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INSIDE AFRICA

The Hunt for al Qaeda in Somalia

Aired January 13, 2007 - 12:30:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JEFF KOINANGE, GUEST HOST: Hello, and welcome to a special edition of INSIDE AFRICA. I'm Jeff Koinange coming to you this week from Liboi on the Kenya-Somalia border.
Now this week, we take a close-up look at the hunt for al Qaeda here, in the Horn of Africa. We'll also examine U.S. involvement in the region, and we'll take a closer look at why some people say this is such fertile ground for terrorism.

But first, a look at more recent events in Washington's first overt involvement in the region in more than a dozen years. Barbara Starr has more on the lead-up to last Sunday's air strike.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. says the offensive against the alleged al Qaeda camp followed weeks of close cooperation between U.S. and African intelligence services. And that reports indicated remnants of Somalia's recently ousted militia, the Islamic Courts Union and its al Qaeda leaders, were at the training camp along the coastline near Somalia's southern border.

U.S. officials say five top al Qaeda operatives, among them Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Abu Taha al-Sudani, and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, wanted for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, in which hundreds died, had fled Mogadishu and headed south after the ICU fell from power.

The ICU denies any involvement with al Qaeda, but the U.S. says intelligence shows al Qaeda stepped up its operations in Somalia after the Islamic militia took control of most of the country in June.

Jendayi Frazer is the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

JENDAYI FRAZER, U.S. STATE DEPT., AFRICAN AFFAIRS: We had felt that and seen evidence, intelligence evidence that these three al Qaeda operatives were also very much influencing the leadership of the Council of Islamic Courts. For example, they were providing logistics, providing fuel, arms, et cetera, to the militias.

STARR: Rear Admiral Richard Hunt commands the U.S. taskforce in the Horn of Africa:

REAR ADM. RICHARD HUNT, U.S. TASK FORCE COMMANDER: And that's where we're really concerned about, as there seem to be much more recruiting, much more training going on. They were positioning themselves to extend their area of influence beyond the Somali borders.

STARR: Neighboring Ethiopia was also worried by the prospect of a hard- line Islamic regime next door. Its invasion to oust the Islamic militia met with no objections from Washington.

Still, the storm is far from over. Concerns are growing that Ethiopians, who are disliked by much of the Somali population, could be seen as an occupying force.

The new government in Somalia is very fragile, and there is concern about an emerging power vacuum. Mogadishu remains racked with gun battles, explosions and violence. The warlords show little inclination to disarm, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, is calling for Islamic fighters to regroup and start a new insurgency.

The Somali government says they want U.S. troops back in the country to help with security. The Bush administration has made clear it will offer assistance, but it will not send troops into Mogadishu. The last time U.S. troops entered the capital, images of servicemen's bodies being dragged through the streets were beamed across television screens around the world.

This is the first known direct U.S. military involvement in Somalia since the failed "Black Hawk Down" mission in the 1990s. There are now indications that U.S. operations in Somalia against the al Qaeda will continue for some time to come.

Barbara Starr, CNN, for INSIDE AFRICA.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: Now, the ongoing U.S. offensive and Ethiopia's move into Somalia has sent many of the alleged al Qaeda fighters on the run in this direction, towards the Kenyan border. So, who is going to stop them crossing over, and what happens to the thousands of Somali refugees trapped at the border with nowhere to run? Well, we hitched a ride with Kenyan security forces patrolling what many here call a porous border.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE (voice-over): On patrol with Kenyan security forces heading towards the bandit-infested Somalia border. These are the men responsible for making sure fleeing Islamic Courts Union members don't escape into Kenya. There's also a growing fear in Kenya of retaliation, after this week's air strikes by U.S. forces on suspected al Qaeda members in Somalia missed their intended targets.

Add to that the fact that Kenya has neither the resources nor the personnel to police the border it shares with Somalia, stretching for more than 1,000 kilometers.

Right now, there is just a few troops visible on the Kenyan side, and about the same number on the Somalia side. Kenya recently shut down its borders with Somalia, but as we were about to find out, shut down is a very loose term here.

(on camera): To give you an idea of what people mean when they say that the Kenya-Somalia border is porous, I'm now standing on the Somalia side. A few paces to my right, and I'm in Kenya, and those men behind me could easily cross over into Kenya, because the security forces can only police so much. Because guess what - there's more than 1,000 kilometers between Kenya and Somalia, and a lot of it is as porous as this.

(voice-over): On the Somalia side, we find a group of refugees sitting obediently on the invisible dividing line. Many have been here for days, some from as far away as Mogadishu, all claiming refugee status. But aid agencies don't have the authority to allow them into Kenya.

Thirty-six-year old Ahmed Abdi is among the refugees. He fled with his wife and six children, but he's left them behind in a little village just beyond the Somali side.

AHMED ABDI, SOMALI REFUGEE: The situation on the border, actually, is very tense, because there is a lot of displacement people who came from very far distance, after Kismaayo, Mogadishu, and the -- even the (inaudible), they want to cross, because there's a lot of, you know, what you call - a disaster.

