Somalia’s warlords agree to disarm and join army – Somalia’s warlords have agreed to disarm and join a new national army, a government official said today as violence in the capital brought home the challenge of restoring order in this fractious and heavily armed country.
One of Somalia’s most powerful warlords, Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, told the AP after the meeting the war lords were “fed up” with guns and ready to cooperate with the government.
However, another warlord spelled out a warning.
“If the government is ready to reconcile its people and chooses the right leadership, I hope there is no need to revolt against it,” said Muse Sudi Yalahow, whose fighters control north Mogadishu. “If they fail and lose the confidence of the people, I think they would be called new warlords. keep your fingers crossed
* Clashes mar Somali talks, Oxfam says raids kill 70
* Somalia asked U.S. to help liquidate al Qaeda militants
* Child soldiers hiding in Somalia after recent violence
* Eritrea warns of “consequences” for U.S. in Somalia
(This is the new Somalia update thread, the first thread can be found here and the second here. More articles can be found in comments.)
Somalia Update III
Jan 11
U.S. forces hunt al Qaeda in Somalia – U.S. officials said American troops were hunting al Qaeda fighters in Somalia on Thursday as residents reported new fighting between Islamic militiamen and Somali and Ethiopian forces.
The fighting early Thursday in southern Somalia set off a brush fire, residents said by two-way radio. There were reports of as many as 35 deaths.
The fighting comes after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his forces were carrying out mop-up operations against Islamic militants in the extreme southern corner of Somalia and that he expected to withdraw his troops within a few weeks.
* Somali Capital Awash in Anger At Ethiopia, U.S., Interim Leaders
* Kenya issues an order to expel 21 Somali MPs
* Somali elders say civilians killed in US air strikes
* Somali airstrike missed al-Qaida target
* Somalia: Political standoff continues in Kismayo
* Weapons Raids in Somalia After Violent Night
Jan 10
U.S. Is Not Saying Who, or What, Was Hit in Somalia Raid
Two days after the United States launched an airstrike against alleged al-Qaeda terrorists in southern Somalia, U.S. officials declined yesterday to provide details of who, or what, was hit.
In Mogadishu, the Somali capital, reports circulated that as many as 50 people, many of them civilians, were killed in the attack by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship. U.S. officials said they are fairly certain that at least one targeted individual was hit; they said they had no informatio
* Yemen seals its sea border with Somalia
* New U.S strikes hit 4 places in Somalia – government source
* Analysis: America’s return to Somalia brings memories of past debacles
* Somalia’s deputy premier: U.S. ground forces needed to flush out al-Qaida
* Afghanistan resources shifted to Africa
* We’ve been there longer than last few days: US official, Iraq makes it all possible.
Seems to me that the esteemed Ethiopian troops were not as capable after all. My guess is they were not getting enough accomplished before Bush’s speech. 
~ candy
Jan 9
“Many dead” after U.S. strikes in Somalia – A U.S. attack plane killed many people with barrages of gunfire in a remote Somali village occupied by Islamists thought to be hiding at least one al Qaeda suspect, a Somali government source said on Tuesday.
In the first known direct U.S. military intervention in Somalia since a failed peacekeeping mission that ended in 1994, an AC-130 plane rained gunfire on the desolate southern village of Hayo near the Kenyan border late on Monday.
“I understand there are so many dead bodies and animals in the village,” the senior source told Reuters.
The U.S. Navy also confirmed it had moved the aircraft carrier Eisenhower to the Somali coast — Africa’s longest — to beef up a naval cordon it had already put there as the Islamists sought refuge in the remote southern tip.
“They are, with other ships, making sure that terrorists are not able to use the sea as a means of transport,” said Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in the Gulf state of Bahrain.click on map to see larger version
* Analysis: US airstrikes could backfire
* Clash of agendas
Jan 8
U.S. targeted al Qaeda suspects in Somalia-report
A U.S. gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al Qaeda operatives in southern Somalia, but it was not known whether the mission was successful, CBS News reported on Monday.
* Raw Story Roundup
* CBS: US Attacks Al Qaeda In Somalia
* Somali president says no negotiation with Islamists
* Interim leader rejects U.S. approach in Somalia
Somali president arrives in capital for first time in 40 years
The Associated Press
Monday, January 8, 2007
MOGADISHU, Somalia
Somalia’s president returned to the beleaguered capital, his first visit since taking office, while his forces and Ethiopian troops laid siege to an Islamic movement’s last military foothold.
President Abdullahi Yusuf took office in 2004 but had not set foot in Mogadishu for 40 years and has spent much of his time as Somalia’s leader outside the country because he considered the capital unsafe. His arrival on Monday came 10 days after his forces — backed by Ethiopian troops, tanks and warplanes — drove the Islamic movement out of the city.
Remnants of the Islamic force are believed hiding in the capital and gunmen attacked Ethiopian troops Sunday in the second straight day of violence in the city.
Yusuf’s troops and their Ethiopian backers appeared close to capturing a jungle hideout used by the Islamic militants, their last foothold in Somalia and a suspected al-Qaida base.
Defense Minister Col. Barre “Hirale” Aden Shire said government troops were poised to enter the Islamic stronghold at Ras Kamboni, on the southernmost tip of Somalia between the sea and the Kenyan border, after a fierce two-day battle. U.S. warships were patrolling the coastline and the Kenyan military was securing its border.
Skirmishes were still taking place outside Ras Kamboni and both sides had suffered heavy casualties, Shire said.
U.S. officials said after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that extremists with ties to al-Qaida operated a training camp at Ras Kamboni and that al-Qaida members are believed to have visited it. The alleged mastermind of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, escaped to Ras Kamboni, according to testimony from one of the convicted bombers.
Leaders of the Islamic movement have vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden’s deputy has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on the Ethiopian troops fighting in their country, according to a taped message posted on the Internet Friday.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia on Dec. 24 to help defeat the Islamic movement that threatened to overthrow the internationally recognized government, which at the time controlled only the western town of Baidoa.
Many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent having troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The countries fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.
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We want negotiations with govt, says Islamist official
8 Jan 8, 2007, 13:38
SAN’A, Yemen Jan 8 (Garowe Online) – The Islamic Courts’ chief foreign officer, who is currently in Yemen, has said that the movement is ready to open negotiations with the interim Somali government.
Prof. Ibrahim Addow denied claims that the Islamist militia were defeated, saying that the militia withdrew to spare the Somali people more death and destruction.
“We accept to sit with the Somali government at the negotiation table and the [Islamic] Courts is always the group that loves peace,†Prof. Addow told Yemeni media on Monday.
The Islamist militia, which ruled Mogadishu and much of south-central Somalia since last June, has been completely routed from major population centers, and their remnants are believed to be hiding in the jungle areas near the Somali-Kenya border.
Prof. Addow’s comments come on a day Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has categorically dismissed any negotiation with the Islamists.
http://www.garoweonline.com/stories/publish/article_6963.shtml
NBC: US airstrikes target suspected al-Qaeda operations in Somalia
RAW STORY
Published: Monday January 8, 2007
NBC News is reporting that US airstrikes have targeted suspected al-Qaeda operations in southern Somalia.
“Pentagon officials are pretending that they don’t know anything about it,” said a commentator on MSNBC’s broadcast initially.
“A senior Pentagon official confirmed for NBC News Monday that a U.S. helicopter gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al-Qaida operatives in southern Somalia,” MSNBC later reported at its web site. “It was not immediately known whether the mission was successful.”
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inconsistent. Was it a helicopter gunship or an AC-130? The report seems to equate the two when they are very different machines.
…AC-130. I’d guess that the journalist involved doesn’t know that Spectre’s a gunship, too.
“If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.” – Shimon Perez [ironic, no?]
Guardian Unlimited, Jan 9
Two US air strikes on sites in southern Somalia, thought to be the hideouts of al-Qaida suspects, have left “many dead”, reports said today.
The attacks yesterday, by a heavily armed gunship, allegedly targeted Islamists wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in other African countries.
Suspects were spotted hiding on the remote Badmadow island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border, officials said.
The area of the island that was attacked is known as Ras Kamboni and is suspected of being a terror training base. A second site 155 miles north of there was also hit. President Abdullahi Yusuf told journalists in the capital, Mogadishu, that the US “has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania”.
Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said: “We don’t know how many people were killed in the attack but we understand there were a lot of casualties. Most were Islamic fighters.”
Speaking to Reuters, a senior government official said: “I understand there are so many dead bodies and animals in the village.”
It was the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since the 1990s.
of course they did such a good job, that leadership members are already in yemen
News
January 09, 2007
Ike warplanes arrive in Somalia
The Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off the war-ravaged country’s coast and its aircraft have begun flying intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the military said Tuesday.
