New York Times News Service
Published May 13, 2006
NAIROBI, Kenya — A new front in the war on terror has broken out on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, as a group of Islamists battled Somali warlords allied with Washington’s aim of rooting out Muslim extremism from the region.
As of Friday, the sixth day of some of the worst street combat since the central government collapsed in 1991, 135 people have been killed, most of them non-combatants.
Although the American Embassy in Nairobi called on all parties to cease fighting, the U.S. government has been accused of backing the warlords, who have fashioned themselves into an anti-terrorism alliance, rooting out elements of Al Qaeda in their midst.
“It’s a well-established fact for the last few years that U.S. counterterrorism officials and other intelligence officials have been working through Somali partners to fight extremists,” said Suliman Baldo, director for Africa policy at the International Crisis Group, a Geneva-based advocacy group that studies wars around the world.
“From the little we know, the U.S. is not supporting the warlords with arms, per se,” Baldo said. Instead, he said, American operatives were paying the warlords to help track down and apprehend those in Somalia suspected of being members of Al Qaeda.
The warlords, who say they have joined America’s fight against terrorism, are calling themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism. They are led by Mohammed Deere, Mohammed Qanyare and Bashir Rageh all powerful figures in Mogadishu.
In interviews, American officials declined to detail their relationship with the warlords and said only that their goal was to support both the fight against terrorism and the recently formed transitional government that is struggling to gain a foothold.
But the president of that government pointed his finger at the United States and said U.S. counterterrorism efforts would work better if they went through Somalia’s fledgling government and not through individual warlords.
“They really think they can capture Al Qaeda members in Somalia,” President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said. “But the Americans should tell the warlords they should support the government, and cooperate with the government.”
As of Friday, the sixth day of some of the worst street combat since the central government collapsed in 1991, 135 people have been killed, most of them non-combatants.
Although the American Embassy in Nairobi called on all parties to cease fighting, the U.S. government has been accused of backing the warlords, who have fashioned themselves into an anti-terrorism alliance, rooting out elements of Al Qaeda in their midst.
“It’s a well-established fact for the last few years that U.S. counterterrorism officials and other intelligence officials have been working through Somali partners to fight extremists,” said Suliman Baldo, director for Africa policy at the International Crisis Group, a Geneva-based advocacy group that studies wars around the world.
“From the little we know, the U.S. is not supporting the warlords with arms, per se,” Baldo said. Instead, he said, American operatives were paying the warlords to help track down and apprehend those in Somalia suspected of being members of Al Qaeda.
The warlords, who say they have joined America’s fight against terrorism, are calling themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism. They are led by Mohammed Deere, Mohammed Qanyare and Bashir Rageh all powerful figures in Mogadishu.
In interviews, American officials declined to detail their relationship with the warlords and said only that their goal was to support both the fight against terrorism and the recently formed transitional government that is struggling to gain a foothold.
But the president of that government pointed his finger at the United States and said U.S. counterterrorism efforts would work better if they went through Somalia’s fledgling government and not through individual warlords.
“They really think they can capture Al Qaeda members in Somalia,” President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said. “But the Americans should tell the warlords they should support the government, and cooperate with the government.”
Source: New York Times, May 13, 2006