KOINANGE: Abdi says there are thousands like him just across the border, and many are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

ABDI: There is no NGO assisting these people, and this will (inaudible), and the fact is, the people, the leading (ph) ones, they're supposed to - especially, these are children here, who are supposed to actually (inaudible), supposed to cross into the Kenya side. The U.S. actually is supposed to come and, you know, and receive those people.

KOINANGE: Such help could take weeks, maybe even months, but the lucky few who made it this far are willing to wait it out. And so they sit, and wait, and hope.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: When we come back, we continue our look at the hunt for al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. What has made Somalia a key battleground in the U.S. war on terror, and how far is the U.S. willing to take it?

Stay with us. You're watching a special edition of INSIDE AFRICA.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOINANGE: Somalia has been gripped in violent turmoil since clan- based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad-Barre in 1991. As soon as Barre was deposed, the warlords turned on each other, plunging the Horn of Africa nation into deadly chaos.

Northwestern clans declared an independent republic of Somaliland in 1991, but it isn't recognized by any government. The northeastern region is relatively peaceful, and functions as a semi-autonomous state, but does not seek independence. And the south is riddled with strife between rival factions.

The present fragile interim government emerged in 2004 when the main warlords and politicians signed a deal setting up a new parliament, which appointed a president.

Somalia was created in 1960, with the merger of British and Italian Somaliland. Its 8 million people are predominantly Sunni Muslim farmers.

Somalia has no natural resources, and most people earn a meager living by farming.

The country is often plagued with droughts, dust storms and floods.

The two major health problems are periodic widespread famine and contaminated water. Those factors, combined with clan fighting, have killed more than a million people since the early 1990s.

(END VDIEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: Welcome back. Now, U.S. involvement in Somalia goes back more than a dozen years. In 1992, U.S. Marines led an international effort to restore order to Somalia, but warlords repulsed the effort, and the casualties suffered in the infamous mission described in the book "Black Hawk Down" set a precedent that endures to this day.

After that, Washington is widely believed to have supported the warlords, who kept the nation in a state of anarchy for years. That support shifted in 2004 to the current interim government, which remains fragile and unable to assert its power. The U.S. also maintains a counterterrorism force in Djibouti, a small former French colony bordering Somalia's northwestern tip.

With more on U.S. involvement in the region, we spoke to Princeton Lyman, with the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PRINCETON LYMAN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: There's been credible intelligence that some of those involved in the bombing of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding out in Somalia. That - and we have spent - the United States have spent quite a bit of time since then in trying to apprehend them within Somalia without success. But that intelligence I think has been considered fairly reliable.

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you think that it's been a wise move to shift from the policy of supporting the warlords and go to a policy of supporting Ethiopia, supporting the interim government set up by the U.N.?

LYMAN: Well, I think the support of the warlords proved to be a very bad decision. We tried to support the warlords against the Islamic Courts Unions, and that failed miserably. We then fell back on supporting the transitional federal government, which is a very weak government, but at least it had some international standing, but was very strongly backed by the Ethiopians.

Some of us felt that there should be an effort to negotiate and encourage moderation on the part of the Islamic Court Union movement, because a war, even though it's successful in terms of the Ethiopians' initial success, creates a real vacuum inside of Somalia.

CLANCY: Ambassador Lyman, when you look at the situation now, there is no doubt that Somalia changed the U.S. commitment to Africa, the way it interacts with the continent. As the U.S. examines this now, is less more? Meaning less U.S. direct involvement in Somalia , more beneficial for Somalia and for the - and for the foreign policy goals of the U.S.

LYMAN: Well, you know, it goes back to what Colin Powell said about the invasion of Iraq -- if you break it, you own it. What happened is, with the Ethiopians having driven the Islamic Court Union movement out, and the international community supporting them, and certainly the U.S. supporting them, now the question is : What do you do about Somalia?

You have a very weak transitional federal government, you have Ethiopian troops there who are highly resented. So I think the U.S. effort now is going to focus first on trying to get some other African peacekeepers in there so that the Ethiopians can withdraw, and then to see whether this transitional federal government can really create a broad- based government. If it cannot, we're going to see a lot more turmoil in that region, and we will inevitably be involved.

CLANCY: What can - what should Somalis be able to expect of Washington?

LYMAN: I think in the first instance, the U.S. will try very hard and put up some of the money, although not enough is yet available, to get a substitute peacekeeping force in, so they - Somali people don't just turn entirely against the Ethiopians, and you have a kind of insurgency there against the Ethiopians.

Then, I hope the United States will work with the African neighbors and other neighbors to Somalia to help this transitional federal government really reach out and bring in more elements of Somali society into a government.

And then, of course, there will need to be humanitarian and economic assistance. It's going to be a very big task, but I think now, unlike the last 12 years, we can't just walk away from Somalia and just assume that the chaos there doesn't affect us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: Princeton Lyman with the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, speaking to us earlier.

