New Reports Suggest U.S. Had Military Precense in Somalia Since 2007

Last week, Reuters reported that rotations of military advisors have been deploying to Somalia since at least 2007. The news agency quoted anonymous US government officials. These revelations come after the Pentagon admitted to a formal advisory mission at the beginning of the year. The official statement was that only three military personnel were in Moghadishu and had been there since October 2013, when they had established a Military Coordination Cell to liaise with Somali authorities and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

AMISOM troops stand on top of a WZ551 armored personnel carrier on the outskirts of Burubow in the Gedo region of Somalia in March 2014, shortly after it was liberated from Al Shabaab control.

These newly uncovered deployments consisted of up to one hundred and twenty special operations forces at a time and were timed to provide a persistent presence, according to Reuters. If these details are correct, these special operators might have participated in the targeting process for a string of air strikes and drone attacks, as well as various commando raids since 2007. US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is currently responsible for operations in Somalia, disputed this, saying that the deployments were smaller and apparently only for specific missions.

The Central Intelligence Agency was largely believed to be in charge of US supported paramilitary activity inside of Somalia until recently. It appears that the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and specifically the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), may have also been directly involved in this covert effort. The Pentagon and AFRICOM have also clearly stepped up their overt activities in the restive east African nation since the beginning of 2013. AFRICOM has declined requests to elaborate on these missions beyond saying they are working closely with the Somali government and other African partners to combat the militant group Al Shabaab.

Al Shabaab came into existence in 2007 after Ethiopian troops and Somali militia routed the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a fundamentalist Islamist organization that had taken control of significant portions of the country. Al Shabaab, formed from the remnants of the ICU’s military wing, has continued to fight pro-government forces and international peacekeepers, now operating under the AMISOM title. Al Shabaab assassinated Somali parliamentarian Ahmed Mohamud ‘Hayd’ just last week and killed four people with a car bomb outside the parliament building in Mogadishu yesterday. These attacks are simply the latest in a string of increasingly aggressive responses to AMISOM’s latest offensive. The situation in the country remains complex and fluid.

Somali, AU Troops Take Towns from Al Shabaab in Renewed Offensive

Somali government troops and peacekeepers from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have reportedly taken control of a number of towns from the militant group Al Shabaab. This includes the town of Burdhubo in the southern part of the country, which is described a a major stronghold of the Al Qaeda-linked group. These advances are part of a renewed AMISOM offensive against Al Shabaab, the planning for which had been alluded to last December.

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013. Note that the green areas are simply listed as “pro-government,” indicating that much of this territory is likely controlled by warlords and their militias.

A number of changes have been made to AMISOM this year already to help in the fight against Al Shabaab. Most notable was the decision to formally integrate Ethiopian forces into AMISOM. Ethiopian forces had already been engaged in operations along the border with Somalia, which sometimes resulted in them crossing over. Now, over four thousand Ethiopian troops are operating with AMISOM in the country. When the decision was announced in January, AMISOM said that they hoped the influx of Ethiopian troops would free up other peacekeepers to fight militants in the country’s south.

In February, Kenya also announced that it was planning on reducing its presence in the southern port town of Kismayo. The move had been made after the Somali authorities complained Kenyan forces were an impediment to exercise central government control in the region. Kenya has supported nominally pro-government warlords in southern Somalia for some time. In 2011, some of these groups declared a semi-autonomous region, called Jubaland. Somalia’s many semi-autonomous actors are a major roadblock to establishing a functional state.

International partners are also looking to step up their involvement in the country. In January, it was reported that the US military would be sending military personnel to the country, the first official military presence there in decades. In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Army General David M. Rodriguez said the military coordination cell in the capital Moghadishu numbered three people, who were working to “coordinate with UN and other partnered forces to disrupt and contain al-Shabaab forces and expand areas under the control of the nominal government.” General Rodriguez also acknowledged that “Precise partnered and unilateral operations [conducted by special operations forces] continue to play limited but important roles in weakening al-Shabaab.” European nations, such as Germany, are also sending additional military personnel to help train and advise Somali government forces.

Al Shabaab remains a significant threat however. The group carried out a bombing in Moghadishu at the end of February that killed twelve people and wounded numerous others near the headquarters of the country’s intelligence service. The fluidity of Somalia’s clan-based political scene is also a significant issue. The UN recently decided to maintain a partial arms embargo against the country after reports that arms shipments were being diverted to Al Shabaab linked groups. It was not clear, however, whether or not the government was simply trying to sway local warlords to their side.

A recent work published by Special Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University on Somalia and the Al Shabaab insurgency noted that “Somalis are highly pragmatic people, prepared to switch allegiances if it gains them an advantage.” The authors suggest that “Trying to play politics within this unbelievably complex world..will only lead to outsiders being badly manipulated and inadvertently making enemies.”

UN Concerns About Somalia Weapons Purchases as Bomb Explodes in Capital

Yesterday, six people were killed in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu after a car bomb exploded.  Three Somali soldiers were killed in the attack.  The attack, near the city’s airport, appeared to target a United Nations convoy. The militant group Al Shabaab, linked to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013. Note that the green areas are simply listed as “pro-government,” indicating that much of this territory is likely controlled by warlords and their militias.

