Analysis: Horn of Terror
Council on Foreign Relations
May 26, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan
In October 1993, eighteen U.S. soldiers on a UN relief mission were killed in the streets of Mogadishu in a prolonged gun battle that followed a raid gone awry (Philly Inquirer). The deaths shocked the American public and resulted in a more cautious U.S. approach to military interventions that lasted until 9/11. Since the UN withdrawal from Somalia in 1994, warlords and clan rivalries have ravaged the country. According to the U.S. State Department, this lawlessness and instability has created a terrorist haven that is "threatening the security of the whole region" (PDF). Yet as this new Backgrounder explains, there is a real threat that Somalia will become an incubator for more serious international terrorism.
The violence Mogadishu has experienced this month is some of the worst in more than a decade. Residents of the city are fleeing their homes (AllAfrica.com) as Islamist militias square off against a band of warlords calling themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (BBC). The alliance's name is widely seen a marketing ploy to attract U.S. support (LAT), and there is some evidence to suggest that the United States is backing the group (WashPost).
Somalia is known to have been a transit point for terrorists, and an International Crisis Group (ICG) report says it is the likely hiding place of the al-Qaeda cell that bombed a Mombasa hotel and fired a missile at an Israeli passenger jet in 2002.
Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.
Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.
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