Now, when we come back - how pervasive are the (inaudible) of terror in this volatile region of the Muslim world? We shift our focus to the core of U.S. and international concern - the terrorists themselves. Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That area is a safe haven of international terrorists. So we're all cooperating in order to find out there whereabouts, and sometimes if they're not coming over (inaudible), we have to eliminate them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE (voice-over): The Horn of Africa has been considered a major source of global terrorism by the United States for the better part of a decade. The region became a suspected terrorist hotspot in the 1990s, when Sudan, then ruled by the National Islamic Front, provided a haven for terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

The first anti-American attacks blamed directly on Osama bin Laden came on August 7th, 1998, when terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 220 people and wounding more than 4,000 others.

Then in 2000, a small bomb-laden boat exploded alongside the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding 39 others.

After 9/11, the U.S. war on terror moved to Afghanistan, headquarters of bin Laden's network. Two years later, it was onto Iraq. And now, America has taken the fight back to Africa, still in search of those original bombers in Kenya and Tanzania.

Among the primary al Qaeda targets of the recent U.S. air strikes in Somalia -- Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, on the FBI's most wanted list as the suspected mastermind of the two embassy bombings. He's also suspected of being behind the 2002 bombing of an Israeli beach resort in Kenya that killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis, as well as the near-simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: Welcome back. So, is the Horn of Africa indeed a hotbed of terrorist activity, and if so, why? Our Ralitsa Vassileva spoke to John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN PRENDERGAST, INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: I think the reality is that there are really only a few suspected members of the East African al Qaeda cell that have moved in and out of Somalia over the last few years. The - the real problem, of course, is that for so long there was no way to monitor. There was, in fact, intelligence black holes in large swaths of Somalia, where these guys could be - have safe haven, and be given sanctuary.

And, you know, the question of whether in the long run, there are actually -- there's potential for recruitment by al Qaeda is another story - is another question altogether. I think the real immediate and midterm threat is members of terrorist organizations from other areas coming and using Somalia as a transshipment point, as a planning area and as a sanctuary.

When you look at the - the national security strategy of the United States, when you look at all the literature on what are the conditions that are right for incubating a terrorist threat, Somalia fits the bill for all of these measures, and so I think it's really a question of how, A, in the first place, do you contain it, which is, of course, what the military strikes in Somalia have done over the last couple of weeks. But then, how do you deal with it and eradicate the real threat in the long run, which the military effort has not done at all.

RALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN ANCHOR: I was also reading that the Ethiopian operations in the country, the U.S. support for the Ethiopians is breeding a lot of extremist sentiment.

PRENDERGAST: Well, I think that it's probably too soon to say that. I think that we need to be clear about what it's doing. It's hardening people's attitudes against the United States and against the Ethiopian occupation. This then gives the potential for the Islamists who are displaced from power, the jihadists who had brought the concern of the international community that resulted in the military invasion by Ethiopia, it's those guys having to deal -- and the potential now to recruit from a larger base, because people feel, Somalis feel that the United States and the Ethiopians only care about their interests, not about the interests of Somalia, and that they will destroy Somalia, if they have to, to achieve their own interest. And I think that will lead to more and more people joining in the long run the recruitment drive of the Islamists, and therefore undermine the counterterrorism objectives in the long run.

VASSILEVA: How strong are the ties between the Islamists and al Qaeda?

PRENDERGAST: I think that, you know, the Islamic Courts, which were the - was the entity that controlled most of southern Somalia during the six months, the last six months of 2006, there were a couple of those courts -- it was a coalition of a number of courts, and there were individual locations that would control the - the local area, that had a little Sharia court, which they held hearings, and then they had a militia that basically ensured stability. And two of those courts had linkages with some of the al Qaeda operatives, providing sanctuary and safe haven.

So I think it wasn't a widespread phenomenon, but there were -- there are elements within the coalition of Islamic Courts that are sympathetic to al Qaeda and extremist jihadist ideology. That's the concern that the international community needs to continue to be focused on and to figure out what's the best way to neutralize that. And I think that, again, in the short run, you know, just placing militarily the administration that the courts had set up definitely disrupts their ability to operate, but in the long run, I think we're in much worse shape because it gives them a recruiting bonanza.

VASSILEVA: And I can't help thinking about another failed peacekeeping effort, the "Black Hawk down" incident in 1993, which basically put the world off in helping Somalia in any way. And I really see a lot of words coming from the international community, but few commitments to actually go back in there and help out.

PRENDERGAST: But it's putting the cart before the horse. Frankly, I don't understand what the United Nations, the Bush administration and the African Union are trying to do. In Darfur and in Somalia both, they're putting the cart before the horse. They're trying to get a peacekeeping operation on the ground before you have a peace deal.

We need to invest in diplomacy now, get the peace process and peace agreement finalized, the power sharing deal in Somalia. Then you can deploy a peacekeeping force. No one is going to send their troops into Somalia now, in the absence of a peace deal. It's not going to work. So I think it would be suicide, in fact, to send your troops in now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: That was John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, speaking to us earlier.

Well, that just about wraps up this week's special look at the hunt for al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. I'm Jeff Koinange, reporting to you from Liboi on the Kenya-Somalia border.

Now, please join us next week when we'll take you inside Zimbabwe to find out why this once promising nation is spiraling deeper into an economic and humanitarian crisis.

Thanks for joining us. The news continues in just a moment.

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