MOGADISHU: Its cities shattered by war, its people facing a growing humanitarian crisis while clan-based warlords jockey for position in a proposed new government, Somalia is in many ways Africa’s Afghanistan. Like Afghanistan, Somalia has been singled out by the US as a possible haven for “terrorists”, even as a focal point for Osama bin Laden’s financial empire.

But some observers say Somalia is being punished unfairly, chosen as an easy target in the war on terrorism because it has no real government and no friends. And unlike Afghanistan, no-one is promising to rebuild Somalia.

Last week, Washington froze the assets of Barakaat, Somalia’s largest remittance company and its lifeline to the outside world, saying it was skimming off money to send to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

Some Somalis blame neighbouring Ethiopia, a longtime foe, for spreading propaganda against their country and Barakaat. Others say Washington is determined to settle an old score after the deaths of more than 20 American servicemen during an ill-fated mission there in 1993.

Somalia’s President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan says he only heard of Washington’s decision to close down his country’s biggest company on CNN, underlining his powerlessness and dependence on the West. His capital Mogadishu is a city in ruins, patrolled by gunmen perched on the back of pick-ups, high on qat, a local narcotic leaf. The old colonial-era cathedral is a crumbling facade, the parliament an unrecognisable pile of rubble.

The danger is that the US action could backfire, by sending Somalia even further towards anarchy and turning it into what the US most fears, a haven for guerrillas.

US diplomats describd the shadowy Muslim group al-Itihaad al-Islamiya as a terrorist group bent on creating an Islamic state by force. Rumours have circulated of a training camp in Ras Kamboni, Somalia.

But many Somalis, as well as independent observers, say the information and rumours are badly out of date. “There is nothing there except an orphanage,” said an independent observer in Nairobi. “People talked of at most 30 or 40 armed men, but they left at least five or six months ago.”

Al-Itihaad began life as military organization, but after a series of defeats in the 1990s, it seems to have turned its attention to political and humanitarian work. Said Somali warlord turned politician Mohammed Qanyare Afrah. “There is nowhere to bomb, and if they Americans) want to kill innocent people, they will create a very bad reaction.” —Reuters