WASHINGTON: With the war in Afghanistan winding down, Americans wondering where the global war on terrorism might shift need look only as far as their local movie theatre for one possible answer. Just as the film “Black Hawk Down” recounts the US military’s last, tragic mission in Somalia, Bush administration officials have stepped up talk about taking the anti-terrorism campaign to that East African nation.

US officials are concerned that Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing Afghanistan will try to regroup in Somalia, a land that long has been a haven to Osama bin Laden’s network. In recent weeks, the United States has increased surveillance of the country even as officials say their options for combating terrorists there are limited by the lack of a central government or trustworthy local group with which US forces might work.

“Black Hawk Down” documents the 1993 attempt to snatch a Somali warlord from the capital, Mogadishu, where 18 US soldiers were killed. It is the kind of mission many analysts believe the United States might have to undertake again to grab Al Qaeda members and sympathizers hiding in Somalia.

The episode was seared into the public mind by the image of Somalis dragging a US soldier’s body through Mogadishu’s streets. Former Clinton administration officials say the failed raid made President Clinton more cautious about using military force.

That backdrop is one factor that would make military action in Somalia different, and in some ways more complicated, than in Afghanistan. Analysts say there is no Northern Alliance-like force of proxy troops the United States could rely on and a more fragmented set of tribal leaders and loyalties than even Afghanistan, one that would make it harder for the United States to know whom it could trust.

“In Somalia, you’d have to watch your back 360 degrees,” said retired Army Col Daniel Smith, research chief for the Centre for Defence Information, a Washington think tank. At the same time, most analysts view Somalia as the politically “easiest” next target. That is mainly because it lacks a central government and because Washington’s partners in the anti-terrorism coalition likely would not resist a move on Somalia as they would a US strike on a nation like Iraq.

Arab countries have said they would not support any military action against another Arab nation, even Iraq. “Somalia is not Arab, it’s primarily Muslim,” said Judith Kipper, co-director of the Middle East Programme for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s far away, it’s poor, it’s down and out. As always, Muslim countries will cry about Muslims being killed. But they won’t cry for Somalia.”

“There’s a profound anger at Somalia in the United States,” said Gayle Smith, who was senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council under Clinton. “People don’t like Somalia. They remember (soldiers) being dragged through the streets.”

Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson University political science professor who has advised US officials on Somalia, doubts that the link between al-Itihaad and Al Qaeda is institutionally strong today. Menkhaus says the US has few options in dealing with terrorists in Somalia, almost none of them attractive. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday.