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U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Oct. 10 to discuss cooperation in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa.
Concerned about Somalia's Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), Washington is signaling a shift from diplomatic engagement of the SICC alone to containing the group via regional and Somalian proxies. The move will contain SICC in southern, central, and northern corridors in Somalia. The Islamist group, however, will not accept this without a fight -- which will threaten U.S. interests in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Many outside governments fear Somalia will become a training ground for jihadists, and that SICC recruits foreign fighters.This concern was reinforced Oct. 9 when SICC leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed -- formerly seen abroad as SICC's moderate face -- declared a jihad against Ethiopia, which he said had sent 35,000 troops to the defense of Somalia's interim government. Ahmed's likely exaggeration of Ethiopian troop levels -- which more realistically consist of several hundred troops in-country and a several-thousand strong ready-reserve in Ethiopia -- is seen as a tactic to inflame nationalist and Islamist sentiment that Somalians are unjustly suffering from anti-Islamic foreign interference.
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