Last Updated on May 8, 2023
The US military’s presence in Somalia is intensifying and now, 900 American troops are deployed to the failed state in the Horn of Africa, publicly tasked with training the Somali Armed Forces to take on Al-Shabaab Islamic militants, but the Americans are increasingly engaging in combat operations as well.
Though President Trump ordered the 2020 withdrawal of American forces from the failed state of Somalia, a hotbed for Islamic terrorism and ethno-religious warfare where US troops have been deployed off and on for decades, Joe Biden ordered over 400 of them to return there in 2022. Now, that number has increased to roughly 900.
The US presence in Somalia is widely seen as a major recruiting tool for the Islamic militants that Americans have been tasked with opposing there.
America First Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz proposed a resolution in the House of Representatives to once again order the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia, but on April 27th, 321 uni-party politicians (165 Republicans and 156 Democrats) voted the resolution down. Just 101 members of Congress (52 Republicans and 50 Democrats) voted in favor of the withdrawal, while a dozen Representatives neglected to vote either way.
The resolution would have ordered the removal of “all United States Armed Forces, other than United States Armed Forces assigned to protect the United States Embassy, from Somalia.”
In addition to troops on the ground supposedly acting in a training and advisory role (much like US troops were tasked with in Vietnam before that situation spun out of control and turned into a full-fledged war that claimed the lives of over 50,000 Americans), the US is conducting air strikes and drone attacks against Al-Shabaab and its associates.
In several instances, American forces have been ordered by the Biden Administration to conduct raids against Islamic radicals on behalf of the Somali Armed Forces.
Along with the United States, Turkey and Communist China are listed as major suppliers of material military aid to the Somalis.
In 1993, Somalia was the site of the “Black Hawk Down” incident that cost the lives of 18 US Army soldiers after Bill Clinton, following in the footsteps of George HW Bush, deployed thousands of troops there with the goal of destabilizing the nation’s authoritarian government and providing humanitarian aid to the Somali population.
Somali fighters shot down two US helicopters, initiating a more than 18-hour-long firefight that later became the subject of the 2002 movie, Black Hawk Down.
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