(CNSNews.com) - Islamic radicals wanting to bring international pressure to bear on the fighting in Somalia -- where Ethiopian forces are trouncing Islamists -- may target Western facilities in East Africa for suicide bombings, a U.S.-based Somali campaigner warned Wednesday.

Terrorists hoped such attacks would "engulf the whole region" and increase the likelihood that bodies like the Arab League and European Union would intervene and cut short the rout of the Islamists, said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

Jamal said by phone from Minnesota that many Somalis desperate for stability after 16 years of conflict had welcomed the arrival of the Islamists known as the Islamic Court Union (ICU) when they seized control of Mogadishu last June by ousting an alliance of warlords and businessmen.

He said the ICU, not all of whose members were extremists, had initially declared itself willing to hold peace talks with Somalia's embattled interim authority -- the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which was set up under a process supported by the U.N. and is based in the Somali town of Baidoa because of the anarchy prevailing in the capital.

But the opportunity to restore order and reach agreement with the TFG had been lost, Jamal said, when ICU radicals connected to global terror networks started to push an agenda of enforcing Islamic law (shari'a) and promoting jihad.

Those radicals, he said, "were getting funding from the Middle East, getting funding from Saudi Arabia, and they hijacked the peace process, and they want to achieve their political goals through very violent means."

Acting in support of the TFG, neighboring Ethiopia then sent in armed forces that in recent days have claimed victories against the Islamists and are reported to be advancing on Mogadishu, the main ICU stronghold.

Echoing a concern long raised by counter-terrorism experts, Jamal said Somalia had offered an attractive haven for al-Qaeda after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban militia sheltering Osama bin Laden's network in Afghanistan following 9/11.

Somalia was an obvious destination, he said, recalling that Somali radicals such as ICU founder Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys had ties to bin Laden going back to when the Saudi terrorist was based in Sudan in the 1990s.

Al-Qaeda and its allies had made their presence felt in the region before, Jamal noted, citing the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, attacks against Israeli targets in Kenya in 2002 and the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, across the Aden Gulf.

Jamal expressed hope that the Ethiopians would succeed in defeating the Islamists and then withdraw, and that the TFG -- aided by the international community -- would then be able to assert its authority across the entire country.

Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council authorized a regional peacekeeping force whose aim would be to help bolster the transitional government.

The Arab League Wednesday added its voice to calls for all foreign elements to withdraw from Somalia. Similar demands have come from the African Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, although the issue continues to divide the U.N. Security Council, and the U.S. government has signaled sympathy for Ethiopia's "security concerns."

Apart from the Ethiopian forces fighting against the Islamists, Eritrea is also believed to have sent in several thousand troops to support the ICU, and volunteer fighters from various Muslim and Arab states are reported to have entered the country to fight alongside the Islamists, too.

Terrorism specialist Douglas Farah warned in an article posted online Wednesday that even if the Ethiopian forces defeat the Islamists, "Somalia is already viewed by much of the Islamist community as another attempt to establish the beginnings of the Caliphate."

"Foreign fighters, along with the Somalis, will likely prolong the fight through guerrilla warfare long into the future," he predicted.

"The whole Horn of Africa is now in danger of a spreading war that can, in the end, only help those who profit from chaos and unaccountability."

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