Militant groups including al Qaeda are exploiting lawless areas in the seven-nation Horn of Africa region to hide, recruit and train members and possibly plan attacks, the head of the region’s U.S.-led anti-terror force said Monday. “We find the terrorist networks here using the fact that there is a lot of ungoverned space in the Horn of Africa,” said Maj. Gen. Samuel Helland. “Because of (this) … it’s very easy for a terrorist organization to establish a presence … It’s very easy for them to train, equip, organize and use the facilities that are present to gain a foothold.” “And I suspect that if we look very hard at the area we’ll see that there is some training going on for operations in other parts of the world,” he said in a telephone interview from Djibouti, where he heads the Combined Joint Task Force overseeing counterterrorism activities in the Horn of Africa.Full Story