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| Africa: Horn |
| Al-Qaeda influence in East Africa may be limited |
| 2005-07-27 |
| Yasin Hassan Omar fled war-torn Somalia when he was just 11 years old, to find a haven in Britain. Yet he seems never to have gotten very far from the tentacles of war, or those of al-Qaeda. The boy who grew up to be a welfare-claiming asylum seeker ran away from his anarchic country just as Osama bin Laden arrived to set up a franchise there. This week, the British Home Office identified Mr. Omar as a suspect in last week's failed mass-transit bombings, after a man was videotaped vaulting a ticket barrier after trying to blow up a subway train. It's unclear whether the alleged involvement of the 24-year-old in an al-Qaeda-style attack had its ideological roots in East Africa or was something that grew through contacts in Britain. Advertisements Yet, the basics of his story seem very similar to that of his roommate and fellow suspect, Muktar Mohamed-Said, a 27-year-old Eritrean refugee, who got his British citizenship just months before becoming a bombing suspect. Now that the Home Office has confirmed that the pair were refugee claimants who arrived in the 1990s seeking respite from war, some members of the British press are calling for reviews of asylum policies. Historically, al-Qaeda's message has had only a limited resonance among East African militants, even though the terrorist group has long claimed the area falls within its sphere of influence. In the 1990s, generals from what is now known as al-Qaeda arrived in Somalia to train insurgents. The trainees killed 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu in October of 1993, according to a U.S. indictment against Mr. bin Laden, who was handed a major propaganda victory by the subsequent U.S. withdrawal. "When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area carrying humiliation, defeat and your dead with you," Mr. bin Laden said in a 1996 statement. Years before he attacked Americans at home on their home soil, he added that, in Somalia, "you have been disgraced by Allah, and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear." A number of other African countries have been more prominent suppliers of militants: Egypt's Islamic Jihad merged with al-Qaeda in the late 1990s, Sudanese officials briefly provided Mr. bin Laden with a base, and scores of North African radicals have been involved in recent al-Qaeda-style strikes. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has flagged Sunni Islamic extremism as its major domestic concern, including reputed members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. However, investigations have tended to focus on individuals of Arab or Pakistani heritage. Canada's more sizable Somali community has not generally raised alarms for its extremist links, although hawala money-transfer networks were shut down as a result of U.S. pressure in 2001. One individual -- Mohammed Warsame, a 31-year-old Canadian of Somali origin who travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 -- has attracted scrutiny. Last year, the former Toronto resident was jailed in the United States on charges of lending material support to al-Qaeda. He awaits trial. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |