Some Closure in Dar es Salaam

BY JOSEPH STRAW

If you like good news, the past two months have brought it in the war on terror.

May saw the end of the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. A month later Ilyas Kashmiri, an Al Qaeda associate considered a possible successor to bin Laden, was reportedly killed (again) by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

Saturday we learned that earlier last week Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the head of Al Qaeda in East Africa, apparently made a wrong turn in Mogadishu, Somalia. Confronted with a Somali military checkpoint – not quite SEAL Team 6 – he refused to stop and was shot and killed on the spot.

Mohammad was alleged to have planned the August 7, 1998, truck bombings on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The coordinated attack killed at least 223 people: 12 of them the Americans targeted, plus 211 others in the blasts’ paths.
 
News of Mohammad’s killing coincided with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s swing through Africa, including a visit Sunday to Dar es Salaam. She laid flowers at a memorial to those killed there in 1998, then visited the new U.S. embassy and met with staff and their families.
 
“I know that there are those of you here today who were serving in the Embassy on that awful occasion,” Clinton said in remarks released by the State Department. “Some of you lost your friends and loved ones, and all Americans grieved with you then, and we have not forgotten your losses…I know nothing can replace those who have been taken from us by such senseless violence, but I know that justice was served and I hope that can give you some measure of comfort.“