Somalia: Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab

In the predawn hours of May 1, a U.S. AC-130 Spectre gunship dispatched from a nearby airbase destroyed a house in central Somalia where members of the Islamist militant group al Shabaab were meeting. Killed in the attack were two militant leaders: Aden Hashi Ayro, a senior member of al Shabaab and al Qaeda's military commander in Somalia, and Sheikh Muhyadin Omar, a senior al Shabaab commander. The two have direct links to al Qaeda prime and a long history of terrorism in the Horn of Africa. The May 1 incident, in conjunction with a multitude of other factors, raises the question of how connected al Qaeda and al Shabaab have become in Somalia and what the implications of that relationship are.