Eran of Arcadia said:I haven't heard anything about it. What news sources? And is it the US government, private citizens, or US-run arms companies? Just wondering.
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7041247
By contrast, Mogadishu's secular warlords look busted. They formed a self-proclaimed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism earlier this year, with the aim of turning back the Islamists' influence and catching one or two al-Qaeda suspects who might have been hiding in Mogadishu. That was enough to win them the backing of the CIA, which, say several sources, funnelled money to them, with disastrous results. “Everyone was aghast at what the Americans were doing,” says a European diplomat. Some in the State Department and the CIA privately bemoan what they see as both the half-heartedness of the operation and a failure to foresee its messy results. An American diplomat in Nairobi responsible for overseeing Somali politics was removed from his post for speaking out. Some of his dissenting reports did not, apparently, reach Washington.
One result is that the United States is more unpopular than ever in Mogadishu. American flags are being burned even in quieter parts of the city; anti-American rhetoric is finding a wider audience. Memories have been rekindled of 1993, when 18 American peacekeepers were killed in Mogadishu after the downing of two helicopters and several hundred Somalis were killed, mostly by the Americans, during the rescue attempt.
America has also been widely blamed, both inside Somalia and among exile groups and diplomats in nearby countries, for egging on the warlords who have been accused of sparking the gun battles that have flared on and off in northern Mogadishu for the past month. Some 350 fighters and civilians have been killed, and at least 2,000 wounded. One of the two hospitals in Mogadishu being run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is struggling to bring in medical supplies, has been taken over by a warlord's militia.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2006051...TiQLIUD;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
NAIROBI (AFP) - Covert United States support for an alliance of Somali warlords now fighting Islamic militias for control of Mogadishu may violate a 14-year-old
United Nations arms embargo, diplomats said.
As the two factions clashed for a fifth straight day on the streets of the capital, provoking international concern about rising violence, the diplomats said Washington's backing of the warlord alliance was legally questionable.
The comments came a day after a panel of experts monitoring the 1992 arms embargo on Somalia told the UN Security Council it was investigating clandestine "financial support" to the alliance from an unnamed country.
Washington has not publicly confirmed its support for the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) but US officials and informed Somali sources have told AFP the group has received US money.
The cash, amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, was delivered by former US military and intelligence officials on at least two occasions to Mogadishu warlords in January and February, sources in Somalia told AFP.
The ARPCT was formed shortly after the second injection of US funds, in a bid to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts. Some believe the courts are protecting Muslim extremists, including Al-Qaeda operatives.
Although US officials say Washington has not supplied the warlord alliance with weapons or military equipment, diplomats said the money could be a breach of the embargo.
"Money is fungible (mutually interchangeable)," one Nairobi-based diplomat told AFP. "It may not be weapons coming in by ship or truck but if the cash is going to buy military equipment that would be a violation."
"It's all about how the money is used and the intent of the donor," said a second. "Funding the alliance was always a risk for stability but it may have been illegal."
The US program is controversial -- not least because of Washington's disastrous military intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s -- and Somalia's fledgling and largely powerless transition government has complained about it.
The government, which argues the US support is fuelling divisions, has long sought the lifting of the arms embargo. But it wants it removed so it can build up its own security forces.
The Security Council has several times rejected the government's request.
The embargo was imposed shortly after Somalia descended into anarchy with the 1991 ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre. But it has been widely ignored by many countries seeking to back competing warlords in the country.
In its report to the Security Council, the UN monitoring group said "a widening circle of states are providing arms and military-related support to Somalia in violation of the arms embargo".
The panel identified six nations -- Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- believed to have violated the embargo since December 2005 but made pointed reference to "clandestine" involvement by another country.
"The Monitoring Group was informed that during January and February 2006, and at other times not specified ... financial support was being provided to help organize and structure a militia force created to counter the threat posed by the growing militant fundamentalist movement in central and southern Somalia," it said.
"The Monitoring Group did not specify third-country involvement because at the time of the writing of the present report it had not completed its investigation," it said.
Although the panel did not name the country, the timing of the support detailed in the report coincides with the deliveries of US funds mentioned to AFP by Somali sources.
The US embassy in Nairobi, which US officials say is coordinating the covert support for the warlord alliance, declined to comment and referred questions to Washington.
Last week, the US State Department acknowledged the United States was working with "responsible individuals" in Somalia to prevent "terror taking root in the Horn of Africa" but declined to specify who its partners were.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060605...42QLIUD;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
John Prendergast, who monitors Somalia for the think-tank International Crisis Group, said he learned during meetings with alliance members in Somalia that the CIA was financing the warlords with cash payments.
