On Oct. 3, 1993, a mob dragged the bodies of two U.S. soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The soldiers had been killed in an intense street battle that was later immortalized in the book Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. But soon after the firefight, U.S. troops were withdrawn from Somalia, and other places–Afghanistan, Iraq–became known as locations where young American soldiers risked their lives. They’re dragging bodies through the streets of Mogadishu once again. This time the dead men–paraded before a camera phone in November–were not American soldiers but Ethiopian ones. Yet the episode was a reminder of how dangerous Somalia has become. Last December the forces of Ethiopia, a prime U.S. ally in Africa and a major recipient of U.S. military aid, invaded Somalia to depose a radical Islamist regime, and Ethiopia received significant U.S. logistical support as the operation unfolded. But today the East African nation–indeed, the whole Horn of Africa–is again in chaos. Ethiopia and Eritrea, which split from Ethiopia in 1993, are on the verge of war , and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer has said that she is considering naming Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism. Somalia itself is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis; according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 1.8 million Somalis are in dire need of assistance. And once again–if with less media attention than in 1993–the U.S. is involved in one of the world’s deadliest regions. In many ways, the Horn of Africa has become, after Iraq and Afghanistan, a third front in the war on terrorism. How did that come about? Deserts, Swamps and Jungles On Jan. 9, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that U.S. forces had carried out an air strike in Africa. An AC-130 gunship, he said, had targeted “what we believe to be senior al-Qaeda leadership.” Whitman neither specified a location nor confirmed reports of other U.S. attacks. Asked about another air strike on Jan. 23–confirmed to TIME by a Pentagon officer–Whitman said, “We’re going to go after al-Qaeda and the global war on terror, wherever it takes us.” He continued: “I don’t have anything for you on Somalia.” Most people don’t have anything on Somalia. It is a hot, poor swath of desert and swamp, sparsely populated by camel herders, mango farmers and fishermen. But in the mental map of Islamic militants, it looms large. The oldest al-Qaeda training camp in Africa, Ras Kamboni, is perched on Somalia’s southeastern tip, surrounded by swampy jungle that makes it as inaccessible as the hill caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Radical groups like al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, funded and trained by foreign militants supplied by Osama bin Laden, have been in Somalia for years. The same bin Laden T shirts that fill Pakistan’s bazaars are sold in the markets along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. Since the outbreak of civil war in 1991, Somalia has suffered from the kind of chaos that provides cover for militants. On Aug. 7, 1998, deadly car bombs detonated simultaneously next to the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people–just 12 of whom were Americans–and injuring more than 4,000. The FBI named three Somalia-based suspects: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, originally from the Comoros Islands, off Mozambique; Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan; and bombmaker Tariq Abdullah, a.k.a. Abu Taha al-Sudani. The FBI said the men were members of the “Osama bin Laden network” and offered $5 million for Fazul’s arrest or death. Fazul’s group allegedly struck again on Nov. 28, 2002, killing 13 people when gunmen attacked the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel near Mombasa, Kenya, and launched two missiles at an Israeli airliner in Kenyan airspace. In 2003, staff at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi evacuated for a week following reports that Fazul wanted to level the new building, and in 2006 al-Sudani was implicated in a plot to attack a U.S. base in Djibouti. All of this means that in the fight against Islamic terrorism, Africa is an increasing worry. “If we’re successful in denying al-Qaeda sanctuary in Waziristan and the North-West Frontier Province [in Pakistan], where are they going to go?” asks a retired senior U.S. special-operations commander. He answers his own question: “Africa.” To counter this perceived threat, in 2002 the U.S. opened a military base in Djibouti–the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa–and a Pentagon source says other moves are under discussion to enhance the U.S. support role across the continent. In 2003, Washington allocated $100 million to the East Africa Counter-Terrorism Initiative, an interagency task force focused on the continent. The U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet, based in Gaeta, Italy, now spends much of its time patrolling the coasts of Africa. This year, using another $100 million allocated to Africa under the Global Peace Operations Initiative, U.S. soldiers will train and equip units from 13 to 15 African countries. The pattern of a growing U.S. military interest in the continent was confirmed on Oct. 1 with the opening in Stuttgart, Germany, of Africom, a 200-officer command dedicated to operations in Africa. The immediate focus of the new command is likely to be the Horn. Friends in Addis Ababa In fact, the U.S. has long been active politically and militarily in East Africa, and its presence dramatically increased after Sept. 11, 2001. In the summer of 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts , an alliance of clerics and clan leaders that included several al-Itihaad al-Islamiya leaders, took over Mogadishu and imposed a form of law and order on Somalia, which had just gone through 15 years of civil war. But a few months later, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the UIC, which had absorbed al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, declared a jihad on Ethiopian troops, who were regularly crossing into Somalia. “That was unacceptable,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told TIME this year. The Ethiopians invaded Somalia on Dec. 24, and the advance was a quick and bloody triumph. Meles’ forces killed thousands of UIC fighters within days, captured Mogadishu and installed the internationally recognized government in exile, the Transitional Federal Government . In a Jan. 5 message, bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Somalis to “consume” the “crusader” Ethiopians “as the lions eat their prey.” But he was too late. Thousands of UIC fighters and refugees were streaming south from Mogadishu toward Ras Kamboni and Kenya.
