America’s Forgotten Forever War in Somalia
The war in Iran and the genocide in Palestine have increasingly dominated the headlines this year as agreements repeatedly falter and prices skyrocket. The bloom is definitely off Trump’s rose. His movement, rooted in Euro-supremacist racism, has spread its poison into everything from gas prices to food safety. People who cheered on Trump’s cruel persecution of Black and brown immigrants and applauded his assaults on queer athletes now find themselves wondering why their genital-grabbing, Viagra-powered hero has abandoned them.
Amid the chaos of this maniacal administration, another forever war is often lost in (or more likely, overlooked by) the mainstream media. The United States has been fighting Islamist terror groups such as Al-Shabaab in Somalia for nearly 20 years, making it one of the longest military entanglements in the nation’s history. While killing Muslims in the name of fighting terrorism is hardly a novelty in U.S. foreign policy, this military entanglement yields little strategic advantage, even compared with the broader War on Terror or Trump’s typically disastrous foreign policy.
The United States coordinates military operations in Africa through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which focuses on counterterrorism, partner training, and regional security, rather than large-scale combat. Al-Shabaab, which translates as “The Youth” in Arabic, is affiliated with the more notorious al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is of course best known for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Shabaab, however, poses little credible threat to U.S. national security because it operates almost exclusively in Somalia and, more broadly, East Africa. Somalia accounts for only a small share of United States trade with Africa (a continent that represents roughly 2% of total US global trade.), and does not meaningfully interfere with shipping through the Suez Canal or other major trade routes, unlike the threats to shipping through the hotly contested Strait of Hormuz.
Like Afghanistan, Somalia has become a long-term U.S. project, with the United States training local proxies such as the Somali National Army to govern in ways that serve American interests. We have more to fear from attacks on U.S. service members stationed in East Africa than from direct attacks on US soil by al-Shabaab, or its local rival, ISIS-Somalia. ISIS split from al-Qaeda in 2014, and its Somali affiliate now competes with al-Shabaab for territory and influence. The primary domestic concern is recruitment, which can be combatted without risking American lives in East Africa.
Although Trump withdrew troops from Somalia during his first term, he moved them to Kenya rather than bringing them home. Biden later redeployed troops to Somalia, and Trump has launched four times as many strikes in the country during his second term as Biden did during his entire presidency. The U.S. presence there arguably strengthens the very terror groups it is supposed to contain. There has been no further discussion of withdrawing troops from Somalia, which was not even mentioned in recent National Security or National Defense Strategy documents. Trump has, however, debated recognizing Somaliland, a self-governing region in northern Somalia that seeks independence. This move could lead to the establishment of as many as four new US military bases. Military strikes have also increased in Puntland, another northern autonomous region in northern Somalia, suggesting that Trump is only deepening U.S. interference in Somalia’s internal conflicts. The crux of the problem is that airstrikes are not working, yet he appears stubbornly wedded to another forever war for no reason more compelling than the time and resources already invested in it.
This is not the United States’ only imbroglio in Africa. The United States is currently sanctioning Rwandan companies accused of financing the M23 rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where conflict minerals fuel the war at the expense of the innocent civilians. Trump has also called for expanding the United Nations arms embargo on Darfur to all of Sudan while refusing to pressure the United Arab Emirates, which funds the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The United States has also launched attacks in Nigeria, where it seeks to secure oil interests in the name of protecting Nigerian Christians. It is considering military action against al-Qaeda affiliates in Mali, which one regional expert has warned could lead to attacks targeting American citizens.
These unethical interventions in Africa coincide with the U.S. military’s announcement of a new approach to security cooperation on the continent, one focused on intelligence sharing, affordable drone technology, and African-led military operations. The subtext is clear: the US military wants to increase its control in Africa by installing sympathetic governments to maintain its faltering global hegemony. This approach is not new; it is a unifying narrative for America’s postcolonial treatment of the Global South. It also echoes the treatment of Americans of African-descent s within the United States, where recently a young Black man was murdered in Mississippi by a group of white friends and at least seven African Americans have been found lynched this year alone, in a continuation of recent violence against African Americans.
The Trump MAGA cult has unleashed a virulent strain of hatred against minorities, especially Black and Muslim people. Although slavery and Jim Crow were more overtly brutal, it requires a particularly vindictive form of aggression to punish minorities for escaping subjugation and excelling in white spaces. Barack Obama was a deeply problematic president in many ways, and a military intervention in Libya himself, but there is little doubt that Americans committed to racial progress are paying dearly for having presumed to elect a Black man to the White House. The message of the forever war in Somalia is clear: Black and Muslim lives remain collateral damage, even in our ostensibly more tolerant era. Our best hope of reversing this disturbing trend is to elect younger, more progressive candidates and wrest the ship of state from the mad king. If we do not, America as we know it–along with its loftier principles–will be swallowed by those who drink most deeply of the poisoned cup that is racism.
