Cold welcome for anti-terror troops

By Katie Nguyen

Djibouti - Few cheered when United States forces landed in Djibouti to hunt al-Qaeda in Africa, a continent where poverty and war are bigger worries than attacks on Westerners.

Sixteen months on, the welcome remains lukewarm. The poverty-stricken country's role as a US anti-terror base arouses more scepticism than support on its pot-holed streets.

"They are looking for (al-Quaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, but bin Laden is not here - sorry," said Abdallah Bouraleh, who drives a taxi to support his two wives and nine children.

"We're afraid Djibouti will become like Somalia and that they will screw things up," he added, referring to a disastrous American foray into peacekeeping in the early 1990s.

Since December 2002 Djibouti has allowed US troops to use it as a base from which to hunt the kind of militants who in 1998 blew up US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200.

Behind Camp Lemonier's barbed wire and columns of sandbags lies the nerve centre of Washington's main anti-terror base in Africa, one of the most important but low profile frontiers in the United States' self-styled "war against terrorism".

Washington fears al-Qaeda cells may be seeking new havens on the continent where weak political institutions and poor policing of deserts and coastlines have made it favourable territory for militants bent on mass attacks on civilians.

Those concerns were sharpened when German President Johannes Rau cancelled a trip to the country at the last minute in March amid warnings by German intelligence of a plot to kill him.

Few share such worries in Djibouti: When it comes to politics, local people have very different priorities.

A visit to noon prayers shows how different.

Inside Djibouti's main mosque, the imam offers a prayer for the soul of militant Palestinian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, assassinated last month by Israeli forces, before starting a sermon about the occupation of Arab land by foreigners.

His mosque is so well-attended that latecomers line up in rows outside, kneeling on makeshift cardboard mats, patterned sarongs flapping in the breeze, flip-flops piled in a heap.

Arab grievances outrank Western ones in this sleepy, desert society, which views the global war on al Qaeda through the lens of its own Islamic culture and national pride.

"We want the ideas developed by George Washington - but we don't want his army," said imam Abdourahman Souleiman Bachir.

"The Americans come with arms to Djibouti and we have the impression they have come to colonise us," he told Reuters. "There's no hatred towards them here, it's just that we don't approve of their politics."

Up to 1 600 US troops are stationed in the country, given the task of hunting down militants in Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Yemen.

Looking at the map, it is a logical choice. Sitting at the mouth of the Red Sea, Djibouti has for centuries provided a strategic link between Africa and the Middle East.

But experts say the Americans will be hard-pressed to make genuine friends in the society, half of which is ethnic Somali, not least because of language and cultural barriers.

"I don't think they (the Americans) are going to convince people who are sceptical about their operation that their presence is going to be beneficial," said Kevin Rosser of the London-based Control Risks Group.

It's less of a problem for the French, who keep their biggest military base in Africa in Djibouti, because many locals speak the language of the former colonial master.

Members of the French Foreign Legion wearing peaked kepi hats, shorts and long socks are as common a sight as local men lazily chewing the green leaves of qat, a mild narcotic, in the afternoon heat.

In contrast, US forces are almost invisible. At Camp Lemonier, a former Foreign Legion post, signs order troops to "Keep a low profile" and wear civilian dress off-base.

"The Americans stay in their corner - it's better for them and for us," said Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh.

Rather than take unilateral action, the US task force wants to train national security forces to capture militants, and cultivate support among ordinary people by community work such as renovating schools.

No one disputes such help is needed. Poverty is on display across Djibouti's desolate landscape of rubble, abandoned vehicles, fly-infested markets and crumbling colonial buildings.

Many leaving the mosque after Friday morning prayers voiced suspicion and distrust of the US presence in Djibouti.

"They (the Americans) have come in their own interest and to fight Islamism," said market trader Abdullahi outside the mosque, just off the notorious Rue d'Ethiopie - a favourite haunt of French legionnaires on the prowl for girls.

Working at the French base, 18-year-old Mohammed Said summed up what many Djiboutians say they feel: "The government accepts the presence of the Americans but the people do not."

"We say that al-Qaeda is a term the Americans have invented. We don't even know what it is."