"I dream, mostly, of leaving," says 20-year-old Ahmed Aden of his home. He has been living in the Dadaab refugee camp for 11 years, ever since his father was killed in Somalia's civil war and his mother fled across the Kenyan border with her four children. The camp of some 120,000 Somalis, awash with arms and surrounded by bandits, is hot, increasingly desperate, and dangerous, Aden says.

Western donors, overwhelmed with requests for funding to deal with new crises and for new refugee camps elsewhere, has all but forgotten Dadaab. The World Food Program (WFP), which provides all of Dadaab's food, was forced to cut its meal portions by half earlier this year. By February, it expects to be out of corn. Cooking oil will be gone by May.

Some of this void is increasingly being filled by a Saudi Arabian-based Muslim aid organization called Al Haramain Islamic Foundation - a group the US says has ties to Al Qaeda.

So it is not surprising that ever since last month's bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Dadaab has been on the lips of every investigative team in town. The FBI, the Israeli Mossad, and local Kenyan intelligence are investigating how Al Qaeda, which has claimed responsibility for the attack, was able to bring in weapons (including two surface-to-air missiles that were fired at an Israeli passenger jet), and where it recruited its agents. The answer may lie in the camp.

The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Fund for Peace in Washington has been saying for the past two years that Dadaab, 60 miles inside the Kenyan border, is becoming fertile ground for terrorists. In interviews with camp refugees between August and December 2000, Kathi Austin, director of the NGO's Arms and Conflict Program, found an intricate web of communication links and arms transfers going from Somali border towns through the refugee camps to downtown Nairobi.

"I had specific information [about terrorist training in Dadaab] before Sept. 11," says Austin. "I was looking at arms networks going from Somalia into Kenya, and I ran into terrorists competing with criminal elements and clans to take advantage of those networks."

Austin, whose team returned to the camp in August, says that Dadaab is an "important pit stop" in the arms pipeline and also a "perfect" training ground for terror organizations. "There are a large number of people in a confined state with little scrutiny.... Meanwhile, more-radical Islam is taking hold there and being imposed on those not interested," she says.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the Kenyan government, and the myriad of NGOs working in the camp all say they have not seen any such terrorist activity. Emmanuel Nyabera, UNHCR's public information officer in Kenya, says that Al Haramain in Dadaab is "not Taliban style," but rather "a normal, religious foundation which can't be denied camp access." But none of the officials here reject the possibility that radical ideas and training are seeping in.

With the renewed suspicions about Dadaab, the Kenyan ministry of home affairs has begun limiting journalists' access to the camp and asking that visitors be accompanied by a ministry representative.

Al Haramain's role in Dadaab is not large, but is welcomed by camp officials. It has set up religious schools; started social programs; and even begun distributing rice, sugar, and, during the holy month of Ramadan, offering up slaughtered camels and goats.

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