Aidan Simardone
Despite Trump’s promise to stop wars, the United States is bombarding Somalia. With America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and a ceasefire with Yemen, drone warfare now dominates in Somalia, with strikes doubling in the last year.
Trump is often said to be pursuing an isolationist foreign policy. But just weeks into his second presidency, he engaged in his first major military operation, conducting airstrikes in Northern Somalia. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised America’s role in Somalia and wavered on withdrawing troops. The Trump administration also expressed interest in recognizing the breakaway region of Somaliland.
But President Trump’s meddling in Somalia will fail. The United States has intervened in Somalia for over three decades. The result has been civil war, mass casualties, and destabilization. The empowerment of local groups has at times provided short-term relief against extremists, but in the long run has helped fracture the country.
American Meddling
American intervention in Somalia has been one disaster after another. During the Cold War, the United States supported Somalia against Soviet-backed Ethiopia. But after the country’s defeat against Ethiopia in the Ogaden War of 1977–78, popular resistance emerged against President Mohamed Siad Barre. Barre responded with a brutal crackdown, including the genocide of the Issaq clan in what is now Somaliland. His overthrow in 1991 plunged the country into civil war and led Somaliland to declare independence.
The killing of United Nations troops in 1993 should have been a sign for America to withdraw. Instead, the United States intervened to capture or kill Mohamed Farrah Aidid of the Somali National Alliance, an amalgamation of four anti-Barre rebel groups. The campaign was a disaster, with war crimes committed. In one incident, an American bombing killed Somali leaders who were meeting to negotiate peace. The Somali people, many of whom once welcomed American troops for providing aid, turned against them. In what became known as the Black Hawk Down incident, American troops experienced the heaviest loss of life since the Vietnam War. America left Somalia in 1994, having failed to capture Aidid.
In 2006, some stability was finally imposed when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took over central and southern Somalia. But in the eyes of the United States government, the ICU was a terrorist organization. To defeat them, Washington supported warlords and backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia to remove the group. With the ICU gone, the country once again descended into chaos. In this aftermath, piracy worsened. Taking over from the ICU, a more extreme group would emerge: Al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab’s Persistence
For nearly two decades, a series of US administrations have tried to dislodge Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabaab from Somalia, but without success. America’s drone program, which began in 2007, sometimes succeeded in killing high-profile leaders, but more often resulted in high civilian casualties. This provided legitimacy for Al Shabaab’s propaganda claiming that the West and its allies are the Somali people’s enemy.
The persistence of Al Shabaab should have been (another) sign that the United States ought to withdraw from the region. Instead, Washington not only expanded its drone program but for the first time since 1994, put boots on the ground. In 2014 there were 120 American troops in Somalia. At the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, there were “several hundred” US troops, according to the New York Times. Despite Trump’s promise to end foreign wars, he expanded the drone program. Troops were not withdrawn until the final days of his first term.
Throughout the Obama and Trump years, little progress was made against Al Shabaab. While the group’s expansion in central Somalia was marginally reversed, they found a new presence in the North and continued to carry out terrorist attacks. In 2017, an American soldier was killed at a Somali compound, the first death since Black Hawk Down. That same year, Somalia experienced its worst terrorist attack, when a truck bombing in Mogadishu killed 587.
Trump’s 2020 removal of US troops was short-lived. Biden not only redeployed troops in 2022 but once again expanded America’s presence, with the construction of five new military bases in Somalia. Despite this, Al Shabaab gained strength, expanding into south-central Somalia.
Trump’s Betrayal
“I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” Trump said in his 2024 election victory speech. Less than two weeks into office, Trump ordered airstrikes in Northern Somalia against ISIS. A week later, as Trump reconsidered America’s global military presence, Defense Secretary Hegseth reassured US Africa Command leaders that the United States would remain in Somalia and signed a directive that eased airstrike use.
The strikes against ISIS in Northern Somalia were largely a display of strength. Although they succeeded in weakening the group, ISIS’s presence was already limited to a few remote mountains. Meanwhile, Al Shabaab controls vast swaths of central and South Somalia and continues to expand. Multiple assaults from the Somali military and American drones have failed to dislodge them. Al Shabaab is now only 25 kilometers away from the capital and almost succeeded in assassinating the President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Going Forward
Trump’s intervention in Somalia will fail, just as US interventions have failed every time for over thirty years. American military activity has not stopped extremism but fueled it. Just as bombings led to the Black Hawk Down incident, so too will airstrikes help Al Shabaab recruit Somalis frustrated at America’s carnage. Despite hundreds of American troops and thousands of airstrikes, Al Shabaab is now nearing Mogadishu. Should Trump by some miracle stop them, a new group would likely emerge, just as Al Shabaab emerged from the downfall of the ICU.
Perhaps out of frustration with the Somalian government, the Trump administration is working with breakaway regions like Puntland and Somaliland, both of whom are more successful at stopping extremism. Al Shabaab has failed to control any territory in Somaliland, while Puntland’s recent counter-offensive has succeeded in diminishing their and ISIS’s control to a few remote mountains. The US military has trained Puntland troops and it is rumored that Trump might recognize Somaliland.
But this carries its risks. While Somaliland is far more stable than the rest of Somalia, it has been involved in clan warfare in its Eastern region since 2023, during which war crimes were committed. Somaliland and Puntland also have a border dispute. The military training Puntland receives to fight ISIS might then be used against Somaliland, fueling further conflict. Empowering Somaliland and Puntland also has implications for the wider Horn of Africa region, which is enmeshed in a complex web of alliances and multiple conflicts. Somalia and Ethiopia only recently signed the Ankara Declaration, which de-escalated tensions between the countries after Ethiopia began working with Somaliland. Recognizing Somaliland would threaten this delicate peace.
Resistance against American imperialism is needed. That means putting an end to its drone program, pulling troops from the region, and stopping its military support. Naysayers might say this will lead to a security collapse. But decades of evidence point in the opposite direction. After the US withdrew in 1994, Somalia eventually returned to some stability with the rise of the ICU in 2006. Likewise, throughout 2021 the security situation was mostly unchanged despite the absence of US troops. Biden’s reintroduction of troops a year later had little effect on Al Shabaab. Airstrikes continued to kill civilians, providing fuel for Al Shabaab’s propaganda and recruitment. In 2024 it was uncovered that U.S. U.S.-trained, elite anti-terrorist group, the Danab Special Forces, was stealing food meant to be rationed to civilians, deteriorating Somalis’ trust in their government. In contrast, Al Shabaab has since 2011 focused on redistributing food, gaining loyalty from those in need.
Rather than idealistic, anti-imperialism is popular, even in the United States. Roughly half of Americans want to be less involved in global security, according to a recent poll. This attitude helped Trump’s election victory, where he was able to win the swing state of Michigan because many Arabs, although skeptical, supported his call for a restrained foreign policy. Now is the time to make that a reality.
Aidan Simardone is a lawyer and columnist at Vox Ummah. His work has appeared in Jacobin, The Cradle and the New Arab.