US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC, May 15, 2022. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP
US President Joe Biden has authorized the re-establishment of a US military presence in Somalia to fight al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab, a senior US administration official said Monday (May 16).
Eighteen months after Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of the 750 American troops stationed in that Horn of Africa country at the end of his mandate, “fewer than 500” American special forces are being redeployed to Somalia, the official, who asked for anonymity, said asked He gave no information about the arrival date.
Mr. Biden “has approved a corresponding request from the Department of Defense,” the senior official told the press. “The President made this decision to increase the security and effectiveness of our special forces, which have spent more than a year sporadically entering and exiting Somalia to facilitate operations there since the previous administration’s decision. counter-terrorism,” he added.
In December 2020, Mr. Trump had ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia and only allowed missions on a rotating basis. However, this coming and going put American soldiers at risk and wasted their time, forcing them to transport their equipment at the start of each rotation and ship it back at the end of the deployment.
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More than a year of political crisis
The US official suggested Mr Biden’s decision had more to do with the security of US forces than Sunday’s election of a new Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. The latter, who was president from 2012 to 2017, prevailed over outgoing leader Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmaajo, who had beaten him five years earlier.
Somali leaders’ support for cooperation with the United States in the fight against Islamists has been “steady” in recent years, the American official said. “We have worked successfully with the Somalis despite the change in government, and we are confident that we will continue to do so under the new government.” The decision to rebuild a US military presence “rationalizes the irrational apparatus we have inherited,” he added. “It was irrational because it posed an unnecessary and high risk to American forces every time they entered and exited the country,” he explained.
The international community on Monday welcomed the election of Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, 66, and called on him to address the problems of this poor and unstable country. This election, initially scheduled for no later than February 2021, ends more than a year of hesitation and political crisis surrounding the organization of elections in this country battered by the Khabab jihadist insurgency and threatened with starvation a drought of historic proportions.
According to the international community and analysts, these political tensions have benefited the Shabab, which has been leading an insurgency in the country for fifteen years. They have intensified their attacks in recent months, notably a double attack in the center of the country on March 23 (forty-eight dead), then a major attack on a base of African Union forces on 3 dead according to the official report).