Paul Redfern
10 December 2001
US CLAIMS that Somalia is harbouring terrorist organisations with links to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network are said to have been questioned by senior UN officials.
UN officials visited Ras Kamboni island near the Kenya border recently after it was said that the Somali group Islamic Unity has a training camp there. They found only an orphanage.
The Guardian newspaper said last week that the Somali group appeared on the US hit list of terrorist groups because of claims that it was responsible for assassination attempts in Addis Ababa.
There are no other terrorist allegations against it and besides the claims of Ethiopia, no substantial allegations of a link to Al Qaeda.
UN resident co-ordinator for Somalia, Randolph Kent told the British newspaper: "We have seen no connections between Al Itihaad and Al Qaeda."
The one other charges that Al Qaeda was engaged in terrorism in Somalia, stems from the US trial of the suspects of the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. But this was dropped for lack of evidence.
The Guardian's East Africa correspondent, James Astill, said that for the United States to strike at Somalia on Ethiopia's advice "would be like invading Pakistan on a tip-off from India," given the two countries' long standing dispute over the Ogaden region.
But another factor likely to be coming into play in US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's thinking is the humiliating withdrawal the Americans made from Somalia in 1994 after 18 members of its elite special forces were killed.
But Mr Rumsfeld's evidence of Al Qaeda involvement in Somalia is considered suspect because before September 11, no US staff are believed to have visited Somalia.
Intelligence evidence is said to come through the embassies in Nairobi and Addis Ababa but before September 11, the military intelligence agencies had no interest in actually going into Somalia. To do otherwise would not have been consistent with what the US undersecretary of state for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, said when he described American policy towards Kenya's north-eastern neighbour as one of "total benign neglect."
Military experts have also questioned what the US could target in Somalia given the almost total infrastructure breakdown in the country. Patrolling the country's vast coastline to prevent any of bin Laden's associates from fleeing there is however considered a likely option, or at least more likely than sending in the US marines.
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