Night Falls on Mogadishu by Dan Darling

ON JUNE 5th, Islamist fighters loyal to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The ICU's sudden consolidation of power has increased concerns that the anarchic African nation may serve as a terrorist haven similar to that of Afghanistan under the Taliban. But while a great deal of ink has been spilled on this subject since the fall of Mogadishu, entirely too much of it has been devoted to criticizing alleged American support for the secular Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). The individuals that now control much of southern Somalia are the real story here, given that a number of key figures in the ICU can be directly linked not only to al Qaeda but also to the killing of a number of U.S. servicemen during Operation Restore Hope in Somalia--an act that forms a major component of the original 1998 US indictment of Osama bin Laden.

Estimates of the actual al Qaeda presence in Somalia are, alarmingly, rather varied. On one hand, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, recounts in his book Through Our Enemies' Eyes how "bin Laden expended sizeable amounts of time, money, and manpower to expand there [Somalia] after he returned to Afghanistan," and that "anywhere from a dozen to several hundred of bin Laden's Afghan Arabs remained in and around Mogadishu after U.N. and U.S. forces departed." Quoting extensively from the Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Aswat, Scheuer argues:

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 ... 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."

A March 2005 United Nations report provided a similar picture of al Qaeda in Somalia, describing the nation as a harbor for a large force of jihadi fighters supported by no less than 17 terrorist training camps. A more comforting analysis of the situation comes from the respected International Crisis Group (ICG). The ICG describes jihadism as an "unpopular, minority trend among Somali Islamists" and argues that the military wing of Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya (AIAI), the primary al Qaeda associate group in Somalia, has been "largely dismantled" as a result of Ethiopian military intervention during the mid-1990s. Furthermore, they found that "the new jihadi network's effective membership is in the tens rather than the hundreds, and the number of ranking al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia probably number less than half a dozen." Needless to say, these are two extremely contrasting views on the scope of the terror network in Somalia.

Regardless of which assessment presents a more accurate picture of the current situation, the current leadership of the ICU is alarming enough on its own right. The newly appointed leader of the group's consultation committee, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is a long-standing al Qaeda confederate, his current denials notwithstanding. A former army colonel, Aweys has been involved with AIAI since its inception and served as the commander of the group's military wing during the formative stages of both its alliance with al Qaeda and its combat operations against U.S., and later Ethiopian, forces. Contrary to the current conventional wisdom--i.e.,that it was the American support for the secular warlords that led to the current status quo in Somalia--Aweys has been declaring for well over a year now his intention to establish an Islamist theocracy in Somalia through violence. In May 2005, he claimed that "democracy is contrary to Islamic teachings." That September, Aweys told SomaliNet's Hassan Ali in an exclusive interview that he was preparing for war against the Jowhar-based interim government, stating that "We [the ICU] have been mobilizing all of our assets in the past few months and we are ready to die for saving Somalia." While US support for the secular Somali warlords may well have been the proximate cause for the recent fighting, it must also be noted that Aweys was preparing his followers to fight for control of Somalia regardless of this alleged U.S. interference. Most likely it was only a question of when, not if, violence would erupt once again in war-torn Mogadishu.

To illustrate that the ICU's leader has abandoned none of his prior ties to international terrorism, it is only necessary to examine the role played by Aweys's young protégé, Aden Hashi 'Ayro. The commander of one of the ICU militias, 'Ayro is reputed to have inherited his mentor's ties to al Qaeda and even traveled to Afghanistan to receive terrorist training there on the eve of Operation Enduring Freedom. Under 'Ayro's leadership, Somali Islamists have desecrated Italian cemeteries, murdered NGO workers, and killed BBC journalist Kate Peyton. It would also be a definite mistake to view the religious extremism of Aweys and 'Ayro as being a merely local variety: on June 6, Knight-Ridder reported that "U.S. officials said the Islamists are hosting the al-Qaida planner of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and two organizers of a failed 2002 bid to down an Israeli passenger jet in Kenya." ARPCT spokesman Hussein Gutale Ragheh went even further, claiming that Arab, Pakistani, and Oromo Islamists had been killed alongside ICU fighters during the battle for control of Mogadishu. While harboring at least three senior al Qaeda operatives should be reason enough to view the ICU as a danger to the region, if the ARPCT accounts have even a kernel of veracity to them it would seem to indicate that the more alarmist accounts of al Qaeda activity in Somalia may, in fact, be accurate.

The effect of the ICU's rule over Mogadishu is already coming into focus. From closing down makeshift cinemas, to preventing Somalis from viewing the World Cup, to making the celebration of New Year's a capital offense, the closer one looks at this regime the more it begins to resemble the Islamist theocracy that once dominated Afghanistan. While some observers have compared the rise of the ICU in Somalia to the Taliban conquest of Afghanistan, a better analogy might be the early rise of the Taliban in Kandahar in 1994, when the movement was still in the process of consolidating its power. At that time, the West chose to ignore the threat, a decision that had tragic consequences for so many. Whether or not we repeat that same mistake, only time will tell.

-Dan Darling is a counterterrorism consultant.