Al Qaeda Ally In Somalia Is in Tatters
Only Remnants Remain Of Potential U.S. Target
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 24, 2002; Page A16
BULO HAWA, Somalia -- Not long after Somalia's central government imploded 11 years ago, emissaries of Osama bin Laden began slipping into this ragged border town more or less at will. Not even U.S. intelligence had heard of al Qaeda when the organization first sent agents to train local militiamen in this remote corner of Somalia that, by the mid-1990s, was being ruled by militant Islamic fundamentalists.
But the fundamentalists are nowhere to be seen now. Defeated by troops from neighboring Ethiopia five years ago, the remnants of al-Ittihad al-Islami melted into the local population after President Bush included the group on a list of terrorist organizations following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Wander across the Somali border today, duck under the low doorway of a reed-and-rag hut, and what peers out of the gloom is a 20-year-old woman who weighs 52 pounds. Nurta Abdi Diryiye shared this hut with her family, but her husband, she said, died fighting al-Ittihad. Earlier this month her son Mohammed, 3, starved to death, followed a few days later by his brother, Mohamud, 2.
"I have nothing at all," Diryiye said. "I had two kids."
The kind of lawlessness that robbed Diryiye of her husband has defined Somalia for more than a decade, and is now bringing it new attention of a sort. After years of being ignored by the West, this country of 6 million people, wrapped around the Horn of Africa, is routinely scanned by U.S. spy satellites and high-altitude American and French surveillance flights. German frigates cruise the coast. All are watching to see whether members of bin Laden's al Qaeda network, escaping pressure across the seas in South Asia, turn up again in Somalia.
If any do, the United States "will take appropriate action," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told a congressional committee on Feb. 6. Off the Indian Ocean coast just south of Somalia, a flotilla of 3,000 U.S. Marines and sailors conducting "intensive ground and air maneuvers" in a joint exercise with Kenyan forces underscores the point.
It is not at all certain that the United States will send its military into Somalia. The only known insertion since Sept. 11 was a handful of U.S. officials in civilian clothes, who met with warlords in the country's violent south in early December, several weeks after Bush shut down a Somali money-transfer and telecommunications company accused of funneling profits to al Qaeda.
The visit sparked a stream of media reports speculating that Somalia would be the next venue in the war on terrorism. But after a flurry of initial preparations, military options have for now been limited to intensive surveillance, according to Powell and others.
The policy reflects the unanimous advice of Somalia experts to whom the U.S. government has turned since the early 1990s, when a U.S.-led intervention ended in the fiasco dramatized in the motion picture "Black Hawk Down." An Oct. 3, 1993, firefight left 18 American soldiers dead and U.S. foreign policy deeply scarred.
"For the first time in many years, the so-called experts, the talking heads, we agree on this one," said Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service.
"Calmer heads have prevailed," agreed David Shinn, a retired U.S. diplomat with long experience in Somalia. "There's no need to be rushing into Somalia. . . . If you think about military targets, I doubt they exist."
Ken Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who serves as a consultant to the State Department and the United Nations, last month dismissed al-Ittihad as "small potatoes."
Whatever history the two groups may share, "al-Ittihad is not an arm of al Qaeda," Menkhaus wrote in a paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. He described the Somali group as a homegrown Islamic movement focused on Somalia and the Ogaden, a region of eastern Ethiopia inhabited by ethnic Somalis.
Menkhaus put the number of Somali nationals with "significant links" to al Qaeda at 10 to 12 "at most." Other analysts suggest a similar number and concur with Menkhaus that the best hope to apprehend them -- or any foreigners associated with al Qaeda who might surface in Somalia -- is "snatch-and-grab" tactics.
Though such extractions could be carried out by U.S. special operations forces, surrogates such as the Ethiopians, who maintain a discreet military presence in Somalia, or Somali warlords motivated by bounties might have more success.
"Our record in Mogadishu in '93 was not very good," Shinn noted, referring to failed U.S. military efforts to kidnap senior aides of the late warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. "As often as not, we got the wrong people."
Since then, Shinn said, U.S. intelligence on Somalia has descended to "abysmal."
"We abandoned it for all those years," he said. "Now we're crashing around trying to reestablish it." But as intelligence services recruit new spies, the hazards of human intelligence -- so recently on display in Afghanistan, where some U.S. attacks reportedly struck forces that turned out to be pro-American -- appear even more pronounced in Somalia.
"For Somalis, disinformation is a parlor game," Shinn said. "And they love to give out bad information on people they'd like to see hit."
Yet ignoring Somalia has its own risks, as the rise of al-Ittihad illustrates, according to analysts, aid workers and Somalis.
The movement first emerged in Somalia from Islamic study groups and followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian group founded in the 1920s to encourage "political Islam" and a return to governments based on the Koran. The brotherhood is now Egypt's main opposition group.
When Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, al-Ittihad at first behaved like other factions, arming a militia to hold territory. After being beaten back in northern Somalia and the southern port of Merca, the group had its greatest success here in the Gedo region, where the borders of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia converge.
The group set up a local administration that residents and aid workers recall as significantly more secure and less corrupt than that of the warlords who preceded it. Scolding women for not covering their faces, its soldiers also enforced a stricter view of Islam than had been customary in Somalia.
To outsiders, however, the training camps were most worrisome. Shinn and others discount latter-day claims that bin Laden's minions had a significant hand in the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" firefight. But according to testimony at last year's East Africa embassy bombings trial in New York, bin Laden routinely dispatched agents to Somalia while living in nearby Sudan between 1991 and 1996. Mohammad Atef, a senior al Qaeda military commander who was killed last year in Afghanistan, made several trips, as did at least two of the men convicted in the 1998 embassy bombings.
Several traveled from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, in the small planes that carrykhat, a mildly narcotic plant, to Mandera in Kenya's northeast corner. From there, crossing into Somalia was -- and is -- as simple as climbing into a covered pickup that shuttles passengers across the border unchallenged, or avoiding the official crossing altogether.
There was also a sea route. This month U.S. warships participating in Operation Edged Mallet will trace part of the route of an al Qaeda-owned fishing boat that traveled between Kenya and Somalia, smuggling the TNT -- disguised as lobsters -- that was used to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. The same seas claimed the lives of perhaps four al Qaeda trainers who drowned when their small boat overturned, according to court testimony.
For all that, experts say there is no evidence that al-Ittihad plotted attacks on Western targets. The Somali group earned the label "international terrorists" by carrying out bombings and assassination attempts in neighboring Ethiopia,whose rulers are Orthodox Christian. The attacks were aimed at destabilizing Ethiopia's central government and supporting a rebellion among the ethnic Somali Muslims who populate Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
Striking back, Ethiopian forces in 1996 and 1997 swept across the border and crushed al-Ittihad as a military force, reportedly killing several Arabs who fought alongside the Somalis. Ethiopia then established itself as the new power in this corner of Somalia, offering training and arms to factions and warlords who helped crush the militants.
"There is no al-Ittihad in our region," said Ahmed Ismail, the self-appointed district commissioner of this area, where a recent U.N. survey found 37 percent of children under age 5 suffering from malnutrition. "There are no experts from Arabia who are training our local people, no. We have destroyed all the bases."
