US uses Somalia events to press Qaeda

WASHINGTON -- The US military is exploiting the sudden downfall of Islamic extremists in Somalia to press the campaign against Al Qaeda, deploying Special Forces troops on the ground to track suspected Al Qaeda members near the Kenya border, US military and intelligence officials said yesterday. The Defense Department also has positioned several warships along the coast to try to prevent escapes by sea.

Opening a new front in the battle against Al Qaeda, the Defense Department hopes to capitalize on a rare opportunity in fractured Somalia to try to track down Islamic militants who were harbored by the radical government until Ethiopia, a US ally, intervened last month and helped rout the Islamist Somali regime.

The substantial US military presence became evident Monday when a US AC-130 gunship attacked suspected extremists in Hayi , in southern Somalia. A local tribal leader told Reuters the attack killed between 22 and 27 people. And yesterday, helicopter gun ships fired on suspected Islamic fighters in another location in the south. It was not clear whether the helicopters were American or Ethiopian. Officials in Washington declined to comment.

The US military has long focused on three suspects wanted in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as a 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. They are Abu Talha al-Sudani of Sudan, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed of Comoros, and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia. There were unconfirmed reports that Monday's US strike killed one of the three.

But the US operation was much broader than a hunt for those three people, officials said in Washington. US troops also were after several other radical Somali Islamist leaders, and also were trying to determine whether many other Islamist fighters had entered Somalia from elsewhere in the Middle East in recent months to support the Islamist government that had consolidated its authority in recent months.

Islamist leaders left the capital of Mogadishu for the southern port city of Kismayo about two weeks ago in the face of superior Ethiopian forces and fled south, eventually prompting Kenya to close its border. The United States is now closely monitoring maritime channels, with three US warships joining the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, which normally travels with three destroyers, a submarine, and 60 warplanes.

A US military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that US Special Forces accompanied Ethiopian troops into Somalia roughly two weeks ago.

Analysts said US forces were seeking to take advantage of a windfall opportunity.

"By tightening the surveillance and interdiction efforts along the coast, it would have had the effect of channeling those people in the direction of Kenya," said J. Stephen Morrison , head of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies , a centrist Washington think tank. "There's a little bit of Bonnie and Clyde to this, or the Sundance Kid. Where could they go next? There aren't too many options."

The US military official who asked not to be identified said Somalia has been the scene of stepped-up US intelligence operations in recent weeks. The official, who declined to provide details because they are secret, said that American Special Forces stationed at a former French Air Force base in nearby Djibouti have worked in close coordination with the Ethiopian military since it launched an offensive last month to roll back Islamic fighters in Somalia.

The primary concern in US military and intelligence circles, the official said, is that Somalia could fast become a base for Islamic fighters.

Last week, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, released an audiotape calling on followers to take up arms against foreigners in Somalia. "My Muslim brothers in Somalia: Do not be terrified by America's power, as you have defeated it before, thanks to God and His grace," Zawahri said.

Analysts said that the use of an AC-130 gunship -- a short-range aircraft operated largely by Special Forces -- signaled that US forces had moved a detachment into nearby Ethiopia or Somalia itself.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government for 15 years. When the Islamist movement known as the Islamic Courts Union finally consolidated control last year, residents responded warmly because it offered a chance for law and order. But support waned after radical elements imposed harsh Sharia law and embarked on an aggressive military push, prompting Ethiopia to intervene. When the Islamists fled Mogadishu in the face of the Ethiopian offensive, clan leaders in several southern cities told them they were not welcome.

But Somali residents also strongly oppose the presence of Ethiopian troops. US troops also are greeted with deep suspicion, in part because of the failed intervention by the Clinton administration that led to the disastrous 1993 firefight in Mogadishu that killed 18 US troops and many hundreds of Somalis. That battle eventually led to US withdrawal.

In the years following the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA officers quietly entered Somalia and gave cash payments to several warlord leaders in exchange for information on the movement of suspected Islamist leaders, two warlords said in interviews in Somalia last year.

In Djibouti in 2002, the Defense Department set up at Camp Lemonier an operation called the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa with 1,600 US troops. Its stated mission was to complete goodwill projects such as digging wells in villages around the region, except in Somalia. But US intelligence officials, in interviews, have said the Special Forces component of the Djibouti-based troops was solely focused on anti terror activities, especially in Somalia.

"They have seven days to clean up Al Qaeda" and another week after that to stabilize Somalia militarily," said Robert I. Rotberg , director of Harvard University's Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution. "The alternative is regression back into semi-warlordism."

Bryan Bender and Farah Stockman of the Globe staff contributed to this report. John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.