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Eric Schmitt, who first reported from Somalia 30 years ago, returned in early February to embed with the U.S. military.
BALEDOGLE, Somalia — The promise and perils of America’s counterterrorism campaign were on full display at a remote training base in central Somalia.
It was graduation day for 346 recruits who would join an elite Somali commando unit trained by the State Department, advised by U.S. Special Operations forces, and backed by American air power.
Since last August, the unit, called Danab, has spearheaded a string of Somali army victories against Al Shabab, an Islamist terrorist group that is considered the deadliest of Al Qaeda’s global branches.
“We’re more dedicated than ever,” said Second Lt. Shukri Yusuf Ali, 24, who joined the unit two years ago as one of its few female members and was recently selected to attend the U.S. Army infantry training course at Fort Benning, Ga.
But sadness hung over the ceremony. Many of the recruits will be rushed to the front lines to backfill two Danab battalions decimated by a Shabab attack last month that left more than 100 Somali soldiers dead or injured.
I first reported from Somalia 30 years ago, when the U.S. military’s main mission there was to make the capital, Mogadishu, and outlying areas in a famine belt safe enough for aid deliveries, which had been interrupted by fighting among Somali factions.
The United States withdrew from the country after the “Black Hawk Down” episode of 1993, when Somali militia fighters killed 18 American service members in a blazing battle later depicted in books and Hollywood movies.
Now, nearly two decades after the rise of Al Shabab, Somalia is the most active front in the “forever wars” that the United States has been waging against Islamist extremists since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The American fight against Al Shabab began in 2014 with a handful of military advisers and grew steadily to a 700-member training force that President Donald J. Trump withdrew just before leaving office in 2021. President Biden restored 450 of the troops last year to advise Somali soldiers fighting a Shabab insurgency that still controls much of the country’s south.
Somalia is also the center of a U.S. counterterrorism drone war that has waned in other hot spots like Yemen, Libya and Pakistan’s tribal areas where U.S. airstrikes have diminished the threat. In the past year, the United States has carried out about 20 airstrikes in Somalia, down from a peak of 63 in 2019. Nearly all of the past year’s strikes, however, were in “collective self-defense” of Somali forces.
I returned to Somalia this month for a rare embed with U.S. Special Operations forces. The visit offered a window into a counterterrorism world in which a small number of Americans, usually far from the front lines, are advising and assisting Somali troops waging a ferocious daily fight against a formidable foe.
As U.S. commandos worked with their Somali counterparts, an array of American, Somali and other African military, diplomatic and aid officials expressed cautious optimism about the Somali government’s commitment to the fight but lingering doubts over its ability to hold the ground it retakes.
Now, in the wake of the attack on Jan. 20 in Galmudug state, in central Somalia, Somali officials have asked for more American firepower and renewed an appeal to Washington for more drone strikes and looser rules on when they can be carried out. The request so far has received a cool reception from the Biden administration, which is wary of a deeper military commitment.
The attack came as the Somali military pressed its monthslong offensive, with several powerful local clan militias joining the fight against a terrorist group that has wreaked havoc across the Horn of Africa. The Somali government has been resupplying the clan militias with ammunition and other aid.
Last May, Somalia elected a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who also held the role from 2012 to 2017. Since returning to office, he has declared an all-out war on Al Shabab, vowing to limit their geographical reach and cut off their money. Intelligence officials estimate that the group has roughly 7,000 to 12,000 members and annual income — including from taxing or extorting civilians — of about $120 million.
The full-scale offensive started soon after Mr. Biden redeployed American trainers to Somalia. Those forces only advise and assist Somali soldiers and do not conduct unilateral counterterrorism operations like the one last month by members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 that killed a senior Islamic State financier in northern Somalia.
Several Somali, U.S. and other Western officials and analysts said in interviews that the military campaign has been increasingly successful, retaking dozens of towns and villages.
But other officials struck a cautionary note about the way ahead, citing Al Shabab’s tenacity, Somalia’s history of dysfunction, the dizzying complexities of its clan dynamics, and a looming famine driven by drought.
“For the coming year, I don’t envision a significant reduction in Shabab’s capabilities,” said Heather Nicell, an Africa analyst with Janes, a London-based defense intelligence firm. “They’re adapting.”
Indeed, Al Shabab has responded with vicious counterattacks across the country, reclaiming some territory in a seesaw battle for control. In October, the group carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia in five years, killing 121 people and wounding about 300 others in a twin-car explosion that struck the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu, a city of around two million people.
More than 1,000 foreign diplomats, military trainers, U.N. workers, journalists and others operate inside a security zone near Mogadishu’s seaside international airport, largely sealed off from the metropolitan mayhem by giant concrete blast walls topped by concertina wires.
In early February, I took an Ethiopian Airlines flight to the city and stayed at a hotel steps from the airport exit. Outside my hotel window, a tan-camouflaged armored vehicle rumbled by. Over three days, a photographer colleague, Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, and I conducted interviews in the security zone and flew aboard an Air Force C-130 cargo plane to this Somali military base 55 miles northwest of Mogadishu to watch live-fire training demonstrations and the graduation ceremony. We kept body armor and helmet at the ready in case of a Shabab attack.
The security zone walls can’t keep all violence at bay. Al Shabab occasionally lobs rounds inside, most recently on Feb. 1, when an 82-millimeter mortar slammed into a wall adjacent to the windowless, fortress-like U.S. Embassy, injuring four people.
The assignment is considered so dangerous that the State Department has barred the U.S. ambassador, Larry E. André Jr., a 33-year Foreign Service veteran, from venturing into the city itself. Even within the green zone, he travels in an armored vehicle with a security detail. Mr. André has made periodic visits elsewhere around the country, including to the graduation ceremony.
