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| East/Subsaharan Africa |
| SAMs may have come from Somalia... |
| 2002-12-02 |
| WESTERN intelligence agencies have identified Somalia as the most likely source of two Sam-7 missiles fired at the Israeli-chartered jet minutes after it left Mombasa airport last Thursday. It was also the main entry point into Kenya of the suicide bombers of the Hotel Paradise. âThose types of Chinese-made Sams are easily purchased in Mogadishu and the rest of southern Somalia. It is virtually certain they came from there,â Moustafa Hassouna, an authority on the threat posed by terrorist groups in East Africa, said. But... But... That guy in al-Guardian said not to blame them. You don't mean he's full of something, do you? Dr Hassouna, an Egyptian who advises the United Nations on regional security issues, and others said that al-Qaeda had maintained a robust network in the Horn of Africa since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed more than 200 people. âSome come in under the guise of refugees, others just slip over the border somewhere. There are so many ways in. I canât see how the Kenyan police could possibly control it,â he said. Obviously they can't. It's like living next door to the family with 14 unruly kids, the one with the car up on blocks out front, where the cops are there every other night... With its level of poverty, several regional conflicts, open borders and corrupt and inefficient governments, experts have long given warning that East Africa could become a âterror centreâ. Camps of impoverished refugees in remote areas provide the perfect breeding grounds for terrorists. For cannon fodder, anyway. There's a difference... Dr Hassouna believes that the missiles missed the aircraft carrying 260 Israeli holidaymakers home only because they had been poorly maintained. âThis was a very close-run thing indeed and shows a high degree of planning and organisation,â he said. And typically Arab levels of maintenance... Somalia is a collapsed state with no effective central government since 1991. It has a long border with Kenya, which is used by Arab refugees, a long, unguarded coastline and more than 100 remote landing strips. Washington is pointing the finger again at Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya (Unity of Islam), a shadowy group that appeared in the country in the late 1980s and gained strength and notoriety in the 1990s after the collapse of the rule of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Some experts say that the group, which was financed from Saudi Arabia, ... where else? ... effectively splintered and broke up several years ago. Others maintain that its members have merely gone to ground. Probably they've been absorbed into a seconed-generation organization by now, with the financing coming round-about, rather than directly from the Sodders. FOLLOWUP: A statement released Monday on an Islamic Web site said that Al Qaeda was behind the deadly dual attacks on Israelis in Kenya last week. The 5-page claim on www.azfalrasas.com was made in the name of "The Political Office of Al Qaeda Jihad Organization." It called the Nov. 28 attacks a Ramadan greeting to the Palestinian people and referred to the Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 231 people â including 12 Americans â and wounded more than 5,000. "At the same place where the 'Jewish Crusader coalition' was hit four years ago ... here the fighters ... came back once again to strike heavily against that evil coalition," the statement said. "But this time, it was against Jews..." Does that mean we can go back to looking for the usual suspects now? |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 I think the Kenyans want US and Israeli investigators to butt out because the results will implicate them in some way - probably some minor Kenyan govt functionaries looking the other way while the deal with Somalia was done. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-02 20:19:57 |