An old cleric, a young warrior and a desecrated Italian cemetery are at the center of the debate over whether Somalia has become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists.
Ever since an Islamic militia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, vowing to bring Islamic rule to this Horn of Africa nation, Western nations have expressed concern that Somalia could become a new base for Osama bin Laden's terror group.
Here in Somalia, interviews with Islamic leaders, moderate business people and other Somalis reveal that people are frightened by recent events and that the Islamic leaders and the clans through which they operate are under close scrutiny.
Clan defines life in Somalia and in the absence of an effective government since 1991, clan elders have stepped in and have run Islamic courts to settle internal disputes for years. Most courts practice the moderate Sufi form of Islam that has dominated Somali culture for centuries.
The courts have always had small militias to enforce their rulings, but their transformation into a united, national political and military power is new. In mid-2004, these courts and militias began uniting as the Islamic Courts Union. On June 6 they seized control of Mogadishu.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a cleric believed to be in his 60s, helped establish the Islamic Courts Union and continues to be one of its most influential and fundamentalist leaders, strenuously calling for an Islamic government to end the chaos in Somalia.
On Sept. 23, 2001, Aweys figured on a US list of individuals and organizations accused of having ties to terrorism. The US accused him of links to bin Laden.
Investigations by the FBI and Kenyan police have shown that terrorist attacks on Kenyan soil in 1998 and 2002 were launched from Somalia, which has the longest coastline in Africa and is only 200km across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian peninsula.
Convicted terrorists have told the FBI a man on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from Comoros, purchased weapons in Somalia and hid there after the attacks.
In testimony before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on June 13, the US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, Henry Crumpton, testified that Mohammed "has been and may still be in Mogadishu."
Aweys' Ayr clan includes another prominent figure linked to terrorism: the young man in charge of the union's most formidable militia, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, who underwent military training in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, according to a report on Somali extremists by the International Crisis Group.
Residents of Mogadishu said that the al-Qaeda suspects operate from a camp established in an Italian cemetery they desecrated in January. More than 700 Italian bodies buried between 1908 and 1941 were dug up and dumped at the airport by Ayr militia, who then constructed a training camp, a mosque and hospital at the site.
The old cemetery is now one of the most fortified compounds in Mogadishu. Several people who said they have been inside described seeing men from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan leading the training of young recruits.
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