U.S. Targets Somali Terrorist Leader

Information has surfaced indicating that the United States military targeted an Islamic terrorist leader in Somalia today, and that the strike resulted in that leader's death. U.S. military efforts in Africa have increased of late with a focus on shoring up the Somali transitional government, interdicting pirates in the waters off Africa, and the establishment of a new U.S. military combatant command, Africom, to address growing instability on the continent.

Somalia has been a lawless sprawl of largely ungoverned space the United States and the United Nations withdrew from the country more than a dozen years ago. According to the Central Intelligence Agency's world fact book, the transitional government that has U.S. and U.N. backing is operating on a five year mandate, from 2004 through October of 2009. In reality, though, the makeshift organization exercises little control over Somalia, which is dominated by various warlords and factions competing for power. The Islamic Courts Union, a radical Islamist group seeking to impose Sharia law, temporarily seized control of Somalia until terrorist elements were forced into hiding by military forces from neighboring Ethiopia. Islamists have not given up, however, and have of late increased levels of violence in Somalia in an attempt to regain control of the country. Ethiopia still has thousands of its military forces in Somalia, providing security and support to the western-backed transitional government.

Years of fighting have left Somalia a desolate wasteland where criminals and terrorists roam about freely. The United States has not been active within Somalia since the now famous firefight in Mogadishu in 1993 that killed nearly 20 U.S. special operations soldiers trying to capture a notorious Somali warlord. That firefight, graphically depicted in both book and film, led the United States to withdraw its military forces from the African country and limit its activities to precision air strikes and naval interdictions off the Somali coast.

Since the west largely abandoned Somalia, the humanitarian situation there has steadily eroded. According to the International Relations and Security Network, nearly three quarters of a million Somali citizens have been displaced by the ongoing fighting. ISN paints a grim picture of life in Somalia, saying in a recent analysis that "...residents of the capital have been fleeing the coastal city as groups opposed to the presence of Ethiopian troops launched a guerilla war punctuated by car bombs, roadside bombs and, most recently, suicide bombings." The United States is using targeted strikes like the one Thursday to take out key players involved in violence in the hope that Somalia will not become another terrorist safe haven.

Sources: CIA, ISN