JEDDAH, 9 January 2004 — American officials have revealed that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was studying to send special forces to Somalia and southern Lebanon to help arrest terrorists, Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, said on Wednesday.
After Sept. 11, 2001, US officials have repeatedly said that Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has cells in Somalia, known as Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiyah.
Washington has, since then, considered the country a possible destination for fleeing terrorists. Therefore, US coalition warships have been stationed off the coast of Somalia to monitor maritime traffic and stop movement of Al-Qaeda fighters. American reconnaissance planes have been even overflying the Somali territory, taking pictures of activities on the ground.
Some Somali sources told the daily that they didn’t rule out the possibility of US forces in Red Sea, who will jointly make military exercises with those of Kenya next week, might be used to attack Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiyah camps in Somalia.
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The regional administration of northwestern region of a breakaway Somaliland has warned authorities in the neighboring autonomous region of Puntland to withdraw its militia from the disputed region of Sool, press reports said on Wednesday.
Tautness has erupted between northern regions of the breakaway Somaliland and Puntland over the disputed regions of Sool and Sanaag. Puntland militia took total control of the Sool regional capital, Las Anod, late last month.
Fu’ad Adan Ade, the Somaliland housing and rural development minister, who is in charge of his government’s operations in Las Anod said that Sool and Sanaag regions were within the internationally recognized boundaries of Somaliland.
“The presence of Majerteenia (Puntland) forces is illegal and illegitimate. They should leave before things get out of hand. These people (Puntland) are arguing in terms of clan, and we (Somaliland) are talking about a nation,” he added. Clans and sub-clans is what is destroying Somalia,” Ade told UN humanitarian news agency. He added that his militias were on their way to Las Anod. “I will urge the Puntland forces to leave peacefully. We have been patient long enough.”
Sool and Sanaag fall geographically within the borders of pre-independence British Somaliland. When Somaliland seceded Somalia in 1991, it claimed that Sanaag and Sool were part of its territory. When Puntland established its autonomous regional administration, it claimed that most of the clans in the disputed regions were associated with clans inhabited its territory.
Four years of below-average rainfall have resulted in widespread food shortage among the nomadic population of Sool region. UN children’s agency said on Tuesday that it would boost emergency aid operations in drought-affected areas in the north of the country.
Humanitarian agencies have also urged the authorities on both sides to resolve their differences peacefully, and to continue to enable humanitarian agencies to deliver assistance to the drought-affected communities.
