"We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about," said Prendergast.

CAIRO – Secret funding by Washington's CIA for Somali warlords against the Islamic Courts in Somalia has backfired, empowering the same groups the Bush administration has sought to marginalize, US government officials and experts have said.

"This has blown up in our face, frankly," John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group told The New York Times on Thursday, June 7.

"We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about," added Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton administration.

US government officials said support to the warlord Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) has dealt a sharp blow to US policy in the region.

They believe that the US activities in Somalia have caused to break the warlord's hold on the capital Mogadishu.

Somalia's Islamic courts on Monday, June 5, declared victory over the warlord alliance after four months of fierce fighting in the capital Mogadishu.

Up to 347 people have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded in fierce fighting between the two sides since February.

Warlords have controlled Mogadishu since the 1991 overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

The African country has lacked almost all the trappings of a functional state, such as national systems of education, healthcare and justice.

Short-sighted

A US official said that concerns had been expressed that US activities in the war-torn country were being carried out in the context of a broader policy.

"They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic framework," he said.

"And they realized that there might be negative implications to what they are doing."

Prendergast said US activities in Somalia were not closely coordinated among various American national security agencies.

"I've talked to people inside the Defense Department and State Department who said that this was not a comprehensive policy," he said.

"It was being conducted in a vacuum, and they were largely shut out."

Support for the warlords has also drawn severe rebukes from senior Foreign Service officers at the US embassy in Nairobi as short-sighted.

Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, earlier signed off on a cable back to the State Department detailing grave concerns throughout the region about US efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report.

Around that time, Michael Zorick, the State Department's political officer for Somalia, was reassigned from Kenya to Chad after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing funding Somali warlords.

CIA Trips

Through its Nairobi's station, the CIA channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to the warlords inside Somalia, according to government officials.

This included trips to Somalia by Nairobi-based CIA case officers, who landed on warlord-controlled airstrips in Mogadishu with large amounts of money for the warlord militias, according to US officials involved in Africa policy making.

Support for the warlords has been approved during a National Security Council meeting about Somalia in March, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Porter J. Goss, who recently resigned as CIA director, traveled to Kenya this year and met with case officers in the Nairobi station, according to one intelligence official.

The interim government has accused the US of fanning the flames of civil war by backing the warlords, not only financially but also militarily.

The decision to use warlords as proxies was prompted by fears of using American personnel in such operations.

In 1994, US troops hastily left Somalia after a catastrophic intervention in the country left 18 American soldiers killed.