Story by JACKSON MBUVI
Publication Date: 2/10/2006
March 8, 2006 (Daily Nation) - Political instability anywhere in the world is a welcome mat for international terrorists. It is the handy ingredient that gives them an opportunity to establish safe havens where they can plan and stage surprise attacks on set targets.
That should explain why the patron saint of the al Qaeda gangs, Osama bin Laden, had set up camp in the Afghan mountains at a time the administration in Kabul could not instill authority in the country. Previously, Osama operated from Sudan, a country where stability was a strange word in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, Osama is suspected to be holed up either in Iraq, arguably the most dangerous place to live in the world, or in the remote provinces of the former Soviet Union where law and order are as rare as ostrich egg.
Turning to the Horn of Africa region, there is more than enough cause for worry. Porous borders appear to be the curse of the region. This is made worse by a curious combination of stable regimes unable to impact authority on their entire territories, unstable regimes, and, at least, one stateless country.
Let's just make a quick scan of our neighbourhood. Recently, Italian intelligence sources warned that al Qaeda-affiliated cells were setting camps in sparsely populated regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea. This could not have come at a worse time when the two unfriendly countries were beating drums of war.
Ethiopia, which is Kenya's northern neighbour, has another problem of its own. Over a decade now, Addis Ababa has been battling a separatist movement to the south, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) army, which wants to establish an autonomous state in south-western Ethiopia.
Both OLA and the Ethiopia government claim they have been winning battles in the protracted struggle. In a communique released early November, the rebels boasted they were about to overrun government troops after reportedly killing 11 and wounding a dozen near the Kenyan border.
Ethiopian authorities told a different story. A spokesman from the country's Information ministry said at the end of November that the remaining pockets of OLA had been eliminated by government troops in a major operation down south, and sooner rather than later, OLA would be a closed chapter in the country's history.
Turning east, the story of Somalia and the security threat it poses to Kenya and the region is now an over-flogged donkey. Somalia was the operation base for terrorists who bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. It was also the safe haven for terrorists who bombed Mombasa's Paradise Hotel in November 2002.
And unknown to many, in 2003, Kenya's anti-terror police foiled an attempt to blow up a British Airways jet at the Jomo Kenyatta airport. No rewards for guessing that the abortive plot was hatched in Somalia!
If anything, Somalia is getting more dangerous by the day. In an interview with a British journalist late last year, Somali president-in-exile, Abdullahi Yusuf, conceded that the situation in his country "was getting worse, not better."
He said that his men on the ground had information to the effect that "Jihadist" groups were planning a series of attacks on select spots in Somalia, the Horn of Africa and overseas. It's no coincidence that two of the three bombers of the London underground last year were of Somali descent.
Turning to the Sudan, it is not undeniable that recently, there have been quite welcome vibes from Khartoum. There is peace with the south and some little progress in the Darfur region. Yet there is still cause for worry in the country that once gave shelter to Osama.
Last December, the leader of the Sudanese People's Congress Party, Dr Hasan al-Turabi, told a London newspaper, 41-Sharq al-Awsat, that Osama was still a friend of the Sudanese.
He said Osama's "terrorist" tag was "a mere creation of the West", and went further to make an ominous prediction that if the al Qaeda leader makes any attacks in the future, it will be "an act of self-defence against the West's aggression."
Equally ominous was al-Turabi's "vision" of his own country. He dismissed last year's peace accord between Khartoum and the SPLM. If anything, he said, the accord will set the stage for actual secession of the south after worse bloodshed.
Uganda, despite succession squabbles ahead of the March presidential election, is a stable place by African standards. Yet all is not rosy.
President Museveni's government has been tackling the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to the north. The cult-like bands of rebels known for killing, raping and kidnapping children, has recently set camp in the less controllable DRC after Uganda troops penetrated their bases in southern Sudan.
Down south, Tanzania could be said to be the region's most stable country after Kenya. But that may no longer be the case. The trouble spot is not in mainland Tanzania, but in Zanzibar island.
The bone of contention is the disputed results of the October 30 election that triggered three days of demonstrations by the opposition Civic United Front (CUF). Election fraud in the spice islands was also alleged in 1995 and 2000 pools.
The fear, as far as Zanzibar is concerned, is that extremist groups could take advantage of the political chaos to pursue other agenda.
Nearly 98 per cent of Zanzibar population is Muslim. But most of them are peace-loving and anti-terrorism. However, an estimated 2 per cent are of the extremist bent. They are dangerous.
In the aftermath of last year election, a CUF official, Othman Juma, captured the mood of the situation in the following words: "When you unfairly lose once, it is bad enough. When you do so three times, you lose hope. When you have lost hope, you can do anything."
Then came the ominous line from the CUF official: "We must be prepared to face the challenge of the al Qaeda taking advantage of the bad situation here."
And it cannot be forgotten that two of the suspects in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, were Zanzibar-born Islamic extremists.
Mr Mbuvi is a security consultant.