Two U.S. airstrikes in Somalia killed large numbers of Islamic extremists, government officials and witnesses said Tuesday. The targets were suspects in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The attacks, by an AC-130 gunship, came after the terror suspects were spotted hiding on a remote island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border, Somali officials said.
Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown said the Navy had no supporting role in the attack.
The carrier joins three other U.S. warships — two guided-missile cruisers and an amphibious landing ship — already conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast.
Brown said he did not know how long the Eisenhower’s redeployment would last.
“We’ll be there as long as required,†he said.
The U.S. military dispatched the Eisenhower from its battle station in the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean coastal waters of Somalia “due to rapidly developing events in Somalia,†the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet announced in a statement.
Brown said the guided-missile cruisers Bunker Hill and Anzio and the amphibious landing ship Ashland were already patrolling the Somali coast in search of al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia in the wake of Ethiopia’s December invasion.
Navy crews aboard the Bunker Hill, Anzio and Ashland have been boarding and searching commercial ships off the Somali coast, Brown said. No terror suspects have been found aboard any of the ships, he said.
.
“That’s a sign that what we’re doing is working,†Brown said. “We’re trying to deter the terrorists from using the sea. If we haven’t detained anyone, that shows us that it’s working.â€
The Eisenhower’s complement of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and E-2C Hawkeye airborne command-and-control craft had been operating over Afghanistan, Brown said. The Eisenhower also carries H-60 helicopters.
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2470241.php
LINK
U.S. strike in Somalia aims at 3 fugitives
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer
January 9, 2007
WASHINGTON — Under cover of the Ethiopian move into Somalia, U.S. officials launched an intensive effort to capture or kill three key suspects in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa more than eight years ago that killed 224 people.
A U.S. Air Force Special Operations gunship struck a location in southern Somalia where some of the suspects were believed to be hiding, a U.S. Defense Department official said Monday.
Witnesses and Somalian government officials said there were many people killed or wounded but that they had no exact numbers. U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials said they did not know whether the strike, made within the previous 24 hours, killed any of the three fugitives.
“It’s not clear what the outcome is at this point,” said the counter-terrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the operation was classified.
Abdirahman Dinari, the Somalian government spokesman, said early reports suggested that among the dead were several leaders of the fleeing Islamic Courts Union recently driven from the capital, Mogadishu, along with “one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in East Africa.” He declined to identify the leader.
The strikes targeted small villages in the vicinity of the port city of Kismayo, he said.
“The explosions shook our village,” said Hussein Abdi, a resident of Afmadow. He said refugees from a nearby village told him at least six were killed.
A government official in Kismayo said soldiers captured 28 suspected Islamist fighters amid the chaos.
Dinari said leaders of the transitional government requested U.S. support and were aware of the impending strike.
U.S. officials have secretly been negotiating with Somalian clans who are believed to have sheltered the three embassy bombing suspects, hoping to obtain information about their locations. It could not be determined Monday whether the airstrike was based on information provided by the clans.
A U.S. intelligence official said it was unlikely that all three fugitives were traveling together but added that U.S. military operatives had been tracking the men for some time, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
“They were on the move, it was a thinly populated area, and this is what you got,” the official said, adding that the AC-130 gunship used in the attack “is not the kind of weapon you generally deploy in downtown Mogadishu.”
“This thing does some violence; it would not be the most surgical event,” the official said.
The gunship was based in Djibouti, just north of Somalia. The strike was first reported by CBS News and independently confirmed by The Times.
CIA, FBI and military teams have been tracking the men, particularly their alleged leader, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, for years, but the fugitives have proved elusive.
U.S. officials and their African and European allies in the negotiations believe that one Somalian sub-clan in particular has been harboring Mohammed and his associates, whom the U.S. describes as the leaders of an East African Al Qaeda cell. Mohammed, a native of the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros, faces terrorism charges in the United States that could bring the death penalty if he is captured and convicted.
Intelligence gathered over the last week indicates that Mohammed and aides Abu Taha al Sudani of Sudan and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan of Kenya recently fled their haven in Mogadishu and headed for the Kenyan border as Ethiopian troops entered the capital and routed the Islamic militias that controlled it.
U.S. officials believe that influential members of the Ayr sub-clan, which they say has sheltered the three, have been in touch with the fugitives. Clan members could provide their pursuers with detailed intelligence about where the men might go and who else within their network of extremists might be hiding them, according to several U.S. counter-terrorism and diplomatic officials familiar with the negotiations.
“We are working through the clans to get at these people,” one U.S. diplomatic official said. “That’s a political reality in Somalia. The clan is the biggest institution, as much as there are any institutions.”
But negotiations with the militant Ayr could raise questions about whether the Bush administration is bargaining with terrorists or those harboring them. The U.S. diplomatic official denied that, saying that engaging the groups, either directly or through intermediaries, was the only realistic way of gathering useful intelligence on the men and perhaps apprehending them.
Mohammed, who has a $5-million U.S. bounty on his head, was indicted in 1998 by a federal grand jury along with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and others for his alleged role in the bombings that year of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. officials also accuse the three fugitives of involvement in the 2002 bombing of a hotel in which 15 people were killed and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner, both near the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
It remains unclear whether U.S. authorities would take any of the three men into custody if captured, because Kenya and other countries also have expressed interest in trying them.
Officials said they could not discuss the details of the talks with Somalian clans, saying they were extremely sensitive and being conducted at a particularly delicate time. The International Contact Group on Somalia, composed of the U.S. and European and African nations, has recently begun working to disarm the various Somalian factions and provide foreign aid.
Although no one is offering clan leaders amnesty for harboring suspected Al Qaeda operatives, U.S. officials said, the negotiations aim for something just short of that, such as inclusion in the political process in exchange for cooperation on the counter-terrorism front.
The Islamic Courts Union, which last year seized control of Mogadishu and other key Somalian cities, is made up of at least 15 small, clan-based “courts,” some of which are moderate, others showing signs of militancy. U.S. officials believe the Ayr sub-clan plays important roles in the Islamic courts, and that at least one of its influential members has direct ties to senior Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials and reports by independent terrorism analysts.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, an Ayr cleric who has been instrumental in establishing and running the Islamic Courts Union, is wanted by the U.S. government for allegedly having ties to Al Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden.
U.S. officials say Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, a young Ayr leader in charge of one of the union’s most violent militias, received military training at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan before the U.S.-led military invasion of that country in late 2001.
Ayr leaders have publicly denied such allegations.
U.S. officials described the hunt for the suspected Al Qaeda operatives as confounding, as they tried to figure out who could speak for the clan, whom to trust and who could deliver intelligence on the fugitives or hand them over to authorities.
One of those intermediaries is apparently Somalian Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi, who held a closed-door meeting Jan. 2 with Ayr leaders at a Mogadishu hotel and requested that they hand over their weapons and support the United Nations-backed transitional government he heads.
Jendayi E. Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of State in charge of African affairs, was unavailable for comment, as she was returning Monday from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where she had been part of the International Contact Group meeting, a spokesman said.
In congressional testimony in June, Frazer said the three suspects posed “an immediate threat to both Somali and international interests in the Horn of Africa…. We must deny them the ability to plan and operate.”
She added at the time that the administration was “constantly reviewing and updating our approach to reflect the fluid dynamics inside Somalia,” and that it would “continue working with Somalis, regardless of clan, religious or secular affiliation.”
John Prendergast, a former Africa policy official in the National Security Council and State Department under President Clinton, said he was skeptical of the secretive talks.
Prendergast, who visits Somalia frequently as a senior advisor at the nonprofit International Crisis Group, said the clans are deeply mistrustful of the Bush administration, particularly because of clandestine efforts by the CIA to fund some warlords and undermine the authority of others.
Also, Prendergast said, though clan members may support the three fugitives, they don’t control them and are extremely unlikely to engage in any betrayal of them unless other powerful Somalian clans and political leaders promise a significant prize in return.
What’s more, Prendergast said, the fugitives have managed to elude capture for nearly a decade and are not likely to sit around and wait for someone to turn them in. “I’d be surprised if those guys didn’t get out of the way a long time ago. They’d be stupid to have hung around this long,” he said.
Tuesday, Jan. 09, 2007
The Somalia Raid: Part of a Wider War
By Sally B. Donnelly
The U.S. military air-strike on a suspected al-Qaeda target in Somalia reported Monday is but one of a number of U.S. operations there in recent days and weeks. In confirming the attack to TIME, a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity said: “We have been active there for a lot longer than the past 48 hours…. Somalia is one of those troublesome ‘ungoverned areas’ — perhaps the worst in the world — and the U.S. has the authority to strike where it needs to there, and we did.”
