U.S. Strike in Somalia Targets Al-Qaeda Figure
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 9, 2007; Page A11


A U.S. Navy AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members inside Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure.

The strike in southern Somalia was launched at night from the U.S. Central Command base in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the area.

It was the first U.S. military action inside Somalia since 1994, when President Bill Clinton withdrew U.S. troops after a failed operation in Mogadishu that led to the deaths of 18 Army Rangers and Delta Force special operations soldiers.

"You had some figures on the move in a relatively unpopulated part of the country," said one source confirming the attack who, like others, would discuss the operation only on the condition of anonymity. "It was a confluence of information and circumstances," he said.

Sources said last night that initial reports from the area indicated the attack had been successful, although information was still scanty. The attack was first reported by CBS News.

One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 -- the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader.

Sudani is among several senior al-Qaeda operatives who, the Bush administration said, were being sheltered by Islamic fundamentalists who last year seized control of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. Late last month, the fundamentalists, who controlled much of southern Somalia, were driven out of the capital and were pushed toward the Kenyan border by Ethiopian troops, who installed an internationally backed transitional government.

Other al-Qaeda figures who allegedly had taken refuge in Somalia, U.S. officials said, included three participants in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The United States has been leading an international diplomatic effort to stabilize Somalia, including organizing an African peacekeeping force to replace the thousands of Ethiopian troops occupying the southern part of the country. It has called on leaders of the transitional government to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with moderate members of the Islamic leadership who are not seen as terrorist facilitators and who are supported by a significant segment of Somali clans.

Neither effort has met with much success. African countries have been reluctant to offer troops, and the new Somalian leaders have resisted negotiations.

Sources would not confirm that U.S. forces are operating on the ground in the Somalia-Kenyan border area, although one emphasized that "we are working very, very closely" with Kenyan forces.

In remarks to reporters late last week, a senior U.S. general with expertise in East Africa said there were no plans to deploy U.S. troops to Somalia. The Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, with approximately 1,500 U.S. personnel, including special operations troops, has the job of conducting anti-terrorist operations and training.

The U.S. Navy presence in the Indian Ocean was stepped up for the strike, with the USS Eisenhower, an aircraft carrier, being deployed to provide air cover and, if needed, evacuate downed airmen and other casualties. The Eisenhower joined several Navy ships from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, that have been patrolling the area to prevent al-Qaeda elements from fleeing war-torn Somalia by sea, a Navy spokesman said.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed aircraft, with four cannons and a six-barrel Gatling gun capable of firing 1,800 rounds a minute. But its most striking weapon is a computer-operated 105mm howitzer that juts sideways from the middle of the aircraft. An offensive behemoth that is relatively defenseless against counterattack, it flies only at night.

It is a blunt weapon that can scorch a wide swath of territory but is not well suited to precision attacks. Sources last night emphasized that intelligence reports indicated that the targeted area was "unpopulated."

The Bush administration has long claimed the right to launch military attacks in other countries when suspected terrorist targets have been identified. In 2002, a missile fired by a U.S. Predator drone over Yemen killed six suspected al-Qaeda terrorists riding in a car across the desert about 100 miles east of that nation's capital. Officials later said the attack had been carried out with the approval of the Yemeni government

A Predator strike was ordered by the CIA last January in response to intelligence placing Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-ranking al-Qaeda leader and bin Laden's chief deputy, at a compound near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. The attack killed a reported 17 people, including six women and six children, but not Zawahiri, who apparently was not at the compound at the time of the strike.

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Neat stuff. I'm going to love reading a book in 30 years about everything that is going on behind the scenes now. I have a feeling the cold war has nothing on this one.

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Aside from the constant fear of nuclear obliteration, yeah.

B

Bot- Two things I am pondering- is this going to be similar to the "Hunt for WMD" another "speculative strike" or is this to take the heat off of the mess in Iraq?

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Only OBL's head could take the heat of Iraq. Not that it would do much in reality but it would look good.

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We have had a large force in Dijoubiti for years; it sounds like they have found a mark that is media worthy.

It would look good for a few days and then the reality of the furor to avenge the new martyr would gather steam.

We're in serious Hydra-Headed beast mode, it would be nice if surgical strikes actually did some good but I'm afraid it'll be gist for their mill more than gain for us.

We slaughtered peopole wholesale in Vittnam and all it did was make the Cong believe we were cowards for falling back on high tech.

ps: Vietnam: a crucial bit of our trial and error learning experience that many would like to ignore.

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There were undoubtedly clandestine CIA & SF forces on the ground in Somalia. They were probably being run out of Djibouti, where we have declared force (as MedMech indicated). People on the ground probably fingered the Al Qaedistas and painted them with laser that night so the folks in the spook plane could target them precisely. This is the clandestine side of the WoT.

There are at least 3 other parts, covert war (unacknowledged, non-uniformed contractors and CIA working with partisans), diplomacy, and financial. The covert war we should never hear about (ideally), whether we win or lose. The clandestine war you may hear about because it uses combined CIA & uniformed services. Uniformed services MUST obey the UCMJ and Geneva Conventions (covert ops do not). In this engagement the aircraft was clearly marked and I'll bet the people on the ground were disguised military and CIA and partisans.

