United States Offers Rewards in Hunt for Somali Militants
By
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/jeffrey_gettle
man/index.html> JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: June 10, 2012
NAIROBI, Kenya - The United States government announced on Thursday $33
million in rewards for information on the location of top terrorist suspects
in
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/so
malia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Somalia in an effort to get residents there
to turn in leaders of the
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/al-shab
ab/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Shabab militant Islamist group.
Shabab militants, who became notorious a few years ago for sawing off hands
and stoning young women, are a shadow of what they once were, losing much of
their territory in Somalia over the past year to a coalition of Kenyan,
Ethiopian, Ugandan, Burundian and Somali forces that united against them.
But the Shabab are still dangerous, adept at suicide bombings and
assassinations, with links to
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaed
a/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Al Qaeda. The American government considers the
group one of the gravest security threats in Africa. Several dozen
Somali-Americans have joined its ranks, and American intelligence agents
fear Somali-American Shabab fighters could be trained in Somalia to wreak
havoc back in the United States.
On Thursday, the State Department announced that it had authorized a reward
of up to $7 million for information on the Shabab founder Ahmed Abdi
aw-Mohamed, also known as Godane, as well as multimillion-dollar rewards for
six other Shabab leaders.
The Shabab's "terrorist activities pose a threat to the stability of East
Africa and to the national security interests of the United States," a
<
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/191914.htm> State Department
statement said. "The group is responsible for the killing of thousands of
Somali civilians, Somali peace activists, international aid workers,
journalists, and African Union peacekeepers."
The Shabab's leaders have proved elusive, narrowly escaping American
airstrikes several times before. In addition to being hardy, the Shabab have
also shown that they have the will and know-how to strike outside Somalia,
killing dozens, including an American, in a suicide bombing in Uganda in
2010.
Militant Islamist groups have waxed and waned in Somalia for decades, with
the Shabab rising to prominence in 2007, after Ethiopia occupied Somalia in
an invasion endorsed and assisted by the American military. The Shabab
presented themselves as nationalistic freedom fighters and nearly toppled
Somalia's weak transitional government after the Ethiopians pulled out in
2009.
But in recent years, the Somali public has become fed up with the Shabab's
hard-line interpretation of Islam. Their territory is now down to a thin
slice of southern Somalia. This week, Kenyan officials said they were
<
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenya+reveals+move+to+capture+Kismayu/-/1056/1
418698/-/y5ff7i/-/index.html> preparing to assault Kismayo, the last major
town the Shabab control.
The State Department says it has had some success with
<
http://www.rewardsforjustice.net> its rewards program, doling out $100
million since 1984 for information that has led to the capture or killing of
numerous fugitives, from Uday Hussein, the son of Iraq's former dictator,
Saddam Hussein, to terrorists in the Philippines.
American officials said Thursday that they were confident that helpful
information would come from Somalia.
"We look forward to investigating the leads that we expect these reward
offers to generate," said Robert A. Hartung, an official in the State
Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
Received on Sat Jun 09 2012 - 21:24:02 EDT