The U.S. military pursuit of “high-value” Qaeda targets in Somalia, where three key operatives accused of carrying out the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania re believed to hiding, is made easier by the fact that a central state authority has scarcely existed in the East African nation for more than a decade. “It’s one of those places where even the State Department, which is usually very cautious about us acting, in this case, said, hey, go ahead,” said the Pentagon official. The three al-Qaeda operatives were the target of the gunship raid in southern Somalia reported Monday, and one Pentagon official Tuesday morning said it appeared likely the strike had kileld at least one of the men.
The Pentagon source also contended that the ability to target Qaeda figures in Somalia is a positive by-product of the Iraq war. “We have a much better handle on Al Qaeda and its operations than ever would have had we not gone to war in Iraq,” he said. “That is not a reason for going to war, or trying to backdate a rationale, but it is a fact now. It is an unintended positive consequence of the war.”
Somalia falls within the military’s CENTCOM command area, and as a longtime Qaeda theater of operations has been a focus of U.S. military interest for years. Special Operations command has been active in the Horn of Africa, with psychological operations and civil projects, such as building water wells and providing veterinary services, in several countries in the region for a number of years. The CENTCOM base in the tiny country of Djibouti — from which the gunship raid was staged — has become an important focus of regional counterterror efforts. Units based there have also played a central role in helping train the Ethiopian army, which last week swept across Somalia and scattered the Islamist militias that had taken control of much of the country. The central government had appealed for international support by arguing that its Islamist enemies were in league with al-Qaeda. The “nation-building” objective of restoring the central government’s authority in a failed state, and the counterterror objective of eliminating three key Qaeda operatives, appear in this instance to have worked in tandem.
Click to Print Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1575308,00.html
US enlists a authoritarian regime to invade a Muslim country, then sends in its gunships for “anti-terrorist operations”, many casualties, mostly civilian, and nobody knows if the “targets” were actually in the mix. Welcome to the latest “GWOT” front, with depressingly similar tactics as those we have seen and continually observe in Afghanistan and Iraq. Who is making the case that the maintenance of yet another “failed state”, mainly Muslim, that now is fair game to US airpower, can produce ANYTHING other than anti-American blowback? Is the ONLY answer to the world’s ills yet more US military action? Is Somalia the latest in a massive failure of imagination that constitutes present US so-called “foreign policy”?
Or, is it the case that ALL policy initiatives are subordinate to military responses, first and foremost?
What a bloody shower.
Civilians reported dead in US strikes on Somalia
09/01/2007 – 18:43:44
Helicopter gunships attacked suspected al-Qaida fighters in southern Somalia a today – a day after US forces launched airstrikes in the eastern African nation.
A Somali politician said 31 civilians, including two newlyweds, died in today’s assault, which was the first offensive in the African country since 18 American soldiers were killed there in 1993.
The attack was launched by two helicopters near Afmadow, a town in an area of forested hills close to the Kenyan border 220 miles south-west of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
A US intelligence official later said the United States killed five to 10 individuals in the attack.
Italy today criticised the attacks on Somalia, expressing concern that “one-sided†action could worsen tensions in the region and carry a high cost of innocent lives.
“Regarding the US military operations in Somalia, deputy premier and foreign minister Massimo D’Alema has reiterated Italy’s opposition to unilateral initiatives which could set off new tensions in an area already marked by high instability,†the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Such operations also carry a high cost in terms of innocent victims among the civilian population,†the ministry statement said.
Italy, a former colonial ruler of Somalia, urged international institutions, including regional ones, to multiply their efforts “to favour a pacification process both internal and among bordering nations,†the ministry said. D’Alema called for dialogue among the various components of Somali society “to permit the isolation of violent factions and to effectively counter every risk of the development of formations tied to international terrorism.â€
A Somali defence ministry official described the helicopters as American, but the local witnesses told The Associated Press they could not make out identification markings on the craft. Washington officials had no comment on the helicopter strike.
The US is targeting Islamic extremists, said the Somali defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to reporters. Earlier, Somalia’s president said the Us was hunting suspects in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa, and had his support.
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U.S. Special Forces Engaged in Operations on the Ground in Somalia
January 09, 2007 1:59 PM
Alexis Debat Reports:
Somalia_soldier_us_nr U.S. special forces are working with Ethiopian troops on the ground in operations inside Somalia today, senior U.S. and French military sources tell ABC News.
The sources declined to describe details of today’s mission but said U.S. special forces, including a significant CIA presence, have been involved in numerous such missions, operating from a large American base camp known as “Camp LeJeune,” established in the French protectorate of Djibouti following 9/11.
There are approximately 3,000 American special forces and U.S. military soldiers based at “Camp LeJeune,” which has become a major reconnaissance and staging base in the fight against al Qaeda in the region.
It is from this base the CIA flies predators over Yemen and Somalia and from which recent air attacks over Somalia were launched.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/us_special_forc.html
Al – Qaeda Targeted in Somalia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 9, 2007
Filed at 2:27 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States killed five to 10 people in this week’s attack on a target in southern Somalia believed to be associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network, a U.S. intelligence official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation’s sensitivity, said a small number of others present, perhaps four or five, at the targeted area also were wounded. The United States was still trying to figure out who they were — a process that may require a mix of intelligence and getting personnel to the scene.
Pentagon officials, speaking privately because the Defense Department was not publicly releasing the information, strongly suggested that the U.S. military was either planning or considering additional strikes in Somalia.
With the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower off Somalia’s coast, commanders can call in strikes from fixed-wing aircraft like the F/A-18. Pentagon officials said that as of Tuesday no carrier-based aircraft had conducted strikes in Somalia.
Another Pentagon official, spokesman Bryan Whitman, said Tuesday that the U.S. military attacks against al-Qaida leaders in Somalia were based on credible intelligence. He would not address whether the operations were continuing.
Whitman would not confirm any details of the strike, which was conducted by at least one AC-130 gunship early Monday local time in southern Somalia, late Sunday EST. He would not say whether the attack successfully killed any specific members of al-Qaida.
The assault was based on intelligence ”that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaida leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them,” said Whitman. ”We’re going to remain committed to reducing terrorist capabilities where and when we find them.”
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Carrier for Afghanistan Shifts to Africa
By JIM KRANE
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Shifting a U.S. aircraft carrier and its 60 warplanes from the Afghanistan war to Somalia has diverted the Navy from bleak winter fighting with the Taliban to an intelligence-led hunt for terror suspects in the Horn of Africa.
The Navy says aircraft from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower are flying regular intelligence missions over Somalia, playing a critical role monitoring the country’s 1,880-mile coast and patrolling the sea that surrounds it to prevent suspects from escaping.
Three other U.S. warships had already taken posts off Somalia, part of the return of U.S. military forces to a country it fled in 1994 after losing 18 soldiers in gritty urban combat, portrayed in the book and film “Black Hawk Down.”
“There’s a lot of water to cover and with four ships, that doesn’t always do it,” said U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. “But the air assets on the Eisenhower can extend the capabilities of those ships.”
The re-tasking of the Eisenhower came as U.S. aircraft launched air raids in southern Somalia, trying to kill al-Qaida suspects in the first overt American military action there since the 1990s.
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On Monday, AC-130 gunships launched at least two deadly strikes, followed the next day by strikes by attack helicopters. U.S. officials said militants were killed, though witnesses reported dozens of civilians dead.
The winter lull in fighting in Afghanistan meant the Eisenhower and its four squadrons of F/A-18 ground attack jets could fight a different war.
Taliban attacks have dropped by half between August and December _ from 913 to 449 _ and U.S. and coalition warplanes have made drastic cutbacks in bombing, according to coalition military data.
Troops in Afghanistan can still rely on air cover from some 20 ground-based warplanes, including U.S. A-10 ground-attack jets and B-1 bombers, Dutch F-16 and British GR-7 fighters.
“There are alternatives to the carrier in Afghanistan,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There really are no alternatives in Somalia.”
The Eisenhower got into position off Somalia “in the past few days” and as of late Tuesday its aircraft had not conducted ground strikes in Somalia, Brown said, nor had they provided support for the AC-130 raids.
The Navy said “rapidly developing events in Somalia” led it to dispatch the Eisenhower from its battle station in the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean off Somalia, where Ethiopian troops and soldiers loyal to Somalia’s U.N.-backed government drove out Islamic fighters that controlled the country.
Two guided missile cruisers, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio, and the amphibious landing ship USS Ashland were already patrolling the coast, with crew boarding private vessels in search of fleeing al-Qaida members, Brown said.
