Kerry says US ‘will never stop’ hunting extremists
US Secretary of State John Kerry briefs
journalists during a press conference in Nusa Dua in the Indonesian resort
island of Bali, on October 5, 2013/AFP
Benoa, Indonesia
October 6- Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said two high profile raids
in Libya and Somalia showed the United States’ unflinching determination to hunt
down those responsible for terrorism.
“We hope that this makes clear that the United States of America
will never stop in its effort to hold those accountable who conduct acts of
terror,” he told reporters in the Indonesian island of Bali after Saturday’s
raids.
The action should
also make clear that “those members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist
organisations literally can run, but they can’t hide”, Kerry added.
In Libya US forces seized a
militant known as Abu Anas al Libi, a long sought Al Qaeda operative indicted in
the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A separate
raid was launched before dawn against a Shebab leader in the southern Somali
port of Barawe. It failed to capture the senior militant and it was unclear
whether he had been killed, but a US official said several Shebab members were
slain.
“We will continue to try and
bring people to justice in the appropriate way with hopes that ultimately these
kinds of activities against everybody in the world will stop,” the secretary of
state said.
Kerry was speaking in Benoa, a
Bali fishing port, after inspecting a USAID development project during a break
from meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
He also
praised “the quality and courage” of the US personnel who took part in the
raids.
Libi, who was
on the FBI’s most wanted list with a $5 million reward, was indicted in US
federal court in New York for allegedly playing a key role in the east Africa
bombings.
The attacks left more than 200
people dead.
His capture
ended a 15 year manhunt for a key Al Qaeda operative, who was born under the
name Nazih Abdul Hamed Al Raghie.
It also paved
the way for Libi, 49, to be brought to the United States to face
trial.
“Capture of Abu Anas al Libi
would represent major blow against remnants of al Qaeda’s core,” Democratic
Representative Adam Schiff, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee,
wrote on Twitter.
The operation took place in
broad daylight with the knowledge of the Libyan government, a US official told
CNN.
Libyan security services denied the claim, saying they were
unaware of any kidnapping or arrest of the man.
According to
the indictment, Libi and other Al Qaeda members discussed an attack on the US
Embassy in Nairobi as early as 1993.
He is said to have conducted visual and photographic surveillance
of the mission that year.
In 1994, he allegedly planned to
attack the mission as well as the building, then housing the United States
Agency for International Development in the Kenyan capital, along with British,
French and Israeli targets.
A US
official said the operation in Somalia sought to capture a “high value” Shebab
leader, and that no US personnel were injured or killed.
The operation marked the
most significant US assault in Somalia since commandos killed key Al Qaeda
operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in the same area four years ago.
It
followed an attack by Shebab gunmen last month on the upscale Westgate shopping
mall in Nairobi that left 67 people dead during a four day siege.
“US personnel took all
necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties in this operation and
disengaged after inflicting some Shebab casualties,” the official
said.
Declining to identify the
people who died, the official said that “even in these extreme operational
circumstances, the US military is very cautious to minimize civilian
casualties.”
The statement was an acknowledgement of US
authorities’ concern with the bitter anti American sentiment fueled by civilian
casualties in US military operations.
The Al Qaeda linked Shebab had earlier claimed it was
British and Turkish special forces that staged a nighttime sea and air attack on
one of its bases, but Britain denied any involvement.
Insurgent leaders in
Barawe, one of the few ports left in Shebab hands, said commandos rappelled from
a helicopter and tried to storm a house belonging to a senior Shebab commander,
but the assault failed.
The
SEAL team approached and fired on the unidentified target’s seaside villa by
sea, according to The New York Times.
Although the Shebab
leader was believed to have been killed during the pre planned assault, the
SEALs had to withdraw before they could confirm the kill, a senior US official
told the newspaper.
“The
Barawe raid was planned a week and a half ago,” a US security official told the
Times.
“It
was prompted by the Westgate attack.”
A senior Somali
government official told the newspaper that “the attack was carried out by the
American forces and the Somali government was pre-informed about the
attack.”
Shebab spokesman
Abdulaziz Abu Musab told AFP that commandos had stormed the beach by boat, but
laid blamed on Britain and Turkey.
“The bungled operation
was carried out by white people, who came with two small boats from a larger
ship out at sea one Shebab guard was killed, but reinforcements soon came and
the foreigners fled,” he said.
“Where the
foreigners had been, afterwards we saw lots of blood, so maybe we wounded
some.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Al Shabaab had claimed the raid
was by British and Turkish forces
Updated Sunday, October
6th 2013 at 16:14 GMT +3
WASHINGTON: US
forces launched raids in Libya and Somalia on Saturday, two weeks after the
deadly Islamist attack on a Nairobi shopping mall, capturing a top al Qaeda
figure wanted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, US
officials said.
The Pentagon said senior al Qaeda figure Anas al Liby was seized in the
raid in Libya, but a US official said the raid on the Somali town of Barawe failed to
capture or kill the intended target from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab
movement.
Liby, believed to be 49, has been under US indictment for his alleged
role in the East Africa embassy bombings that killed 224 people.
