At least three of the four suspects in the July 21 attempted bombings on the London subway and a bus were born in East Africa, where al-Qaeda-linked groups still operate and may be growing in strength, according to a new assessment by counterterrorism experts.
The attackers, at least two of them naturalised British citizens, were born in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea and there’s no evidence they have been back there recently. But East Africa has several indigenous terror groups and has suffered three al-Qaeda attacks since 1998.
”There is a genuine threat, there is no doubt the networks are still present and they retain the capacity to strike again,” said Matt Bryden, an East Africa analyst for the thinktank International Crisis Group.
”On the other hand, much more is known about these groups, there has been an intelligence surge in the last few years, they are kept under pressure.”
Osama bin Laden moved to East Africa in 1991 at the invitation of Hassan al-Turabi, an Islamic fundamentalist once considered the spiritual, if not de facto, leader of Sudan. Bin Laden brought with him Afghan war veterans, millions of dollars and plans to start al-Qaeda.
In 1992, bin Laden dispatched some of his deputies to Somalia, where a United States-led peacekeeping operation was under way. The operatives trained members of a Somali Islamic group called al-Itihaad Islamia, according to former Somali fighters.
Al-Itihaad members took at least partial credit for shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter in 1993, a battle that left 18 US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead. Bin Laden considered the subsequent withdrawal of US troops from Somalia his first victory against the United States.
During this time, al-Qaeda operatives reached out to other Islamic fundamentalist groups in the region, including Eritrean Islamic Jihad and the Ethiopian branch of al-Itihaad.
Under US pressure, the Sudanese government expelled Bin Laden in 1996, forcing him to move to Afghanistan. But al-Qaeda left cells behind in East Africa, and two of them attacked the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998, killing 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans.
The al-Qaeda controller for those attacks, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, escaped from Kenya to Somalia following the bombings, and in 2002 organised the car bombing of an Israeli hotel in the Kenyan resort of Mombasa, after which he again went to Somalia, suspects have told interrogators.
While al-Itihaad was largely destroyed or disbanded by Ethiopian troops fighting inside Somalia by 1997, some of its members have regrouped under new guises and have begun to grow in strength, according to an International Crisis Group report released in July.
Somalia, divided into warring fiefdoms, remains fertile ground for terrorists.
The United Nations and ICG have identified Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former al-Itihaad member and now leader of Somalia’s Islamic courts, as a key figure. He is also on a US list of suspected al-Qaeda members.
In his ICG report on Somalia, Bryden identified an Aweys associate who trained in Afghanistan, Aden Hashi Ayro, as the leader of a new ”small but ruthless network based in Mogadishu”, the Somali capital. Ayro’s group has been implicated in a number of assassinations in Somalia, the July report said.
Somalia’s Islamic courts have heavily armed militias and financial support from powerful Somali businessmen, who try to keep their political activities secret, said Mogadishu residents.
Aweys has refused to participate in forming a new government for Somalia and has threatened a religious war if foreign troops are brought in to help disarm the rival militias.
A counterterrorism force deployed in Djibouti by the US has concentrated on improving the ability of East African governments to fight terrorism. The Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa provides intelligence-gathering help, regional cooperation and border protection, as well as humanitarian projects to improve the US military’s image among Muslims.
Bryden said that while there is still a clear threat of more terrorist attacks in East Africa, important strides have been made.
”There has been an investment in border controls, the computerisation of immigration information and the upgrading of security forces,” Bryden said.
”The sharing of intelligence among countries in the region has been stepped up considerably.”
Still, no-one has been convicted in any East African country of a terrorist act, and most East Africans deny there is a terrorist threat in the region.
The men under investigation in London are the first East Africans suspected of involvement in a terrorist attack outside the continent since the September 11 attacks. – Sapa-AP