U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducted an airstrike in Somalia against ISIS targets on Saturday, killing “multiple ISIS-Somalia operatives.” It was the eighth such strike in the short time that Trump has been in office, reflecting a quiet, but deadly American campaign in a part, of the world that remains far below the public radar.
“AFRICOM, alongside the Federal Government of Somalia and Somali Armed Forces, continues to take action to degrade ISIS-Somalia's ability to plan and conduct attacks that threaten the U.S. homeland, our forces, and our civilians abroad,” a Sunday AFRICOM press release stated.
The military said the attack against ISIS-Somalia, Islamic State’s small branch there, was coordinated in tandem with the Somali government and Somali Armed Forces.
While AFRICOM alleges no civilians were harmed in the strike, the Pentagon has been less than forthcoming about Somali casualties in similar incidents.
Saturday’s attack follows a Trump administration decision in late February to ease rules guiding U.S. raids and airstrikes outside conventional battlefields; that move was made with al Shabaab, another Islamist group in the region, in mind.
What’s more, AFRICOM struck Somalia eight times between February 1 and March 15, reportedly conducting “collective self-defense airstrike[s] against al Shabaab” in some of the cases, and striking ISIS-Somalia in some others.
“Our Military has targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done. I did!,” Donald Trump previously said of an early February AFRICOM strike on ISIS-Somalia on X.
“The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!,’” he wrote.
A Somali government official told Nick Turse at the Intercept, that despite the military’s assertion that it had been working in coordination with the Somali government on that February strike, that little advance notice of the attack was provided to officials in Mogadishu.
The U.S. has been blasting away at Somalia since at least 2007, and has carried out military operations there since 2002 despite no formal declaration of war. Successive administrations have been using the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Force (AUMF) as a blanket authorization to bomb targets in Somalia since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
There are also an estimated 450 American troops stationed there, after President Biden reversed a Trump era decision to move them all out.
Despite his decision to withdraw boots on the ground, the last Trump administration authorized over 200 air strikes against al Shabaab and IS in Somalia. In comparison, the Biden administration struck Somalia a declared 39 times over its four year term through 2024.
AFRICOM says ISIS-Somalia’s “malicious efforts threaten U.S. security interests.” In contrast, Intercept reporter Nick Turse points out how far away that threat really is.
“ISIS–Somalia is a tiny organization that operates primarily in the Golis Mountains of the Bari region in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland state,” he wrote in February. “There is no evidence the group has the capability to target the United States.”
