{"id":976,"date":"2020-05-22T21:22:08","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T21:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=976"},"modified":"2020-05-22T21:22:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T21:22:08","slug":"what-on-earth-is-the-us-doing-by-bombing-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=976","title":{"rendered":"What On Earth Is The US Doing By Bombing Somalia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)<\/a><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has quietly ramped up<\/a> a vicious bombing \u2013 and covert raiding<\/a> \u2013 campaign in Somalia amid a global coronavirus pandemic. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has provided any explanation for the deadly escalation of a war that Congress hasn\u2019t declared and the media rarely reports. At stake are many thousands of lives.<\/p>\n

The public statistics<\/a> show a considerable increase in airstrikes from Obama\u2019s presidency. From 2009 to 2016, the U.S. military\u2019s Africa Command (AFRICOM) announced 36 airstrikes in Somalia. Under Trump, it conducted at least 63 bombing raids just last year, with another 39 such attacks in the first four months of 2020. The ostensible US target has usually been the Islamist insurgent groupal-Shabab<\/a>, but often the real \u2013 or at least consequent \u2013 victims are long-embattled<\/a> Somali civilians.<\/p>\n

As for the most direct victims, it\u2019s become clear that notoriously image-conscious<\/a> AFRICOM public affairs officers have long undercounted and underreported<\/a> the number of civilians killed in their expanding aerial bombardments. According to Airwars, a UK-based airstrike monitoring group, civilian fatalities \u2013 while low<\/a> relative to other bombing campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria \u2013 may exceed<\/a> official Pentagon estimates by as much as 6,800 percent. Only these deaths don\u2019t tell the half of it. Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled<\/a>  areas that the US regularly bombs, filtering into already overcrowded refugee camps outside of the capital of Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

There are approximately 2.6 million<\/a> internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia who barely survive and are often reliant on humanitarian aid. So vulnerable<\/a> are the refugees in the pandemic-petri-dish camps, that one mother of seven described feeling \u201clike we are waiting for death to come.\u201d Her fears may prove justified. Recently, coronavirus cases have risen rapidly<\/a> in Somalia \u2013 a country with no<\/a> public health system to speak of \u2013 and due to severely limited testing availability, experts believe the actual tally is much higher than reported. No matter how AFRICOM spins it, their escalatory war will only exacerbate the country\u2019s slow-boiling crisis.<\/p>\n

A Sordid Backstory<\/h4>\n

While comprehensive analysis of the sordid history of US military operations in Somalia would fill multiple volumes, it\u2019s worth recalling the basic contours of Washington\u2019s record<\/a>. During the Cold War, the US pressured the United Nations to hand over the ethnically Somali Ogaden<\/a> region to Ethiopia, then proceeded to arm and back this sworn enemy of Mogadishu. That is until Marxist Ethiopian military officers took power in a 1974 putsch, at which point America turned on a dime, and changed sides<\/a>. Washington then backed<\/a> Somalia in the ensuing war over Ogaden. Over the next decade and a half, the US propped up the abusive and corrupt Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, after the Berlin Wall came down and Barre, a notorious human rights-violator, had outlived his Cold War usefulness<\/a>, Congress cut off military and \u2013 more importantly \u2013 economic aid. Barre was soon toppled in a coup, and clan-based militias carved up the remnants of the Somali state. Civil war raged, and hundreds of thousands of civilians starved to death in the ensuing famine<\/a>. Thanks to the blockbuster 2001 Hollywood film \u201cBlackhawk Down<\/a>,\u201d what came next is the one bit of Somali history most Americans know. In 1992, US troops filtered into Somalia to support what began as a United Nations humanitarian response. No doubt, they eventually did some good.<\/p>\n

In the chaos, the UN and especially the US took sides<\/a> in the civil war. Then after American special operators killed numerous civilians<\/a> in the hunt for one particular warlord, thousands of angry Somalis turned on a group of army rangers and Delta Force commandos during another botched raid. In the day-long battle that inspired the film, 18 US soldiers<\/a> and \u2013 far less reported \u2013 some 500 Somali men, women, and children<\/a> were killed. With no stomach for the bad press of body bags being brought home, President Bill Clinton pulled the troops out within months.<\/p>\n

For several years, Washington reverted to largely ignoring the ongoing Somali tragedy. That is until the 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., placed the region \u2013 and anything vaguely Islamist \u2013 into the Pentagon\u2019s crosshairs. There hadn\u2019t been much of an al-Qaeda presence in Somalia at the time, so the US basically \u201cinvented<\/a>\u201d one. In 2006, after an imperfect but popular<\/a> Islamic Courts movement<\/a> brought some stability<\/a> to the capitol, Washington encouraged, backed<\/a>, and even took part in<\/a> an Ethiopian invasion.<\/p>\n

This too backfired. The more hardline al-Shabab was empowered<\/a>, largely catalyzed, and grew in popularity through its resistance to the illegal<\/a> Ethiopian occupation and to the corrupt UN and U.S.-backed interim governments that followed. What AFRICOM\u2019s director of operations called the \u201cdisease<\/a>\u201d of al-Shabab is now used as a vague justification<\/a> of the latest escalation in US airstrikes.<\/p>\n

AFRICOM Inertia<\/h4>\n

How many Americans know that some 500<\/a>\u2013800<\/a> US troops are based in Somalia at any given time? Fewer still likely have the faintest idea that three Americans were killed<\/a> in neighboring Kenya just a few months back, when al-Shabab nearly overran an airbase that housed some US troops.<\/p>\n

Apathy and ignorance are troubling enough, but as has been the case<\/a> for nearly all recent interventions in the Greater Middle East, Washington\u2019s aggressive Somalia policy has proven counterproductive<\/a>. The more intense and overt the US military strikes and presence, the more empowered al-Shabab becomes since the group is as much<\/a> nationalist resistant movement as terror group. While this admittedly abhorrent crew kills and oppresses<\/a> Somali civilians as much as or more than American bombs or U.S.-backed government security forces, Washington\u2019s self-sabotage is real. As a Brown University Costs of War Project report<\/a> concludes: \u201cAl-Shabaab is fueled, in part, by the US war against it.\u201d Though affiliated<\/a> with al-Qaeda, al-Shabab\u2019s recruits, expertise<\/a>, and grievances<\/a> are mainly local. Most funding<\/a> comes from piracy and other criminal enterprises.<\/p>\n

The United Nations with tacit support<\/a> from even America\u2019s NATO allies has called<\/a> for a global ceasefire during the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump team has only escalated<\/a> military actions in various hotspots \u2013 particularly Somalia<\/a>. This won\u2019t play well with allies, adversaries, or neutral nations alike. If anything, it will drive the latter into the arms of Russia or China. In the face of such strategic inertia, one can\u2019t help but wish the US military would heed its own doctrine.<\/p>\n

It might start with number four on its list of the eight \u201cparadoxes<\/a>\u201d of counterinsurgency: \u201cDoing Nothing is Sometimes the Best Action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) The Trump administration has quietly ramped up a vicious bombing \u2013 and covert raiding \u2013 campaign in Somalia amid a global coronavirus pandemic. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has provided any explanation for the deadly escalation of a war that Congress hasn\u2019t declared and the media rarely reports. At stake are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}