U.S. sees terrorism in Somalia; Minnesota Somalis see it differently

Listen to Bush administration officials and you hear the chilling claim that a new terrorist front is emerging in Somalia because militant Islamists have created secret havens and platforms there for Al-Qaida.

Now listen to Prof. Ahmed Samatar echoing thousands of Somalis in Minnesota.

"Lies," said Samatar, who is dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College in St. Paul.

In the chasm between the dire official warning and the Somalis' vehement rebuttal lie high-stakes questions. If the threat is real, does it signal another round of terrorist attacks that could reach as far as Europe and the Americas? If the naysayers are right, is the United States poised to repeat mistakes it made by miscalculating the tensions tearing at Iraq?

As home to America's largest Somali community, Minnesota is a main stage for the debate over the threat of terrorism in Somalia and its neighbors on the Horn of Africa. The arguments here are informed by phone calls from loved ones that ex-patriot Somalis receive from their homeland.

While Samatar, and many who agree with him, frame one end of the arguments, Somalis in Minnesota represent opinions that range from clear opposition to U.S. actions to a shared concern that terrorists have established a beachhead in Somalia.

Washington watched warily last summer while groups calling themselves the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts pushed aside a feckless transitional federal government to take control of a large region of Somalia and restore a modicum of order after 15 years of violent anarchy.

Then, beginning in December, the United States helped Ethiopian forces and the transitional government oust the Islamic Courts and beat back a series of insurgent attacks. U.S.-backed government leaders claimed last week that Mogadishu was calm and under their control.

But the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported Friday that most of the 365,000 people who fled the capitol city aren't returning because they expect more fighting.

In a major report on terrorism last week, the State Department laid out a rationale for ousting the Islamic Courts. Somalia's weak government, protracted instability, porous borders, unguarded coastline and proximity to the Arabian peninsula have long made it a target for international terrorists, the report said.

In that vulnerable setting, it said, the Islamic Courts were quickly "hijacked by al Shabaab (the Youth), a small extremist group affiliated with Al-Qaida that consists of radicalized young men."

With leaders who trained in Afghanistan, the group allegedly is behind recent murders of foreign aid workers, Somali nationals and an Italian nun, it said. The report also accused some Islamic Courts leaders of harboring Al-Qaida operatives suspected in U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and other attacks.

Vehement critics

But if it is true that embassy bombers were hidden in Somalia, the United States could have pursued them with the approval of many in the Islamic Courts movement, Samatar said.

Indeed, there might have been resistance from some Taliban-like reactionaries, he said, but the broad-based movement included many reasonable Muslims who were prepared to work with the United States.

Instead, he said, Washington bought Ethiopia's argument that "a major storm of terrorism was brewing in Somalia and that they needed to destroy it."

As a result, the resistance fighting Ethiopian troops "is not just the Islamic Courts or what is left of them," he said.

"What we are seeing now is a national resistance movement, and a significant part of it is youths," he said. "Why wouldn't they be fighting if their homes are destroyed, their families are no more, they have no other place to go and they face mighty Ethiopian forces. What else are they supposed to do?"

Samatar, who talks regularly with a sister and other relatives in Somalia, said there is a growing feeling that Islam itself is under attack.

"They fear there will come a time when Islam will be so demonized that the Somalis will be pushed to run away from their own religion ... that any Somali who speaks in the name of Islam will be automatically seen as a terrorist," he said.