If you are asking is it a "Wag the Dog" type thing, I don't believe so.

i dont think so either.

and i dont think getting OBL would make very many folks decide that suddenly we are winning the war in iraq.

tom w

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..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Here's an example of covert operations that had its cover blown. I'm betting this kind of activity is not uncommon.

Bot


By Chiara Remondini and Gregory Viscusi

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. and Italian agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 disputed the right of a Milan court to try them, with the former head of Italy's military intelligence service threatening to call past and present ministers as witnesses if he's put on trial.

If Judge Caterina Interlandi decides to press charges against 35 U.S. and Italian agents for the 2003 abduction of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, it would be first judicial examination of the U.S.'s policy of capturing terrorism suspects abroad and sending them to third countries for interrogation.

``Bob Lady insists the solution should be political and between the two governments and that this affair should not be the object of a criminal trial,'' said Daria Pesce, the lawyer for Robert Lady, the former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in the city who is accused by Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro of organizing the abduction. Pesce said she's withdrawing from the case ``because I am a lawyer and not a political mediator,'' and because Lady refuses to cooperate with the court.

Under the Italian system, a prosecutor, in this case Spataro, carries out an investigation and indicts the defendants. A judge then hears the case to decide whether to press charges. The actual trial would then be led by another judge, and the government has no legal right to intervene in the case.

After a first day of the initial proceedings in which lawyers on both sides presented various motions, Interlandi set the next hearing for Jan. 29.
Spataro, who brought the charges, compared Lady's arguments to those used by terrorists in the 1970s.

Tortured During Questioning
``Lady has contested the Italian justice system just as the Red Brigades did 20 years ago,'' Spataro said after the hearing, which wasn't open to the public.

According to Spataro, CIA and Italian agents kidnapped the Egyptian cleric, better known as Abu Omar, as he walked down a street in Milan and then flew him to Egypt where he was tortured during questioning about alleged terrorism links. He's still in custody there, prosecutors say.

Milan police were already tracking Abu Omar because they suspected him of recruiting Islamic radicals, and said the abduction disrupted their investigation.

Spataro also accuses Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy's military intelligence unit Sismi, and the agency's second-highest official, Marco Mancini, of helping with the kidnapping. Through lawyers, both men have declared their innocence.

In total, 26 U.S. individuals and nine Italians are accused.

`Reveals State Secrets'

In November, the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, which took office in June, replaced Pollari, as well as the heads of Sisde, the intelligence unit of the Interior Ministry, and Cesis, a body that compiles information from both services.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government denied that it or Italy's intelligence services had knowledge of or a role in Abu Omar's kidnapping.

``Either Pollari reveals state secrets, putting at risk national security, or he has no way to defend himself,'' said his lawyer Titta Madia after today's hearing. ``Some authority must take up this situation and take a decision.''
He said that if Pollari is sent to trial, he will ``call as witness the current Prime Minister, his predecessor, and all the authorities in charge of the secret services.''

None of the accused was present at today's hearing.

The accused Americans, including Lady, have left Italy, prosecutors said. The U.S. doesn't comment on specific cases against presumed terrorists.

Rendition Policy

Prosecutors say the case is an example of the U.S. policy of ``rendition,'' where terrorism suspects are shipped to countries with looser rules on using torture, such as Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan. Italy, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey cooperated with the U.S.'s rendition program by allowing flights to land and take off even though it broke the laws of those countries, the Council of Europe said in a report issued in June.

``The case of Abu Omar is a formally legal activity for the Americans,'' Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said in an interview last week. ``They call it rendition and there are acts of the president authorizing these operations. In Italian terms this is a kidnapping which bluntly violates our criminal code.''

What a mess, it would be cleaner just to do a hit on him. One sniper 1k yards away, one shot, makes a big splash in the papers the next day then everyone forgets about it.

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I think you are right on Hatterasguy....

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My next door neighbor, a former US Army Col. has flown on one of those in Ethiopia. She described what it is like when going full-tilt. Whoooweee! that must be something to see. I wouldn't want to be anywhere on the ground when that bad mofo goes over!

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Correct me if I'm wrong here. An AC-130 is a C-130 cargo plane (4 prop engines) with its cargo bay chock full of big guns, machine guns, a howizer-type gun etc....

what is the navy doing with an AC130, I thought that only the USAF had AC-130's.

(someone needs to repost that nighttime AC 130 attack vid where they picked off the targets like a video game... "let me get confirmation...yeah...yeah...go ahead and level the building..." =)

Its off to FAS.org for me =)

-John

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Angel, the story didn't say the Navy was operating the Spectre -- the Eisenhower was there to provide air cover and rescue forces for the Spectre.

As to the description of an AC-130 being "a blunt weapon that can scorch a wide swath of territory but is not well suited to precision attacks," they got that just about backwards. It is very precise and does not cover a wide area.