No terror suspects have been found aboard any departing ships, he said.
The Eisenhower’s aircraft drastically expand U.S. capabilities in the Horn of Africa. They can be used to track escape vessels and other targets, or give air cover to U.S.-trained Ethiopian troops, or repel an assault on the weak Somali government.
“Ethiopia has gone into a very high risk environment with a great deal of American advice and support. If things go wrong they may need American air support,” Cordesman said. “Same with the Somali government.”
With U.S. warplanes a few miles offshore, the Navy can strike ground targets in minutes, rather than the hours it would take to fly in long-range bombers from U.S. bases in the region, Cordesman said.
The Eisenhower’s compliment of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and E-2C Hawkeye airborne command-and-control craft had been operating over Afghanistan. But bad weather and a string of Taliban defeats has reduced the level of combat operations there, said NATO spokesman Mark Laity in Kabul.
“Since the peak of activity in August and September, we’ve seen an extremely steep decline in significant actions,” he said.
Laity said enough warplanes remain in Afghanistan to provide cover.
“If our troops get into trouble they will get air power,” he said.
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Camp Lejeune: Deployed Entitlements For Iraq, Okinawa, Afghanistan and Djibouti
( … Link … )
We’re living in the age of “constructive chaos”, the age where the principle of the transformative power of violence is finally being given free rein.
We’re all living in the Bush Administration’s inner re-enactment of “Taxi Driver“.
… Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me…
… Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c%#$^, the dogs, the filth, the s*%&. Here is a man who stood up…
Travis Bickle works himself up in the mirror with repeated practice of “You talkin’ to me? Well, there’s nobody here but me and you, you must be talkin’ to me”. Bickle will gird his loins and finally storm into the pimp’s den, guns blazing – and miraculously Bickle will survive, and prevail, and become a hero.
And oh! Jodie Foster’s parents will send him a glowing letter of thanks for saving her and restoring her to the family’s Rockwellian bosom. There will be no consequences to the violence whatsoever; there will merely be dead bad people, and in fact – despite the fact that Bickle’s original disturbed state comes from his Vietnam experiences – this time the power of that transfigurative violence will finally calm Bickle’s inner demons.
We’ll just blow a lot of shit up and throw the pieces in the air and when they fall back down all the little brown brine shrimp will magically turn into Sea Monkies who finally this time will obligingly build the castles, mount the tiny thrones and don the shining crowns they declined to in our disappointed youth.
at this forum it was remarked that the US stepped in because the Ethiopians(who were paid to attack) took a beating on the Kenya border
U.S. Strike in Somalia Targets Al-Qaeda Figure
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 9, 2007; Page A01
roundup article, there is also a Q&A with DeYoung
NYT U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia
LA Times – U.S. aircraft launch 2nd wave of Somalia attacks
from Somalinet:
It is the third day of consecutive US air raid in Somalia.
from WaPo
[In an interview early Tuesday, Abdirizak Hassan, chief of staff for Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, confirmed the strike. Hassan said he heard from American officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed had been killed, although U.S. officials said he had not been in their immediate sights. "Among the targets was Fazul," he said, "and we understand that Fazul is no more."
Hassan also said Somali officials authorized the strike. "We gave permission for actions that are more than airstrikes," Hassan said. "Whatever it means to rout these people out, we have given them permission."]
Like there’s a government at all, or if there is, if its permission means anything. Talk about a freaking pathetic sop to legitimacy.
I can’t beleive that the US would be efficient at getting rid of the Republican party’s best friends. Bet ya ithey managed to kill lotsa women, childerns, dogs and cows, but not much of their best friends.
May be that plane should have targeted the RNC or better yet, Americans for the New Century. (Cheney, Pearl and the other
(place insults here) members.
a really stupid reporter or just a nickname for the base. I believe the troops are from Camp LeJuene, NC
isn’t that nice, Bush will be able to point at the GWOT tomorrow night. I’m just shocked
that he would use Somalis this way….
Somalia attack sends message, WH says
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) — The U.S. air attack on suspected al-Qaida members in Somalia earlier this week underscored U.S. determination to hit al-Qaida and its supporters anywhere in the world, the White House said.
“… Without talking about military issues, it is pretty clear that this administration continues to go after al-Qaida,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday. “We are interested in going after those who have perpetrated acts of violence against Americans, including bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we will continue to conduct whatever operations we can to go after that.
“We’ve made it clear that this is a global war on terror, and this is a reiteration of the fact that people who think that they’re going to try to establish safe haven for al-Qaida anyplace need to realize that we’re going to find them.”
A U.S. AC-130 gunship on Sunday attacked suspected al-Qaida members and their Islamist militia companions in southern Somalia, near the Kenyan border, who were apparently fleeing Ethiopian troops who had earlier routed the Islamic Courts Union militia on behalf of Somalia’s Transitional Government.
The Transitional Government had earlier been ousted from the capital, Mogadishu, by the Islamist coalition that was said to have included members of al-Qaida.
Among those believed killed in the U.S. strike Sunday was Tariq Abdullah — aka Abu Talha al-Sudani — an explosives expert and close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, who once headed al-Qaida’s cell in Somalia.
Abdulla/Sudani is believed to have helped arrange al-Qaida financing for the 1998 bombings of U.S. diplomatic missions in Kenya and Tanzania.
Snow declined to speak about the military operation itself, which was believed launched from U.S. facilities in Djibouti.
Reports said the attack was a result of Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence information.
I started thinking about oil
and found this[below]: which led to this. This article from May is more topical.
Neocons Attack ‘al-Qaeda’ in Somalia
Posted: Tuesday, January 9, 2007
By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
January 09, 2007
It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus “al-Qaeda” has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.
Earlier today, we learned a “U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia,” CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. “The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa,” apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. “The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia… where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.”
In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Sharia, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.
Here in America, they are called the Somali Islamists–granted, a simplistic term, but then we here in America like our simplistic terms–and thus the Somali version of a Muslim is lumped in with all the other Islamists, including those we are told are fascist, never mind European fascist movements of the early 20th century have nothing to do with Islam, and the word “Islamofascists” is little more than a meaningless and rather crude political epithet.
Of course, the word and nonsensical idea is strictly for domestic consumption, as evil Nazis are part of the firmly entrenched cultural landscape and it is apparently easy to associate Hitler and Nazism with people–indeed, entire cultures and religions–one does not like or understand (remember, “al-Qaeda” is a magnet for Hitler types like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or so the corporate media, with their neocon reading scripts in hand, tell us).
Last December, the popular ICU lost control after Ethiopia, with U.S. backing and encouragement, invaded and sent them packing to the southern-most tip of the country. According to CBS, the fleeing ICU are “al-Qaeda” to the man and, as such, fair game for an AC-130 gunship, sent from a U.S. airbase (at Camp Lemonier) in Dijibouti.
Of course, this is little more than a facile and threadbare excuse to kill Muslims, as Bush’s “minds” from the American Enterprise Institute are big on slaughtering large numbers of them on ice-thin pretext.
For instance, take the neocon Vance Serchuk, a scribbler at the Weekly Standard, who specializes in making excuses for the Ethiopia invasion, an affair wholly rigged by the United States. According to Serchuk and the neocons, the “Somalia problem came to metastasize over the past six months,” and Somalia is not simply “a failed state that could be occasionally exploited by terrorists,” but “an active and steadfast ally of the global jihadist movement,” thus the “Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa… at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti…. constitutes the U.S. military’s first post-9/11 outpost in sub-Saharan Africa.”
As Serchuk readily admits, this task force fits “squarely with what last year’s Quadrennial Defense Review” proposed, that is a “shifting emphasis” toward the use of “surrogates” in the war on terror, that is to say proxies will do the bidding of the neocons in the hundred or more year “war” planned for us and our children, and our children’s children.
Thus the attack against “al-Qaeda” may be considered yet another in a series of attacks against “Islamofascists” in Africa, as effete and bilious chicken hawks, hiding out in their comfy academic and think-tank lairs, are keen to chase Muslims hither and thither–or have National Guard kids from Nebraska chase them–as the neocon “clash of civilizations” plan dictates.
Oh, coincidentally, the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” that is to say after a suitable number of Muslims are killed and a requisite dictatorship takes hold, as the rule of Mohammed Siad Barre didn’t exactly work out as planned back in the 90s.
“Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001,” writes Larry Chin. “This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.”
“A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia,” notes F. William Engdahl. “Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.” bit more with links
U.S. Is Not Saying Who, or What, Was Hit in Somalia Raid
Accounts Differ in Mogadishu and D.C.
