Somalia to Thailand, the same story of Pak-Afghan Terrorism
- From: alertpak@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:46:52 -0700 (PDT)
April 29, 2009 by alertpak || www.alertpak.wordpress.com
Terrorists moving from Pak-Afghan border to Africa
Lolita C Baldor, Associated Press || Washington, April 28, 2009 (First
Published: 11:02 IST(28/4/2009)
Evidence is growing that battle-hardened extremists are filtering out
of havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into East Africa,
bringing sophisticated terror tactics that include suicide attacks.
The alarming shift, according to US military and counterterror
officials, fuels worries that Somalia increasingly is on a path to
become the next Afghanistan, a sanctuary where al-Qaida-linked groups
can train and plan their threatened attacks against the West.
So far, officials say the number of foreign fighters who have moved
from southwest Asia and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to the
Horn of Africa is small, perhaps two to three dozen. A similarly small
cell of militant plotters was responsible for the devastating 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And the cluster of
militants now believed to be operating inside east Africa could pass
on sophisticated training and attack techniques gleaned after seven
years at war against the United States and allies in Iraq and
Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. “There is a level of activity that
is troubling, disturbing,” U.S. Gen. William “Kip” Ward, head of U.S.
Africa Command, told The Associated Press. “When you have these vast
spaces, that are just not governed, it provides a haven for support
activities, for training to occur.”
Ward added that American officials already are seeing extremist
factions in East Africa sharing information and techniques. Several
military and counterterror officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, cautioned that
the movements of the al-Qaida militants does not suggest an
abandonment of the ungoverned Pakistan border region as a haven.
Instead, the shift is viewed by the officials more as an expansion of
al-Qaida’s influence, and a campaign to gather and train more recruits
in a region already rife with militants. Last month, Osama bin Laden
made it clear in a newly released audiotape that al-Qaida has set its
sights on Somalia, an impoverished and largely lawless country in the
Horn of Africa. In the 11-minute tape released to Internet sites, bin
Laden is heard urging Somalis to overthrow their new moderate Islamist
president and to support their jihadist “brothers” in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Palestine and Iraq.
Officials said that in recent years they have seen occasional signs
that sophisticated al-Qaida terror techniques are gaining ground in
East Africa. Those harbingers include a coordinated series of suicide
bombings in Somalia last October.
In the past, officials said, suicide attacks tended to be frowned on
by African Muslims, creating something of an impediment to al-Qaida’s
efforts to sell that aspect of its terror tactics. But on Oct. 29,
2008, suicide bombers killed more than 20 people in five attacks
targeting a U.N. compound, the Ethiopian consulate, the presidential
palace in Somaliland’s capital, and two intelligence facilities in
Puntland.
The coordinated assaults, officials said, amounted to a watershed
moment, suggesting a new level of sophistication and training. The
incident also marked the first time that a U.S. citizen, a young
Somali man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, became a suicide bomber. The
foreign fighters moving into East Africa complicate an already-rising
crescendo of terror threats in the region. Those threats have come
from the Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist Islamic faction and from al-
Qaida in East Africa, a small, hard-core group also known by the
acronym EEAQ.
While not yet considered an official al-Qaida franchise, EEAQ has
connections to the top terror leaders and was implicated in the
August, 1998, embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 225
people. The bombings were al-Qaida’s precursors to the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, a plot spawned by a small cell of operatives as far back as
1992. Four men accused as al-Qaida plotters were later convicted in
federal court in New York for those bombings. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
and several other EEAQ members remain under indictment in the United
States for their alleged participation in those bombings. Mohammed is
on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list with a reward of up to $5
million on his head. Al-Qaida has the skills while al-Shabab has the
manpower, said one senior military official familiar with the region.
The official said that EEAQ appears to a small cell of a few dozen
operatives who rarely sleep in the same place twice and are adept at
setting up temporary training camps that vanish days later.
What worries U.S. military leaders, the official said, is the fear
that EEAQ and al-Shabab may merge in training and operations, with the
potential of spreading al-Qaida’s more extremist jihadist beliefs to
thousands of clan-based Somali militants, who so far have been
squabbling in their own internal struggles.
