Militant groups including al-Qaida are exploiting lawless areas in the seven-nation Horn of Africa region to hide, recruit and train members and possibly plan attacks, the head of the region’s U.S.-led anti-terror force said on Monday.
“We find the terrorist networks here using the fact that there is a lot of ungoverned space in the Horn of Africa,” said Maj. Gen. Samuel Helland. “Because of (this) ... it’s very easy for a terrorist organization to establish a presence ... It’s very easy for them to train, equip, organize and use the facilities that are present to gain a foothold.”
“And I suspect that if we look very hard at the area we’ll see that there is some training going on for operations in other parts of the world,” he said in a telephone interview from Djibouti, where he heads the Combined Joint Task Force overseeing counterterrorism activities in the Horn of Africa.
Since late 2002, Djibouti has hosted U.S. troops using the tiny state as a base to hunt down the kind of militants who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 200 people.
The task force in the Horn of Africa region encompasses the territory and airspace of Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Yemen and Ethiopia, as well as the coastal waters of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Helland took over the task force in May.
Al-Qaida thought linked with local radicals
“I think we can say with some level of confidence that there are al-Qaida operatives in the Horn of Africa,” Helland said, adding that the network provided ideological inspiration as well as direct support to local militants.
“Suspicions are pretty high” that al-Qaida militants had personal contact with local radicals, he said. “There is a capability here within the region that is supported as we see in open form by the al-Qaida network that extends out of the Middle East.”
The United States and nations in the region are trying to determine the extent of al-Qaida’s presence in the Horn of Africa, “who they are, where they are and what they’re doing,” he said.
U.S.-led forces have so far been unable to root out the militants because they blended in with local populations in chaotic areas that have escaped local government control, Helland said.
“This is ungoverned space they thrive in. It is a place where there is chaos. It’s a place where there is no governance. There’s no rule of law. It’s all based on warlord relationships, and they just go ahead and blend in with them,” he said.
Helland said the U.S. forces were working with regional states, conducting military, border security and maritime security training, as well as civil affairs projects like drilling wells, repairing medical clinics and providing veterinary services to enhance stability and make it more difficult for militant recruiters.