By Karen DeYoung and Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; A07
Two days after the United States launched an airstrike against alleged al-Qaeda terrorists in southern Somalia, U.S. officials declined yesterday to provide details of who, or what, was hit.
In Mogadishu, the Somali capital, reports circulated that as many as 50 people, many of them civilians, were killed in the attack by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship. U.S. officials said they are fairly certain that at least one targeted individual was hit; they said they had no information about civilian deaths in the strike the Kenyan border.
Several officials suggested that stories reaching Mogadishu of many deaths and continuing U.S. attacks had confused the airstrike with ongoing operations in the area by Ethiopia’s military, including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. But it was impossible to confirm independently any of the widely differing accounts in Mogadishu or in Washington. The officials agreed to discuss the attack only on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed yesterday that a single airstrike occurred on Sunday, targeting “what we believe to be principal al-Qaeda leadership.” Officials said that no further information would be released until U.S. personnel could assess directly the results of the strike and identify any dead.
“Let me draw a parallel with a domestic crime scene,” one official said. “Imagine that complicated by 100, and that gives you an idea of what we’re having to deal with.”
Direct U.S. access to the area, where fleeing Islamic fundamentalist forces are being pursued on the ground and from the air by the Ethiopians, is viewed as problematic but necessary.
A principal target of the airstrike was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who U.S. officials have said is a longtime associate of Osama bin Laden and a key figure in an East African al-Qaeda cell based in Somalia.
Officials cautioned against reports that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, two other al-Qaeda operatives said to be responsible for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, may have been killed in the attack.
Also on the U.S. and Ethiopian target list, officials said, are Somali fundamentalist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the former head of a militant group accused of links to al-Qaeda in the 1990s, and several other Somali Islamic leaders described as terrorists.
“I don’t think anybody has packed up and gone home,” another official said of U.S. operations in the area.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was moved into the Indian Ocean near the Somali coast to provide assistance, if needed, to the AC-130 on Sunday, and to use its aircraft to pinpoint the location of targets on land or sea. Four other U.S. naval vessels from the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet are in the area.
In the chaos of Mogadishu, where invading Ethiopian troops routed the Islamic fundamentalists last month and installed an internationally backed transitional government, word of the U.S. attack provoked rage and anti-Americanism.
“I am angry,” biology teacher Ahmed Weli Mohamed, 37, said in a telephone interview. “I am very, very angry. Even if there are terrorists, there are maybe two or three people, but hundreds are killed. . . . Americans don’t respect us as human.”
The news made shop owner and retired Somali soldier Hussein Farah Guley, 56, recall the early 1990s, when U.S. troops were part of a U.N. force that monitored a cease-fire in the country. Among the many foreigners killed by warring Somali clans during that period were 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers, who were attacked in Mogadishu after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in 1993.
“The Somalis, they will get angry,” Guley said, “and if they see anyone from the outside, they will kill them.”
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi’s transitional government, which U.S. officials said gave permission for the airstrike, is perceived by many Somalis as having interrupted a months-long period of unusual calm. The government is also seen as being too closely aligned with its leadership’s clan and with outsiders, particularly Ethiopia and the United States. Although many rejected the stern religious laws imposed by the Islamic fundamentalists, who came to power last summer after driving out U.S.-funded warlords, they appreciated a new semblance of order.
Somalis have already begun to express anger toward Ethiopian troops. Last night, a former police building in the capital, now occupied by the Ethiopians, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a speeding car. One Ethiopian and one Somali soldier were killed, and three civilians were injured.
The United States is leading an effort to deploy an African peacekeeping force to replace the Ethiopians, and it is pressing Gedi’s government to open talks with Islamic leaders who are seen as moderates. No progress was reported on either front yesterday. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that a possible U.N. force is also being “actively discussed.”
Like a deluded compulsive gambler, Bush is fuelling a new cold war
With air strikes on Somalia and a surge in troops in Iraq, he is staking everything on a finale he can call victory
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday January 10, 2007
The Guardian
Say what you like about George Bush, but no one can accuse him of following the crowd. When everyone from the American electorate to the US military brass, along with a rare consensus of world opinion, cries out with one voice to say “enough” of the war in Iraq, Bush heads in the opposite direction – and decides to escalate. When his army chiefs complain of desperate overstretch in the war on terror, he takes that as his cue to open up another front. And that’s just this week.
On Sunday night the US military launched an air strike – not on Iraq or Afghanistan, but on southern Somalia. Some reports last night claimed that the bombing has continued ever since. If you didn’t know that Somalia was on the enemies’ list – if you’re finding it hard, what with Syria and Iran and North Korea, to keep track of Washington’s foes, don’t blame yourself. These days the axis of evil is expanding faster than the European Union, with a couple of new members added every January.
Not that we should mock. At first blush, the Somalia raid (or raids) looks like just the kind of action that a global war on terror should entail, had it not been diverted by the unrelated nonsense about WMD and Iraq. After all, the Americans say they aimed their fire on Sunday at al-Qaida bigwigs, thought to be responsible for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Zapping bad guys like them is exactly what the war on terror was supposed to be about.
But Sunday’s operation carried serious risks. There is the propaganda coup – with the jihadist enemy represented by the US, once again, bombing a Muslim country. If the Americans have bungled, and civilians have been killed, then the recruiting impact for al-Qaida and others will be even greater. And the precedents suggest such raids from the sky are horribly inaccurate. This time last year a US Predator drone thought it had Osama bin-Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in its sights when it hit a Pakistani compound near the Afghan border. The attack killed a reported 17 people, including six women and six children – but not Zawahiri. Africa hands I spoke to yesterday were doubtful the Americans had done any better this time: their chief target, al-Qaida’s top man in east Africa, is said to be a master of disguise and constantly on the move. (And, if they really did have him in their grasp, wouldn’t it have been better to capture him and find out what he knows?)
It hardly helps appearances that Washington’s partner in this adventure is the government of mainly Christian Ethiopia. For this was not just a simple police operation, but part of a wider US intrusion into a messy, complicated conflict.
more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1986719,00.html
Somalia: A Shaky Country After Fall of Islamists
9 Jan 9, 2007, 18:57
By John Mbaria
ANALYSIS
Last January, a fight is reported to have broken up in Mogadishu that was to determine the course of recent military events in Somalia.
This was between militia loyal to Bashir Raghe, -one of the warlords reportedly financed by US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to root out suspected terrorists in Somalia-, and the family of Aboker Omar Adaani, who is said to have been the most prominent supporter of the Islaamic courts.
Raghe’s men are said to have captured several “technicals” (machine-gun mounted pick-up trucks) belonging to Adaani. Subsequent attempts to settle the dispute through a traditional peace-making process -that gained currency in the country after the fall of Siad Barre regime in 1991- were fruitless as Raghe refused to hand them back arguing that the US would not permit them to be handed over to “terrorists.”
Details about the skirmishes are relayed by Matt Bryden, a Nairobi-based Specialist on Somalia and a Consultant with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, in the paper; Profile of Islamic Courts, written on October 24 last year.
In the paper, Bryden says that the skirmishes set on course “a larger and more decisive confrontation. The confrontation was to culminate in a humiliating military defeat wrought on the Union of Islamic Courts by an Ethiopia-led assault.
An equally important happening to the understanding of the current situation in Somalia was attack on the home of one Aden Hashi Ayro -a young militia commander associated with Ifka Halan court set up by members of the Habar Gidir clan in the late 1990s- by militia loyal to Mohamed Qanyare Afrah -another of the CIA-funded warlords.
According to The (January 4 Issue) Ayro is a 30 year-old militant suspected to have trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. He is wanted for his alleged involvement in the killings of several foreigners in Somalia besides being one of the people in-charge of a “sleeper” al-Qaida cell.
Following the attack, Ayro was to escape to a colonial-era Italian Cemetery from where he established a base for his own protection. According to Bryden, the base attracted Jihadi militants who were “outraged” by American actions in Somalia and elsewhere.
This set on course the formation of Hisbul Shabaab, one of the most militant group within the ranks of UIC. The organisation espouses a Salafi Jihaad Islamic orientation that has a more militant and revolutionary religious approach. Recent reports by the Voice of America reveals the intricate details of how Ethiopia’s arch-enemy, Eritrea, was involved in the training and arming of Hisbul Shabaab’s fighters.
Distinguished by the blacks they mounted on their vehicles and the red head cloths they used to mask their faces, Bryden says the fighters served as a quick reaction elite force for the courts and have connections with international jihadists in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Today, Hisbul Shabaab’s overwhelming influence within the UIC is believed to have been the principal cause of international outrage against the Islamic courts. It is now apparent that US’ support to Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to invade Somalia and attack the Islamist movement, hinged on a desire to prevent the coming to power of these elements.
