Kenyan Men Accuse U.S. of Renditions | Newsweek International

International
Recruited For Jihad?
Dan Ephron 1/24/2009 12:00:00 AM
It didn't trouble Burhan Hassan's mother that her son had been spending more time at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, Minneapolis's largest mosque. A 17-year-old senior at Roosevelt High, Hassan and his family had fled civil war in Somalia when he was a toddler. Some of the other Somali immigrants in the Cedar-Riverside housing project where he lived got drawn into gangs with names like Murda Squad and Somali Mafia. But Hassan was getting good grades and talking about going to college, says his uncle Abdirizak Bihi. When the boy didn't come home from school on Nov. 4, his family assumed he was at the mosque. By evening, his mother had searched his room and found his laptop was gone and clothes were missing. Later, she discovered his passport had been taken from a drawer she kept locked. "That's when we realized something serious had happened," says Bihi.
AFRICA
Stuck in Somalia
4/10/2008 12:00:00 AM
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is easily Washington's most important African ally in its war on terrorism. In 2006, the United States quietly helped Zenawi's forces invade neighboring Somalia after a U.S.-financed coalition of warlords lost the capital of Mogadishu to an Islamist alliance known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The Ethiopian forces ousted the UIC but have been bogged down since then fighting an Iraq-style insurgency by Somali Islamist and clan militias. The current round of violence has driven 750,000 from their homes, and Ethiopia's allies in the United Nations-backed transitional federal government [TFG] have been unable to control Mogadishu, much less the rest of the country.
AFRICA
‘Fragile Institutions’
2/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
Before the recent unrest in Kenya, America's top diplomat to Africa was already busy. Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, has tried to hold together fragile peace agreements in southern Sudan and Africa's Great Lakes region, while keeping an eye on Islamic militants in Somalia and the continued decline of Zimbabwe. An acolyte of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from their days together at Stanford—where Frazer wrote her dissertation on military-civilian relationships in the Kenyan government—Frazer recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jason McLure in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Excerpts:
Murk of War
Rod Nordland 1/11/2007 12:00:00 AM
Heroes, Terrorists and Osama
Rod Nordland 7/22/2006 12:00:00 AM
THE LAST WORD
Meles Zenawi: An Impatient Ally

Despite his poor human-rights record, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is Washington's most important African ally in the War on Terrorism. In 2006—after an alliance of Islamists that included the radical al-Shabaab militia took over neighboring Somalia's capital, Mogadishu—Ethiopia, with quiet U.S. backing, invaded, putting a U.N.-supported Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in power. Since then, Ethiopian troops have become bogged down fighting an insurgency that has driven 750,000 Somalis from their homes and shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, only a quarter of the peacekeepers promised by the African Union have shown up. Recently Zenawi sat down with NEWSWEEK's Jason McLure in Addis Ababa to discuss Ethiopia's exit plan, its archenemy Eritrea and its alliance with the United States.