Somalia's al-Qaeda Link

By Alex Perry

Osama bin Laden has been urging Al-Qaeda followers to open up shop in Somalia for years, but there was always doubt about whether that call would resonate in a largely secular nation with a historic wariness of Arab interference. No longer. After January's attacks by Ethiopia--which were backed by U.S. air power and aimed to reduce the threat of terrorism--an increasingly international Islamist presence has flourished in the country, drawn by the chaos of postinvasion Somalia and the chance to strike back at the U.S. and its ally Ethiopia. In Mogadishu, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi told TIME that an alliance has formed among Somali nationalist rebels, remnants of the overthrown Islamic government, and rebels from the Ethiopian border region. U.S. officials accuse Eritrea, which has fought several wars against Ethiopia, of lending troops to the insurgency. Other observers say hundreds of foreign jihadists are arriving in Somalia. Transitional federal government President Yusuf Abdullah has accused Iran and Pakistan of funding the rebels, while others in Mogadishu point to Libya, Egypt and disgruntled elements within the Somali diaspora.

The fighters have been adopting al-Qaeda tactics at times. The Ogaden National Liberation Front, a Somali rebel group, killed nine Chinese oil workers and 65 Ethiopians at a rig in eastern Ethiopia in April. A diplomat in Nairobi warns of a "third front in the war on terror." The parallels to Iraq, which the U.S. alleged had links to al-Qaeda, only to invade and create them by sowing chaos and anti-U.S. sentiment, are plain. "America's aggression helped us a lot," explains jihadi commander Mohammed Mahmood Ali in Mogadishu. "We got a lot of support from that."