BALEDOGLE, Somalia — The promise and perils of America’s counterterrorism campaign were on full display at a remote training base in central Somalia.
It was graduation day for 346 recruits who would join an elite Somali commando unit trained by the State Department, advised by U.S. Special Operations forces, and backed by American air power.
Since last August, the unit, called Danab, has spearheaded a string of Somali army victories against Al Shabab, an Islamist terrorist group that is considered the deadliest of Al Qaeda’s global branches.
“We’re more dedicated than ever,” said Second Lt. Shukri Yusuf Ali, 24, who joined the unit two years ago as one of its few female members and was recently selected to attend the U.S. Army infantry training course at Fort Benning, Ga.
But sadness hung over the ceremony. Many of the recruits will be rushed to the front lines to backfill two Danab battalions decimated by a Shabab attack last month that left more than 100 Somali soldiers dead or injured.
I first reported from Somalia 30 years ago, when the U.S. military’s main mission there was to make the capital, Mogadishu, and outlying areas in a famine belt safe enough for aid deliveries, which had been interrupted by fighting among Somali factions.
The United States withdrew from the country after the “Black Hawk Down” episode of 1993, when Somali militia fighters killed 18 American service members in a blazing battle later depicted in books and Hollywood movies.
Now, nearly two decades after the rise of Al Shabab, Somalia is the most active front in the “forever wars” that the United States has been waging against Islamist extremists since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The American fight against Al Shabab began in 2014 with a handful of military advisers and grew steadily to a 700-member training force that President Donald J. Trump withdrew just before leaving office in 2021. President Biden restored 450 of the troops last year to advise Somali soldiers fighting a Shabab insurgency that still controls much of the country’s south.
Somalia is also the center of a U.S. counterterrorism drone war that has waned in other hot spots like Yemen, Libya and Pakistan’s tribal areas where U.S. airstrikes have diminished the threat. In the past year, the United States has carried out about 20 airstrikes in Somalia, down from a peak of 63 in 2019. Nearly all of the past year’s strikes, however, were in “collective self-defense” of Somali forces.
I returned to Somalia this month for a rare embed with U.S. Special Operations forces. The visit offered a window into a counterterrorism world in which a small number of Americans, usually far from the front lines, are advising and assisting Somali troops waging a ferocious daily fight against a formidable foe.
As U.S. commandos worked with their Somali counterparts, an array of American, Somali and other African military, diplomatic and aid officials expressed cautious optimism about the Somali government’s commitment to the fight but lingering doubts over its ability to hold the ground it retakes.
Now, in the wake of the attack on Jan. 20 in Galmudug state, in central Somalia, Somali officials have asked for more American firepower and renewed an appeal to Washington for more drone strikes and looser rules on when they can be carried out. The request so far has received a cool reception from the Biden administration, which is wary of a deeper military commitment.
The attack came as the Somali military pressed its monthslong offensive, with several powerful local clan militias joining the fight against a terrorist group that has wreaked havoc across the Horn of Africa. The Somali government has been resupplying the clan militias with ammunition and other aid.
Last May, Somalia elected a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who also held the role from 2012 to 2017. Since returning to office, he has declared an all-out war on Al Shabab, vowing to limit their geographical reach and cut off their money. Intelligence officials estimate that the group has roughly 7,000 to 12,000 members and annual income — including from taxing or extorting civilians — of about $120 million.
The full-scale offensive started soon after Mr. Biden redeployed American trainers to Somalia. Those forces only advise and assist Somali soldiers and do not conduct unilateral counterterrorism operations like the one last month by members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 that killed a senior Islamic State financier in northern Somalia.
Several Somali, U.S. and other Western officials and analysts said in interviews that the military campaign has been increasingly successful, retaking dozens of towns and villages.
But other officials struck a cautionary note about the way ahead, citing Al Shabab’s tenacity, Somalia’s history of dysfunction, the dizzying complexities of its clan dynamics, and a looming famine driven by drought.
“For the coming year, I don’t envision a significant reduction in Shabab’s capabilities,” said Heather Nicell, an Africa analyst with Janes, a London-based defense intelligence firm. “They’re adapting.”
Indeed, Al Shabab has responded with vicious counterattacks across the country, reclaiming some territory in a seesaw battle for control. In October, the group carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia in five years, killing 121 people and wounding about 300 others in a twin-car explosion that struck the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu, a city of around two million people.
More than 1,000 foreign diplomats, military trainers, U.N. workers, journalists and others operate inside a security zone near Mogadishu’s seaside international airport, largely sealed off from the metropolitan mayhem by giant concrete blast walls topped by concertina wires.
In early February, I took an Ethiopian Airlines flight to the city and stayed at a hotel steps from the airport exit. Outside my hotel window, a tan-camouflaged armored vehicle rumbled by. Over three days, a photographer colleague, Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, and I conducted interviews in the security zone and flew aboard an Air Force C-130 cargo plane to this Somali military base 55 miles northwest of Mogadishu to watch live-fire training demonstrations and the graduation ceremony. We kept body armor and helmet at the ready in case of a Shabab attack.
The security zone walls can’t keep all violence at bay. Al Shabab occasionally lobs rounds inside, most recently on Feb. 1, when an 82-millimeter mortar slammed into a wall adjacent to the windowless, fortress-like U.S. Embassy, injuring four people.
The assignment is considered so dangerous that the State Department has barred the U.S. ambassador, Larry E. André Jr., a 33-year Foreign Service veteran, from venturing into the city itself. Even within the green zone, he travels in an armored vehicle with a security detail. Mr. André has made periodic visits elsewhere around the country, including to the graduation ceremony.
