Somalia: Arms Intended for Government May Be Going to Islamic Extremists
The Wall Street Journal reports about Somalia, for sad decades a poster child for some of the horrid side effects of being a poor nation caught in Western war and power games, that arms being sent supposedly to help the Somalian government fight Islamic terror group Al Shabaab might be going to arm them.
WSJ reports on a new confidential United Nations report that asserts that Somali government representative Musa Haji Mohamed Ganjab "has ordered that arms intended for Somalia's government be delivered instead to an al-Shabaab commander."
Their reporter got Ganjab to directly deny the accusations:
"Not even a Kalashnikov," he said in an interview near his home in Johannesburg.
He said some emails the U.N. relied on were faked, including one linking him to arming al-Shabaab, and some were hacked. He called himself a victim of a conspiracy by inspectors monitoring an arms embargo on Somalia that has been in place for two decades.
The Somali government did not comment for the WSJ article. But a "State Department official familiar with [the UN report] said U.S. diplomats find it credible."
And:
The U.N. investigators gave their report to the Security Council in October. A few days later, it voted to continue the embargo exception that lets the government import some weapons. The U.S. joined in the vote.
Ed Krayewski from September on the U.S.'s ongoing drone war in Somalia.
