Somali Islamic Leader Surrenders in Kenya

Soldiers surrounded the area known as Bulo Huvey, broke down a metal gate, shoved their way into a neighbor's house and arrested at least two people whom Luqman has known for years, he said.

Certain he was next, although not sure why, he climbed through a window and ran.

"I escaped," recounted Luqman, who said he was never a staunch supporter of the Islamic movement. "Now I live somewhere far from where I used to live, because I'm afraid. I'm afraid for myself. I know a lot have been arrested. Some have been killed. But I can't tell exactly the number."

The U.S. State Department tacitly supported the Ethiopian invasion that pushed the Courts movement from power, and in December it cast the Islamic Courts as a group controlled by an al-Qaeda cell. Many regional analysts and diplomats have described that claim as exaggerated.

This month, U.S. and Ethiopian aircraft conducted strikes targeting not only three men suspected in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies -- and whom the Courts were accused of sheltering -- but also certain Courts leaders accused of having al-Qaeda connections.

"To defeat them, the U.S. put them all in one basket," said Uluso, who met with State Department officials when the Islamic Courts came to power last June. "Then, after they were defeated, the thinking was they could maybe reconsider and take the good guys and empower them, so that the image that America is against Islam will not be on the table. Because that has been the impression in the Islamic world."

But the U.S. airstrike in southern Somalia -- aid groups have reported that it killed at least 20 civilians -- plus the continuing arrests are working against the goal of inclusion, said a top leader of the Islamic movement who is still in the region.

The leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, warned that if the detentions continue, "things could get ugly."

He said that the leadership of the Islamic Courts is "completely intact" and that U.S. ambassadors have been in contact with some of its members.

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has often used the label "terrorist" to justify the detentions. But the pattern of arrests suggests to many analysts in the region that the situation is less about fighting a global war on terrorism than it is about Ethiopia trying to address its internal security problems and help Somali government leaders settle their own old scores.

For one, the arrests are heavily targeting Ayr neighborhoods that had supported the Courts. The Ayr are considered rivals of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's clan, the Darod. Moreover, Yusuf, a close ally of Ethiopia, has had a long-standing personal feud with Islamic Courts leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is Ayr and is on a U.S. list of people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda. Aweys has consistently denied such ties.

There has also been an ethnic dimension to the arrests. Ethiopian and Somali security forces are focusing on people such as Luqman who are from a region of Ethiopia along the Somali border where an underground group has been fighting for years to end Ethiopian control. The group, the Oromo Liberation Front, was suspected of having people in Mogadishu and of cooperating with the Islamic Courts.