As we’ve already seen, the destruction of two American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 with hundreds of fatalities was an almost immediate consequence. That was followed in November 2002 by another group of Islamists who tried to destroy an Israeli-owned Boeing 757 passenger jet with 261 passengers and ten crew on board at Mombasa, one of the largest harbours in East Africa. Incompetence coupled to bad judgement caused both rockets to go wide, but a suicide bomber did ram a truck loaded with explosives into one of that city’s Israeli-owned seaside complexes later that morning. A dozen tourists and staff were killed.

Gradually, there were issues linked to Somalia that began to unravel. For instance, US Embassy officials in Nairobi were able to demonstrate that al-Qaeda had been moving into other East African countries in the region and used mainly Saudi money to buy the allegiance of poor Muslims. More of bin Laden’s operatives passed themselves off as simple men looking for a quiet place to lead a devout life. They continue to do so because the East African coastline is historically Islamic, preponderantly so, in fact.

‘These people put large amounts of money on the table, and sometimes marry local girls with the idea of establishing a bloodline. In this way they forge a formidable network throughout East Africa’, I was told.

What also emerged were the identities of the people who were involved in some of the East African attacks, the majority with Somali connections. For years, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of two Kenyan bombings, together with his co-conspirator Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, sought out like-minded compatriots in the thousand or so mosques that dot this remote coastline. Fazul, a national of the Comores Archipelago, even financed a soccer team in the Kenyan coastal village of his choice and, in a brash moment, called it the al-Qaeda team.

By all accounts, says a UN report published by All Africa Global Media, Fazul remains in hiding in the Somali capital, though he slipped back into Mombasa for a short while, prompting terror alerts from Britain and the US. Like some of his co-conspirators, Fazul survives on cash allowances provided by an al-Qaeda financial controller living in Sudan.

Following the uncovering of caches of al-Qaeda documents in Afghanistan, several Somali sites – including bases at Las Anod in the north and El Wak near the Kenyan and Ethiopian frontiers – have been pinpointed as two of the most important al-Qaeda training bases in Africa. It has been common knowledge in Nairobi for some time now that another al-Qaeda staging post was south of the port of Kismaiyu, not far from the Kenyan border. Explosives used in the American Embassy attacks came from there before being sent by road to Kenya and Tanzania. Each time, according to US diplomatic sources, there were Somali couriers in charge.

The suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour on 12 October 2000, had Mogadishu connections. A Somali woman was identified as the paymaster; she acquired all the vehicles needed for the operation.

An important consequence of these developments is that American defence planners have established several sites in the Horn of Africa for expanding a military presence in the region, including one or two on Somali soil. Though Washington is not saying exactly where they are, they are close enough for some of the warlords in Mogadishu to move their place of residence on a regular basis.