Murky Arms Traffic Plagues Somalia
Since leaving Somalia in the 1990s, Musa Haji Mohamed Ganjab has been a landlord and entrepreneur and served as a representative of the Somali government, which the U.S. is backing to fight the jihadist group al-Shabaab. He also has ordered that arms intended for Somalia’s government be delivered instead to an al-Shabaab commander, a confidential United Nations report alleges.
This is just one of the discussions, the report says, that Mr. Ganjab has had about illegally arming groups in Somalia, including the government.
The report shows the complexity of the struggle against extremism in Somalia, a country that is a U.S. national-security concern because of its local al Qaeda-linked group. Al-Shabaab recently launched two attacks just across the border in Kenya in which it slaughtered all non-Muslims, including killing 36 at a quarry-worker camp early this month and more than two dozen in an attack on a bus in November. On Christmas Day, it attacked an African Union base in Mogadishu, killing three soldiers.
Posted by: Steve White 2014-12-31 |