Prendergast estimated that CIA-operated flights into Somalia have been bringing in $100,000 to $150,000 per month for the warlords. The flights remain in Somalia for the day, he said, so that U.S. agents can confer with their allies.
The Bush administration has maintained a silence over allegations in recent months of a U.S. proxy war against Islamist radicalism in the country.
Pentagon spokesman Navy Lt. Commander Joe Carpenter reiterated the administration's position that the United States stands ready to "disrupt the efforts of terrorists wherever they may be active."
SECRET SUPPORT
Claims of clandestine U.S. support for secular warlords who call themselves the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism" have been aired by Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf and independent analysts.
A
United Nations team charged with monitoring a U.N. arms embargo against Somalia has also said it is investigating an unnamed country's clandestine support for the warlords alliance as a possible violation of the weapons ban.
The former intelligence officials said the operation was controlled by the Pentagon through U.S. Central Command's Combined Joint Task Force for the Horn of Africa, a counterterrorism mission based in neighboring Djibouti established after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
On Monday, after months of fighting that has killed around 350 people, the Islamic militia claimed control of Mogadishu and a warlord militiaman said his coalition's leaders were fleeing the capital.
U.S. intelligence has produced no conclusive evidence of an active al Qaeda presence in Somalia, experts said. But there have been reports of al Qaeda members in the country, including suspects in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa.
"The Pentagon, and now the U.S. government as a whole, is convinced these are elements for establishing a religious-based government like the Taliban, that could be exploited by al Qaeda," said a former intelligence official knowledgeable about U.S. courterterrorism activities.
The CIA has given its warlord allies surveillance equipment for tracking al Qaeda suspects and appeared to view the warlords as a counter to the influence of Afghanistan-trained Islamist militia leader Aden Hashi Aryo, Prendergast said.
"By circumventing the new government and going straight to individual warlords, the U.S. is perpetuating and even deepening Somalia's fundamental problems, and compromising long-term efforts to combat extremism," Prendergast said.
Somalia, a country of 10 million people, has had no effective central authority since 1991 when warlords overthrew military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The central government is based temporarily in the town of Baidoa and has been unable to control events in Mogadishu.
Americans have bad memories of U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1993, when 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and 79 injured in a battle with guerrillas loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid after entering the country to support a relief effort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/world/africa/08intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report.
Around that time, the State Department's political officer for Somalia, Michael Zorick, who had been based in Nairobi, was reassigned to Chad after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing Washington's policy of paying Somali warlords.
One American government official who traveled to Nairobi this year said officials from various government agencies working in Somalia had expressed concern that American activities in the country were not being carried out in the context of a broader policy.
"They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic framework," the official said. "And they realized that there might be negative implications to what they are doing."
The details of the American effort in Somalia are classified, and American officials from several different agencies agreed to discuss them only after being assured of anonymity. The officials included supporters of the C.I.A.-led effort as well as critics. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the American Embassy in Kenya.
Asked about the complaints made by embassy officials in Kenya, Thomas Casey, a State Department spokesman, said: "We're not going to discuss any internal policy discussions. The secretary certainly encourages individuals in the policy making process to express their views and opinions."
Several news organizations have reported on the American payments to the Somali warlords. Reuters and Newsweek were the first to report about Mr. Zorick's cable and reassignment to Chad. The extent and location of the C.I.A.'s efforts, and the extent of the internal dissent about these activities, have not been previously disclosed.
Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of high-level suspects.
Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes. The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital.
"This has blown up in our face, frankly," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive field experience in Somalia.
"We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about," said Mr. Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton administration.
The American activities in Somalia have been approved by top officials in Washington and were reaffirmed during a National Security Council meeting about Somalia in March, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the March meeting, at a time of fierce fighting in and around Mogadishu, a decision was made to make counterterrorism the top policy priority for Somalia.
Porter J. Goss, who recently resigned as C.I.A. director, traveled to Kenya this year and met with case officers in the Nairobi station, according to one intelligence official. It is not clear whether the payments to Somali warlords were discussed during Mr. Goss's trip.
The American ambassador in Kenya, William M. Bellamy, has disputed assertions that Washington is to blame for the surge in violence in Somalia. And some government officials this week defended the American counterterrorism efforts in the country.
"You've got to find and nullify enemy leadership," one senior Bush administration official said. "We are going to support any viable political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism."
In May, the United Nations Security Council issued a report detailing the competing efforts of several nations, including Ethiopia and Eritrea, to provide Somali militias and the transitional Somali government with money and arms — activities the report said violated the international arms embargo on Somalia.
