Somalia is an impoverished nation in the Horn of Africa that has been ravaged by decades-long civil strife and unrest. It has also been the scene of US military aggressions under specious pretexts, including combating Wahhabi extremists.
The American Army deployed hundreds of its troops to Somalia under George W. Bush’s presidency, and after Barack Obama took office, Washington launched drone attacks targeting local civilians.
Donald Trump’s administration was marked by a continuation of his predecessor’s militaristic actions, including a surge in drone attacks against war-torn Somalia.
During all of these years, the administrations that came to power in Washington, D.C., whether Democrats or Republicans, resorted to usual media machinations, fabricating the necessary justification for the US presence in Somalia and the striking of hard-line Somali militants, by placing an exaggerated emphasis on the geostrategic significance of the Horn of Africa for US national interests.
Numerous studies indicate, however, that US military intervention in Somalia has not only failed to bring peace and stability to the eastern African nation, but has also adversely impacted the entire region, as hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees have fled to neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea, escaping decades of armed hostilities, famine, and cholera.
In the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election, which was rammed by allegations of electoral fraud, Trump pledged to pullout US troops from Afghanistan and Somalia, seriously limiting American military involvement overseas.
In reality, however, the Pentagon relocated the Somalia-based troops to other military bases, particularly in Djibouti and Kenya, where they carefully plan and carry out drone attacks, often targeting civilian-populated areas in Somalia.
Despite former President Trump’s evaluations, a senior Biden administration official recently claimed that President Biden agreed to the Secretary of Defense’s request for a redeployment of the US military presence in Somalia so that Americans could reportedly operate more effectively against the Saudi-funded Al-Shabaab, which, according to US authorities, has grown in military strength, posing an imminent threat to the United States in the Horn of Africa.
The highly contentious decision by Biden to re-transfer troops to Somalia comes in the aftermath of the ignominious withdrawal of American personnel from Afghanistan in August 2021. Biden’s overall strategy required a reduction of Washington’s military commitments in the Middle East and North Africa by bolstering local forces and US regional allies, which nevertheless seems to have been an abject failure so far.
But now, with Biden’s dramatic shift in strategy, US troops must return to Somalia, and many observers interpret this move as a flagrant violation of his presidential campaign promises to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In the meantime, Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the American National Security Council (NSC), confirmed Biden’s new Somalia strategy, arguing it would provide more effective action against Al-Shabaab. Although Watson did not specify how many soldiers the US Army would dispatch to Somalia, other officials said it would be about 450.
Furthermore, a high-ranking Biden administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters that the crux of Biden’s Somalia policy is to limit the Wahabi militants’ capacity to conduct complex attacks.
Since 2008, the Al-Shabaab extremists have sought to topple the legitimate UN-backed Somali government by carrying out many deadly assaults in Mogadishu and other Somali cities, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent civilians.
