US in Somalia: Wrong Approach?

There is no doubting that the recent killing of wanted Kenyan-born terrorist Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia by US forces has dealt a blow to the insurgent movement in the war-torn country.

Nabhan is said to be an influential player in the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 as well as the mastermind of the 2002 Israeli hotel bombing and failed plane attack in Mombasa. A terrorist by any description without a doubt.

Couple the mind of a known terrorist with a rag-tag army of Islamist militias in Somalia and you have the perfect recipe for fundamentalist indoctrination and consequently a grave threat to peace in the Eastern and Horn of Africa regions.

What is in doubt though is the extent of the blow to which the United States have dealt the brewing terrorism in the socially fractured country. The US has been accused of killing terrorists instead of terrorism. And as if in swift response to the accusation, the insurgents responded with a deadly attack on the base of the African Union peacekeepers in Somalia killing a number of soldiers.

In short, the message was that killing Nabhan was not a deterrent to terrorist activities in the region and with the Islamists having vowed to avenge his death, the whole region is on tenterhooks now.

Greater patrol of the waters off Somalia by the international community and sealing off of porous borders with countries like Kenya can curb the influx of arms and supplies to the terrorist groups and even the movement of foreign recruits into Islamist groups.

Internally, more support for the African Union Peacekeeping Mission would be more productive than covert operations like witnessed in the case of Nabhan. Mechanisms could also be put in place to engage clan elders and moderate sheikhs in curbing the indoctrination of young Somalis with warped religious teachings on jihad and the beauty of suicide bombings.

One terrorist less does mean the end of terrorism and probably the US and the International Community need to find a way of fighting terrorism as opposed to killing terrorists. Its simply counterproductive