"Arms, military matériel and financial support continue to flow like a river to these various actors," the report said.
The United Nations report also cited what it called clandestine support for a so-called antiterrorist coalition, in what appeared to be a reference to the American policy. Somalia's interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf, first criticized American support for Mogadishu's warlords in early May during a trip to Sweden.
"We really oppose American aid that goes outside the government," he said, arguing that the best way to hunt members of Al Qaeda in Somalia was to strengthen the country's government.
Senior American officials indicated this week that the United States might now be willing to hold discussions with the Islamic militias, known as the Islamic Courts Union. President Bush said Tuesday that the first priority for the United States was to keep Somalia from becoming a safe haven for terrorists.
The American payments to the warlords have been intended at least in part to help gain the capture of a number of suspected Qaeda operatives who are believed responsible for a number of deadly attacks throughout East Africa.
Since the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, American officials have been tracking a Qaeda cell whose members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and parts of the Middle East.
Shortly after an attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and the failed attempt to shoot down a plane bound for Israel that took off from the Mombasa airport, both in November 2002, the United States began informally reaching out to the Somali clans in the hopes that local forces might provide intelligence about suspected members of Al Qaeda in Somalia.
This approach has brought occasional successes. According to an International Crisis Group report, militiamen loyal to warlord Mohammed Deere, a powerful figure in Mogadishu, caught a suspected Qaeda operative, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, in April 2003 and turned him over to American officials.
According to Mr. Prendergast, who has met frequently with Somali clan leaders, the C.I.A. over the past year has increased its payments to the militias in the hopes of putting pressure on Al Qaeda.
The operation, while blessed by officials in Washington, did not seem to be closely coordinated among various American national security agencies, he said.
"I've talked to people inside the Defense Department and State Department who said that this was not a comprehensive policy," he said. "It was being conducted in a vacuum, and they were largely shut out."
Even the Somali interim president in exile, who by the war only maintains his position by virtue of support from the West is criticising America for intefering.
And before people say, war on terror, blah, blah, blah, the Islamists in Somalia don't seem to be like the Taliban. Despite their anti-US stance (and who can blame them since the US funded their enemies), they are already reaching out to the West, denying any links to al-Queda. It does seem likely they want to implement sharia law though. Let's hope America doesn't make a Ho Chi Minh style mistake again.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2006060...F6QLIUD;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Yet the chairman of Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts denied any links to terrorism or radical anti-western Islam in an open letter to diplomats that said the movement was not political and interested only in peace.
"We share no objectives, goals or methods with groups that sponsor or support terrorism," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said in the letter delivered to the diplomatic corps in the Kenyan capital on Tuesday.
A day earlier, Islamist militia claimed victory in the battle for Mogadishu over the ARPCT, which accuses the courts of harboring terrorists, including Al-Qaeda members. This view is shared by US intelligence officials.
The letter, a copy of which was read to AFP by a senior Islamist official, rejects those accusations and seeks to allay US fears that Somalia may become a new
Afghanistan under an African version of the Taliban militia.
"We wanted to inform the United States that our only agenda is to ensure peace and order in Mogadishu," the official said. "If we achieve that, it would be easy to spread it across Somalia."
US
President George W. Bush said Tuesday he was concerned about the situation in Mogadishu and would ensure that Somalia did not become a haven for terrorists.
On Wednesday, Washington reacted cautiously to Ahmed's letter, with the State Department saying there appeared to be splits in the Islamist ranks.
"There are a number of different voices in the group," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, adding that the United States was "not going to pass judgment at this point about the precise nature of this group."
But Ahmed himself appeared torn, telling a pan-Arabic daily he may quit his post and warning that US intervention would meet disaster similar to the one in 1993 that left 18 US soldiers and 300 Somalis dead.
"If US forces intervene directly against us in Mogadishu, then we are ready to teach them a lesson they will never forget and repeat their defeat in 1993," he said.
On the bright side of things, the US actions in Somalia seemed to have forced the hands of the Islamic side and hopefully Somalia will get its first stable government for 15 years.
But despite my criticism of America I do believe that Europeans are pretty guilty too (diamond trade...). And so is China. So, I guess no region/country can be said to be innocent here. Everyone is guilty. Still this latest American action is probably the most blatant Western interference in a long-going war for a long time.
In the end though, Africa has got to sort itself out. It's gotta to learn to take responsibility. It needs some decent leaders who actually have a vision besides, "extort as much money as possible". It doesn't matter if they are dictators. That and they need to stand up and embarass the outside world enough to get them to crack down on them funding the wars.