Some al-Ittihad militants simply retreated to even more remote areas, establishing camps on the Kenyan border in the villages of El Wak and Ras Kamboni, according to residents. Even those are gone now. The last, at Ras Kamboni, was replaced by an orphanage. Most Somali fundamentalists, however, chose a course that some analysts and many moderate Somalis say the Bush administration might do well to follow: They invested in Somalia's future.
Shifting from a failed military strategy, al-Ittihad established schools, providing a much-needed service in a stateless society while raising a new generation more receptive to the notion of a strict Islamic state.
"It's changing the thinking of the children quite a lot," said one moderate Somali who asked not to be identified. Curricula that historically drew on Egyptian and Sudanese interpretations of Islam have been supplanted by teachers trained in the more conservative views from the Arabian Gulf, the resident said.
"But they're teaching things the Saudis would not allow," the Somali said.
At the same time, the closest thing to a central authority that Somalia has seen since 1991 -- the two-year-old transitional national government -- relies almost exclusively on Arab League money to operate. The Bush administration has been pointedly critical of the government, citing suspicions that its backers include al-Ittihad members or supporters and its association with Islamic courts that in some cases were run by al-Ittihad. Menkhaus said that some Islamic aid agencies "promote ideas that could produce a new generation of Somalis who are much more receptive to radical Islamic agendas."
But Western aid has been feeble, with 80 percent of the United Nations' $30 million request unfunded last year. In a country where only 13 percent of children go to school, 23 percent of people have access to clean water and three years of dought threaten starvation on a scale not seen in the Gedo region since 1992, Somalis ask where else they can turn.
Said Randolph Kent, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the country: "I think there is a growing sense that maybe we're missing real opportunities in Somalia."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
February 24, 2002
Somali religious schools make U.S. uneasy
By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published February 24, 2002
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Mohamed Ahmed was assuring his foreign visitors that Islamic extremism wasn't being promoted at his dusty little school on the outskirts of this war-ruined African capital.
Amin Noor primary school, the bearded headmaster said, was no different than hundreds of private Arabic-language institutes that have sprouted in Somalia in recent years. He displayed donated United Nations pencils and workbooks to emphasize the school's legitimacy. He even offered a tour of the classrooms.
And that's when the facade of moderation began to crack.
While teachers stood somberly by their blackboards, some of the school's 700 students--impoverished boys age 6 to 12--mischievously flashed their school binders at visiting journalists. An embarrassed instructor tried to snatch the binders away.
Pasted inside, where kids elsewhere would display favorite cartoon characters, were heroic portraits of Osama bin Laden. Nine years after the United States' peacemaking efforts here ended in bloodshed and humiliation--a fiasco vividly dramatized in the recent film "Black Hawk Down"--Washington again is focusing its attention on this chaotic country, this time as a possible target in the global war against terrorism.
U.S. warships are patrolling Somalia's lawless coastlines, hoping to intercept Al Qaeda operatives who might flee to Somalia for safety. American spy planes troll the skies, keeping an eye on terrorist camps that were used to plan the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa.
Yet even as the Pentagon concentrates on Somali training camps and smuggling ships, experts warn that a more serious threat to U.S. national security may be brewing in far unlikelier locations: the rustic classrooms of hundreds of koranic schools that have blossomed in the ashes of Somalia's 12-year civil war.
Teaching Arabic instead of Somali, drilling young children in the geography and culture of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or other Arab states instead of their own benighted country, the schools attract thousands of impoverished students every year due to their minimal fees.
And while these schools are not as radical as the madrassas of Pakistan, where the Taliban got its start, many Somalia watchers worry that the private religious schools eventually could tap into a vast pool of young Somalis brutalized by poverty and war, embittered by years of Western neglect, and sympathetic to calls for jihad.
More than 300 koranic schools, many funded by rich Arab states, are believed to have sprouted in Somalia over the last decade, according to a recent UN survey.
By contrast, neither Somalia's weak transitional government nor Western aid groups have opened a single new school in the fractured nation of 7.5 million during that time.
"For a decade the Americans and Europeans were happy to leave us alone and call us a failed state," said Mohamed Omer Dalha, a former professor of language at the now-destroyed Somali National University. "The Arab world stepped in to fill that vacuum. So if the West has enemies here, they helped make them."
Indeed, abandonment by the international community is a universal complaint in Somalia--even more so among moderate Somalis who are growing alarmed by the monopoly that Islamic schools hold on the nation's moribund education system.
Whereas the UN and Western humanitarian groups still pump some $100 million a year into famine and disaster relief in Somalia, almost none of those funds are spent on improving the nation's ravaged infrastructure, including schools. Anything of value would soon be looted by the country's feuding warlords, aid groups say.
And so, in Mogadishu, where gunmen careen down sand-blown streets in battered pickups, the koranic schools are often the only sign of outside investment in crumbling, bullet-pocked neighborhoods.
With the government school system defunct since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, religious schools have moved into old public schoolyards. Government schools that once honored liberation heroes have been repainted and renamed after figures from the Koran, or even after Saudi or Kuwaiti religious scholars.
Al Itihaad al Islamiya, a Somali fundamentalist group classified as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration, operates some of these schools, Somali leaders admit.
"Somalis are traditionally a tolerant people," said Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, the president of Somalia's largely powerless transitional government. "What the terrorists want to do is take over power by grooming a new generation of extremists. Unless we get help to rebuild our own schools, there is little we can do."
Earlier this month, the State Department called the growth of fundamentalist schools in Somalia "profoundly disturbing."
Yet if Americans see Somalia's madrassas as breeding grounds for bin Laden sympathizers, many ordinary Somalis consider the rise of foreign-supported schools as the latest blow to their hapless nation's culture.
In a fiery debate aired by Somalia's only television station in January, teachers from the country's struggling Somali-language schools accused the Arabic schools of educational imperialism.
Students learned more about the Saudi royal family, the angry Somali teachers charged, than about their own country.
"We teach Arabic because we are part of the Arab League and our origins lie with Arab countries," countered Mohamed Elmi-Tohow, the director of FPENS, a coalition of 87 Islamic schools that dominates education in Mogadishu. "We don't teach Somali subjects because all our old textbooks have been destroyed in the war."
As for imparting lessons of hatred toward the West, Elmi-Tohow insisted that his schools only taught "the good parts of religion" such as compassion and the respect of law.
At Imam Al-Shaafi secondary school in Mogadishu, however, staff members contemptuously refused to shake the hand of a visiting Western reporter.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Limited
The Times (London) February 23, 2002
Doctors at war with despair in ravaged city
Janine di Giovanni in Mogadishu
IN THE post-apocalyptic world that is Mogadishu, even the decaying rubbish piled high on the streets has a price.
"If you try to remove it, the banditos will say it is theirs and demand money," said Sheikhdon Salad Cilmi, a surgeon. "If you don't give it, they will shoot you."
There is no place in this city not touched by war and its aftermath. Every ornate column and monument once erected by the Italians in their quest to colonise Somalia has been ripped apart by mortar shells, bullets, fire and looting. The warlords who control the city have hijacked the people, according to Dr Sheikhdon, who runs Medina Hospital. "They have no free will."
