{"id":160987,"date":"2020-05-18T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=160987"},"modified":"2020-05-18T09:27:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T08:27:29","slug":"why-on-earth-is-the-u-s-bombing-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/05\/why-on-earth-is-the-u-s-bombing-somalia\/","title":{"rendered":"Why on Earth Is the U.S. Bombing Somalia?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

US military base in Somalia. Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

15 May 2020 – <\/em>The Trump administration has quietly\u00a0ramped up<\/a>\u00a0a vicious bombing\u2014and\u00a0covert raiding<\/a>\u2014campaign 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\u00a0statistics<\/a>\u00a0show 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 U.S. target has usually been the Islamist insurgent group\u00a0al-Shabab<\/a>, but often the real\u2014or at least consequent\u2014victims are\u00a0long-embattled<\/a>\u00a0Somali civilians.<\/p>\n

As for the most direct victims, it\u2019s become clear that notoriously image-conscious<\/a>\u00a0AFRICOM public affairs officers have long\u00a0undercounted and underreported<\/a>\u00a0the number of civilians killed in their expanding aerial bombardments. According to Airwars, a UK-based airstrike monitoring group, civilian fatalities\u2014while\u00a0low<\/a>\u00a0relative to other bombing campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria\u2014may\u00a0exceed<\/a>\u00a0official Pentagon estimates by as much as 6,800 percent. Only these deaths don\u2019t tell the half of it. Tens of thousands of Somalis\u00a0have fled<\/a>\u00a0areas that the U.S. regularly bombs, filtering into already overcrowded refugee camps outside of the capital of Mogadishu.<\/p>\n

There are approximately\u00a02.6 million<\/a>\u00a0internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia who barely survive and are often reliant on humanitarian aid. So\u00a0vulnerable<\/a>\u00a0are 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\u00a0risen rapidly<\/a>\u00a0in Somalia\u2014a country\u00a0with no<\/a>\u00a0public health system to speak of\u2014and 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<\/h3>\n

While comprehensive analysis of the sordid history of U.S. military operations in Somalia would fill multiple volumes, it\u2019s worth recalling the basic contours of Washington\u2019s\u00a0record<\/a>. During the Cold War, the U.S. pressured the United Nations to hand over the ethnically Somali\u00a0Ogaden<\/a>\u00a0region 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\u00a0changed sides<\/a>. Washington then\u00a0backed<\/a>\u00a0Somalia in the ensuing war over Ogaden. Over the next decade and a half, the U.S. propped up the abusive and corrupt Somali dictator\u00a0Mohammed Siad Barre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, after the Berlin Wall came down and Barre, a notorious human rights-violator, had outlived his Cold War\u00a0usefulness<\/a>, Congress cut off military and\u2014more importantly\u2014economic 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\u00a0famine<\/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, U.S. 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 U.S.\u00a0took sides<\/a>\u00a0in the civil war. Then after American special operators\u00a0killed numerous civilians<\/a>\u00a0in 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 daylong battle that inspired the film,\u00a018 U.S. soldiers<\/a>\u00a0and\u2014far less reported\u2014some\u00a0500 Somali men, women, and children<\/a>\u00a0were 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\u2014and anything vaguely Islamist\u2014into the Pentagon\u2019s crosshairs. There hadn\u2019t been much of an al-Qaeda presence in Somalia at the time, so the U.S. basically \u201cinvented<\/a>\u201d one. In 2006, after an imperfect but\u00a0popular<\/a>\u00a0Islamic Courts\u00a0movement<\/a>\u00a0brought some\u00a0stability<\/a>\u00a0to the capitol, Washington encouraged,\u00a0backed<\/a>, and even took\u00a0part in<\/a>\u00a0an Ethiopian invasion.<\/p>\n

This too backfired. The more hardline al-Shabab was\u00a0empowered<\/a>, largely catalyzed, and grew in popularity through its resistance to the\u00a0illegal<\/a>\u00a0Ethiopian 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\u00a0justification<\/a>\u00a0of the latest escalation in U.S. airstrikes.<\/p>\n

AFRICOM Inertia<\/h3>\n

How many Americans know that some\u00a0500<\/a>\u2013800<\/a>\u00a0U.S. troops are based in Somalia at any given time? Fewer still likely have the faintest idea that three Americans were\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0in neighboring\u00a0Kenya<\/i>\u00a0just a few months back, when al-Shabab nearly overran an airbase that housed some U.S. troops.<\/p>\n

Apathy and ignorance are troubling enough, but as has been the\u00a0case<\/a>\u00a0for nearly all recent interventions in the Greater Middle East, Washington\u2019s aggressive Somalia policy has proven\u00a0counterproductive<\/a>. The more intense and overt the U.S. military strikes and presence, the more empowered al-Shabab becomes since the group is as\u00a0much<\/a>\u00a0nationalist resistant movement as terror group. While this admittedly abhorrent crew\u00a0kills and oppresses<\/a>\u00a0Somali 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\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0concludes: \u201cAl-Shabaab is fueled, in part, by the US war against it.\u201d Though\u00a0affiliated<\/a>\u00a0with al-Qaeda, al-Shabab\u2019s recruits,\u00a0expertise<\/a>, and\u00a0grievances<\/a>\u00a0are mainly local. Most\u00a0funding<\/a>\u00a0comes from piracy and other criminal enterprises.<\/p>\n

The United Nations with tacit\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0from even America\u2019s NATO allies has\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0for a global ceasefire during the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump team has only\u00a0escalated<\/a>\u00a0military actions in various hotspots\u2014particularly\u00a0Somalia<\/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 U.S. 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:\u00a0\u201cDoing Nothing is Sometimes the Best Action.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

This article was produced by<\/i>\u00a0Globetrotter<\/i><\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 May 2020 – The Trump administration has quietly\u00a0ramped up\u00a0a vicious bombing\u2014and\u00a0covert raiding\u2014campaign 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","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":160990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[237,131,867,100,267,1126,1050,504,950,378,234,112,1967,95,70,92,481],"class_list":["post-160987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-africa","tag-africom","tag-anglo-america","tag-direct-violence","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-invasion","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-pentagon","tag-somalia","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}