But now that the battle seems to have been won, reports show the Transitional Federal Government does not have the wherewithal to bring the country back to normal life. For one, just like its predecessor, Transitional National Government, TFG lacks the innovativeness demonstrated by the Islamists in the short period they called the shots in Southern Somalia. As much as the Islamists were objectionable, they seemed to have had come up with a more serious process of establishing order and discernible authority in Mogadishu and elsewhere.
In January 2005, a World Bank’s commissioned report showed that TNG -which was formed following the 2000 Peace Conference in Arta, Djibouti- had failed to initiate the arduous task of setting up a central government and instead focused on getting international recognition and securing donor aid mostly from Gulf states.
Observers say before the rise of UIC and Ethiopia’s military strike, TFG had delved too much on seeking international recognition at the expense of concentrating on a blue print on how to link up with other forces -clan authorities, religious and sectarian NGOs- for the establishment of administrative structures for the entire country.
Different analysts allude to the important roles that Islaamic courts came to play in restoring order in the strife-torn horn of Africa country. The initiatives had the blessings of businessmen. Having grown weary of the long-running warlords’ driven mayhem in Mogadishu, business people had embarked on “buying” off militiamen loyal to some of the warlord who they ‘donated’ to the Islamic courts to aid in policing hostile neighbourhoods.
Further, some analysts have appreciated the multi-dimensional nature of the long-running conflict there. While the intricate details of the conflicts are rarely reported in the media, there is evidence that it was not merely an inter-clan thing but has had a lot to do with access and control of natural resources there.
Some reports show that some of the more powerful and better-armed clans -whose leaders now form TFG’s ranks- have forcefully occupied lands especially within Shabelle and Juba river valleys that once belonged to ‘lesser’ clans. As the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf moves to restore order, it will be interesting to see how it deals with this situation.
Blow-by-blow account
On his part Bryden -who has given a blow-by-blow account of the rise of the Islamic courts- has consistently argued that the courts not only “brought revolutionary change” in much of Southern Somalia but had also “filled a vacuum” created by absence of a government.
He says UIC was involved in “a complex process of internal re-organisation” that involved not just military expansion but negotiations with other groups. And contrary to the establishment of the TFG -which was a culmination of IGAD-led initiative- the courts were “a community-based response to lawlessness and violence that pervaded much of Southern Somalia.
Initially, they possessed a few “technicals” but counted on business people to bankroll their low-keyed operations, which were in open competition with other forces that shaped the chaos in the country. Later, a “second generation” of the courts -Ifka Halan, Circolo, Warshadda and Hararyaale- were to emerge in the 1998-2000 period forming the basis of the Council of Somali Islamic Courts (CSIC).
Bryden says the initiation of the latter courts had Islamic influences -proliferation of religious schools, mosques and sectarian NGOs. “During the long years of state collapse and civil war, this gradual process of ‘re-Islamisation’ prepared the ground for a more explicitly religious type of governance.”
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the key figures in UIC- was to play a leading role in the establishment of a joint committee to coordinate activities of different courts. Unfortunately for the courts, Sheikh Aweys had a ‘dark past’ -at least as far as Ethiopia and the US are concerned.
He is said to be a former Vice Chairman and military commander of al-Itihaad al-Islaami -an organization that is rightly or wrongly associated with terrorism including an attempt to kill an Ethiopian government minister in mid 1990s. He is said to have engaged in an extensive travel in the Middle East, shortly before he came back to express fears that the Mbagathi Peace Conference in Nairobi was heading towards the establishment of an Ethiopia-friendly Somali Government.
And he had cause to be afraid because for so long President Abdullahi Yusuf was seen as a trusted Ethiopian ally. Bryden says this fear led to the formation of SCIC under the leadership of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
The rest is recent history. But what is clear is that even after supporting the hounding out of the Islamists and -now- the direct attack by US planes on its remnants, the international community is seemingly not ready to bankroll the difficulty process of returning Somalia back to normal.
Even though major donor countries supported the passing of UN Resolution 1725 that called for the deployment of IGAD-led peace keeping force, it is only Uganda that has come out to express a willingness to send troops. US’ $40-million pledge might be ‘too little’ to do much especially after one considers IGAD’s October 16 estimation that Somalia needs 8 battalions of troops for 12 months at a cost of up to US$335 million (Ksh23 billion).
As things look today, US and Ethiopian-led military victory might look hollow in the not-so-long time to come.
Source: The Nation (Kenya)
http://www.garoweonline.com/stories/publish/article_6990.shtml
10:00U.S. Airstrikes in Somalia
An update on the US air strikes in Somalia and the ongoing effort to track down Al Qaeda terrorists.
Guests:
Michael Scheuer, CBS News Terrorism Analyst, former CIA analyst who served as chief of the Bin Laden Counter Terrorist Center from 1996 to 1999 and author of two books on the threat of terrorism under the name of Anonymous
Neil Livingstone, chair and CEO, ExecutiveAction, an international risk management firm and author of nine books on terrorism
Edmund Sanders, LA Times, Nairobi Bureau Chief
David Smock, analyst, U.S. Institute of Peace
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, professor of law, Emory University
http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/
you can listen to the show
U.S denies reports of new Somalia air strikes
Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:36 PM GMT
By Sahal Abdulle
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The United States, facing growing international criticism over an air strike targeting al Qaeda suspects in Somalia, denied reports on Wednesday it had carried out further strikes.
A Somali government source and a local lawmaker said U.S. planes struck several sites on Wednesday after an assault on Monday against a village where the suspects were thought to be hiding.
But an official in Washington denied more strikes. “There have been no additional attacks,” said one official.
U.S. government sources said U.S. ally Ethiopia, which defeated Islamist forces in a lightning war last month, had conducted further air strikes since Monday.
The Somali officials did not say how they distinguished between U.S and Ethiopian planes operating in the remote southern area where Islamists were driven after their defeat.
The government source said four new U.S. strikes hit areas near Ras Kamboni, a coastal village close to the Kenyan border long thought by Western and east African intelligence agencies to be a hideout and training camp for Islamic militants.
“As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force,” said the source, talking to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Somali officials said many died in Monday’s strike — the first overt U.S. military action in Somalia since a disastrous humanitarian mission ended in 1994.
Amnesty International said it had written to the U.S. government expressing concern, echoing U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, France, the European Union, former colonial power Italy, Egypt and the Arab League.
“We are concerned that civilians may have been killed as a result of a failure to comply with international humanitarian law,” said Claudio Cordone, an Amnesty International official.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said there had been just one U.S. air attack with no civilian casualties.
“They knew where the target was and they suspected that the target would move and they would miss the opportunity unless they acted quickly,” he said.
Meles told a news conference in Addis Ababa Ethiopian soldiers had gone to the site of the attack. Eight “terrorists” were killed, five captured and seven escaped, he said.
ISLAMISTS HIDING
Lawmaker Abdirashid Mohamed Hidig said after touring the region in an Ethiopian helicopter that at least 50 people were killed by U.S. and Ethiopian air strikes.
The areas struck were Hayo, Garer, Bankajirow and Badmadowe, he said. “Bankajirow was the last Islamist holdout. Bankajirow and Badmadowe were hit hardest”.
Hidig told reporters: “Yesterday I personally saw the planes striking. The air strikes resumed this morning.” He spoke in the port of Kismayu after returning from a tour of the area.
“The worst loss has befallen civilians since the fleeing Islamists are hiding among the people there,” he said.
more
Violence engulfs Somali capital
By Jeffrey Gettleman
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Mogadishu exploded in violence Wednesday morning after insurgents attacked a government barracks during the night and soldiers responded by sealing off large swaths of the city and searching house to house for weapons.
The raids immediately sparked resistance, and squads of Ethiopian soldiers and troops loyal to the transitional government poured into the streets, where they battled outraged residents and a handful of masked insurgents.
From dawn through early afternoon, the pop of gunfire and the boom of explosives echoed across Mogadishu, Somalia’s chaotic capital. But it is difficult to tell how many people here actually support the growing insurgency against Somalia’s transitional government and the Ethiopian troops backing it up.
On Wednesday, a group of masked men stood on the steps of a Mogadishu mosque and announced that they were Somalia’s new freedom fighters. They were met by jeers.
“Why can’t you hit anything then?” shouted a woman, referring to a botched grenade attack earlier in the day that completely missed an Ethiopian patrol and destroyed a house instead. “Were you scared? Were your fingers trembling?”
Regardless of the insurgents’ popularity or lack of it, violence is increasing. And the transitional government, which entered the capital two weeks ago for the first time since it was formed in 2004, now faces a critical test: how quickly, if at all, can it pacify a notoriously dangerous city, bristling with guns and split by deep clan divisions?
