Military officials urge Obama to hit Somali militia

Some US military officials are expressing “frustration” that the Obama team has not ordered attacks on an Islamist militia’s training camps in Somalia, the Washington Post reports in its Saturday edition.

“There is increasing concern about what terrorists operating in Somalia might do,” an unnamed US counterterrorism official is quoted as saying in the Post’s front-page story.

Al Shabaab, the group worrying the Obama policymakers, is said to have links to the al Qaida operatives who bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. And while Shabaab itself has so far confined its activities to Somalia, the Post says that Washington now fears “potential attacks against other countries in Africa.”

In recent remarks to the US Congress, two high-level US officials warned separately that terrorists in Somalia pose a growing threat to Kenya.

Other voices within the Obama administration are counselling caution. These national security officials point out that “an ill-considered strike would have negative diplomatic and political consequences far beyond the Horn of Africa,” the Post states.

Apart from military strikes, options under consideration by the Obama team include increased financial pressure and heightened diplomatic activity aimed at resolving the overall political turmoil in Somalia, the Post adds.

The Bush administration carried out at least five missile attacks on targets inside Somalia. These forays had mixed results, killing one Shabaab leader in 2006 but also enraging many Somalis not part of the organisation.

In his first 80 days in office, President Barack Obama has not ordered US military actions outside Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr Obama has also steadfastly declined to comment on the Somali pirates holding a US citizen captive. Obama administration officials have said, however, that there does not appear to be a direct link between al Shabaab and the pirates.