The Biden administration is considering sending troops back into Somalia after former President Donald Trump abruptly pulled them out before leaving office, forcing counterterrorism training operations against al Shabab to go remote and inhibiting intelligence collection, says a top U.S. general.
The United States had some 900 troops in Somalia doing advise and assist, intelligence collection, and helping to plot strikes against al Shabab and ISIS terrorists operating in the country until Trump declaring an end to “endless wars” called for all the troops to come home in December. Since then, U.S. Africa Command chief Gen. Stephen Townsend told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that “al Shabab looks over their shoulder every day.”
After a closed session with senators, Townsend told the Washington Examiner that American trainers are still “commuting to work” in Somalia and explained how ISR efforts were affected by the Trump moves.
“Those aircraft now are based farther away, and so they have reduced station time,” he said of the platform’s ability to remain in the air over a target.
Instead of taking off from Mogadishu airport, they must depart from U.S. bases in neighboring countries, increasing transit times and reducing the amount of intelligence that can be gathered.
TRUMP ORDERS TROOPS OUT OF SOMALIA AS PENTAGON PROMISES TERRORIST THREAT WILL STILL BE CONTAINED
“Probably, the average time is more on the line of two and a half to four hours,” he said, revising upward a statement made to senators in open session. “We also have a blend of remotely piloted aircraft, and manned aircraft frequently have shorter legs.”
Townsend told senators that Trump’s repositioning introduced “new layers of complexity and risk.”
“Our understanding of what’s happening in Somalia is less now than we were there on the ground physically located with our partners,” he said, foreshadowing what the U.S. expects will happen in Afghanistan once troops and intelligence-gathering capabilities are removed.
SASC ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe described the negative meaning behind the oft-used term “over the horizon.”
“Over the horizon really means that you’re taking troops out of the area and conducting your activity from another country, and it’s something that I disagreed with in the previous administration,” he said. “History has shown that it doesn’t work as well from an adjoining country from the country where the activity is.”
Townsend said al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates in the Sahel region of West Africa and elsewhere on the continent are viewed less as direct threats to the U.S. homeland. Al Shabab, however, is growing in Somalia and has ambition to strike Americans at home and abroad, Africom often points out.
“I don’t think our government views the terrorist situation in the Sahel as America’s to solve, right? So, I have not been tasked to defeat terrorists in the Sahel,” he said. “Almost all of Europe is representative in the Sahel in some way, shape, form, or fashion. We support them and their efforts.”
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Returning to the impact of Trump’s repositioning on Somalia, the commander admitted that virtual advise and assist is not as effective and intelligence-gathering is diminished.
“Your situational awareness, your intelligence, it decreases for sure,” he said. “So, we’re going to have to find ways to account for that.”