Most of the violence on Wednesday was concentrated in strongholds of the Ayr sub clan, a powerful lineage group closely connected to Somalia’s Islamist movement that had controlled much of the country until Ethiopia got heavily involved last month.
On the other hand, neighborhoods of the Darod clan of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the transitional president, were quiet. Many Darod members said they were happy about the weapons raids, especially the ones in Ayr neighborhoods.
Clan rivalries have long been the curse of Somalia, the cause of its civil wars, its famines and its state of suspended decay. It seems that this new chapter is no different.
The insurgents are still a mysterious bunch, but many people suspect they are members of the Islamist movement. After getting routed by Ethiopian-led forces in a conventional military matchup, the Islamists vowed to fight on as an underground army.
As each night passes, more and more government troops are getting hit. On Tuesday night, insurgents launched one of their boldest attacks yet, firing rocket-propelled grenades from two pickup trucks at an army barracks in central Mogadishu. Initial reports indicated that several soldiers were killed and that the insurgents escaped.
Doctors at Medina hospital said Wednesday afternoon that 15 people were admitted for gunshot wounds in 24 hours, including 3 government soldiers. The violence from the past week has filled the hospital’s 65 beds, leaving bleeding men and women curled up on the floor and under acacia trees in the courtyard.
“This is not something that is going to stop,” said Dahir Mohammed, head of medical department. “Until the Ethiopians leave, people will be determined to kill them.”
The Islamist leaders, meanwhile, have fled to a jungle in southern Somalia along the Kenyan border where they are being hunted down by Ethiopian troops, with the help of American forces.
Somali officials on Wednesday said that Abdallah Mohammed Fazul, a suspected terrorist accused of planning the bombings against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, had been killed in recent American airstrikes in southern Somalia.
But U.S. officials quickly distanced themselves from that claim, saying on Wednesday that they had no such evidence and were not even sure Fazul was among the terrorist suspects hiding in the jungle with the Islamists.
more IHT
U.S. reportedly targeted 20 in Somalia
Staff and agencies
10 January, 2007
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN,
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Ethiopia‘s prime minister said Wednesday the U.S. military targeted 20 high-level members of an Islamic movement linked to al-Qaida in an airstrike this week in southern Somalia, attacking quickly before the Islamists could escape.
The air assault has been criticized internationally, with the African Union, European Union and United Nations among those expressing concern. But British Prime Minister Tony Blair told lawmakers it was right to stand up to extremists who were using violence to “get their way” in Somalia.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters in his country‘s capital, Addis Ababa, that eight suspected terrorists were killed in Monday‘s airstrike, five were wounded and taken into custody by Ethiopian forces, and seven escaped.
He said Ethiopia and the U.S. have been cooperating on intelligence, and that most of the information has come from the Americans. He also said the Ethiopians did not provide any intelligence that led to Monday‘s airstrike.
However, a U.S. military official based in the region said the Ethiopian military had provided the intelligence that led to the strike. “We acted on time-sensitive intelligence and made the strike in cooperation with the Ethiopians,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding U.S. special operations missions.
The U.S. military official said Tuesday‘s strike was probably carried out by Ethiopia since the aircraft were identified as Russian-made Hind helicopter gunships like those used by the Ethiopian military.
The al-Qaida suspect believed to have been killed Monday was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Hassan said. He cited a U.S. intelligence report that was given to Somali authorities.
If confirmed, it would mean the end of an eight-year hunt for one of the FBI ‘s most-wanted terrorists. Fazul was believed to have been harbored by the Somali Islamic movement that had challenged the country‘s Ethiopian-backed government for power.
Fazul, 32, joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and trained with Osama bin Laden , according to FBI documents. The U.S. put a $5 million bounty on his head for allegedly planning the embassy bombings, which killed 225 people.
Somalia‘s Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aided said Wednesday that U.S. special forces were needed on the ground to help Somali and Ethiopian troops capture Muslim extremists. “They have the know-how and the right equipment to capture these people,” said Aided, a former U.S. Marine.
A senior Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said a small U.S. operations team already was on the ground, providing military advice to Ethiopian and government forces.
In Washington, two senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday they had heard of no plans to put any sizable contingent of American ground troops in Somalia. Small teams of liaison officers — such as special forces advisers or trainers — were another matter, they said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.
U.S. troops based in Djibouti have been training Ethiopian soldiers for years, mostly in small-unit tactics and border security. Ethiopia has the largest military and is America‘s closest ally in the region.
Meles said the success of the Ethiopian military intervention may have paved the way for the American airstrikes.
“No one expected the terrorists would be running around in groups of five or six without any protection,” Meles said.
In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, some said the U.S. air attacks would increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country, where people are already upset by the presence of troops from Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population.
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the post now
US denies southern Somali attacks
An armed Somali soldier in Mogadishu (5 January 2007)
UN officials fear the air strikes could lead to an escalation of hostilities
US forces say they have carried out no fresh air strikes in southern Somalia against Islamist fighters since Monday.
Residents in Afmadow town, north of Kismayo, have described two attacks, whilst another was reported by Somalis in the coastal area of Ras Kamboni.
Reports suggest Ethiopian MiG fighters and helicopter gunships seen in the city of Kismayo may be involved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6247111.stm
Comment
By Jonathan Clayton
TimesOnline- UK
10 January 2007
Claims that a senior al-Qaeda suspect believed to have been the mastermind behind terror attacks against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania has been killed in the current wave of air strikes against Islamist strongholds in southern Somalia have been greeted with scepticism in the region.
News agencies reported Somali government officials saying that Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, who is accused of the joint 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam which killed 262 people, was dead. The Somali President’s Chief of Staff said he had received the information from the Americans.
However, reports from the area said Fazul Abdullah had left the hardline Islamist hideout of Ras Kamboni and slipped over the porous border to Kenya, where his wife and many members of his family live, several weeks ago. Regional analysts said they believed reports of his death were misinformation intended to give the impression the operation was a success and mask the danger of the country slipping into an all-out civil war.
Local sources said the Ethiopian forces, who had cornered fugitive Somali Islamists in the area since they were driven out of the capital two weeks ago, had suffered high casualties and called on the US for air support. That support now needed to be justified.
“I suspect we are seeing some classic misinformation going on here… The truth is the American and Ethiopian intelligence from the area has always been suspect,” said one expert on Somalia based in Kenya. “Unless, we are shown the bodies of these alleged al-Qaeda operatives, no-one will believe it.”
Regional analysts say Somalia’s Islamists were largely made up of members of the Hawiye clan while the US-backed weak transitional government is dominated by the Darod and its sub-clans, historic foes of the Hawiye and former backers of the deposed dictator Mohamed Siad Barre whose fall from power ushered in 15 years of rule by warlords.
They said the situation in Mogadishu, which saw its first period of calm for more than a decade after it was taken by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) last June, would be the true test of whether the military operation against the Islamists and hardline al-Qaeda sympathisers was a success or not.
“There are several thousand UIC supporters in Mogadishu, what they do is more important for long-term stability in Somalia than whether these al-Qaeda operatives are killed or not,” the source added.
http://www.eritreadaily.net/News0107/article0107103.htm
U.S. special forces in Somalia
1/10/2007, 6:07 p.m. CT
By PAULINE JELINEK
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. special operations forces are in Somalia hunting suspected al-Qaida fighters, but Pentagon officials dismissed the idea they are planning to send any large number of ground troops to the African nation.
U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday a small American team has been providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground. The officials provided little detail and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The U.S. forces entered Somalia with Ethiopian forces late last month when Ethiopians launched their attack against the Islamic movement said to be sheltering al-Qaida figures, one of the officials said.
They spoke days after an American airstrike on a suspected al-Qaida target that U.S. officials have said killed up to 10 people.
The Navy has moved additional forces into waters off the Somali coast, where they have conducted security missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew on suspicious ships.
With the arrival of the USS Ramage guided missile destroyer, there were five ships Wednesday: the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio guided missile cruisers, and the USS Ashland amphibious landing ship, which officials said they could use as a brig for any captured suspects.
Despite the continuing operation in Somalia, two other senior U.S. defense officials said they had heard of no plans to put any sizable contingent of Americans into Somalia. They also spoke on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon typically does not talk about future operations or troops movement.
The small teams of special operations forces serving as liaison officers, advisers and trainers are a different matter, the officials said. They declined to specifically say whether additional teams are planned.