Child soldiers, hired out as freelance militiamen, ride in the back of pickup trucks armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs while their older brothers sit behind rusted anti-aircraft guns.
There is no government, except the transitional Government that controls only half of Mogadishu and some coastal strips. However, it is regarded by some people as a tool of the Islamic extremists. There are no laws, courts, police, or justice. The north has two breakaway republics and in the rest of the country more than 30 clans battle over borders, cattle and vengeance.
There is no central bank. There are no exports. There is, the people say with a kind of grim determination, no hope.
Unlike other war-torn countries where aid agencies and reconstruction committees rush in, no one is here to help Somalia. Worried international aid organisations run their Somalia operations from Kenya, and use local Somalis to man their offices.
Now, Dr Sheikhdon, who works in a 60-bed decaying institution that was once the pride of Somalia, treats daily the gunshot wounds, mine injuries and street stabbings with limited beds and equipment, on a meagre budget of Pounds 42,000 a year. "We always have more than 60 patients, so many people get shot here every day," he said. Patients pay what they can, or nothing at all. A major operation, such as abdominal gun wounds, costs about Pounds 30. In the private hospitals, it would cost Pounds 200.
In recent weeks, America has taken a new interest in Somalia, believing it may become Osama bin Laden's next hiding place. It has named a Somali fundamentalist group, al Ittihad, as a terrorist organisation whose camps bin Laden may have visited.
Most of the al Ittihad camps were crushed by the Ethiopians in the mid-1990s, and the members scattered. But the fear is more that Somalia, in its highly vulnerable condition, will fall prey to Islamic radicals who want a foothold in the strategic Horn of Africa.
According to several sources, they are already funnelling money into the country to build mosques and preach jihad in schools. But money is not going to where it is needed, such as hospitals.
Dr Sheikhdon, like many Somalis, believes the very fact that Somalia has been so neglected is a cause for serious concern in the West.
The vulnerability of the population, combined with a lack of central government, makes Somalia not just dangerous to itself but dangerous to its neighbours and the world, according to Dr Sheikhdon. "Because of the extreme poverty, bin Laden could get numerous followers. No one would refuse him if they were hungry," he said.
Dr Sheikhdon believes the current international interest is temporary, and that the situation is much worse than Afghanistan under the Taleban.
"I think Afghanistan is lucky," he said. "They got intervention from the international community. Without intervention, there is no hope."
His hospital is a tragic analogy of an abandoned country. Each month, about 350 patients arrive, half of them wounded by weapons. In one bed lies Osman, who is ten years old and has a gunshot wound to his stomach and a bloody sheet wrapped around his waist. In another lies Abdul Mohammed, 26, who was brought in that morning with a bullet in his chest.
And there is Nurta, 39, who was nine months pregnant a few days ago, but was stabbed on the street and lost her baby.
But the saddest and most confused patient is the one who will never recover. Mao, 12, who comes from the provinces south of Mogadishu, was blown up by a landmine. Now he is blind and missing parts of his left hand.
The already painful life he would have had growing up in Somalia has been made a dozen times worse by his handicap. He will never be able to support himself, and he will always be dependent on his already poverty stricken family.
"All we can really do is treat their wounds and save their lives," says Dr Sheikhdon. "I try to count my blessings, not my woes."
But in Somalia, even the optimistic doctor admits those blessings are increasingly few.
BBC. Saturday, 23 February, 2002, 18:30 GMT
Aid worker's death provokes Somali fury
A Swiss woman who ran a hospital and school in a Somali port town has been shot dead, according to officials.
Verena Karrer was attacked by gunmen who raided her house in the southern coastal town of Merca, witnesses said.
Two gunmen attacked her house but she had no guard
Neighbour Ali Wawarsame
Thousands of Merca residents took to the streets, angry at the murder, witnesses said.
"We want justice for the killing, let the killers be apprehended and face the course of justice," demonstrators shouted.
She was well loved, people are angry
Colleague Starlin Arush
They described Ms Karrer as a mother figure who loved and served the people of Merca with dedication.
Students from her school and patients of the hospital were among the protesters.
COSV's Somalia representative Starlin Arush said of Ms Karrer: "She was well loved. People are angry."
Ms Karrer, aged 70, had been in Merca for several years.
She operated a health clinic and a secondary school with funds from an Italian agency, the Committee for the Co-ordination of Volunteering Organisations (COSV).
Ms Karrer, a midwife, nurse and teacher, was one of only a handful of foreigners in Merca.
Her body will be flown for cremation in Nairobi and her ashes returned to her family in Switzerland.
Rumours were circulating Merca that a disgruntled worker who had been sacked by Ms Merca may have taken revenge.
The government has sent criminal investigators to the town to hunt for the killers and the motive.
Copyright 2002 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London) February 21, 2002
Case still open on 'terror's quartermasters': But the US remains convinced that Barakat, the Somali money-transfer group, funds al-Qaeda, report Edward Alden and Mark Huband
BYLINE: By EDWARD ALDEN and MARK HUBAND
The decision of the US and its allies last November to freeze the accounts of Barakat, the Somalia-based hawala money-transfer group, was the most conspicuous act so far in the financial war on terrorism.
Condemning the company as "the quartermasters of terror", Paul O'Neill called the group "a pariah in the civilised world". The US Treasury secretary described it as a principal source of funding, intelligence and money transfers to the al-Qaeda network.
But US officials now say that Barakat's links to al-Qaeda are considerably less clear than those initial statements implied. Barakat, also known as al-Barakaat, "is a piece of a larger mosaic", said a US Treasury official, one in which al-Qaeda serves as "the umbrella organisation for a loose network of single-purpose, fundamentalist Islamic organisations".
The US action on Barakat underscores the controversy it may arouse in its continued efforts to shut off the flow of finances to al-Qaeda.
While US allies in the Arab world, including Dubai, where Barakat has its headquarters, have co-operated in shutting down the group, they are pressing the US for stronger proof before acting against others on a list of 168 groups and individuals targeted by the US.
Before the US and its allies shut it down last year, Barakat was the largest business group in Somalia, with subsidiaries involved in banking, telecommunications and construction. It had 60 offices in Somalia and 127 abroad in 40 countries, mostly involved in wiring money from expatriate Somalis living abroad to their families at home.
Its biggest asset was the large Somali diaspora in the US and Europe, from which US officials believe about Dollars 500m (Pounds 350m, Euros 574m) a year flowed back to Somalia via its banking operations in Dubai.
The US believes that about five per cent was skimmed from each of these transactions in commissions, a fee low enough to attract Somalis eager to send funds home but still high enough to provide at least Dollars 15m-Dollars 20m annually that was allegedly diverted to terrorist causes.
It is not clear that Barakat has ever channelled money directly to al-Qaeda. However, the US says it acted against Barakat because of its links to a militant Somali group - al-Ittihad al-Islami - that it believes is part of this larger network of terror.
"(But) there is no reason to make a distinction" between al-Qaeda and al-Ittihad, said the US official. The Barakat network, which included internet communications, provided "logistical support" to Mr bin Laden and al-Qaeda cells worldwide, US officials say, although they have not elaborated.
