The increasing activity of US military and intelligence officers in Somalia — and the need in general to justify the extension of the “war on terror” — led Washington to announce on March 18 that it had found incontrovertible evidence linking al-Qaeda to Islamic activists in Somalia.
Five British Muslims went on trial in Aden, Yemen, on January 26, accused of planning to bomb the city’s main hotel, the British consulate and a church.
Yemen, in a move reflecting its new close diplomatic and military ties with the US, is offering to mediate between Eritrea and Ethiopia in their territorial dispute, which is threatening to unravel the US’s carefully constructed anti-Sudan alliance in the Horn of Africa