Introduction

• Since at least the mid-1990s, 3 terrorist groups have been operating inside Somalia. The most dangerous is an al-Qaeda contingent that includes the cells responsible for the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi and the 2002 bombing of a tourist hotel in Kenya and the simultaneous attempt to shoot down an El Al charter aircraft. The second is the leadership of al-Itihaad al-Islami, a Somali Islamist nationalist group with long-standing ties to al-Qaeda that seeks to establish an Islamic theocracy in the Somali-inhabited regions of the Horn of Africa. During its height in the early 1990s, al-Itihaad had a powerful militia with more than 1,000 fighters and was funded in large part by Islamic NGOs from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, establishing training camps staffed by al-Qaeda instructors and carrying out several terrorist attacks inside Ethiopia. After the Ethiopian military attacked on its Somali bases in early 1997, much of the group's military and political infrastructure collapsed, though its leaders remained active and played a supporting role in the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi. Since 2003, a small but independent jihadi network linked to al-Qaeda has emerged in the greater Mogadishu area.

• The notoriety and effectiveness of these terrorists has led to the widespread perception that Somalia is a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and a center for terrorist activity. A March 2005 UN report portrayed Somalia as the home to an army of jihadis and at least 17 terrorist training camps. ICG disagrees with these findings, believing instead that al-Itihaad's militia has been largely dismantled, that there are less than a dozen al-Qaeda leaders in Somalia, and that the Mogadishu jihadis probably number in tens rather than hundreds, in contrast to several Western states that host far larger and more sophisticated terror networks. What makes Somalia such an area of special concern is that the lack of a central government, police, immigration, customs, and intelligence agencies render the country a haven for terrorist groups. In this vacuum, foreign security services, particularly those from the US, have taken up the challenge of fighting terrorism in Somalia. A Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was set up in Djibouti to coordinate and serve as the backbone of regional counter-terrorism initiatives. But for many of the same reasons that Somalia is a focus of concern, ICG judges that it is unlikely to ever become a refuge for al-Qaeda on par with Afghanistan under the Taliban because there is no sympathetic authority to provide protection, the flat terrain offers few opportunities for concealment, and a rich oral tradition makes it difficult to maintain secrets.

• Over the years, Somali leaders have attempted to exploit the al-Qaeda presence for their own political ends. After 9/11, various warlords and faction leaders declared their country a potential haven for terrorists, a view that Ethiopia backed and denounced the Transitional National Government (TNG) as a front for al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups. In 2001, Addis Ababa backed the formation of the opposition coalition Somali Restoration and Reconciliation Council (SRRC) that soon began working on collecting intelligence on the TNG and its supporters. SRRC reports including lengthy lists with names of political rivals and their ties with terrorist groups that included al-Itihaad and Takfir wal Hijra. Some leading TNG figures were indeed associated with al-Itihaad and the progressive Islamist movement Harakat al-Islax, but much of the TNG cabinet and the Mogadishu business elite were alleged by SRRC to have terrorist ties, as well as their sponsors and business partners in Djibouti.

• Concerns about the TNG's terrorist ties and the threat of al-Qaeda provided much of initiative behind Somalia's neighbors in the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to replace the floundering TNG with a more reliable partner. In October 2004, peace talks in Kenya set up the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) based in Nairobi under the leadership of President Abdullah Yusuf, a central SRRC figure who made certain that the TFG was dominated by members of his clan and factional allies. Yusuf earned his anti-terrorist credentials by fighting and defeating al-Itihaad members in northeastern Somalia in 1992 and has lived on that success ever since. As the president of Puntland, he has cooperated closely with Ethiopian and US intelligence and many observers expected him likely to win the support of both governments. Addis Ababa did throw its support behind Yusuf, but Washington like many countries remained noncommital because of their skepticism about his ability to build consensus among the various Somali factions and lead a continued reconciliation process.