Ahmed Nur Jumale, the chairman of Barakat, who set up the group in 1989, said yesterday that US officials have seen the company's accounts and that funds leaving Barakat offices tally with those arriving in Somalia, suggesting that there is no evidence of diversion. Anyway, he said, "Dollars 20m is more than we could make in 20 years".
Mr Jumale also said that the US had exaggerated the role of al-Ittihad al-Islami, which could not be a conduit to al-Qaeda as the US asserts because it is barely functioning. "There is at this time no al-Ittihad al-Islami in Somalia. It is discussed as if it is powerful and existing, when actually it is dead," he said.
The US, however, discounts those denials, saying that Mr Jumale's links with Mr bin Laden go back to Somalia in the early 1990s. Mr Jumale is alleged by the US to have been a close associate of Mohammed Farah Aideed, the Somali warlord who forced the humiliating withdrawal of US peacekeeping forces from Somalia after a firefight in 1993 killed 18 American soldiers.
All three, the US says, were united by a desire to drive the US military out of the region.
That account, however, raises as many questions as it answers.
First, the only reasonably clear sign of an al-Qaeda presence in Somalia at that time amounted to a short, and apparently insignificant, visit in 1993 by an activist - not Mr bin Laden himself.
Further, while Mr bin Laden and Gen Aideed were similarly opposed to the US, Gen Aideed always portrayed himself as a staunch opponent of the radical
Islamist groups. His militiamen fought bloody battles with al-Ittihad al-Islami on several occassions, Gen Aideed said in interviews in the mid-1990s.
Finally, al-Ittihad itself has had only a fleeting presence in Somalia, occasionally seizing control of small towns along the country's borders or on the coast but rarely holding them for very long.
In spite of all that, the US says, the Barakat case has demonstrated the unexpected scope and scale of al-Qaeda's fundraising efforts. Its officials believe that Barakat reveals how Mr bin Laden succeeded in drawing on a disparate group of Islamic radicals united only by their hatred of the US.
Barakat "shows you the broad base of this kind of movement", said the US Treasury official. Who would have thought such an operation would exist in Somalia Think, he says, of what might exist in the rich countries.
Aspiring lawyer opens doors to legal rights to Somali community
Kavita Kumar
Star Tribune
Published Feb 16, 2002
It's about 7:15 p.m. on a recent weekday. Hassan Mohamud has just gotten home after a long day spent dealing with immigration law. He plans to spend the evening with his wife, Asha; their 1-year-old daughter, Sara, and the newest addition to their family -- Zuhour, barely a week old -- in their Minneapolis apartment.
A Somali woman who lives in his building knocks on his door. She is frantic, afraid the landlord will kick her out because of a question about her Section-8 status. He listens, calms her and tells her to make an appointment at his office the next day. (He's already booked two weeks out, but will find some extra time for her.)
Help on citizenship forms
RICHARD SENNOTT
STAR TRIBUNE
Later that evening, a friend, Abdulahi Omar, has a friend who wants Mohamud's advice about going to law school. The young man arrives at his door about 9:30 p.m. "We need this guy," Omar says of Mohamud. He adds, with a smile: "We ask Allah to give him a long life and good health."
Mohamud, 40, is a man in demand these days. He graduated last month from William Mitchell College of Law. He is, many believe, the first Somali to earn a degree from a Minnesota law school. And he is helping to swing open the door to legal rights for Somalis.
For many Somalis, he also is a resolver of disputes, a sealer of marriages and a shoulder to lean on when they don't understand aspects of their job, immigration status or housing rights.
He's a cultural broker -- a bridge between the world they know and the world they're trying to learn. It's a bridge that carries a lot of weight and responsibility, but one that he knows he can't afford to break.
He knows there is much to do. "I want to bring Somalis to American culture. We are not guests here anymore. We have to learn about one another," he said.
Technically, Mohamud won't be an official lawyer until he passes the Minnesota bar exam, which he plans to take in March and July.
In the meantime, he is a legal assistant at the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis. Working on an immigration project, he holds monthly seminars to educate Somalis about their rights, gives talks to agencies such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service to teach them about Somali culture, and does outreach work in Minneapolis high schools.
He has about 175 cases on his desk right now, and more pour in everyday. Most of his clients are Somalis or other East African immigrants.
Peggy Russell, managing attorney at Legal Aid, said having a Somali lawyer helps build trust in a community that has mistrust and fear of the U.S. legal system.
"I think that it really helps a community . . . to make them feel as though they have a voice," she said. "Some are very hesitant to pursue legal rights. One, they don't know they have them. And two, they worry if they complain they will be in bigger trouble."
That Mohamud speaks Somali helps. But more important is his knowledge of culture and history. And he's able to explain intricate legal issues in a way his clients understand, Russell said.
His prominence in the community is another plus.
"We have hundreds of people calling us for assistance who probably wouldn't have because Hassan is in the office," she said. "I feel so fortunate to have him."
Imam
It's Tuesday evening at the Al-Taqwa Mosque in St. Paul, where Mohamud is an imam, or prayer leader. It's also home to his Somali Families and Youth Organization, a nonprofit group that he heads.
He sits, bundled in his coat in the chilly office, and holds a two-hour walk-in clinic offering free legal advice. He asks questions in Somali of a woman who wants a divorce. He explains her situation to Ken Gilchrist, a lawyer with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services who advises him.
"It's important to have a Somali attorney," Gilchrist said after the client leaves. "But more than that, it's important to have one who is committed to working with his people like he is. We need attorneys who know the culture and who they can afford."
But some worry that won't always be the case with Mohamud.
"Many people are saying now Hassan will be a rich person, and after two years he will leave Legal Aid Society and start his own business," Mohamud said. "But my goal is not to make money. My goal is to make justice. And not justice for one group or people of one skin color. But justice for all people. Like Dr. King's dream."
The journey
The son of a doctor and a businesswoman, Mohamud was born in Mogadishu.
He attended Somalia National University, where he majored in civil law. He then went to Cairo to study at the Institute of Islamic Studies, where he received a graduate degree in Islamic law in 1989. He was planning to return to Mogadishu to teach at the university, but the civil war in his homeland interrupted his plans.
In 1996, he came to Dallas, Texas, as an asylum seeker. The next year he came to the Twin Cities to work in the St. Paul School District as an educational assistant and multicultural consultant.
In August 1997, he enrolled as a part-time student at William Mitchell, financing school through loans, scholarships, and working full time.
Those were rough days for him and his family. Four hours of sleep a night. Coming home from the library at midnight.
"My family missed me," he said. "They need me now."
His fast-paced life has slowed a bit since graduation, but he's still very busy -- running from meetings to appointments to prayer services.
"He gives more of his time than any Somali I know," said Abdi-Rahman Mohamed, one of few Somali doctors in the Twin Cities. "And I've never heard him complain of how busy he is or of what he is doing."
Mohamud says simply, "If you believe in Allah, you will have enough time . . . My wife believes the same thing."
-- Kavita Kumar is at kkumar@startribune.com .
