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NAIROBI, Kenya — The shadowy military commander of the Islamic movement that is advancing across southern Somalia has begun to go public, and he’s arousing concern among diplomats and counterterrorism experts who allege he is an extremist with links to al-Qaida.
As the rebels seize town after town, Aden Hashi Ayro is increasingly taking a public role, and it may be a signal that radicals within the country’s Islamic movement are gaining the strength to put their anti-Western, anti-modern stamp on Somalia.
Ayro, who is in his mid-30s, is said to have received al-Qaida training in Afghanistan. He has been linked by U.N. officials to the murders of 16 people, including BBC journalist Kate Peyton. Counterterrorism officials also suspect he was involved in a plot — never carried out — to bring down an Ethiopian airliner.
No photographs of him are known to exist, and only last month did he step from the shadows in Kismayo, Somalia, to address hundreds of his gunmen who had seized the strategic seaport without violence.
In Kismayo, Ayro became the first official in the movement to
Since June, Islamic forces have captured almost all of southern Somalia’s strategic and economic centers, making them the de facto authority in the shattered African nation.
The fighters are under a loose alliance of Islamic courts, some more radical in their interpretation of Quranic law than others. With the courts has come a semblance of order after 15 years of civil war, but also a strict and often severe interpretation of Islam.
Western governments say it is too early to tell who will emerge on top — moderates within the Islamic council or hard-liners like Ayro.
U.S.-based counterterrorism expert Peter Pham said moderates cannot compete because the hard-liners control the guns. "What we have here is a dangerously radical movement," he said, accusing the West of being in "an ostrichlike sense of denial."
Ayro is the courts’ link man to al-Qaida, according to Pham, diplomats in the region and U.N. investigators.
Source: AP, Oct. 15, 2006