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Radical Islamists linked to al-Qaeda set to take control of Somalia Hardline Islamists are poised to take control of Somalia, opening up a new front in the war on terrorism. By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi Last Updated: 2:03PM GMT 26 Dec 2008 Fears are growing it could become a new al-Qaeda stronghold two years after a failed US-backed Ethiopian invasion. The country's weak transitional government, its 14th in 17 years, looks likely to fall once Ethiopian troops pull out at the end of December after failing to stamp out a growing Islamist insurgency. The Ethiopians are the last line of defence against a total takeover by a radical Islamist group linked to Osama bin Laden's terror organisation. The group preaches strict Sharia law and approved the stoning to death of a 13-year-old girl in October. Al Shebab, the fanatical armed wing which broke from the Islamic Courts Union which ran Somalia for the second half of 2006, now holds more than 80 per cent of the country - more territory than the Courts controlled during their reign. Rashid Abdi, Somalia analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said: "They may be forced to moderate their radical line once they take over just to stay in power. "But there are those who predict al Shebab turning into some kind of Frankenstein's monster taken over by, or at least sympathetic to, foreign elements who have ambitions outside Somalia, to spread radical Islam or mount terror attacks, in northeastern Kenya or eastern Ethiopia." The group, listed as a terrorist organisation by Washington, has been accused of sheltering the al-Qaeda cell which bombed the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and blew up an Israeli-owned hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002. Last month, the US embassy in Nairobi warned that it continues to receive indications of potential terrorist threats aimed at American, Western, and Kenyan interests in Kenya including threats of "suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings, attacks on civil aviation, and attacks on maritime vessels". There are fears that al Shebab, whose stronghold is the Somali port of Kismayo just north of the border with Kenya, could launch an attack on coastal resorts popular with Western tourists over the Christmas holidays. The United Nations office in Nairobi has warned staff of a "heightened level of alert along the coast". Al Shebab's chief military commander, Muktar Robow, said earlier this year that he was ready "to take orders from Sheikh Osama bin Laden". His forces were swelled by foreign fighters who answered a call to jihad when the Ethiopians invaded, in December 2006, to crush the Islamic Courts Union. That intervention, heavily encouraged by Washington, is widely seen to have prompted the radicalisation of Somalia's Islamist movement and to have launched its Iraq-style insurgency which has killed thousands of civilians and forced 1.1 million people into desperate squatter camps. Two-thirds of the population of Mogadishu, the capital, have fled. This has created a humanitarian disaster where 3.2 million people, half the population, now needs handouts, but where international aid staff cannot work and food shipments must be shepherded by warships to ward off pirates. "I think it is finally starting to sink-in in Washington, two years too late, that sending in the Ethiopians as a proxy force to deal with the Islamists was just madness," said Andrew McGregor, terrorism editor at the Jamestown Foundation, a right-wing think tank in Washington. There is some hope that once the Islamists seize control - and few doubt that they will - they will curb their insurgency, which largely targets the Ethiopians, and that Somalia might enjoy a level of stability as was seen under the Islamic Courts Union. But there are concerns whether al Shebab, whose name means "the youth" and whose forces are largely illiterate and disaffected young men, can peacefully consolidate their power once they are in charge. "Unless they can reach out and form some new alliances, which is not an easy thing to do among Somalia's clans, they will fail and we will see the start of yet another civil war," said Mr Abdi. "I'm not optimistic. The future looks bleak and is likely to be bloody." Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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