Marine-cum-Somali warlord seeks U.S. return
He celebrated U.S. soldiers' deaths; Exiled, now he hopes troops will hunt al-Qaeda in Somalia
By Ron Kampeas Associated Press
WASHINGTON - For Hussein Farrah, the summer of 1996 started with a future rooted in the Los Angeles suburbs: a job with a local council plotting roads, married life interrupted by stints with Marine reserves buddies.
By October, he had added "Aidid" to his name and had led thousands of followers in a Somali stadium celebrating the killings three years earlier of 18 American soldiers hunting his father.
Hussein Farrah Aidid is the son of Mohamed Aidid, the warlord who directed the October 1993 uprising against American forces - and of a mother who brought him to the United States at age 17.
Today, he is a warlord himself, in exile in Ethiopia. He hopes to return to his Somali clan and is inviting the United States to come back, too, this time to root out suspected al-Qaeda leaders in his homeland.
"I know what the U.S. wants, and I know what these terrorists can do," he says. U.S. officials recently warned Congress that the influence of terrorists may be spreading in Somalia and it cannot be ignored.
'Here comes the prince'
The younger Aidid once wanted much of what America had to offer. He's a naturalized U.S. citizen who reveled in the good life in California and in the days of duty and nights out with Marine buddies.
Those old friends recall an easygoing pal who jokingly called himself "the prince" to remind them of his father's prominent position in Somalia.
These days, U.S. officials don't quite know what to make of their ex-Marine. They remember his harsh rhetoric at the stadium, when Aidid had returned to Somalia after his father's death to lay claim to the clan. "A victorious national day for the Somalis," he called the 1993 attack. "A gloomy day for the aggressors."
Despite that, U.S. officials don't think he's a foe. But they're not sure he's a friend. It's a dilemma that is emblematic of Somalia's chaos.
Some of his fellow Marines believe that if it comes down to divided loyalties, the culture of the corps will transcend that of the clan.
"Once a Marine develops a loyalty to the corps, it never fades," said Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston, who was his commander.
"His ties to the corps would ultimately win out," said James Neal, who spent long days with him in a Marine Humvee and long nights with him drinking, laughing and dining out.
As Aidid himself put it, "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
Whatever his motives, Aidid's life bridges the nations like no other: a dizzying trajectory from an engineer in the refuge of southern California's suburbs to warlord.
Aidid enlisted in the Marines in 1987 and became a U.S. citizen four years later because it was a prerequisite to becoming an officer. Aidid never became an officer, but he stuck with the corps. He was happy to join the initial Somalia mission in January 1993 and was immediately forthcoming about who his father was.
On the outs
Aidid stayed three weeks, until Somali interpreters recruited from U.S. colleges arrived. This was before U.S. forces' relations with his father deteriorated into warfare.
During his time there, Aidid visited a few times with his father - with Johnston's permission - and would argue the warlord's case with journalists.
Johnston never doubted Aidid's loyalty to the Marines and was not surprised to learn later that he had returned to duty even after his father became America's enemy.
Aidid never discussed the 1993 killings.
That all changed on July 24, 1996. His father was critically wounded in a battle with a rival warlord. The grim son prepared to go back to Somalia.
On Aug. 1, his father died on the operating table. His son took over the clan.
Aidid is on the outs with the shaky new Somali government. But he is comfortable in his role, easily launching into his father's old rhetoric against "foreign interests" and "terrorist" rivals. But now, his aim is to get U.S. forces - and himself - back in.
February 12, 2002
©2002 Caller-Times Publishing Co. A Scripps Howard newspaper.
Sunday, 02/24/02
Somalis fear loss of TV program would sever community's ties
RICKY ROGERS / STAFF
Mahad Barkadle, producer of SOMTV, mans the control booth of public-access Channel 19 at Nashville State Technical Institute.
By NATALIA MIELCZAREK
Staff Writer
Every time SOMTV goes on air, the producer of the show, Mahad Barkadle, goes a little deeper in debt.
Barkadle says he has been the primary financier of the Somali television program since it was launched three years ago and has invested about $8,000 to keep the show alive.
If SOMTV, which airs on public-access Channel 19, doesn't find new funding by spring, the resource, considered by local Somalis to be the glue that holds them together, will go off the air.
''In two months, my debt will be up to $10,000 and I won't be able to continue doing the program,'' said Barkadle, a husband, a father of two, a taxi driver and a community volunteer who's paying a high price out of his pocket to serve his people.
If the programming ends, Somalis say, they'll be left without a tool that teaches them how to adapt to a new life more than 8,000 miles away from Somalia.
When they tune in, they can find out what rights they have as immigrants or where to buy lamps and furniture to establish a new home.
''The program unites the community, because when you bring the leaders on, people realize they have a community and they can go to someone and learn things,'' said Barkadle, who is one of a few regulars to write, film and produce the shows.
Mohamed Nur tunes in at least once a week to keep up with community news and receive information that he says he can't get anywhere else.
Since he came to Nashville eight years ago, he said, SOMTV has been a vital link between his new home and the one he left behind in Somalia.
''A lot of people are born here so they know what's going on,'' Nur said.
''We come here and don't know. Through this program, we can understand that we can go to a garage sale or whatever and take care of ourselves.''
The shaky future of SOMTV also worries Imam Abdishakur Ibrahim, a Somali spiritual leader in Nashville.
He said that the shows provide practical information and that they also spread spiritual messages to what he assesses is a 2,000- to 3,000-member community.
''The television brings us together,'' Ibrahim said. ''We also convey our messages to our community, about Islam, for example, so that people have the correct message about Islam.''
SOMTV is a primary example of the best use of public-access television, as are other ethnic programs on Channel 19, said Jim Gilchrist, executive director of Channel 19.
''It serves the elderly refugees who don't speak English and can't get international news but in their native language, and it also serves the younger ones who have no memories of their country and can retain the cultural knowledge,'' said Gilchrist, who said he wasn't aware of SOMTV's financial problems.
People who want to produce a program for public-access Channel 19 must fill out an application form and provide a program proposal letter that outlines the type of show, Gilchrist said.
The applicant must also complete a training session, pay an annual fee and produce a pilot program that is judged for its photography, lighting and editing.
When Hanh Huynh started the Vietnamese-in-Nashville segment on Channel 19 a year ago, he said, he was in a similar situation as Barkadle.
''At first I had to put up a lot of my own money, almost $3,000. But now we ask the community and most of the stores like grocery stores and they contribute,'' Huynh said.
Barkadle said that he and the Somali Community Center have asked for donations in their community but that people don't have enough money to give.
Carter Moody, with the Nashville New American Coalition, an umbrella organization for local refugee groups, educators and businesses, said his agency provides a few thousand dollars each year to support the shows.
''It helps them in their capacity to build and strengthen their organization, but it's not enough to sustain the television show,'' said Moody, who said he's written letters to local and federal businesses and agencies for financial support, so far with no response.
Meanwhile, regular viewer Jamal Abdul from Somalia said he can't imagine what will happen if no money comes through to help SOMTV's situation.
''If it goes away, we'll be like blind,'' Abdul said.
