Word: somali
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...Laden thrives on chaos. In the 1980s his headquarters were in the Sudan while that country was in the throes of civil war. When Sudan threw him out, he relocated to the rubble of Afghanistan. In 1993 bin Laden sent some of his top aides to support the Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. It was Aidid's forces that later killed 18 U.S. servicemen in an extended fire fight, the one described in the book and film Black Hawk Down...
...that the U.S. necessarily suspects the Somali government of harboring terrorists - but in a land where the government, like the warlords, collects its taxes at roadblocks, state authority is almost non-existent outside Mogadishu. And Washington believes Al Qaeda has been exploiting that situation by renewing its ties with local Islamic radicals to set up a safe haven...
...closing down the Internet connection of the Somalia Internet Company (and with it the whole country's Internet access), accusing both of having links with Al Qaeda. The move choked the largest revenue source of Somalia's near-stagnant economy - remittances sent home via Al Barakaat by thousands of Somalis living abroad. Somali authorities strenuously deny any Al Qaeda presence in their country, and President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan has pledged full cooperation with the U.S. against terrorism...
...Washington believes, however, that the bin Laden link to Somalia sidesteps the government, instead running through a local Islamist group called Al Itihad al Islamiya that may have established links with Al Qaeda in the early 1990s. U.S. officials also cite allegations that some of the Somali fighters that killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers in Mogadishu in 1993 may have been trained by bin Laden lieutenant Mohammed Atef. Atef had been an Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader before becoming Al Qaeda's operational chief and allegedly helping mastermind the September 11 attacks. He was reportedly killed two weeks ago during...
...Somali government and local observers rush to dismiss the concern, saying Al Itihad was mostly destroyed as a military force in a cross-border showdown with the Ethiopian military in 1996. They claim its fighters have dispersed and the movement exists today primarily as a politically-motivated welfare group. "They were an armed force but now we don't know of any camps in Somalia," says President Hassan. "We invite the Americans to come here and investigate...