The US government has also been offering a $5
million reward for information leading to his capture, under the State
Department's Rewards for Justice program.
"As the result of a US counterterrorism operation, Abu Anas al Liby is
currently lawfully detained by the US military in a secure location outside of
Libya," Pentagon spokesman George Little said without elaborating.
Liby, also known as Nazih al-Ragye, was arrested
at dawn in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as he was heading home after morning
prayers, a neighbor and militia sources said.
"As I was opening my house door, I saw a group of cars coming quickly
from the direction of the house where al-Ragye lives. I was shocked by this
movement in the early morning," said one of his neighbors, who did not give his
name, "They kidnapped him. We do not know who are they."
Two Islamist militia sources confirmed the
incident.
The Pentagon confirmed US military personnel had been involved in an
operation against what it called "a known al Shabaab terrorist," in Somalia, but
gave no more details.
One US official, speaking to Reuters on condition
of anonymity, said the al Shabaab leader targeted in the operation was neither
captured nor killed.
US officials did not identify the target. They said US forces, trying to
avoid civilian casualties, disengaged after inflicting some al Shabaab
casualties. They said no US personnel were wounded or killed in the operation,
which one US source said was carried out by a Navy SEAL team.
Somalia firefight
A Somali intelligence official said the target of the raid at Barawe, about 110 miles south of Mogadishu, was a Chechen commander, who had been wounded and his guard killed. Police said a total of seven people were killed.
The New York Times quoted a spokesman for al Shabaab as saying that one
of its fighters had been killed in an exchange of gunfire but that the group had
beaten back the assault.
It quoted an unnamed US
security official as saying that the Barawe raid was
planned a week and a half ago in response to the al Shabaab assault on a Nairobi
shopping mall last month in which at least 67 people died.
"It was prompted by the Westgate attack," the
official said.The New York Times quoted witnesses as saying that the firefight lasted more than an hour, with helicopters called in for air support.
The paper quoted a senior Somali government official as saying that the government "was pre-informed about the attack."
Earlier, al Shabaab militants said British and Turkish special forces had raided Barawe, killing a rebel fighter, but that a British officer had also been killed and others wounded.
Britain's Defence Ministry said it was not aware of any such British
involvement. A Turkish Foreign Ministry official also denied any Turkish part in
such an action.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday,
October 6, 2013
Libya, Somali raids signal US wont forget attacks: Kerry
Secretary of
State John Kerry. He said two high-profile raids in Libya and Somalia showed the
United States' unflinching determination to hunt down those responsible for
terrorism.
In Summary
- A separate raid was launched before dawn against a Shebab leader in the southern Somali port of Barawe. It failed to capture the senior militant and it was unclear whether he had been killed, but a US official said several Shebab members were slain.
- In Libya US forces seized a militant known as Abu Anas al-Libi, a long-sought Al-Qaeda operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said two
high-profile raids in Libya and Somalia showed the United States' unflinching
determination to hunt down those responsible for terrorism.
"We hope that this makes clear that the United States
of America will never stop in its effort to hold those accountable who conduct
acts of terror," he told reporters in the Indonesian island of Bali after
Saturday's raids.
The action should also make clear that "those members
of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations literally can run, but they can't
hide", Kerry added.
In Libya US forces seized a militant known as Abu Anas
al-Libi, a long-sought Al-Qaeda operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A separate raid was launched before dawn against a
Shebab leader in the southern Somali port of Barawe. It failed to capture the
senior militant and it was unclear whether he had been killed, but a US official
said several Shebab members were slain.
"We will continue to try and bring people to justice in
the appropriate way with hopes that ultimately these kinds of activities against
everybody in the world will stop," the secretary of state
said.
Kerry was speaking in Benoa, a Bali fishing port, after
inspecting a USAID development project during a break from meetings of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
He also
praised "the quality and courage" of the US personnel who took part in the
raids.
---------------------------------------------
How elephant poaching
helped fund Kenya terrorist attack
The recent terrorist attack in
Kenya may not seem like a story about sustainability or the
environment, but in fact there is a disturbing connection between the deadly attack at the Westgate
mall in Nairobi, which has left at least 68 dead and more than 150
injured and the illegal ivory trade that fuels poaching of elephants, rhinos and
other wildlife.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the United States taking more
action in the fight against illegal wildlife trafficking. In July,
President Obama issued an executive order establishing a cabinet-level Task
Force on Wildlife Trafficking, which has this month formed an advisory council
including cabinet members, as well as executives from the major anti-trafficking
and wildlife conservation organizations. The US has also announced plans to destroy its 25-year-old stockpile
of seized ivory to send a message to the world about crisis of the
ivory trade.
All of this is being done, not simply to preserve the lives and ecosystem
benefits of rhinos and elephants, but also because the United States now sees
wildlife trafficking as national security threat. Why? Because poaching and
illegal wildlife trafficking is a major source of funding for terrorist groups,
including Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-backed Somali terror group responsible for
Saturday's attack in the Nairobi mall.
