Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001

There is no direct evidence linking the Somali radical Islamist group al-Itihaad to al-Qaeda, and an American military presence in that country would find "no one to fight,” Ken Menkhaus, a principal adviser to the State Department on Somali issues, told NewsMax.com.

According to Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, there had been a base of non-Somali Islamists on Ras Komboni Island, a remote coastal area in southern Somalia just across the Kenyan border. "There’s no one there now,” he advised.

Menkhaus opined that Somalia at first blush might seem an ideal place for a fleeing Osama bin Laden. "It’s Islamic, unstable, cheap and does contain some radical Islamists, but would be the worst possible base for a non-Somali secret cell.”

He added that Somalia is mostly a desert and Somalis are very aware of foreigners in their midst, "particularly a famous outlaw with a price on his head.

"If bin Laden winds up in Somalia, it will be a clear indication that he has been defeated,” said Menkhaus. "Somalia will be his Vietnam.”

A better bet for bin Laden, said Menkhaus, would be to "disappear into a large, semi-out-of-control Third World city such as Nairobi, Kenya."

Menkhaus was critical of the recent financial squeeze put on the desperately poor country by freezing the assets of Al Barakaat, a Western Union-style money wiring service, and closing down the Internet connection of Somalia Internet Co. because of perceived links with al-Qaeda.

"That was like using a sledgehammer,” Menkhaus said. "It would have been better to use it [Al Barakaat] as "flypaper for intelligence.”

Despite these misgivings, however, Menkhaus endorses the patrolling of the long Somalian coastline, conceding that Somalia has indeed had a history of serving as a place of "trans-shipment” of money and materials for radical Islamic operations elsewhere.

Menkhaus pointed to recent reports in the East African press reporting that a U.S. naval presence is already cruising offshore.

The Davidson professor is in agreement with Randolph Kent, the U.N.’s resident coordinator for Somalia, who recently concluded, "We have seen no connections between al-Itihaad and al-Qaeda. Nor for that matter have we seen any evidence of the terrorist activity which is exciting the rest of the world.”

Like Kent, Menkhaus sees al-Itihaad’s aim as infiltrating the country’s institutions to lay the groundwork for an eventual Islamic state. However, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently went on record saying, "Somalia has been a place that has harbored al-Qaeda and, to my knowledge, still is.”

The Somali Transitional National Government (TNG), set up 18 months ago and not yet in full control of the capital, Mogadishu, was quick to tell Washington that its concerns were groundless. The TNG maintains that al-Itihaad’s military arm was mostly destroyed by the Ethiopian military in 1996 and it exists today primarily as a politically motivated welfare group.

TNG President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan recently stated: "They [al-Itihaad] were an armed force, but now we don’t know of any camps in Somalia. We invite the Americans to come here and investigate.”

But Ethiopia’s ambassador to the United Nations recently told the Security Council, "We have ample evidence” of al-Qaeda activities in Somalia.

Ethiopian officials believe al-Itihaad, backed by al-Qaeda, is seeking to take over the semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia known as Puntland, whose main port is Bosaso. The Ethiopians maintain that since the Sept. 11 attacks, Bosaso has been used to send Somali volunteers to Afghanistan to help the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Ethiopia has told the U.S. government that it is anxious to coordinate with Pentagon planners to carry out strikes against al-Qaeda and al-Itihaad centers inside Somalia.

But Menkhaus is leery of the Ethipian claims, telling NewsMax that Somali fighters have not been rounded up in Afghanistan. Furthermore, Ethiopia has its own agenda against al-Itihaad, suspecting it of plotting to agitate its own ethnic-Somali citizens (about 2 million) and of a series of assassination attempts in Addis Ababa.

The British newspaper The Guardian recently drew this analogy: "To strike Somalia on Ethiopia’s advice would be like invading Pakistan on a tip-off from India.”

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Al-Qaeda

War on Terrorism

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