Somalia: US took bodies of militants after strike

MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED

Asso­ci­ated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. mil­i­tary forces landed in Soma­lia to retrieve the bod­ies of dead or wounded mil­i­tants after a U.S. drone strike tar­geted a group of insur­gents, Somalia’s defense min­is­ter told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Friday.

The oper­a­tion is at least the sec­ond time U.S. troops have landed in Soma­lia after a tar­geted strike, though no forces have been sta­tioned there since shortly after the “Black Hawk Down” bat­tle that left 18 Amer­i­cans dead in 1993.

Defense Min­is­ter Abdul­hakim Mohamoud Haji Faqi called on the U.S. to carry out more airstrikes against the al-Qaida-linked mil­i­tants, though he admit­ted that Somali offi­cials appear not to have been informed about the June 23 oper­a­tion near the south­ern coastal town of Kismayo beforehand.

“But we are not com­plain­ing about that. Absolutely not. We wel­come it,” Faqi told AP. “We under­stand the U.S.’s need to quickly act on its intel­li­gence on the ground,” he said. “We urge the U.S. to con­tinue its strikes against al-Shabab because if it keeps those strikes up, it will be eas­ier for us to defeat al-Shabab.”

U.S. offi­cials have increased their warn­ings that the threat from Somalia’s al-Shabab mil­i­tant group is grow­ing and that mil­i­tants are devel­op­ing stronger ties with the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Ara­bian Peninsula.

New Pen­ta­gon chief Leon Panetta told law­mak­ers last month that as the core al-Qaida lead­er­ship in Pak­istan under­goes lead­er­ship changes, with the killing of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. needs to make sure that the group does not relo­cate to Somalia.

The only Amer­i­can mil­i­tary base in Africa is in the tiny nation of Dji­bouti, which lies on Somalia’s north­ern bor­der. U.S. troops can also oper­ate from Navy ships mov­ing through the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

In 2009, U.S. heli­copters swooped over a con­voy car­ry­ing the al-Qaida fugi­tive Saleh Ali Saleh Nab­han, who was killed in the U.S. raid. Elite com­man­dos rap­pelled to the ground and col­lected two bodies.

Faqi said the June 23 attack was car­ried out by a U.S. drone, and that after the attack U.S. forces picked up mil­i­tants who were either killed or injured. Res­i­dents in Kismayo reported hear­ing heli­copters hov­er­ing over­head the night of the operation.

“We have intel­li­gence reports from our own sources that the U.S. army picked up mil­i­tants after the strike,” Faqi said, declin­ing to dis­close them. He said that the Soma­lia gov­ern­ment would release the mil­i­tants’ names when they’re con­firmed by DNA tests.

In late 2009 the U.S. deployed drone air­craft to the island nation of Sey­chelles. A U.S. offi­cial said then that the drones were pri­mar­ily for anti-piracy efforts but that he couldn’t rule out their use over Somalia.

Rashid Abdi, a Somali expert with the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group, said if the drone strikes are con­ducted with “sen­si­tiv­ity” they would crip­ple al-Shabab with­out caus­ing a pub­lic out­cry over civil­ian deaths.

“Any increased for­eign mil­i­tary involve­ment car­ries its own risks. How­ever, short, sharp and sur­gi­cal strikes to take out for­eign jihadists or degrade al-Shabab may not be a bad thing,” he said. “Due care must be taken to avoid civil­ian deaths.”

The approx­i­mately 9,000 African Union forces in Soma­lia — led by troops from Uganda and Burundi — have gained ground in an offen­sive this year against al-Shabab fighters.

The Pen­ta­gon is send­ing nearly $45 mil­lion in mil­i­tary equip­ment to those two nations to help their troops in Mogadishu. The aid includes four small, shoulder-launched Raven drones, body armor, night-vision gear, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and heavy con­struc­tion equip­ment, gen­er­a­tors and sur­veil­lance systems.

Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the AU peace­keep­ers, wel­comed the U.S. assis­tance, say­ing it will help the force increase its sur­veil­lance abil­i­ties. “With the help of drones, we can locate insur­gents in real time and deal with them deci­sively,” he said.

He also urged the U.S. to increase its strikes against mil­i­tants to destroy insur­gents’ com­mand and con­trol capa­bil­i­ties. “If you elim­i­nate al-Shabab lead­er­ship, you are lim­it­ing their power to con­duct suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary oper­a­tions,” Ankunda said.

Even as the U.S. says it will increase its focus on al-Qaida and its affil­i­ates, Faqi said al-Shabab fight­ers make an eas­ier tar­get than mil­i­tants in Pak­istan or Yemen, because Soma­lia has few moun­tain­ous areas that can serve as hide­outs. He said he didn’t believe mil­i­tants in Soma­lia are as expe­ri­enced as in other parts of the world.

Still, U.S. offi­cials have said they believe that al-Shabab counts hun­dreds of for­eign fight­ers — includ­ing vet­er­ans of the Iraq and Pakistan-Afghanistan con­flicts — among its ranks. A Somali sol­dier last month killed Fazul Abdul­lah Mohammed, a top al-Qaida oper­a­tive and the mas­ter­mind behind the 1998 bomb­ings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Soma­lia hasn’t had a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment since 1991, a state of chaos that has allowed mil­i­tancy and piracy to flour­ish. Faqi said the U.S. pays the bulk of the army’s salary, along with Italy, and that his gov­ern­ment gets logis­ti­cal and capac­ity build­ing sup­ports from Amer­ica. He said his gov­ern­ment is grate­ful but needs even more help with hos­pi­tals, com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment and vehicles.

Faqi said al-Shabab is in a “very, very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion nowa­days, finan­cially, mil­i­tar­ily and morally,” and that any sus­tained aer­ial strikes would fur­ther weaken the mil­i­tants, who con­trol large swaths of the country’s south­ern and cen­tral regions, includ­ing por­tions of the cap­i­tal, Mogadishu, despite the suc­cess of the African Union offensive.

“There is mis­trust among its top lead­ers, and between Soma­lis and for­eign­ers. So I believe that new aer­ial strikes against its lead­ers will be another nail in the cof­fin of al-Shabab,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Jul 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.