TIME magazine's Ishaan Tharoor explains the recent history of
Al-Shabaab:
The group, whose name means the Youth in Arabic, was once the militant youth wing of a coalition of Islamist forces that held sway in parts of Somalia more than half a decade ago. The country has had no real functional central government for over two decades, and the Islamists, for a time, provided a veneer of security and stability despite the harshness of the Shari‘a they sought to impose. That control slipped following a series of offensives spearheaded by the African Union, beginning with an Ethiopian-led invasion in 2006.
Dana Liebelson at Mother Jones
notes that in addition to their power slipping in recent years, some
sources of Al Shabaab's funding have been disrupted:
Until 2012, al-Shabaab ran the port city of Kismayo, and it made a bunch of money from a racketeering business that exploited the city's thriving coal industry. But after foreign forces kicked the group out of Somalia's capital and Kismayo, it lost much of this revenue...According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the group also gets funding from kidnapping operations and allied terrorist groups.
While it is good that efforts to defund Al Shabaab have been successful in
some areas, this has led the group to turn to poaching to make up for that lost
income.
Three years ago, The Elephant Action League
published an 18-month-long investigation that found that Al-Shabaab's
trafficking of ivory through Kenya "could be supplying up to 40% of the funds
needed to keep them in business."
The role of Al Shabaab in ivory trafficking is of immense concern. The harsh environment in which they operate, deprived of natural resources or infrastructure to raid (such as in eastern DRC or the Niger delta), makes ivory and rhino horn trade that much more important.Shabaab’s role is not limited to poaching and brokerage, but is a major link in the chain, enabling them to reap huge profits from the mark-up in the trade. Shabaab’s strength and conviction to continue its fight will increase its need for fighters, arms, ammunition and other equipment, and increase its need for funds. As the West continues to fight radical terrorist organizations through seizing assets in offshore bank accounts, straw companies and “charities”, these organizations, including Al Shabaab, will rely increasingly on trafficking in contraband as a source of finance.
In April of 2013, Ian J. Saunders wrote a detailed report for International
Conservation Caucus Foundation (ICCF) on how Al-Shabaab was dependent on ivory
to fund its operations:
Since 2011, Kenya has suffered from unsustainable increases in elephant poaching in all its major elephant habitats. The rapid escalation of the threat to elephants is due to heightened levels of participation from the heavily armed poaching gangs, often hailing from Somalia, operating either for organized crime syndicates or for fundamentalist organizations. Ivory has the potential to provide an easily accessible and untraceable source of revenue to terrorist and extremist organizations in both Kenya and Somalia, providing a direct threat to the U.S. and its African allies.Wildlife managers with security experience who are operating on the ground have seen an evolution of activity that, combined with specific indicators, represents a credible and increasing threat that Al Shabaab in East Africa is gaining financial support through trading in illegal ivory.This source of finance will always be available to Al Shabaab and other Islamic terrorist organizations in East Africa as long as the security/anti-poaching deterrent on the ground is not sufficient to deny them access to it. Ivory is a source of revenue too convenient for Al Shabaab to ignore, and it would be naïve to think otherwise.
Saunders notes that the escalation in the number of poaching incidents and
the sophistication of the operations that has overwhelmed the capabilities of
local agencies.
In the last few years, the increase in ivory prices fuelled by demand mainly from China has created a security situation over and above what was previously faced by wildlife authorities. In essence, anti-poaching has moved from a simple policing operation to a low-level form of counterinsurgency, increasingly involving some of the world’s most notorious and professional crime syndicates and international terrorist organizations.This has resulted in the overstretching of existing resources and a lack of sufficient deterrents on the ground. No wildlife agency in the world is set up to fight terrorism, insurgents and rebel armies, but that is what is expected of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) in the Congo and the wildlife authorities in Chad, to name but a few.
This explains why the United States has started calling wildlife
trafficking a national security threat and is beginning to take more significant
action to address the crisis.
Two weeks ago, Hilary Clinton spoke at the White
House Forum to Counter Wildlife Trafficking and cited this increased
militarization of poaching as a reason for the US to become more involved:
“Illegal poaching and trafficking also represent an economic and security challenge in Africa and beyond. Wildlife trafficking has become more organized, more lucrative and more dangerous than ever before. Poachers now use helicopters, automatic weapons, night vision goggles, satellite phones to overwhelm and even murder park rangers and other local authorities.”
The
slaughter of elephants is no doubt a tragedy, but as the deadly attack at the
Westgate mall in Kenya shows, the bloodshed fueled by the sale of ivory does not
stop with the elephants. Buying ivory helps pay for the bullets and bombs used
by terrorists to kill innocent people, including park rangers and now these
shoppers in Nairobi.
Highlighting this connection
between the sale of ivory and violence is important because a powerful tool in
combating the demand for poached ivory is to so thoroughly taint the image of
ivory goods that potential consumers are shamed and discouraged from ever buying
ivory again.
For more on the ivory trade,
ABC News had a good segment on the challenges of distinguishing "illegal" ivory
from that which was on the market before the ban was in place.
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