Capturing Conflict: Somalia: Al-Qaeda’s New Haven

We are screening Somalia: Al-Qaeda’s New Haven as part of our Capturing Conflict Film Festival which showcases a selection of the most important films about the risks journalists and filmmakers take in order to get their stories out.

Unreported World visits one of the most dangerous places on earth to investigate the growth of a militant Islamic network and asks whether Somalia’s fertile training ground for Islamic terrorists could provoke a regional civil war.

A decade has passed since the UN military mission in Somalia ended following the deaths of 18 US special forces and 1,000 Somalis in the so-called "Blackhawk Down" battle.

The state has collapsed completely, with warlords controlling the country and more than half a million people killed over the last ten years by war and famine. But the warlords’ hold on the country is now being superseded by a new, well-funded Islamic network. America alleges the militants’ leader Shayk Hasan Dahir Aweys is linked to al-Qaeda, and other contacts tell Reporter Aidan Hartley that rich Saudi businessmen are backing the jihadi network, which is training 3,000 men to spread Islamic revolution all over the African continent.