The scenario could become even more worrisome, the officials said, if
the foreign fighters transplant their skills at bomb-making and
insurgency tactics to the training camps in East Africa. Africa
experts, however, said it will not be easy for Islamic extremists to
win many converts in East Africa.
Francois Grignon, Africa Program Director for the International Crisis
Group, a Brussels-based research group, said in an interview that al-
Qaida faces a challenge gaining recruits in Somalia. Many clan
members, he said, generally practice a more moderate Islam, and
militants are not inclined to join a fight they do not see as their
own.
The United States, he said, needs to encourage the new government
there to deal with the growing terror threats and to marginalize the
jihadists so that they are not able to sustain their activities in
Somalia.
Ward said the U.S. Africa Command is working with a number of nations
to build their ability to maintain security. He said commanders are
less able to do much in Somalia, where the new government is still
fragile.
Meanwhile, he said, officials continue to watch as the ties between
the terror groups grow.
“I think they’re all a threat,” said Ward. “Right now it’s clearly a
threat that the Africans have, but in today’s global society that
threat can be exported anywhere with relative ease.”
nHindustantimes/28-04-2009
Islamist militant attacks intensified in Thailand
BBC News || 07:36 GMT, Tuesday, 28 April 2009 08:36 UK
Nine people have died in the past 24 hours in a wave of attacks by
suspected Islamic militants in southern Thailand.
The latest violence coincides with the fifth anniversary of an attack
on the Krue Se mosque, which marked a sharp escalation in the
separatist conflict.
It was the first big clash between the security forces and militants,
and more than 100 people died in just one day.
About 3,500 people have died since then and successive governments
have made little progress in stemming the unrest.
Thailand annexed the three southern provinces - Narathiwat, Yala and
Pattani - in 1902, but the vast majority of people there are Muslim
and speak a Malay dialect, in contrast to the Buddhist Thai speakers
in the rest of the country.
Insurgents target people they perceive to be collaborating with the
Bangkok government - using bomb blasts, beheadings and shootings.
They also try to force Buddhist residents from the area, with the aim
of ultimately establishing a separate Islamic state.
High alert
Gunmen stormed into a house in Yala province late on Monday, opening
fire on a Muslim family and killing four people.
Two men were later found dead outside a nearby mosque.
In other incidents, a Buddhist government official was shot dead in
Pattani province, a Muslim man was fatally shot while watching a
football match in Yala and another man was killed nearby in a drive-by
shooting.
According to the BBC correspondent in Bangkok, Jonathan Head, there is
nothing remarkable about the attacks of the past 24 hours.
Now in its sixth year, the renewed war in Thailand’s south continues
to exact a heavy toll on the local inhabitants with relentless
regularity, our correspondent says.
Early on Monday there were 11 co-ordinated attacks on schools and
electricity substations. On Saturday a bomb blast injured 15 people.
The bloody assault on the Krue Se mosque by Thai security forces on 28
April 2004 is seen as an important point in the long-running conflict,
leading to a marked escalation in the violence.
Security forces stormed the mosque and killed 32 Muslims who had
barricaded themselves inside. More than 70 others died in separate
incidents on the same day.
“Security forces are taking special precautions and are on high alert
on the [Krue Se] anniversary,” army spokesman Parinya told the
Associated Press on Tuesday.
Human rights groups argue that the government’s failure to punish any
members of the security forces for abuses against civilians has
alienated the population in Thailand’s deep south.
But other analysts believe the militants, who operate in small cells
affiliated with Islamic schools, are not interested in negotiating
with the government, whatever concessions it makes.
The authorities in Thailand are very much anxieted to the numbers of
increasing Islamic Institutions supported by the foreign Islamist
Organisation closer to the Pak-Afghan origins. The Islamic education
institutions funded by the middle-east or Pak-Afghan sources never
submit the reports of their activities after repeated strictures. Now,
a stringent vigilance is imposed upon the Muslim clerics who are
frequently visiting Thailand from Pakistan, Bangladesh or
Afghanistan.
.
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