Terror's Playground

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On a dusty side street in Somalia's former capital, there's little that distinguishes Mohammed's stall from the others. A grenade rests against a box of ammunition next to a row of AK-47s, and still more rifles hang from nails beneath a patch of tin roofing. His booth occupies prime real estate in the center of Mogadishu's Bakaraaha Arms Market, and he obsessively polishes his guns with an oil-stained rag in a battle against sand and grit. But few passersby show interest. Once one of the most bustling, bristling arms bazaars in the world, the Mogadishu weapons market is weathering a down cycle, with business a mere fraction of what it was in the days when warlords settled internecine grudges in the city's streets. Mohammed's average daily sales have dropped from 15 AKs to just three--and prices have fallen by almost half, to $300. "The only good job was selling guns," says Mohammed, 24. "Now I don't know what I'll do."

In most strife-torn parts of the world, a bear market for weapons would be cause for relief. But tranquillity rarely lasts long in Somalia. Since the overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, the country has been a byword for dysfunction, less a nation-state than a destitute, unremittingly violent land ruled by the barrel of a gun. Last June the warlords' grip on power was finally broken by a dedicated confederacy of fundamentalist Muslim militias that fought their way into the former capital and sent the warlords fleeing.

Since then, the Muslim militias, which call themselves the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), have consolidated their claim to Mogadishu and expanded their control to include most of Somalia, particularly the fertile lands and strategic ports in the country's south. Meanwhile, the U.N.-backed transitional government is unraveling. Confined to the squalid town of Baidoa near the Ethiopian border, the government is dependent on foreign money and security and crippled by internal dissent and mass resignations.

The fear is that Somalia, a country with nearly 9 million Muslims and one that the U.S. has long suspected is a haven for al-Qaeda, may fall further into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to terrorist organizations. A report by the U.N.-chartered watchdog group on Somalia, which was submitted to the U.N Security Council last week, says the ICU has developed extensive ties with groups and states steeped in terrorism.

The report states that the ICU sent "approximately a 720-person-strong military force to Lebanon to fight alongside Hizballah against the Israeli military" during this summer's monthlong war. In exchange, Hizballah's leadership "has made arrangements" for governments like Iran's and Syria's to contribute arms and supplies to the ICU. And senior leaders within the ICU, including co-leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, allegedly have direct ties to al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a radical group suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

Leaders of the ICU deny such allegations, but it's telling that they don't seem particularly bothered by them. "We believe the war against terrorism is a war against Islam," says the hard-line ICU national security chairman, Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde. "Those who are making trouble are not based here." Then, in English, the sheik adds forcefully, "Bush is the mother and father of terrorism."