By Matthew Lee
NAIROBI (AFP) - Covert United States support for an alliance of Somali warlords now fighting Islamic militias for control of Mogadishu may violate a 14-year-old United Nations arms embargo, diplomats said.
As the two factions clashed for a fifth straight day on the streets of the capital, provoking international concern about rising violence, the diplomats said Washington's backing of the warlord alliance was legally questionable.
The comments came a day after a panel of experts monitoring the 1992 arms embargo on Somalia told the UN Security Council it was investigating clandestine "financial support" to the alliance from an unnamed country.
Washington has not publicly confirmed its support for the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) but US officials and informed Somali sources have told AFP the group has received US money.
The cash, amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, was delivered by former US military and intelligence officials on at least two occasions to Mogadishu warlords in January and February, sources in Somalia told AFP.
The ARPCT was formed shortly after the second injection of US funds, in a bid to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts. Some believe the courts are protecting Muslim extremists, including Al-Qaeda operatives.
Although US officials say Washington has not supplied the warlord alliance with weapons or military equipment, diplomats said the money could be a breach of the embargo.
"Money is fungible (mutually interchangeable)," one Nairobi-based diplomat told AFP. "It may not be weapons coming in by ship or truck but if the cash is going to buy military equipment that would be a violation."
"It's all about how the money is used and the intent of the donor," said a second. "Funding the alliance was always a risk for stability but it may have been illegal."
The US program is controversial -- not least because of Washington's disastrous military intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s -- and Somalia's fledgling and largely powerless transition government has complained about it.
The government, which argues the US support is fuelling divisions, has long sought the lifting of the arms embargo. But it wants it removed so it can build up its own security forces.
The Security Council has several times rejected the government's request.
The embargo was imposed shortly after Somalia descended into anarchy with the 1991 ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre. But it has been widely ignored by many countries seeking to back competing warlords in the country.
In its report to the Security Council, the UN monitoring group said "a widening circle of states are providing arms and military-related support to Somalia in violation of the arms embargo".
The panel identified six nations -- Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- believed to have violated the embargo since December 2005 but made pointed reference to "clandestine" involvement by another country.
"The Monitoring Group was informed that during January and February 2006, and at other times not specified ... financial support was being provided to help organize and structure a militia force created to counter the threat posed by the growing militant fundamentalist movement in central and southern Somalia," it said.
"The Monitoring Group did not specify third-country involvement because at the time of the writing of the present report it had not completed its investigation," it said.
Although the panel did not name the country, the timing of the support detailed in the report coincides with the deliveries of US funds mentioned to AFP by Somali sources.
The US embassy in Nairobi, which US officials say is coordinating the covert support for the warlord alliance, declined to comment and referred questions to Washington.
Last week, the US State Department acknowledged the United States was working with "responsible individuals" in Somalia to prevent "terror taking root in the Horn of Africa" but declined to specify who its partners were.
Source: AFP, May 11, 2006