulate, the presidential palace in the autonomous Somaliland region and two intelligence facilities in Puntland.

 

The coordinated assaults, officials said, were a watershed moment, suggesting a new level of sophistication and training.

 

Ward said U.S. Africa Command is working to improve security in eastern Africa. But meanwhile, he said, the ties between the terror groups are continuing to grow.

“I think they’re all a threat,” Ward said of both the foreign and African militants. “Right now it’s clearly a threat that the Africans have, but in today’s global society that threat can be exported anywhere with relative ease.”

 

A U.S. terrorism report which was published in the newspaper the Daily Nations on Saturday, said Al Qaeda allies are active in Kenya.

 

The annual report published by the U.S. State Department warned Al Qaeda agents responsible for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam remain at large and currently pose "the most serious threat to Kenya.

 

The report contained an overview of the expanding security ties between the United States and Kenya aimed at preventing terrorists from staging attacks inside Kenya and apprehending suspected terrorists.

 

It said a group of Al Qaeda supporters is active at the Kenyan coast and in parts of Nairobi.

 

In the past year, Washington said it helped the Kenyan army develop a Ranger Strike Force, an elite counter-terrorism unit capable of conducting operations against infiltrators and armed groups.

 

The United States also gave training and unspecified equipment to the Kenyan navy for maritime interdiction operations in Kenyan waters. U.S. State Department's Anti-terrorism Assistance program also provided training and equipment to the country's Maritime Police Unit.

 

The report said the U.S. military's Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa is currently installing a Maritime Security and Safety Information System in key positions along the Kenyan coast.

 

The measures were largely in response to threats posed by two Al Qaeda operatives, who allegedly carried out the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies.

 

U.S. intelligence analysts said the operatives, the Comoros-born Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan national Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, have eluded capture through the help of Al Qaeda’s support network in the coastal region of Kenya and in parts of the capital Nairobi.

 

It said that "the escalating conflict in Somalia provides a permissive environment for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda operatives and al-Shabaab."

 

While Kenya's border with Somalia remains officially closed, "some Kenyan officials characterized the closure as irrelevant, given the ease of crossing in both directions," the report noted.

 

These high-level expressions of concerns about terrorist activity in East Africa represent the latest one in a series of recent warnings by U.S. officials concerning growing threats to Kenya.

 

However, the Kenyan authorities dismissed threats, saying the east African nation was very far from any threats. "Kenya as a country is very safe. We will study the report and take the necessary action," police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said.

 

Reports indicate that in today's Somalia, al-Shabab ("The Youths"), a terrorist organization in the vein of the Taliban, is the landlocked answer for the "pirates" of the Indian Ocean. That group asserted responsibility for firing mortar rounds at a plane carrying U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, D., N.J., out of Mogadishu on April 13.

 

David Shinn, former State Department coordinator in Somalia and the U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia from 1996 to 1999, told me that while it's important to avoid overstating the links between Al Qaeda and al-Shabab, those links do exist.

 

Indeed, Osama bin Laden praised al-Shabab and others in an audio message released last month: "Your patience and resolve supports your brothers in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb, Pakistan, and the rest of the fields of jihad."

 

Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, a former Al Qaeda operative in Nairobi who is wanted for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is now among the al-Shabab corps. So, too, are Abu Taha al-Sudani, formerly an Al Qaeda leader and financier in East Africa, and Salah Ali Salah Nabhan, wanted for questioning related to a 2002 hotel bombing in Mombasa, Kenya.

 

It's dangerous to label this simply a "piracy" problem. Or to subscribe to the notion that sending multiple warships to aid one captain held captive by four young "pirates" was over the top. Terrorism -- whether motivated by religious fanaticism, perverse national pride, or money -- is already a large part of the thread of the region. And those are conditions ripe for organizations like al-Shabab and Al Qaeda to exploit.

 

It has been two years since Hunt expressed to me his concern that the Horn of Africa could become another Afghanistan. In the years since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has let the real Afghanistan fester back into a hub of terrorism and extremism.

[Sherban Shabeel]

Nah man, Somalia is on track to becoming the next Atlantis.

[MoonLight1]

And Somaliland is the next PANSHIR VALLY, and Riyaale is the next Ahmed shah masuud.lol

oops and SNM is the next NA or Northern Alliance, or shall we call the NORTHERN WEST ALLIANCE.lol