Somalia by Al J Venter

Author:Al J Venter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
ISBN: 9781526707963
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2017-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

MiG-21 graveyard at Mogadishu Airport. (Photo Al J. Venter)

In some respects, conditions in this vast country, that covers an area of a quarter of a million square miles – fractionally smaller than the state of Texas – began to resemble Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban still strode tall in that mountainous kingdom. Once American and European intelligence agencies started to focus on what was going on in the Horn of Africa, it was discovered that Somalia’s revolution, like a miasmic virus, had infected an entire region, all the way south, through Kenya and Tanzania to Mozambique and beyond.

More immediate evidence of this development came when a bunch of Mogadishu-based revolutionaries blew up the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. In the Kenyan capital, more than 200 people were killed and 4,000 injured. Damage caused in Dar es Salaam was not nearly as severe, as the bomber apparently detonated his device prematurely.

That was followed in November 2002 by another group of Islamist dissidents trying to destroy an Israeli-owned Boeing 757 passenger jet with 261 passengers and ten crew on board at Mombasa, Kenya’s largest port. Incompetence caused both rockets to miss the plane, but a suicide bomber did ram a truck loaded with explosives into one of that city’s Israeli-owned seaside complexes, killing a dozen tourists and staff.

Gradually, there were issues linked to Somalia that began to unravel. For instance, a US Embassy official in Nairobi described it as a situation in which al-Qaeda members were moving into other East African countries like Kenya and Tanzania, where they either used money to buy the allegiance of poor Muslims, or passed themselves off as simple men looking for a quiet place to lead a devout life.

‘These people put large amounts of money on the table, and sometimes marry local girls with the idea of establishing a bloodline. In this way, they have managed to forge a formidable network throughout Eastern Africa,’ the American declared.

What also emerged were the identities of the people who were involved, almost all of them with Somali connections. For years, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of two Kenya bombings, together with his co-conspirator Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, sought out like-minded compatriots in the thousands of mosques that dot this remote coastline. Fazul, a Comorian national, even financed a soccer team in the village of his choice and, in a brash moment, called it the al-Qaeda team.

By all accounts, says a report from the UN, published by All Africa Global Media, Fazul remained in hiding in the Somali capital for years, though he slipped back into Mombasa for a short while, prompting terror alerts from Britain and the US. Like some of his co-conspirators, Fazul survived on cash allowances provided by an al-Qaeda financial controller living in the Sudan.

Following the uncovering of caches of al-Qaeda documents in Afghanistan, several Somali sites, including bases at Las Anod in the north and El Wak near the Kenyan and Ethiopian frontiers, have been pinpointed as two of the most important al-Qaeda training bases in Africa.

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