Twenty-Three Years After ‘Black Hawk Down,’ America Is Back at War in Somalia
Drones,
commandos and allied troops fight Al Shabaab
by
PETER DOERRIE
Long
before the debacles of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Somalia was the
quagmire that Western militaries would have loved to strike from their records.
In
the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident in 1993, overconfident U.S. forces
blundered into an ambush in Mogadishu. Eighteen American soldiers and two
troops from the supporting U.N. force died.
The
West retreated from Somalia. To fill the security vacuum, the African Union
deployed a peacekeeping force from 2006 onward.
The
AMISOM peacekeeping force relies to a great degree on
material and financial support from the United States and European allies,
whose interest in the Somalia conflict increased again when Islamist groups
gained influence in the country.
But
the memory of the 1993 battle complicated direct intervention
by Western militaries.
Gradually
and quietly, this has begun to change.
Al
Shabaab, the most powerful Islamist group in Somalia, aligned itself with Al
Qaeda in 2012. But in contrast to the globally-oriented Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab
has focused on military and political objectives in Somalia and neighboring
countries, demonstrating a nationalist brent that the broader Al-Qaeda movement
lacks.
Nonetheless,
the U.S. military has conducted drone strikes on Islamist militants in Somalia
since at least 2011. But lately, American intervention has escalated.
Both the frequency of — and casualties from — U.S. drone strikes in Somalia increased dramatically. No
fewer than 194 people have died in American drone strikes in Somalia as of
September 2016. That’s a tenfold increase over 2015, according to the United
Kingdom-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The
U.S. military and intelligence services have also deployed manned warplanes
from bases in Ethiopia and Djibouti, as well as from ships at sea, in order to
strike targets and collect intelligence.
A Burundian soldier clears a
building during a training course to prepare African Union missions in Somalia
and the Central African Republic. U.S. Air Force photo
American
and British commandos have been active on Somali soil since at least 2007 — and
probably as early as 2003 — for individual
reconnaissance and kill-or-capture missions. As with the drone
strikes, ground activity has increased markedly in recent years.
In
addition to unilateral missions aimed at high-value targets, U.S. Special
Operations Forces have been embedding with Somali and Ethiopian troops as
“advisers” — and have even found
themselves in gunfights with Al Shabaab fighters.
This
practice seems to have begun in earnest in 2015, when Pentagon press releases
began to refer to “self-defense strikes” by drones and other aircraft in support
of U.S. troops and their allies after they had come under fire.
This
choice of words is not without its ironies, as a close reading of these reports
makes clear that in most — if not all — cases, U.S. troops were
involved in offensive missions,
where return fire was practically guaranteed.
The
United Kingdom has expanded its involvement in Somalia. It currently stations
65 soldiers in Mogadishu as advisers — and plans
to double that number, Prime Minister Theresa May said in
September 2016.
Other
European nations are also active in Somalia, training Somali soldiers within
the framework of an E.U. mission that
began in 2010 and currently includes 195 troops. The E.U. mission has expanded
in recent years, and recently moved its headquarters from Uganda to Somalia
itself.
Western
militaries could further grow their footprints in Somalia in coming years,
potentially including more active involvement in combat operations. This is not
necessarily by choice, either. The fact of the matter is that AMISOM, while
initially successful in pushing back Al Shabaab, has struggled recently.
Al
Shabaab has lost control over most major towns in Somalia, but remains dominant
in large swathes of the countryside. The group is conserving its strength by
avoiding direct confrontation with AMISOM wherever possible.
This
strategy has paid off for the Islamists. AMISOM forces are overstretched and
susceptible to devastating raids on their isolated camps and supply lines. The
A.U. mission has lost hundreds of soldiers in such incidents since 2014.
Burundian troops serving with AMISOM
near Modmoday, Somalia. AMISOM photo
Other
external forces have sapped AMISOM’s strength.
Burundi
is embroiled in a domestic crisis bordering on a civil war. Uganda is
preoccupied with its interests in South Sudan, where it has intervened
militarily. Ethiopia has suffered massive popular protests that the government
has suppressed with a huge military deployment at home.
At
the same time, Ethiopia must guard its borders with Eritrea and South Sudan.
This may have been a factor in Ethiopia withdrawing troops from several Somali
town in September 2016. Al Shabaab promptly recaptured the
communities Ethiopia abandoned.
The
United States and the European Union have been loath to provide further
financing and support for certain AMISOM partners. Both Burundi and Uganda have
recently held highly contentious and fraudulent elections marred by violence.
AMISOM provides funding and training to the militaries of both countries.
While
the West and AMISOM recently reached a compromise on payments to the A.U.
force, Western governments probably wish that they could rid themselves of the
burden of having to cooperate with some of the more questionable governments in
the region.
But
as it stands, Somali forces are by no means capable of asserting the
government’s authority over Somalia’s territory.
Because
past efforts have failed to bring Somali security forces up to an acceptable
level of capability — and because AMISOM cannot
be relied upon to continue the job on its own — Western militaries will have to fill the void
if they don’t want to see all the gains they’ve achieved in Somalia recede
before their eyes.
With
Somalia’s second presidential and legislative elections of the past three
decades coming up later in 2016, many more American and European soldiers could
find their way to Somalia.
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