• These concerns appeared justified when Yusuf appealed for 20,000 international peacekeepers to return his government to Somalia and later announced that he would not relocate to Mogadishu but rather to Baydhowa and Jowhar. Unpresuaded by his requests and already overstretched by commitments to Darfur, the African Union (AU) vacillitated, prompting IGAD to propose their own 10,000-strong intervention force. Although described as a peacekeeping mission, the operation was described as one of peace enforcement, involving "all measures necessary" against any party deemed to threaten the process - exactly the kind of mission that brought US and UN forces into conflict with Somali warlords in the early 1990s. The original concept also included a reference to counter-terrorism, indicating that peacekeeping was not the only consideration for Somalia's neighbors.

• These issues polarized the TFG into two camps, one led by Yusuf and the SRRC, the other by the Mogadishu warlords. The TFG parliament also splintered, with Speaker Sharif Hassan returning to Mogadishu while President Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Geedi remaining in Nairobi. The Mogadishu faction rapidly set to work, organizing a coalition of civil service organizations, women's groups, and former military and police officers in the hopes of demonstrating that Mogadishu was the proper site for the TFG. Yusuf continued to insist that Mogadishu was too insecure and foreign troops were essential. This impasse threatened to splinter the TFG into rival armed camps, derailing the already fragile peace process.

Manufacturing Jihad

• Since the fall of al-Itihaad in the mid-1990s, the fortunes of Somali jihadis have been on the decline. Many former jihadis have abandoned violence and returned to more conventional schools of Salafism. The flow of funding from Islamic NGOs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf began to dry up soon after 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan destroyed an important training center. From a jihadi perspective, Yusuf's appeal for foreign troops, particularly from Ethiopia, seemed like an answer to their prayers. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the former al-Itihaad vice chairman and military commander now based in Mogadishu, predictably condemned the proposed deployment and called on Somalis to wage jihad against any foreign troops who set foot inside their country. His view was echoed by Mogadishu's influential sha'riah courts and other religious leaders.

• TFG supporters were quick to brand opponents of Yusuf's deployment plan as extremists, while Ethiopia regarded the opposition as nothing more than a handful of Islamic terrorists. But Yusuf's rivals inside the TFG, including several key ministers, saw the peacekeeping plan as a ruse by Yusuf and his Ethiopian backers to crush his enemies, a view widely held by the Hawiye clan. As of February 2005, ICG found Mogadishu residents broadly united against military intervention and the next session of the Somali parliament at a Nairobi hotel degenerated into a brawl when the question of foreign intervention was brought to a vote. The Mogadishu residents who subsequently took to the street in protest represented a broad cross section of society.

• Some Mogadishu residents feared that while a war between Ethiopia and the Islamists might be good for Ethiopia it was bad for Somalia and stated that they would be willing to fight alongside Islamists against any foreign troops. Others simply feared that foreign military intervention would lead to an Islamist takeover under the pretext of defending Somalis from foreign occupation. Recognizing these risks, international actors have moved to try and advert a regional catastrophe that could serve as a catalyst for the rise of jihadi movement inside Somalia. The EU, IGAD's Partners' Form, and the UN Security Council all followed the US lead in urging restraint by IGAD and Somalia's neighbors.

• In March 2005, IGAD put forward a revised deployment plan that excluded Somalia's neighbors from the first phase with the counter-terrorism component of the mission removed at AU request. In May, the AU Peace and Security Council approved only the first phase of the planned IGAD deployment, effectively proscribing neighbors from taking part and seeking UN Security Council approval that it was unlikely to receive given US misgivings about sending foreign troops into the country.

• After 9 months of delay, the TFG wore out its welcome in Nairobi and left Kenya on June 13 in a carefully staged ceremony that left President Yusuf and his followers no choice but to depart. Apart from the Kenyan honor guard and military band at the airport, no foreign troops were on hand to deliver the interim president back to his country. In Mogadishu, efforts to prepare the city for the TFG's arrival were underway, including the removal of roadblocks and militias headquartered just outside the city, with even Sheikh Aweys agreeing to contribute 28 crewed battlewagons to the disarmament process. While Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi continued to warn of an al-Qaeda presence in Somalia, he affirmed that a Somali government, aligning his government with the international consensus and the threat of a broad-based insurgency appears to have receded.

