President Barack Obama’s administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using special operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa nation.
Hundreds of U.S. troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after 1993’s Battle of Mogadishu, described in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.
The Somalia campaign, as it is described by U.S. and African officials and international monitors, is partly designed to avoid repeating that debacle, which led to the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers. But it carries risks including more U.S. casualties, botched airstrikes that kill civilians, and the potential for the United States to be drawn even more deeply into a troubled country that has stymied all efforts to fix it.
But the Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare — a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa, from Syria to Libya, despite the president’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones. This year alone, the United States has carried out airstrikes in seven countries and conducted special operations missions in others.
U.S. officials said the White House had quietly broadened the president’s authority for the use of force in Somalia by allowing airstrikes to protect U.S. and African troops as they combat fighters from al-Shabab, a Somali militant group that has claimed allegiance to al-Qaida.
In its public announcements, the Pentagon sometimes characterizes the operations as “self-defense strikes,” though some analysts have said this rationale has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
America’s role in Somalia has expanded as al-Shabab has become bolder. The group has attacked police headquarters, bombed seaside restaurants, killed Somali generals and stormed heavily fortified bases used by African Union troops.