Call 880-3441 or 248-8440 for more information.
© Copyright 2002 The Tennessean
A Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper
UN Ambassador Rejects Idea of "Greater Somalia"
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
February 12, 2002
Ethiopia's ambassador to the UN, Abdul Mejid Hussein, has rejected the possibility of a "greater Somalia", along with other senior political leaders from Ethiopia's Somali National Regional State.
"There should be no ambiguity on the issue of being Ethiopian," Ambassador Hussein, former head of the Somali People's Democratic Party (SPDP), told a press conference in Addis Ababa on Tuesday. "The vision of the new Ethiopia is one that Somalis in Ethiopia should be very clear about, and there should not be any confusion about being part of what is being called the greater Somalia."
"We are not part of a greater Somalia," he stressed. He was speaking after Somali faction leader Hussein Aideed was accused of calling for a greater Somalia. In a recent interview with IRIN, Aideed said he wanted to "bring back" Ethiopian and Kenyan Somalis, otherwise "you have a population divided who are in the same family".
Ambassador Hussein said Aideed was a guest of Ethiopia. "He is welcome of course, so long as he does not interfere in our affairs...Those who still believe that they would like to join Somalia can do so constitutionally, they can do so peacefully, we have no objection to that."
But he said the SPDP - which holds power in Ethiopia's Somali state - had "voluntarily" agreed to be part of Ethiopia, stressing that the Somali people in Ethiopia had their rights enshrined in the constitution. "So nobody has forced us, we have our own MPs who have continued to support our position, and the programme of this party is not for secession," he stated.
Hussein had been called in to an emergency meeting of the political party to help iron out "squabbling" within the SPDP. He said in-fighting had led to the "paralysis" of the party and the government in the state. The Somali National Regional State - also known as Zone Five - is one of the largest areas in Ethiopia.
Copyright 2002 Newsweek
Newsweek. February 4, 2002, U.S. Edition
Terror Hot Spots: Somalia -- Kids in the Cross Hairs
BYLINE: Tom Masland in Mogadishu with Roy Gutman in London
The war is far from over, but what are the next fronts From Africa to Asia, a look at the battles to come--both on the ground and for hearts and minds
Somali fundamentalists didn't figure anybody would mind when they took over a looted and abandoned high school in downtown Mogadishu. They weren't building a bomb factory or training terrorists. They were restarting Somalia's only university, with classes in economics and computer science, Arabic and English. But before even the first semester was out in 1997, gunmen working for a local warlord broke up the studies. "The students rushed to me as I arrived," recalls Osman Omer Jelle, an English teacher. "They said, 'Teacher, there are gunmen in the university!' "
Today, wild-eyed thugs still block access to the former school. Down the block, other clan-based militiamen killed a passerby last week for his AK-47, worth $400 at the city's central market. Yet "Mogadishu University" has survived. The fundamentalists, from an organization called Al Islah (Reconciliation), negotiated to buy back their meager library and moved to an old hotel with sagging ceilings. Clean-cut young men and women registered for second-semester classes last week, and held a gathering attended by alumni from the first graduating class, which received diplomas last June. The host was university president Ali Ahmed Abubakar, a Saudi-trained Ph.D. in Islamic law. "We will continue even if we have to hold classes under a tree," he says. In failed states like Somalia, the line between good guys and bad--between "our guys" and the "evil ones"--often gets blurry. Somalia is home to a relatively small number of hard-core Muslim extremists, some of them connected to Al Qaeda. (The extremists regard members of Al Islah as sellouts because they oppose violence and favor a more progressive interpretation of Islam.) Yet the Somali gunmen who do the looting and pillaging are not fundamentalists at all. And some of the people doing good works favor the gradual creation of an Islamic theocracy. The difficulties in sorting out the various players raise questions about the ways that the global war on terror should be fought. Is it enough to bomb and capture terrorists Many experts on Somalia think that direct military action could even be counterproductive--spurring greater frustration and swelling the small ranks of militants.
Since September 11, Washington has shut down Somalia's leading financial institution, a money-trading outfit called Al Barakaat, which was accused of funneling money to Al Qaeda. And U.S. and allied warships patrol the 1,900-mile Somali coastline, while surveillance aircraft hunt from the skies. Early this month Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made clear that Washington was concerned about Qaeda operatives in Somalia. "They go in and out," he said. "We know there have been training camps there and that they've been active over the years and that they... go inactive when people get attentive to them."
The last time the United States got really attentive to Somalia was back in the early 1990s. Operation Restore Hope began as a mission to save Somalis from starvation, but ended in a horrific fire fight that left 18 Americans and several hundred Somalis dead. (A pirated version of the movie "Black Hawk Down," which chronicles that battle, was shown in Mogadishu last week.) Since then, the international community has largely withdrawn from Somalia.
Organizations like Al Islah have stepped into the void. By locating out-of-work teachers, Al Islah has so far knitted together a network of 112 primary and secondary schools serving 17 of Somalia's 18 regions. Of those, 92 use course materials imported from the Arab gulf; others use an English-language curriculum from neighboring Kenya. Funding comes from tuition--$6 a month for school and $600 per year for the university--and also from patrons in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. (Religion is taught, but not aggressively, according to students and parents.)
Some powerful Somalis see the education program as a creeping Islamic-militant takeover, funded from abroad. "These people are trying to transform the whole society," says Mohamad Kanyare Afra, a former warlord who joined the country's latest attempt at a government (which controls only parts of Mogadishu). "They can go to hell." Osman Ali Ato, another prominent warlord, says that building schools "is what I would do if I wanted to spread terrorism and religious fundamentalism."
Ato may have a point. But then, he's not building schools. And neither is the international community. Just about everyone who follows Somalia agrees that the country won't be safe from terrorists--or safe for kids with ambitions beyond what they can get with a gun--until rule of law is established, and a central authority can be held accountable. That could mean bolstering the transitional government now in place. But after getting burned there once, Washington isn't anxious to rush back in.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: GOOD GUYS OR BAD GUYS Local militia fighters in El Maan, a port town north of Mogadishu
Copyright 2002 Indigo Publications
The Indian Ocean Newsletter
February 2, 2002 N. 982
Washington's Five Options
Drawn up for the U.S. Congress, a report on Africa and the anti-terrorist fight presents the five options that the United States could undertake in Somalia.
