terrorism triumph of global importance, the killing in Somalia of a top Al-Qaeda plotter will do nothing in the short-term to stabilize the world's most profoundly failed state. The government forces who shot Fazul Mohammed at a roadblock in Mogadishu Tuesday delighted Western officials by removing a notoriously accomplished bomber from Al-Qaeda's ranks and netting a haul of intelligence on his mobile phones and laptops. That information will be studied by Western spies seeking to raise pressure on Al-Qaeda after the death of Osama Bin Laden. Nick Pratt, a terrorism expert at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, said the death of any Al-Qaeda commander would threaten the group's resilience. “In the end, leaders are less able to lead, and the group's cohesion and strategic direction suffer,” he said. “This is why you pursue them to the ends of the earth.” But viewed from a Somali perspective, Mohammed's death is an event of much less immediate significance. Of more relevance is the fact that the Somali soldiers who killed him serve an administration that is a government in name only. The government holds just a few districts of the capital and faces a resourceful foe in Al-Qaeda-allied Al-Shabaab rebels, some of whose leaders he is believed to have trained. For that reason, the loss of one opponent, no matter how gifted, will do little to restore to the Horn of Africa country the central administration it has lacked for 20 years. As a result, Somalia experts say the country will likely continue to destabilize its neighbors, provide a haven to Al-Qaeda and host an increasingly bold community of pirates who stalk shipping lanes vital to world energy security. To make matters worse, from the perspective of Somalia's neighbors, President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's government is riven with power struggles, diluting what little authority it enjoys. “The central weakness of the effort to drive Al-Shabaab out is the rot in Villa Somalia and that rot remains for now,” said Somali expert Abdi Samatar, referring to the seat of the presidency and what he sees as its ineffective actions. Its infighting has proven immune to mediation by foreign governments, in part because they themselves are divided on how to fix Somalia's chaos – an indicator suggesting that Somalia's chaos might survive an eventual victory against Al-Shabaab. And while Al-Shabaab's generally rules by coercion and is not popular, the brutal form of order that it imposes has won grudging acceptance from some businessmen who prefer its predictability to the chaos that endures in other areas.
