US operations in Somalia will go on until key al-Qaeda targets are eliminated, a Pentagon official said on Wednesday, as debate sharpened over Washington's next move in the stricken nation.
The remarks followed last week's assault in Somalia using a fearsome AC-130 aircraft which US officials say killed at least eight people, described in Washington as radicals sheltering al-Qaeda's top Africa leadership.
The fact that the top members of Osama bin Laden's network are still presumed at large in the country is sparking speculation of possible follow-up operations and questions on whether Somalia will become the latest hot battlefront in the "war on terror."
PHOTO: AFP
Theresa Whelan, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, said on Wednesday US forces were working to ensure "international terrorists who were seeking refuge in Somalia are brought to justice."
"When that is done, our operations will cease," she said, at a half-day conference on Somalia sponsored by US think tanks, without specifying how long operations might continue or offering details on future US troop deployments.
Some observers saw the strike as presaging an attempt to snuff out any resurgence of the fundamentalist Islamic Courts movement, which took control of most of Somalia last year before being ousted in a US-backed Ethiopian offensive.
Al-Qaeda
The strike also fits into a long-term US goal of ensuring East Africa does not succeed Afghanistan as an al-Qaeda terror base.
Speculation over possible future US action is also being spurred by the mighty firepower of a US aircraft carrier battlegroup prowling off the African coast.
"It's a good question, and it's easier to pose it than answer it," said John Pike, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org.
"It would appear that the Islamic Courts envisioned a Taliban-like enterprise -- just because we have run them out of downtown Mogadishu, doesn't mean we have heard the end of it," he said.
Exaggerated?
Critics of US policy say Washington exaggerated al-Qaeda's sway on the movement, in pursuit of their own geopolitical ends in the strategically sensitive Horn of Africa region.
"I think the US and Ethiopia overstated the case in order to justify the military intervention and ongoing air strikes," said John Prendergast, of the International Crisis Group.
"There is certainly a dangerous al-Qaeda cell on the Indian Ocean coast that used Somalia as a safe haven and transshipment point [but] this kind of short-term military tactic devoid of any political strategy will backfire in the long run," he said.
Senior US officials argue however that security operations in Somalia co-exist with vigorous US diplomatic and political attempts to stabilize the fragile state after its latest political earthquake.
As well as chasing terrorists, Washington was also trying to mobilize global support for Somalia's weak transitional government, and to speed the deployment of an African peacekeeping force, Jendayi Frazer, assistant US secretary of state for African affairs, said at the conference.
Clan elders and residents in the area targeted by the US operation close to the Kenyan border claimed 100 people were killed in numerous air strikes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.
Washington has said however that no civilians were killed and that US forces carried out only a single air strike.
"High value" al-Qaeda militants the US believes are in Somalia include Comoran Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, blamed for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Materials used in the blasts were smuggled through Somalia.
The other is Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese alleged to be close to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Stephen Morrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies which hosted the conference, said a US program that simply prioritized hunting alleged terrorists was insufficient.
"We know [the US] approach has been very concentrated on the counter-terror side that is highly controversial," he said at the conference. "We need to be thinking about how we move beyond that."
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS