Killing of al-Qaida leader in Somalia sends message

The United States and its allies in the war on global terrorism must not be deterred by Thursday’s deadly retaliation by members of an Islamic militant group to Monday’s killing of an al-Qaida operative in Somalia. The operative, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, was wanted by the international community for the 2002 car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

Nabhan, a 30-year-old Kenyan, was said to be the leader of al-Shabab Mujahideen Movement, which is operating in lawless Somalia with the aim of toppling the government.

Somalia has become a haven for terrorists, including those tied to al-Qaida, the world’s leading terror organization led by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America’s mainland, is holed up in the remote mountain region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He and members of his inner circle have successfully eluded capture or death and that his emboldened followers and other terrorist groups to step up attacks around the world.

Thursday’s suicide bombers targeted the main base of the African Union peacekeepers in Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu. The cars, with United Nations logos, were permitted to enter the guarded compound by soldiers who assumed they were attached to the peacekeeping mission. One car sped toward a gasoline depot, while the other exploded in a nearby area. At least 16 people were killed, including four bombers, and dozens were injured.

Despite this retaliation, the U.S. and its allies must not let up on the campaign to seek and destroy terrorist leaders wherever they may be. Indeed, while the war on global terrorism might have become bogged down in deadly battles with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the elimination of leaders of al-Qaida and other groups clearly demonstrates a strategy that is working. It should be pursued with even greater vigor.

Getting rid of the leadership of any such organization is not only important from a military standpoint, but is psychologically pertinent.

Commando raids

The fact that elite U.S. forces conducted the commando raids Monday and took out Nabhan and five others was not lost on the Mujahideen Movement.

“God foiled the endeavor of our stupid enemy who imagined that the flame of jihad in the Muslim lands ... will be extinguished with the killing of the mujahideen leaders,” the group said in a statement posted on an Islamic web site.

Earlier this year, U.S. missiles killed an al-Qaida operations chief and a top Uzbeck militant in northwest Pakistan. They were two of several militant leaders killed in Pakistan by missiles fired by unmanned U.S. drones. One of the strikes killed Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Last year, a senior commander known as a top explosives and poisons expert and three other commanders of al-Qaida were killed in a U.S. air strike.

Abu Khabab al-Masri, who had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States, was accused of training terrorists to use poisons and explosives, and is believed to have trained suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Al-Masri is also believed to have helped run al-Qaida’s Darunta training camp in eastern Afghanistan, until the camp was abandoned amid the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country.

While it is true that there is price to be paid whenever a top terrorist operative is killed, the cost of doing nothing is even greater.

In Somalia, where the rule of law is virtually nonexistent, the U.S. and its allies must make sure that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban aren’t given free rein.

While the U.N. peacekeeping force must be bolstered, the search-and-destroy strategy employed by the U.S. against most-wanted terrorists must continue.