Entitled Africa and the War on Terrorism and listing possible options for the U.S. in Somalia, the report was issued on January 17 by the Congressional Research Service for the benefit of American legislators. It was drawn up by Ted Dagne, an expert on international issues who used to work as an adviser to Congressman Donald Payne (Democrat, New Jersey). According to Dagne, U.S. officials have not yet presented evidence linking Al Ittihad (a Somalian fundamentalist group) and the transitional national government (in Somalia) with Al Qaeda", Osama bin Laden's terror network. As a result, he said, Washington could limit itself to seeking to apprehend individuals in Somalia suspected of terrorist activities and bring them to justice. Another option he suggested was to infiltrate Somali groups suspected of terrorist links in order to monitor, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist networks. A third option, which he deemed potentially complicated, was to address the root causes of the problem because a stable Somalia under a democratic authority is perhaps the only guarantee of a terrorist-free Somalia. In that respect, he said, Washington could play a pivotal role in forging a strong regional alliance that can play a constructive role in bringing about an end to the instability in Somalia. A fourth option, rather more cautious, would be for the U.S. to limit itself to simply monitoring events in Somalia but, Dagne added, some analysts felt this would allow the terrorist threat to increase. On the other hand, he said, a heavy-handed approach could be construed as targeting a weak and defenseless country or - worse - as a settling of old scores to avenge the killing of 18 American Rangers killed in battle in Mogadishu in 1993.Dagne, who is of Ethiopian origin, outlined the position of Addis Ababa and said the Ethiopian government had not been able to provide information about locations of training camps, links between the transitional national government and Al Ittihad and Al Qaeda, the identity of members of Al Qaeda, or their activities in Somalia. Dagne even went to the point of declaring Ethiopia had contributed to the unrest in Somalia by supplying warlords with arms and at time sending its troops into Somalia to fight faction leaders.The report also mentions Africa's perception of the U.S. war on terrorism, pointing out that some African government officials were eager to see the coalition against terrorism led by the United Nations rather than the United States. And in return for their cooperation with the U.S. they would like to secure the capture and extradition of African terrorists and extremist groups active in Europe and the United States.
www.africaintelligence.com
Horn of Africa: US sanctions and strategy
http://www.indexonline.org/news/102_20020201_dewaal.shtml :
US policy towards Sudan and Somalia, allows us to see some of the wider consequences of 11 September, especially in Africa, argues Alex de Waal.
Almost for sure, the soft drinks industry isn't funding Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida network of international terrorism.
The Gum Arabic Company of Sudan - the monopoly seller from that country that produces 80% of the world's supply of gum Arabic, the key ingredient for putting the fizz into fizzy drinks - has strongly denied that Osama bin Laden is, or ever
has been, a shareholder, or has had any financial links with the company.
It repeated this denial a few days after the 11 September terrorist crimes. However, there is evidence that in the early 1990s, when Osama was a guest of the Sudanese government, he made a bid for the Sudan's gum marketing agency.
By 1996, when the Sudan government - under mounting political pressure from the US and military pressure from its neighbours - asked Osama to leave, it wasn't clear whether he had succeeded. That year's State Department 'fact sheet' for Sudan claimed that Osama had a near monopoly' over gum, maize and sesame products, through companies he controlled.
It is possible that some of his front companies had shares in the Gum Arabic Company, not easily traceable to Osama himself. It's also possible that when the Sudan government wound down Osama's investments in Sudan after 1996, that some of these companies escaped their scrutiny, deliberately or otherwise.
Certainly, leading individuals involved in al Qaida-associated companies and philanthropic organisations went on to take senior positions in the government and associated enterprises. By 1998, the US was taking a studiously agnostic position
over Osama's links to gum Arabic.
In the meantime, the US imposed far-reaching trade sanctions on Sudan, in response to that country's clear record of sponsoring
international terrorism. It was implicated for example in the June 1995 assassination attempt against Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak. But, after protracted negotiations, gum Arabic was exempted from the trade ban.
The soft drinks lobby argued its corner. If the price of certainty was losing the bubbles in the bottle, they preferred to leave
the matter of the financing for international terrorism in some doubt. The sanctions are renewed annually, most
recently in October.
So, after 11 September, does the fizz pass the Bush doctrine test:'Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists'? There's
no hard evidence for Osama's stake in bubbles, but neither can we rule out the possibility.
However, we can be confident that the financial clout and legal expertise of the soft drinks manufacturers will make sure that
gum Arabic is innocent until proved guilty. And that if a slender financial linkage is discovered, it is the Sudanese suspects who will have their assets frozen, rather than soft drinks disappearing from the shelves.
In Somalia, the al Barakaat finance house, used by Somalis all over the world to remit money back home, to their country in which
no banks exist, was not so fortunate. Headquartered in Dubai with branches across Europe, North America, the Middle
East and East Africa, al Barakaat was a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of Somalis.
Unable to use normal credit checks, al Barakaat utilised the Somali clan system as a means of ensuring guarantees from its clients
and guaranteed money transfer in two days. It also built up one of Africa's most efficient and cheap telecommunications
networks.
In November, the US abruptly closed down al Barakaat, on the grounds that it was associated with al Qaida. No evidence was produced.
Al Barakaat was Somalia's largest enterprise, and the decision will impoverish Somalis and compel them to look elsewhere
for means of sending funds around the world: a US spokesman suggested that Somalis should use Western Union instead.
There are no banks, post offices or Western Union branches in Somalia. The owners of al Barakaat have insisted that their books
are open for scrutiny, and that they are ready to cooperate with any investigation.
But, not only has the US refused to budge, but governments in Africa have themselves begun to use this as a pretext for confiscating
al Barakaat's assets and cracking down on Somali populations.
The Ethiopian government, for example, has insisted that all Somalis register for new identity cards and use official Ethiopian
banks for their transactions. Kenya is likely to follow suit. In practice this is less a measure for combating terrorism
than a means for policemen and moneylenders to earn a little extra income at the expense of the Somalis.
So far, no one has produced any proof of al Barakaat's linkages to al Qaida, other than the commonsense surmise that any financial
institution in Somalia could be used by Islamist groups based there, at least one of which (al Ittihad al Islami)
has substantiated links to al Qaida.
The current Transitional National Government in Somalia - something of a misnomer for a fragile coalition that doesn't even control
all of its capital city, let alone the hinterland - also has links with al Ittihad. This is partly based on the
fact that it is the Islamists who have done more than anyone else to provide schools, clinics and a judicial system
(based on the sharia) in Somalia than anyone else.
Subject to the financial equivalent of carpet-bombing, Somalis suspect that they are considered guilty unless proven otherwise.
It's no surprise that US fizzy drinks manufacturers are dealt with differently from Somali entrepreneurs.
But the contrast shows that the lines aren't quite as clear as the White House would have us believe.
A number of erstwhile 'state sponsors' of terrorism, including Libya and Sudan, have cooperated to a greater or lesser extent
with US counter-terrorism efforts. This is partly because US intelligence is in such a deplorable state it has had
little choice but to collaborate with a range of insalubrious governments in order to make any progress at all.
The State Department's readiness to cooperate with Khartoum has brought howls of protest from the US coalition of the religious
right, the Black Caucus and rights activists who were vigorously campaigning for very tough measures against Sudan's
government because of its record on human rights and conduct of the civil war.
The Sudan Peace Act, a bipartisan bill with overwhelming support in both houses that essentially puts the US firmly on the side
of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, was due to proceed to its final stage in mid-September, but was suspended
at the White House's request.
Sudan's President Bashir may have thought he was off the hook, and has since detained journalists, assassinated a judge, bombed
civilian targets in the south, and permitted a large militia raid in which women and children were abducted, possibly
into slavery.
Bashir may be forgiven for assuming that the US has reverted to a Cold War modus operandi, in which security cooperation dictates
inter-state relations, giving him carte blanche for internal repression as long as he delivers the counter-terrorist
goods.
