In Somalia, U.S. troops usually hang back from front lines. Airstrikes are more often than not carried out by drones, controlled from far away.
It is a war nearly invisible to the average American, but it is not antiseptic.
In June, a U.S. special forces soldier was killed and four others wounded by mortar fire, as they were advising local Somali troops, battling al-Shabaab, a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda.
But American casualties are rare, which means it is a war that no U.S. news organization regularly covers.
What little is known about the fighting comes in largely from official news releases from the U.S. Africa Command, based in Germany.
On Monday, for instance, a release announced that in the latest series of airstrikes 62 al-Shabaab militants were killed in six separate strikes, four on Saturday and two on Sunday.
So far this year, the U.S. has carried out 45 strikes in Somalia in support of ground combat by Somali government forces and troops from the African Union Mission to Somalia.
In the past two months alone, the U.S. has killed 137 suspected al-Shabaab fighters, who it says have been using southern and central Somalia as a base to plot and direct terror attacks, steal humanitarian aid, extort the local populace to fund its operations, and shelter radical terrorists.
Each AFRICOM release carries a version of this boilerplate language: “At this time we assess these airstrikes did not injure or kill any civilians.”
The Pentagon says the number and effectiveness of the strikes is up dramatically, in part because of new authorities granted the military last year by President Trump, and in part because after each strike the U.S. exploits the battlefield for intelligence that leads it to more terrorists.
“These are intelligence-driven operations,” said Col. Rob Manning, a spokesman at the Pentagon.
There are approximately 500 U.S. troops in Somalia, mostly special operations forces, like Army Staff Sgt. Alexander Conrad, the 26-year-old soldier killed in June.
The U.S. does not disclose where the troops are located in Somalia, nor where the manned and unmanned aircraft that carry out the strikes fly from.
It is a war that will go on for the foreseeable future.
As of August 2018, the Pentagon estimates there are still between 3,000 and 7,000 al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia, along with up to 250 militants affiliated with the Islamic State.
