Somalia may not be the haven al Qaeda hoped it would become a year and a half ago before we supported an Ethiopian drive to unseat the Islamic Courts Movement, but al Qaeda still exists there. Now they're short one leader and a few others:
Islamist leader Aden Hashi Ayro, believed to be the head of al-Qaida in Somalia, was killed when the airstrike struck his house in the central Somali town of Dusamareeb, about 300 miles north of Mogadishu, said Sheik Muqtar Robow, a spokesman for the Islamic al-Shabab militia.
Another commander and seven others were also killed, Robow said. Six more people were wounded, two of whom later died, said resident Abdullahi Nor.
"Our brother martyr Aden Hashi, has received what he was looking for — death for the sake of Allah — at the hands of the United States," Robow told The Associated Press by phone.
Capt. Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, confirmed there was a U.S. airstrike early Thursday in the vicinity of Dusamareeb. Another U.S. military spokesman, Bob Prucha, said the attack was against a "known al-Qaida target and militia leader in Somalia." Both declined to provide further details.
And in the Philippines, an al Qaeda leader was wounded:
A top al-Qaida-linked militant long hunted by U.S. and Filipino troops was wounded during a military attack on a rebel encampment in the southern Philippines, a military spokesman said Thursday.
Around the world, usually quietly, our forces help local security forces battle al Qaeda and jihadi groups. Ideally, we can atomize these groups enough so that local friendly forces can keep them on the run so that they never rise to the level of threat that requires the highly kinetic efforts that we see in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And if we can make sure the ideology of jihad is discredited in the Moslem world, these atomized and on-the-run bands will dwindle over time and disappear.