Certainly there are similarities, and we can expect that the US will support strengthened surveillance capacities in states that
are on-side in the war on terrorism. But a closer look suggests that the relationship is rather more complicated
than a return to the simple loyalty criterion.
Cold War geo-strategy was based on competition for important pieces of real estate, and for sovereign states. Counter-terrorism
makes different demands. For example, improved financial surveillance cuts both ways.
It strengthens the hands of central banks and finance ministries, but it also makes it more difficult for ruling elites to siphon
funds out of their countries undetected. The Sudan government is not the only one that is using counter-terrorism
as a pretext for all kinds of opportunistic crackdowns.
Alongside Ethiopia's round-ups of Somalis and its despatch of troops to Somalia to support its favoured clients in that unfortunate
country, several dictators have begun using the label 'terrorist' to justify actions against journalists and dissenters.
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and Isseyas Afewerki (Eritrea) seem to have deluded themselves that these cynical ploys may actually
work.
But US co-operation with unsavoury governments is partly also a reflection of the success of established US policy: to fight terrorism
by making it too costly for any state to sponsor it.
Ten years ago, any one of half a dozen countries would have been high on the list as potential culprits for the 11September crimes.
When the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, the only serious refuge for such conspicuous criminality was
Afghanistan.
If we look at international militant Islamist over a decade, it is evident that it is in strategic retreat, due largely to the
loss of these 'state sponsors' and partly to the crushing of armed insurgencies in Algeria and Egypt.
What sustains the fires of violent extremism is its enemies' readiness to go to war. Chechnya was the pre-eminent example, but
since Osama so successfully goaded President Bush into a declaration of war (momentarily even a 'crusade'), the
fires may be stoked again.
In important respects, the 11 September crimes were akin to a global Omagh: a last-ditch attempt by a fringe movement to derail
the processes that were leaving it marginal.
While governments across the Moslem world have disavowed militant Islam, largely because of its associations with terrorism, the
Islamist movements have been active in filling the social gaps left by the decay of state services.
In countries such as Egypt, the great majority of service provision for the poorest, including education and health, is provided
by the Islamists. The Pakistani madarassas that incubated the Taliban are but one example of how hardworking, committed
Islamists have built up a strong social base over the last two decades.
The renowned Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which provides micro-credit to millions of poor women to help them raise themselves out
of poverty, has been copied by Islamic charities that embark on 'Islamic' models of finance that eschew interest
and in which lender and client enter into a joint enterprise, sharing profit.
These networks and constituencies can either be co-opted by states in support of the status quo, tolerated as the alternative
to disorder, or radicalized.
This is the arena for the biggest struggle in the Muslim world: for the allegiance of millions of people who fear their own governments,
fear the US and fear the radical alternatives too - but for whom social Islam provides both a comfortable frame
of meaning and practical assistance in their daily lives.
There is no simple line that can be drawn to separate social services from militant mobilisation. Some of the same Islamic philanthropic
organisations that fund health clinics and micro-credit, also train armed mujahideen.
In earlier decades, Kennedy-esque US idealism might have mobilised foreign aid programmes to provide a liberal alternative.
But today, the US Agency for International Development's contribution to a discussion about Islamic models of philanthropy is
to dumbly tick off the bureaucratic reasons why they could not consider funding the major Islamic voluntary agencies.
As with the CIA, decades of affluence and power have hidden the triumph of mediocrity. Perhaps the most telling indication of
the vacuum of vision for international development has been the charade of the US Air Force dropping 'humanitarian
daily ration' packages over Afghanistan.
It is simply mind-boggling that after decades of scrupulous review of best practices in relief programmes, the indiscriminate
air-dropping of packaged meals over the Afghan countryside (where many no doubt land in minefields) and villages
(where at least one fatality has resulted from a direct hit on a house) should be considered as anything other than
a gimmick.
To its credit, Médecins Sans Frontières deplored this as 'propaganda.' But from the legions of US aid workers, in and out of government,
who see their profession parodied in this way, just silence.
After 11 September, the sense of power in Washington is almost tangible. The US government knows it is powerful and has no hesitation
in using that power. It is so powerful that it can afford to be ignorant and to blunder: it will prevail anyway.
Rhetoric to the effect that the world has changed, has terrified many governments across the world. This mood of determination
will last for now. The question is, will it be used judiciously?
Actions such as the arbitrary closure of al Barakaat suggest not. This and similar clumsy crackdowns run the risk of radicalising
the social Islamists, creating a massive posthumous following for Osama.
Perhaps the most bitter struggle is in Washington itself. It's over the definition of the war, and the definition of success.
So far, what counts as victory has been left carefully undefined.
This is a smart move by the realists at the State Department, who don't want to be tied to a 'premature' declaration of success
that leaves a problematic legacy (as, they would argue, occurred with the Gulf War).
Neither do they want their hands tied when it comes to cutting deals with less than democratic governments. And this also leaves
room for a quick get-out if the going gets too tough: the US is reserving the option of declaring victory and withdrawing.
But what if Colin Powell loses control over the definition of success?
There are many signs that a raft of agendas, far more ambitious and diverse than simply dismantling al Qaida, is becoming tied
to the 'war' on terrorism. We see this in the slow inflation of the theatre of war.
Hawks at the Pentagon, tied to resurgent figures from the religious right, are gunning for 'terrorist' groups and states around
the world. Somalia is near the head of the list, largely because it is such a politically soft target. Sudan is
also on their hit-list, more because southern
Sudan has become a cause célèbre for Christian fundamentalists than through any strategy to counter terrorism. Sudan is a particularly
attractive target because it is the focus of a uniquely broad coalition in Washington.
Alongside the religious right, there are liberals, long outraged by the regime's appalling human rights record, and the Congressional
Black Caucus, united in horror at Khartoum's complicity in the abduction and probable enslavement of several thousand
southern Sudanese women and children.
US peace envoy to Sudan Senator Jack Danforth has set the warring parties there four tests to see if they are serious about peace.
The tests themselves are mundane: delivery of relief to the Nuba Mountains, ceasefire for polio vaccination and similar. These
have long been the stock in trade of a succession of frustrated mediators in Sudan.
But this time, the US means business: if Khartoum fails the tests (the SPLA will have little difficulty in passing them), the
US will abandon its peace efforts and the White House will give the nod to Congress to revive the Sudan Peace Act
and return to its policy of support for the SPLA.
This won't solve Sudan's problems, but it will gain Bush some points with the Black Caucus and, maybe, some African-American votes
in 2004. And gum Arabic will remain 'exempt' from US trade sanctions.
Should this scenario unfold in Sudan, the liberal and Black Caucus 'success' will be putting some real pressure on Khartoum to
end abuses. The religious right 'success' will be a new front in the global struggle between good and evil.
Sudan is a special case that may not reflect the wider trend. But should Bush's global war on terrorism become defined in the
same metaphysical terms - good versus evil - it will never be won, and can be an indefinite justification for military
spending, foreign adventures and erosion of civil liberties.
Alex de Waal is founder and director of the London-based Justice Africa. This article appeared in issue 1/02 of
Index on Censorship.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/102_20020201_dewaal.shtml using