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Three top al Qaeda suspects survive U.S. strike
11 Jan 2007 13:47:52 GMT
NAIROBI, Jan 11 (Reuters) – A U.S. air strike on Somalia three days ago killed up to 10 al Qaeda-affiliated “terrorists”, but three of the most wanted suspects survived, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
“We are still in pursuit (of the three). We and the Ethiopians and everyone else wants to interdict terrorists,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The United States on Monday hit a village in south Somalia in an attempt to take out an al Qaeda cell accused of bombing two U.S. embassies in 1998 and an Israeli-owned hotel in 2002.
The U.S. official said between eight to 10 “al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists” were killed in Monday’s attack.
“There were a number of terrorist targets that were killed in that operation,” he added
bit more
Hm.
.
US envoy rules out military base in Somalia
Story by NATION Reporters
Publication Date: 1/12/2007
The United States yesterday denied claims that it planned to set up a military base in Somalia after getting rid of “terrorists.â€
The US ambassador to Kenya, Mr Michael Rannerberger, maintained that Washington’s long term interest was to ensure that stability was restored in the war-torn country.
The envoy also denied media reports that scores of Somali civilians had been killed in air raids by the US military operating from the Somali coast, on the Indian Ocean.
Mr Rannerberger insisted that there were no civilian casualties in early this week’s air strike in the Horn of African country by US forces pursuing senior al Queda suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, accused of being behind the 1998 terrorist attacks on the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam US embassies.
The envoy said they believed that Mr Mohammed was killed in the strike, but could not give further details.
He maintained that their military operation was specifically to eliminate a Mr Mohammed.
Asked about his country’s military strategy in the Horn of Africa, Mr Rannerberger said the US had no troops on the ground and had no plans to set up a military base in that country.
He was addressing reporters at the US embassy.
He said the US was working closely with Kenya, Ethiopia and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia to restore stability in the Horn of Africa country.
The envoy called on the Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf and his government to embrace dialogue with all peace-loving parties in the country.
The Ethiopian forces have been in the country since December 24 to drive away the Islamic Courts Union leaders and their forces.
Mr Rannerberger denied press reports that the US was planning to occupy Somalia.
“We have pledged to give Somalia $40 million in development and humanitarian aid. The Ugandan Government has pledged to donate troops for peace-keeping. This is a positive effort,†Mr Rannerberger said.
On the controversial arrest of some Somali MPs by the Kenyan authorities for opposing the invasion of their country by the Ethiopian forces, Mr Rannerberger said he was optimistic that the “misunderstanding†would be resolved amicably.
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Perhaps the reasoning goes like this -
“Well, look at how many civilians are becoming terrorists in response to our outrageously heavy-handed actions. Now – just imagine how much angrier you’d be at us if you were killed in one of those actions. I think we can logically say anyone we killed is a terrorist, because if they weren’t one immediately before their deaths, they sure as hell would qualify as one immediately after.”
LMAO
The U.S. has initiated a series of attacks in southern Somalia aimed at suspected members of al Qaeda. What do you think?
Jeff Andrews, Bodyguard
“Why would the army shoot people who are living in Somalia? That just seems redundant.”
American Voices
“Damn right it’s loaded, it makes a lousy club.”
Schumpeter’s creative destruction to world affairs, except instead of innovation, there are bullets.
posted about this back in November 2005.
Viral fever spreads from Kenya to Somalia -officials
12 Jan 12, 2007, 13:43
GARISSA, Kenya, Jan 12 (Reuters) – The Rift Valley Fever, a virus that has killed nearly 80 people in Kenya, has spread to the Somali border town of Doble, where thousands of refugees fleeing conflict are assembled, officials said on Friday.
The disease was largely confined to remote parts of Kenya’s northeastern and coast provinces. However, the disease which is spread through the movement of infected livestock, has crossed over to neighbouring Somalia.
“In Doble, there were reports of people falling sick and animals dying,” Kariuki Njenga, a virologist with the Centre for Disease Control, told Reuters. “There are also reports of animals aborting for the last two weeks. These are some of the symptoms of the Rift Valley Fever.”
Although transmission from animals to humans is rare, the disease develops into a much more severe illness once it crosses over causing victims to abort, vomit blood or bleed to death.
The disease is transmitted to humans through mosquito bites or frequent contact with contaminated animals.
“Four more people have died of Rift Valley Fever in the region today. This brings the total death toll to 78. There are now 214 confirmed cases since Dec. 14,” said Ahmed Omar, medical officer for North Eastern province.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said its teams were having difficulties getting help to affected people as heavy rains over Kenya had made roads impassable, meaning the disease could spread to other areas.
The WHO, Medecins Sans Frontieres and other agencies have deployed teams of experts to reinforce local hospitals and clinics and stop the epidemic spreading any further.
Source: Reuters
How US forged an alliance with Ethiopia over invasion
Xan Rice in Nairobi and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday January 13, 2007
The Guardian
On December 4, General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces from the Middle East through Afghanistan, arrived in Addis Ababa to meet the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. Officially, the trip was a courtesy call to an ally. Three weeks later, however, Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia in a war on its Islamist rulers, and this week the US launched air strikes against suspected al-Qaida operatives believed to be hiding among the fleeing Islamist fighters.
“The meeting was just the final handshake,” said a former intelligence officer familiar with the region.
Washington and Addis Ababa may deny it, but the air strikes this week exposed close intelligence and military cooperation between Ethiopia and America, fuelled by mutual concern about the rise of Islamists in the chaos of Somalia.
much more
The Independent, By Anne Penketh & Steve Bloomfield, Jan 13
The herdsmen had gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes. But lit up by the flames, they became latest victims of America’s war on terror.
It was their tragedy to be misidentified in a secret operation by special forces attempting to kill three top al-Qa’ida leaders in south-ern Somalia.
Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets wanted for their alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
The wanted men are Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, who were all supposedly sheltered by the Union of Islamic Courts during its short reign in Mogadishu.
The operation, which opened a new front in Washington’s anti-terror campaign, seems to have backfired spectacularly in the five days since it was launched. In addition to the scores of Somali civilians killed, the simmering civil war in the failed state has been rekindled.
Djibouti warns US over Somalia
Sun. January 14, 2007 08:25 am.
Mohamed Abdi Farah
(SomaliNet) The Djiboutian president Ismael Omar Gelle said on Saturday that his government is warning the US government not to use the land of Djibouti as base to launch air strikes on southern Somalia.
Mr. Gelle made the statement through the Djibouti media and said the American government should not bomb on civilian people in southern parts of Somalia since they failed to kill what they called ‘terrorist cells’.
“We the Djiboutian government would not accept that US air forces use our land as base for launching air raids on Somalia and we are making it clear that we are absolutely against the plan,†said Gelle while talking to the reporters.
Speaking on the presence of the Ethiopian forces in Somalia, Mr. Gelle said: “the Ethiopian government should withdraw its troops from Somalia and I am repeatedly asking the international community not to send troops into Somalia but to work out introducing peace and stability in that country,â€
It is for the first time that Djiboutian president Ismael Omar Gelle expressed his opposition to the US military mission in Somalia and the use of the Djiboutian land as base for air strikes on southern of Somalia.
http://somalinet.com/news/world/Somalia/6667
US attack in Somalia part of global blueprint
Mark Mazzetti in Washington
January 15, 2007
MILITARY operations in Somalia by US commandos, and the use of the Ethiopian army as a surrogate force to root out al-Qaeda operatives, are a plan that Pentagon strategists say they hope to use more frequently in worldwide counterterrorism missions.
Military officials said the strike by a US gunship against terrorism suspects in southern Somalia last week shows that even with the departure of Donald Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, Special Operations Command troops intend to take advantage of the former defence secretary’ directive in the weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks.
The recent military operations had been carried by the Pentagon’s joint Special Operations Command, which directs the military’s most secretive and elite units, such as the army’s Delta Force, officials said.
The Pentagon established an outpost in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti in 2002, partly to serve as a hub for special operations missions to capture or kill senior al-Qaeda leaders in the region.
Few “high value” targets have materialised, and the Pentagon has gradually moved members of the covert Special Operations units to more urgent missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But officials in Washington said last week that the joint command had quietly been returning troops and weaponry to the region in recent weeks in anticipation of a mission against members of an al-Qaeda cell believed to be hiding inside Somalia.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, told Congress on Friday that the strike in Somalia was executed under the Pentagon’s authority to hunt down and kill terrorism suspects around the world, a power given to it by the White House shortly after the September 11, attacks.
snip….
Critics of the Pentagon’s aggressive use of Special Operations troops – including some Democratic members of Congress – have argued that using US forces outside of declared combat zones gives the Pentagon too much authority in sovereign nations and blurs the lines between soldiers and spies.
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