U.S. Special Forces Kill al-Qaeda Leader in Somalia

This should continue to be our strategy: kill Qaeda wherever we find them. That should be our focus as it relates to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Iraq.

The deadly drama of piracy, terrorism and humanitarian catastrophe that is Somalia took another twist Monday when a squad of U.S. Special Operations helicopter gunships, launched off a Navy vessel in the Indian Ocean, attacked and killed an alleged al-Qaeda leader inside Somalia, U.S. officials told TIME. The dead man was believed to be Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a 28-year-old Kenyan wanted for attacks on a seaside hotel and an Israeli airliner in 2002 in Kenya. It was at least the sixth attack by U.S. forces inside Somalia in less than three years and the latest in a series of U.S. assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives in that country. According to news reports, Nabhan was killed when up to four U.S. helicopters fired on a convoy carrying suspected Al-Qaeda targets in a village in southern Somalia on Monday. The reports said the helicopters attacked a vehicle, killing some people inside, then circled back and landed to pick up the bodies and any survivors for identification. (See pictures of the pirates of Somalia.)

As much as it seemed to be a successful strike against terrorism, the attack was also a testament to Somalia's longevity as a refuge for Islamist militants. Conditions haven't changed in years. Somalia last had a government worthy of the name nearly two decades ago, in 1991. For most of the 1990s, like Afghanistan at the time, the country was torn apart by rival warlords. Like Afghanistan too, out of that chaos arose an army of radical Islamist warriors determined to bring strict religious law and order to the country, but also open to funding from and cooperation with al-Qaeda. The first shots in what later became known as the war on terror were fired by these Somalia-based militants when they blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, killing 213 and 11 people respectively. But Afghanistan, and later Pakistan, became the focus of the militant Islamic threat after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden moved himself and his main base of operations there in 1996, after he was expelled from Sudan, eventually to perpetrate the attacks of 9/11.