A Dissenting View

ICG's opinions aside, both the US and the UN appear to have very different views concerning Somalia. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, gives us a little bit of an idea as far as what they think is active in the country on pages 178-180 of Through Our Enemies' Eyes:

Africa has remained high-interest locale for bin Laden since the 1994 withdrawl of UN and US forces from Somalia, and his operatives have remained active there in - at least - Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, South Africa, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Nigeria, Madagascar, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Given al Qaeda's August 1998 attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, bin Laden obviously has strong bases in each of those countries. Somalia, however, seems a case apart, and bin Laden expended sizeable amounts of time, money, and manpower to expand there after he returned to Afghanistan. At his death in 1996, according to the UK-based journal Al-Hawadith, Abu Ubeidah left a strong al Qaeda presence in Africa, although the article exaggerates when it says he created a formal "federation of African fundamentalist groups, which rallied financially and organizationally around bin Laden's al Qaeda banner." What seems fair to say is that Abu Ubeidah built a mature al Qaeda presence in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, and a growing infrastructure in Somalia ... Somalia, however, now seems the focus of al Qaeda's efforts in Africa.

To secure al Qaeda's Somali base, bin Laden's fighters focused on backing Farah Aideed's son Husayn and supporting al-Itihaad al-Islami (AII), or the Islamic Unity Party. The political chaos and physical devastation left in Somalia after the civil war and UN intervention made the groups eager for bin Laden's financial and military support as they compete for supremacy in Somalia. Over the past several years, bin Laden's Somalia-based force reportedly has risen to between four hundred and two thousand fighters, and there are reports of senior bin Laden lieutenants - most frequently the IG's Mustafa Hamza - visiting the country to survey al Qaeda's progress in Africa and the needs of its Somali allies. In May 1999, al-Sharq al-Awsat said al Qaeda was setting up a camp near the coastal town of Ras Kamboni and was installing sophisticated communications there. In addition, bin Laden's fighters reportedly have built "structures and training camps in the region of Gedo, near the border between Somalia and Ethiopia," and possibly are trying to acquire uranium deposits in northern Somalia. Al Qaeda also appears to use Somalia as a base for dealing with the Eritrean Islamic Jihad, taking advantage of the unstable politics yielded by the 1998-1999 Great Lakes War to contact Islamists in Central Africa and supplying weapons to al Qaeda operatives in Kenya.

In Somalia, al Qaeda now has close ties to the AII guerrilla organization and to an Islamist grouping called the United Front for the Liberation of Western Somalia (UF), consisting of AII, the Western Somali Liberation Front, and the Somali People's Liberation Front. Al Qaeda provides unspecified support to the AII and in return trains some of its fighters in UF camps, which the West watches far less closely than those in Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Formation of the UF began in late 1996 after the Ethiopian army made cross-border "preemptive strikes" on AII bases in Somalia. According to al-Awsat, the August 1996 Ethiopian raids on AII "almost broke its back;" the Ethiopians also claimed to have "apprehended ... a number of 'Afghan Arabs' who were financed by Osama bin Laden" and who were serving with the AII. After this setback, the AII joined the two above-mentioned groups to form the UF, which was created "with the recommendation of Osama bin Laden," who also "facilitated the arrival of a group of his followers in southern Somalia and financed their purchase of sophisticated weapons" to assist the UF's organizational efforts. Bin Laden's aid, according to al-Awsat, has been effective to the point where "the Islamic groups ... have indeed regained their strength." Bin Laden's support for the Somali Islamists has ensured three things: Al Qaeda has a force in being and base for staging attacks in Africa; bin Laden has a potential personal safe haven there; and he has earned the enmity of the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments. Ethiopia, in particular, is bin Laden's foe, because al Qaeda has "carried out operations in Ethiopia, especially in its capital Addis Ababa."

Needless to say, these are two extremely different portraits of Somalia. I leave it to the reader to decide which they think fits best.