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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus |
| 2004-06-28 |
| I really don’t know what to do with this; the Al Qaida-Qaddafi connection seems very unlikely given Muammar’s stance toward the organization. Good info on SA and Mugabe, though. Salt needed, I guess. RW Johnson ponders the existence of a political triad linking Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qadaffi via Robert Mugabe. [...] On 25 August 1998, just eighteen days after the bombs in Kenya and Tanzania had been detonated, a pipe bomb exploded in the Planet Hollywood restaurant on Cape Town’s Waterfront, killing one and wounding 27. The police concluded from the fact that the target had sounded American and that a pipe bomb had been used that this was probably the work of Pagad. But no one was ever apprehended for the atrocity despite the fact that the ANC minister for safety and security, Sydney Mufamadi, had announced that the police were closing in and that an arrest was expected at any moment. Later Mufamadi changed tack, seeming almost to blame the US for the bomb and suggested that it was a predictable reprisal for the Cruise missile attack on Sudan. The FBI was more successful, quickly arresting three suspects for the African bombings, Mohamed Saddeck Odeh, Rashed Daoud Al-’Ouhali and Wali al-Hage, the latter having earlier served as personal secretary to Bin Laden himself. All three were flown to the US where they confessed that the kingpin of the operation, Haroun Fazil (26), had rented a villa outside Nairobi where the bomb had been constructed. Fazil had driven a white pick-up truck and guided the lorry laden with explosives, driven by his operatives, to the US Embassy. Straight after the bombing he had taken a flight to his native Comoros Islands. The FBI, finding a record of a phone call made from a Nairobi hotel to the Comoros, asked the help of the Comoros government in tracing the call but clearly Fazil was tipped off for on 22 August he fled to Dubai just as the FBI arrived in the Comoros - where they found incriminating CDs in his family home. What this event drew attention to was the existence of a Muslim network running all the way down the East coast of Africa from the Persian Gulf to Cape Town. South Africa itself has many attractions for Muslim terrorists. Durban, after all, is home to Africa’s richest Muslim community and its International Islamic Centre was built thanks to a personal donation by Bin Laden. Moreover, large sums of money can move easily through the Durban Indian community to Mauritius, Nairobi or Cape Town - and, indeed, to its overseas branches in London, Toronto and Sydney. One could be sure of finding, within southern Africa, enough al-Qaeda sympathizers, enough money and enough ways of making sure the two connected to make this region a major front in the terrorist war. Moreover, the region boasts not one but two failed states - the DRC and Zimbabwe - ideal breeding grounds for terrorism. An ironic advantage of this situation, I discovered as I started to delve into the question of terrorist links, was that some members of Mugabe’s secret police, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), were feeling sufficiently disaffected to talk frankly, though of course anonymously, about the subject. Mugabe’s relationship with radical Islam goes back to 1978 when Libya’s president Muammar Qadaffi provided arms and training for his Zanla guerrillas in Mozambique and, after Zimbabwean independence, trained 700 policemen for the new government. ... Read the rest, if you care |
| Posted by:Anonymous5089 |
| #4 There's been a chain of Muslim communites along the eastern Africa coast for centuries. Did a bit of poking around. I'd say grain of salt with the "triangle", unless the Libya-Zimbabwe-AlQ linkup was set up years ago. Sounds like Mugabe stiffed the Libyans a few months back. It wouldn't be surprising, however, to find 'Libyans' on the farms, as Johnson writes. Re S. Africa: not a surprising attitude, given the ANC's ideology. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-06-28 9:28:59 PM |
| #3 Go ahead, Moogie, make our day. . . |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-06-28 5:06:19 PM |
| #2 Thanks, A 5089, time to reform the RLI? This place should have been sorted by now, precision strikes are called for and then a general culling of ZANU-PF, perhaps. Heard a Beeb radio 5 show last Sunday, about the CIO/ZANU-PF asylum scam in the UK: "Lie to the white man, tell him what he wants to hear", basically. I lived there for nearly 3 decades and it sums it up. Thing is, we knew they were lying. |
| Posted by: rhodesiafever 2004-06-28 3:00:25 PM |
| #1 Qaddafi had a change of heart when he viewed Sadaam being deloused, but he, Mugabe and Mbeki, Mandella and Tutu would have been perfectly willing to help facilitate anti-American activity during that time-frame. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-06-28 2:46:52 PM |