An old cleric, a young warrior and a desecrated Italian cemetery are at the centre of the debate over whether Somalia has become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists.
Ever since an Islamic militia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, vowing to bring Islamic rule to this Horn of Africa nation, Western nations have expressed concern that Somalia could become a new base for Osama bin Laden’s terror group.
Here in Somalia, interviews with Islamic leaders, moderate business people and other Somalis reveal that people are frightened by recent events and that the Islamic leaders and the clans through which they operate are under close scrutiny.
Clan defines life in Somalia and in the absence of an effective government since 1991, clan elders have stepped in and have run Islamic courts to settle internal disputes for years.
Most courts practice the moderate Sufi form of Islam that has dominated Somali culture for centuries.
The courts have always had small militias to enforce their rulings, but their transformation into a united, national political and military power is new.
In mid-2004, these courts and militias began uniting as the Islamic Courts Union and on 6 June 2006 seized control of Mogadishu and in the weeks since much of the rest of southern Somalia.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a cleric believed to be in his 60s, helped establish the Islamic Courts Union and continues to be one of its most influential and fundamentalist leaders, strenuously advocating for an Islamic government to end the chaos in Somalia.
On 23 September 2001, Aweys figured on a US list of individuals and organisations accused of having ties to terrorism. The US accused him of links to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Investigations by the FBI and Kenyan police have shown that terrorist attacks on Kenyan soil in 1998 and 2002 were launched from Somalia, which has the longest coastline in Africa and is only 200km across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian peninsula.
Convicted terrorists have told the FBI a man on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from Comoros, purchased weapons in Somalia and hid there after the attacks.
In testimony before the United States Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee on June 13, the US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, Henry Crumpton, testified that Mohammed ”has been and may still be in Mogadishu”, Crumpton said.
Aweys’ Ayr clan includes another prominent figure linked to terrorism: the young man in charge of the union’s most formidable militia, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro. Ayro underwent military training in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, according to a report on Somali extremists by the International Crisis Group.
According to the December report, Ayro’s ”militia has links to al-Qaeda operatives in Mogadishu … to whom it provides protection”.
Residents of Mogadishu — and even some moderate supporters of the union from outside the Ayr clan — told The Associated Press (AP) that the al-Qaeda suspects operate from a camp established in an old Italian cemetery they desecrated in January 2005.
Ayr militia, acting on orders from Aweys and Ayro, dug up more than 700 Italian bodies buried between 1908 and 1941 and dumped the bones at the airport. They then constructed a training camp, a mosque and field hospital to treat their wounded.
The old cemetery has become one of the most fortified compounds in Mogadishu and few people have visited it since the militia took over.
But several people who told AP that they have been inside described seeing men from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan leading the training of young men to join the Islamic militia.
”The Saudis have very big beards,” a truck driver told the AP on condition that he not be named for fear of retribution.
”They take orphaned boys and indoctrinate them, then send them off for military training,” another Mogadishu resident said.
The Islamic union’s chairperson, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, denied in an interview on Saturday that anyone in his group was involved with international terrorists, but a few members of the union have long stood accused of ties to al-Qaeda.
Ahmed acknowledged that the union’s militia use the cemetery camp for training, but denied that any foreigners or suspected terrorists were present.
”These kinds of rumours were spread by our enemies,” he said during the interview in Jowhar, 90km north of Mogadishu.
Ahmed agreed to a request to visit the cemetery, but a spokesperson later said that Ahmed would have to accompany the journalists when he returned to Mogadishu, and that journalists could visit only after the militiamen inside the camp had been informed. No date for a visit was set.
Aweys has told The Associated Press in past interviews that he has no ties to al-Qaeda.
Attempts to reach him for this story were not successful. He was reportedly spending time at his ancestral home in a remote part of central Somalia. Requests to speak to Ayro were also declined because he was not in Mogadishu, union officials said.
A May 2006 report by a United Nations committee monitoring the flow of arms into Somalia reported that al-Itihaad al-Islaami, a conservative Somali group Aweys founded, operates as a militia supporting the union and was receiving weapons from Eritrea. The report named Aweys and Sheik Yusuf Indohaadde as the group’s leaders.
Indohaadde, who is also an Ayr clan leader, told journalists during a joint interview with Ahmed on Saturday that such reports were fabrications by the union’s enemies to discredit their organisation.
”We want to say in a loud voice that we have no enemies, we have not enmity toward anyone,” Indohaadde said in what he called a message to the world. ”There are no foreign terrorists here.”
An Ayr clan leader told AP that in an attempt to defuse the allegations, clan elders met with US Ambassador William Bellamy in Nairobi, Kenya and promised to cooperate in the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists.
”There are no foreigners in a group training or carrying out terrorist activities in Somalia, [but] there may be individuals who are hiding,” said Ali Iman Sharmarke, a businessman and self-described moderate.
Ayr clan elders ”signed an agreement with the US ambassador that if they tell us exactly where these men are in Somalia, our clan militia will go and capture them and turn them over,” he added.
”The responsibility is on them to tell us exactly where they are.”
A spokesperson for the US embassy said the ambassador has met with Somali community leaders, but could not comment on what took place in those meetings.
Moderate elements who make up the majority of the union’s supporters said that little can be done against al-Qaeda suspects who may be in Somalia unless the clan that is protecting them decides to push them out or turn them over. Any outside interference in clan affairs will only result in bloodshed, they said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, these moderates said that if a new national government with public support can take power in Somali, it would be much easier to arrest and deport terror suspects. But until then, clan rules apply.
African and Western diplomats meeting at African Union headquarters on Monday agreed to send experts to study conditions in Somalia before deploying a peacekeeping mission. Also on Monday, there were signs of increasing tension between Somalia’s transitional government, which was powerless to intervene in the recent fighting and has called for peacekeepers, and the Islamic militias, who fiercely oppose outside intervention.
Somalia’s transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf told the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Somali service that he would only open talks with the Islamic group’s leaders after they withdraw militias to Mogadishu, lay down their arms, recognise his administration and accept the transitional Constitution.
The leader of Somalia’s Islamic group, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, on Monday rejected the conditions, adding his group would not meet with the government if it continues to press for peacekeepers. – Sapa-AP