French advisors kidnapped in Somalia

By David McKenzie

| July 14, 2009

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Somali soldiers run with their weapons as they move into a stronghold of Islamic militants in Mogadishu, Somalia on July 12. Two foreign journalists were abducted by gunmen in the Somali capital Mogadishu, police said. (AFP/Mohamed Dahir)

Many Somalis went to U.S. after 1992 American intervention in Somalia

Fresh fighting has erupted between transitional government and rebels

U.N. estimates 200,000 people have been forced to flee Somali capital

(CNN) — Amid the worsening conflict in his country, Somalia’s president made a plea for Somalis living in the United States to stop sending their young men to fight.

“I call on the Somali-American community not to send their youth to Somalia to fight alongside al-Shabaab,” President Sheik Sharif Ahmed said on Sunday.

He was referring to the Islamist militant group that is waging a brutal war against his administration in Mogadishu.

“I am saying to those young men from abroad: ‘Your families fled your home to America because of insecurity. You should not return here to ferment violence against your people,'” he said.

Somalis began arriving in the United States in significant numbers after the U.S. intervention in Somalia’s humanitarian crisis in 1992.

A sizable group of young Somali-American men left Minneapolis last year and were feared recruited by al-Shabaab militants.

In October, Shirwa Ahmed, 27, a Somali-American who had been radicalized by al-Shabaab in his adopted home state of Minnesota, traveled to Somalia and blew up himself and 29 others.

The incident — the first-ever suicide bombing by a naturalized U.S. citizen — raised red flags throughout the U.S. intelligence community.

The president’s call came after fresh fighting erupted Sunday between Somalia’s transitional government forces and Islamist rebels.

According to several witness accounts, AMISOM — the African Union Mission to Somalia — supported government forces to push back al-Shabaab as the militia attacked the presidential palace.

AMISOM tanks and soldiers were involved in the fighting, according to witnesses.

“The sound of heavy artillery in Mogadishu was very loud and continuous,” a witness told CNN. “It was shaking the ground, and many buildings were destroyed by the shelling.”

The president called the operation “a clear victory” against al-Shabaab.

“Our forces have weakened the strength of the al-Shabaab militia in this fighting,” Ahmed said.

Government forces displayed the bodies of five al-Shabaab fighters in their trademark green uniforms.

Al-Shabaab, a group that is on the U.S. government’s terror watch list, remains entrenched in the northeast and sections of the south of the capital.

The group categorized the involvement of AMISOM as a shift in their attempts to overthrow the transitional government.

“The fighting in Mogadishu has entered a new phase. Now it’s between us and AMISOM,” said Ali Mohamud Rage, a spokesman for al-Shabaab. “AMISOM was backing up the government directly, but we will keep fighting.”

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and sparked brutal clan infighting.

The transitional government has struggled to establish authority, challenged by Islamist groups that have seized control of Mogadishu and much of the south.

The United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people have been forced to flee Mogadishu since the latest round of fighting began in early May between the government and the Al-Shabaab and Hisb-ul-Islam groups.

The Somali-American population in the United States is concentrated in clusters primarily in Minneapolis; Columbus, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; and San Diego, California.

The potential recruitment of young Somali-American men has been made possible by “a number of factors that come together when a dynamic, influential and extremist leader gains access to a despondent and disenfranchised group of young men,” Andrew Liepman, deputy director for intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, said earlier this year.

Many refugees, he said, “lack structure and definition in their lives” and are “torn between their parents’ traditional tribal and clan identities, and the new cultures and traditions offered by American society.”

All AboutSomalia • Al Shabaab

French advisors kidnapped in Somalia

By Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya — Two French security advisers were kidnapped from their hotel in Somalia’s perilous capital on Tuesday by a renegade faction of Somalia’s own security forces, Somali and Western officials said.

The two Frenchmen were helping train Somalia’s new presidential guard, and the kidnappers holding them are disgruntled government soldiers upset about not getting paid for risking their lives in recent battles, a Somali official said.

The French foreign ministry issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying that the two advisers were on an “official mission of assistance to the Somali government” and that “all the state services concerned were mobilized.”

Witnesses said that shortly after sunrise, about 10 soldiers driving an official police truck arrived at the Sahafi Hotel, located in a part of the capital, Mogadishu, that is loosely controlled by the transitional government. The hotel is a favorite for the few foreign travelers who make it to Mogadishu these days and known for its grubby rooms and relatively tasty menu of camel steaks, lobster and watermelon juice.

A driver at the hotel said the soldiers went straight to the Frenchmen’s rooms and marched them out at gunpoint. Some witnesses even said that the men left the hotel in their boxer shorts. A Somali official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the kidnappers were from the same clan as Somalia’s interior minister and had been part of a well-known clan militia that was recently absorbed into the government’s fledging security forces.

But the transitional government is struggling to survive and several soldiers have complained about not being paid.

By nightfall, government forces had arrested some of the kidnappers, the Somali official said, and were negotiating with the others for the Frenchmen’s release.

“We know where they are,’ said the official, who asked not to be named for security reasons.

Other Somali officials said the kidnappers were asking for a million dollars in ransom but were willing to settle for around $500,000.

Somalia has been steeped in violence and chaos for the past 18 years, since the central government collapsed. The current conflict pits a determined insurgency, led by radical Islamists, against a moderate Islamist transitional government armed by the United States, among others.

Western diplomats say that training the government’s security forces is the only way to end the country’s cycle of lawlessness. Kidnapping — on land and on sea — has become a flourishing industry and last year pirates off the coast of Somalia made tens of millions of dollars by kidnapping foreigners.