The report, entitled
Africa and the War on Terrorism and listing possible options for
the U.S. in Somalia, was issued on Jan. 17 by the Congressional
Research Service for the benefit of American legislators. It was
drawn up by Ted Dagne, an expert on international issues who was
adviser to Congressman Donald
Payne (Democrat, New Jersey).
According to Dagne,
“U.S. officials have not yet presented evidence linking Al
Ittihad (a Somalian fundamentalist group) and the transitional
national government (in Somalia) with Al Qaeda, Osama Bin
Laden’s terror network.
As a result, he said,
Washington could limit itself to seeking “to apprehend
individuals in Somalia suspected of terrorist activities and
bring them to justice.”
Another option he
suggested was to infiltrate “Somali groups suspected of
terrorist links in order to monitor, disrupt and dismantle
terrorist networks.”
A third option, which he
deemed “potentially complicated,” was to address “the root
causes of the problem” because “a stable Somalia under a
democratic authority is perhaps the only guarantee of a
terrorist-free Somalia.” In that respect, he said, Washington
could “play a pivotal role in forging a strong regional
alliance that can play a constructive role in bringing about an
end to the instability in Somalia.”
A fourth option, rather
more cautious, would be for the U.S. to limit itself to
“simply monitoring events in Somalia” but Dagne said some
analysts felt this “would allow the terrorist threat to
increase.” On the other hand, he said, a “heavy-handed
approach” could be construed as “targeting a weak and
defenseless country” or – worse—as a “settling of old
scores” to avenge the killing of 18 American Rangers killed in
battle in Mogadishu in 1993.
Dagne, who is of
Ethiopian origin, outlined the position of Addis Ababa and said
the Ethiopian government had not been able to “provide
information about locations of training camps, links between the
transitional national government and Al Ittihad and Al Qaeda,
the identity of members of Al Qaeda or their activities in
Somalia.” Nor had the Ethiopians found “clear evidence of
acts of terrorist against U.S. targets by Al Ittihad.”
Dagne even went to the
point of declaring Ethiopia had “contributed to the unrest in
Somalia by supplying warlords with arms and at time sending its
troops into Somalia to fight faction leaders.”
The report also mentioned
Africa’s perception of the U.S. war on terrorism, pointing
out that some African government officials were eager to see
the “coalition against terrorism led by the United Nations
rather than the United States.” And in return for their
cooperation with the U.S. they would like to secure the
capture and “extradition of African terrorists and extremist
groups active in Europe and the United States.”