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US gets jihad leader in Somalia — but “the penetration by al Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced”

May 1, 2008 9:14 am By Robert Spencer

Last year in The Journal of International Security Affairs I chronicled the jihadists’ brief rule in Mogadishu, their displacement of the relatively less virulent and violent cultural Islam of Somalia, and the international media’s breathless enthusiasm for their brutal regime. They were driven from Mogadishu then, but the Somali jihad is not over. “U.S. air strike kills al Qaeda boss in Somalia,” from Reuters (thanks to all who sent this in):

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – U.S. war planes killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and as many as 30 other people on Thursday in Washington’s biggest blow against an insurgency raging since 2007.

The rebels said Aden Hashi Ayro — who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies — died in the first major success for a string of U.S. air-strikes on Somali insurgents in the last year.

“Infidel planes bombed Dusamareb,” Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters by phone, referring to a town in central Somalia, where body parts lay strewn round a wrecked house.

“Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed.”

The death of the Afghanistan-trained militant is likely to bolster the Western-backed Somali government’s efforts to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground. But it is sure to enrage Ayro’s fellow fighters, who say they are waging a jihad to eject Ethiopian troops.

One local elder said 30 bodies had been recovered from the ruins.

Ayro was a key figure on the ground masterminding the Islamists’ Iraq-style insurgency against allied Somali-Ethiopian troops. The violence had intensified in recent weeks, with scores of deaths in Mogadishu and a series of hit-and-run raids by the Islamists on towns outside the capital.

“His elimination is very important,” said M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think-tank in London.

“(But) the penetration by al Qaeda in Somalia is so great that he will be replaced. This is a setback (for the militants), and it will be felt, but it’s not a mortal blow.”

[…]

Al Shabaab is the armed wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for the second half of 2006, until the government and Ethiopian forces routed it in a two-week war.

Under Ayro, the Shabaab adopted Iraq-style tactics, including assassinations and roadside bombs and claimed at least one suicide bombing — unheard of in Somalia’s moderate Sufi Islamic customs.

Western security officials and diplomats say it has also been responsible for killing aid workers and journalists, the desecration of an Italian colonial-era cemetery in 2005 and scores of attacks during the insurgency.

Sufism is not necessarily all that “moderate,” as you can see here. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s childhood experiences amply demonstrate that East African Islam is not utterly benign. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Islamic Courts Union manifests influences from outside the region that have only exacerbated the violence and instability that was already there.

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