HAS the US stepped back on to the scene of one of its most memorable military disasters — and chosen to back the kind of warlords who humiliated it?

If Americans were ever going to forget the image of the bodies of US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in October 1993, the film Black Hawk Down is now there to remind them.

But in Somalia, where rising turmoil has killed 150 in the past month, the interim government has accused the US of sliding quietly back into the fray on the warlords’ side, more than a decade after they drove out US forces.

The Somali government claims that the US is backing the kind of warlords who were its old enemy, and who make the country ungovernable, to keep al-Qaeda, its worse enemy, at bay.

This week two senior spokesmen from the Bush Administration refused to answer direct questions about US backing, but acknowledged fears that al-Qaeda would profit from the chaos. “In an environment of instability, al-Qaeda may take root. We want to make sure that al-Qaeda does not establish a beachhead in Somalia,” Tony Snow, White House spokesman, said.

This week Hilary Benn, International Development Secretary, the first British minister to visit Somalia since 1993, said that he knew nothing about US support for warlords. “I am aware that people have made those comments . . . I haven’t seen any evidence myself,” he said.

To credit Somalia with a “government” is stretching a point; it has only a United Nations-backed gesture of hope. For 15 years, since the overthrow of Mohammed Siad Barre, the long-time dictator, Somalia has had no central rule.

The interim government, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, clings to the shadow of power, but must meet in neighbouring Kenya or in the southern town of Baidoa, as Mogadishu is too dangerous.

The US should take no convincing of that point. On October 3 and 4, 1993, in one of the first and worst crises of Bill Clinton’s presidency, 18 US soldiers were killed and 79 injured in a battle with guerrilla fighters loyal to warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

The film Black Hawk Down, with its jerky images taken from Black Hawk helicopters hovering about the teeming streets and markets of Mogadishu, showed how a rescue attempt for an injured American spiralled out of control.

Since then, warlords have split the country into fiefdoms (Aidid himself was killed in 1996). They have fought each other and the government, although some have recently teamed up with members of the government in a “secular alliance” to try to impose control.

The latest fighting has pitched both warlords and the government against Islamic extremists, whom they say have brought in “foreign fighters” to help them, including al-Qaeda. Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, is just a short boat ride across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and the Saudi peninsula, where al-Qaeda has many supporters.The fundamentalists, who are linked to the Islamic courts, claim that they alone have managed to impose order in parts of the country.

On May 3 in Stockholm, President Ahmed said that he believed the US was helping warlords. “The Americans should tell the warlords they should support the government and co-operate,” he said.

That charge of US involvement has been supported by many analysts. However, on Wednesday Sean McCormack, State Department spokesman, refused to answer direct questions. He said only that the US was working with the interim government “as well as responsible members of the Somali political spectrum”, whom he declined to name.

Snow, at the White House, also refused to answer questions beyond saying that the US supported transitional federal institutions that were trying to re-establish a central government.

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