The death of al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane pushes the
counterterrorism fight in Somalia into a new phase, and now U.S. and Somali
officials wonder what Godane's possible replacement could mean for the future
of the group.
Experts say Godane ruled the group
like a tyrant and had killed off several of his likely successors, leaving
others at a distance. That raises questions about who might take over for him
and how effective that person could be to lead a group that had been seen as an
emerging threat in the region.
Hussein
Mahmoud Sheikh-Ali, the senior counterterrorism aide to Somali President Hassan
Sheikh Mohamud, told Foreign Policy on Friday, Sept. 5, that Godane had not
created an organization in which a clear successor would be up to the task of
replacing him should he be killed.
The two individuals who have
already been floated to replace him -- Godane's nominal deputy, Mahad Diriye,
and his head of operations, Mahad Karate -- are simply not capable of filling
Godane's shoes, Sheikh-Ali said. Neither man is seen as having the education,
savvy, or credibility within the organization to pick up where Godane left off.
"Nobody can replace him, and
these two people don't have the ability or the capacity to take over this
organization going forward," Sheikh-Ali said in a brief interview, adding
that Somalia still wants the United States to help his government "finish
off" al-Shabab and "end terrorism in Somalia."
U.S. officials, who confirmed
Godane's death on Friday, four days after a U.S. airstrike targeted him in the
town of Barawe, hailed the militant leader's death, describing it as a
significant blow to the organization.
"Removing Godane from the
battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabab," the
Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said in a statement.
"Shabab is hugely weakened," Sheikh-Ali said.
The group's future relationship
with al Qaeda is now uncertain with Godane gone, and some believe that without
him, al-Shabab's ambitions to link to the broader network disappears,
potentially leaving al-Shabab to slip to a more localized threat characterized
more by criminal behavior and illicit trafficking inside Somalia.
"Al-Shabab's emergence as an
al Qaeda affiliate has a lot to do with his leadership," a U.S. official
said. "Removing Godane from the battlefield doesn't end the threat from
al-Shabab, but there's no question it has dealt the group a major
setback."
Thomas
Joscelyn, senior editor of the Long War
Journal, which focuses on U.S. counterterrorism efforts, said there are
other al Qaeda loyalists in the group but it's not clear how much power they
wield.
He said both Diriye and Karate,
who has led the Amniyat, al-Shabab's intelligence and internal security wing,
are viable successors and effective leaders.
After days of sifting through
various intelligence sources, the Pentagon confirmed that Godane had in fact
been killed in Monday's airstrike on a militant position in a rural area of
south-central Somalia.
Although there had been widespread
confidence that Godane was killed in the strike, U.S. officials were reluctant
to confirm that the leader was dead. As foreign intelligence services sought
evidence from the site, the U.S. intelligence community was waiting to see
whether Godane would start communicating with any of his close associates --
either his wives or senior commanders.
"Everything's
gone quiet," a U.S. Defense Department official had told FP on
Wednesday.
Previous attempts had Godane
resuming communications fairly quickly after being targeted but missed. The
defense official said that following a U.S. airstrike on Jan. 26 that killed
Sahal Iskudhuq, a senior al-Shabab commander, Godane was up on the Internet
within 24 hours.
Immediately after Monday's
airstrike in Somalia, Pentagon officials acknowledged the strike and the target
-- an unusual move that hinted that American officials were reasonably
confident they had succeeded in killing him. After that, though, their
confidence seemed to wane. And as recently as Thursday, defense officials said
there was no consensus within the intelligence community on whether the strike
had actually killed Godane.
Pentagon
officials had taken pains to say that no U.S. service members were on the
ground near where the strike occurred, which was north of the town of Barawe,
where al-Shabab has sought refuge and which is considered a "tough
neighborhood" and a perilous place for Western troops. Instead, the United
States relied on foreign intelligence services -- mostly Somali -- that had
been fighting al-Shabab to relay Godane's status, a defense official told FP.
With little firsthand evidence,
the U.S. intelligence community couldn't be sure. Some foreign sources said
Godane was dead; others weren't sure.
On
Tuesday, the Pentagon provided some of the basic details about the strike. U.S.
special operations forces, "working from actionable intelligence" and
using manned and unmanned aircraft along with Hellfire missiles and
laser-guided munitions, destroyed an encampment and a vehicle, Kirby told reporters in a briefing at the Pentagon on
Tuesday. No U.S. troops were on the ground in Somalia before or after the
strike, he added.
According to the defense official,
three people were killed in the attack, not six as initial press reports
indicated.
Shane
Harris contributed to this report.
Photo by Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty
Images
No comments:
Post a Comment