Talk of new US role in Somalia

WASHINGTON -- More than a decade after US troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, officials of Somalia's interim government and some US analysts of Africa policy say the United States has returned to the African country, secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital.

The latest clashes, last week and over the weekend, were some of the most violent in Mogadishu since the end of the American intervention in 1994, and left 150 dead and hundreds more wounded. Leaders of the interim government blamed US support of the militias for provoking the clashes.

US officials have declined to directly address on the record the question of backing Somali warlords, who have styled themselves as a counterterrorism coalition in an open bid for American support. White House press secretary Tony Snow said yesterday that the United States is working with ''regional and international partners" to keep Al Qaeda from establishing itself in northeastern Africa.

US officials have long feared that Somalia, with no effective government since 1991, is a desirable place for Al Qaeda members to hide and plan attacks. The country is strategically situated on the Horn of Africa, a boat ride away from Yemen and a longtime gateway to Africa from the Middle East. No visas are needed to enter Somalia, there is no police force and no effective central authority.

The country has a weak transitional government operating largely out of neighboring Kenya and the southern city of Baidoa. Most of Somalia is in anarchy, ruled by a patchwork of competing warlords; the capital is too unsafe for even Somalia's acting prime minister to visit.

Leaders of the transitional government said they have warned US officials that working with the warlords is shortsighted and dangerous. ''We would prefer that the US work with the transitional government and not with criminals," the prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, said in an interview. ''This is a dangerous game. Somalia is not a stable place and we want the US in Somalia. But in a more constructive way. Clearly we have a common objective to stabilize Somalia, but the US is using the wrong channels."

Many of the warlords have their own agendas, Somali officials said, and some reportedly fought against the United States in 1993.

''The US government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said by telephone from Baidoa. ''This cooperation . . . only fuels further civil war."

US officials have refused repeated requests to provide details on the nature and extent of their support for the coalition of warlords, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-terrorism, a name that some Somalis said was a marketing ploy to get US support.

But some US officials, who declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the issue, have said they are generally talking to these leaders to prevent Al Qaeda from gaining a safe haven.

''There are complicated issues in Somalia, in that the government does not control Mogadishu and it has the potential for becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists," said a senior administration official in Washington. ''We've got very clear interests in trying to ensure that Al Qaeda members are not using it to hide and to plan attacks." He said it was ''a very difficult issue" to show support for the fledgling interim government while also working to prevent Somalia from becoming an Al Qaeda base.

A senior US intelligence official, who also asked not to be identified, said it was a ''Hobbesian" situation -- that the transitional government in Kenya was in its ''fifteenth iteration" and it, too, was a ''collection of warlords" that played both sides of the fence.

The official said the United States had yet to decide where it was most useful to be placed.

The source said Somalia was ''not an Al Qaeda safe haven" yet, adding, ''There are some there, but it's so dysfunctional." US officials believe a small number of Al Qaeda operatives who were involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania are now residing in Somalia.

Analysts outside the government contend the Bush administration is backing the warlords as part of its global war against terrorism.

''The US relies on buying intelligence from warlords and other participants in the Somali conflict, and hoping that the strongest of the warlords can snatch a live suspect or two if the intelligence identifies their whereabouts," said John Prendergast, the director for African affairs in the Clinton administration and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, a think tank. ''This strategy might reduce the short-term threat of another terrorist attack in East Africa, but in the long term the conditions which allow terrorist cells to take hold along the Indian Ocean coastline go unaddressed. We ignore these conditions at our peril."

''Are we talking to them and doing some of that? Yes," said Ted Dagne, the top Africa analyst for Congressional Research Service. ''We fought some of these warlords in 1993 and now we are dealing with some of them again, perhaps supporting some of them against other groups. Somalia is still considered by some as an attractive location for terrorist groups."

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.