The bomb came as Reuters reported that it had obtained a confidential UN report regarding diversion of arms from official purchases by Somalia’s central government.  The report comes after the decision was made to ease the arms embargo against the country last March, in an attempt to improve its ability to fight Al Shabaab.

However, the report suggests that some of the arms shipments were diverted to various militias, including those aligned with Al Shabaab.  This serves to reinforce existing concerns about the strength of the central government in Somalia’s complex, clan-based social structure.

For instance, while some diversions could be traced to Al Shabaab-linked militias, the reason behind the diversions seemed to be more linked to clan loyalties.  The report mentioned the planning of arms deliveries to “Al Shabaab leader Sheikh Yusuf Isse,” who is a member of the Abgaal clan.  Somalia’s current president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is also a member of the Abgaal clan, as are many of his advisors.

President Mohamud had called on the UN to extend the easing of restrictions just last month.  According to Reuters, the new UN report recommends either restoring the full embargo or otherwise improving mechanisms to track arms shipments.

It is quite possible that President Mohamud could have been attempting to sway Sheikh Isse to switch sides with the deliveries.  Somalia’s central government relies heavily on warlords only nominally under its control to provide security in much of the country.  Other countries, like Kenya and the United States, have also been reportedly supporting such groups in an attempt to prevent terrorists from gaining a foothold there.

These parallel forces remain a significant impediment to the credibility of the central government, but are also critical in many ways to the providing of basic security in many places.  UN operations in the country in the 1990s were plagued by the same problems, as the UN struggled to find ways to disarm and demobilize militias, while at the same time finding it necessary to work with them to protect the distribution of vital humanitarian aid.  Finding a lasting solution to this ongoing problem will likely be critical to the establishment of a functional Somali state.

Kenya to Withdraw Troop’s from Somalia’s Kismayo

It was reported today that Kenya plans to reduce its presence in the Somali port city of Kismayo in the country’s south.  About two hundred Kenyan personnel will remain, but the bulk of the peacekeeping duties there will be taken over by forces from Burundi and Sierra Leon.  All three countries are providers of forces to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013. Note that Kismayo and other areas in the country’s south are only described as “pro-government.”

The decision to withdraw the troops comes in response to complaints from Somali authorities that they were hindering attempts to assert central government control.  The ability of the central government to effectively assert its authority continues to be a serious issue.  Currently the top third of the country consists of semi-autonomous regions of Puntland and Somliland, which have had a complicated relationship with central government authority.  In 2011, warlords in the south declared another semi-autonomous region, Jubaland, with its Kismayo as its defacto capital.  The nominally supportive of the central government, the warlords in control of Jubaland are backed by Kenya and there has been the suggestion that Jubaland is effectively a buffer state against the spillover of violence from the AMISOM campaign against the Al Shabaab militant group.

Semi-autonomous regions are not the only problems the United Nations-backed Somali government has been having with regards to asserting their authority.  Today, the UN’s top envoy in Somalia voiced concern about rising tensions at a federal state-building conference in the city of Baidoa.  The conference is intended to help the process of simply establishing a federal state in the area.  Much of Somalia remains under the control of loosely aligned warlords with backing from various regional actors like Kenya and Ethiopia, and international entities, like the US Central Intelligence Agency.  The US recently deployed military advisors to work on training the central government’s actual security forces.  The US has also worked on training forces for deployment in support of AMISOM and has also launched targeted strikes against Al Shabaab leadership figures, including one just this week.  Given all this, the UN has been pushing recently for a new and cohesive strategy to support Somali peace and security and the development of its institutions.

US Sends Military Advisors to Somalia

The Washington Post reported today that this past October, the US military deployed advisory personnel to Somalia to assist in the development of the national security forces and coordinate with African peacekeepers currently in the country.  This represents a logical expansion of the US effort with regards to Somalia.  The United States already provides significant assistance to African forces deploying in support of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) as part of the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program and others.  ACOTA is managed by the US Department of State with help from the Department of Defense.

However, the deployment is notable given the stand-off approach the US has favored following participation in UN peacekeeping operations in the country in the early 1990s.  The US experience in Somalia was decidedly negative, even beyond the relatively well known “Black Hawk Down” incident in October 1993. Since then, the US has preferred to use airstrikes, including strikes by AC-130 gunships and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as raids by special operations forces.  In the last decade or so, unmanned aerial vehicles operating over Somalia have said to have been based in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  This past October saw both a special operations raid, which was aborted, and a drone strike, both directed at the terrorist group Al-Shabaab.  In addition, it has been reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency has been funding nominally pro-government warlords and pursuing other activities to help in this effort.

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013.

The two successive UN missions provided results that were themselves inconclusive at best and did not dramatically improve the landscape for the Somali people.  Many of the same issues that complicated those missions in the 1990s remain factors for operations today as Ethiopian and Kenyan forces have learned in the last decade.  While Ethiopian troops have long since withdrawn from the country, Kenya remains one of the primary contributors to AMISOM.  There have also been reports of Kenyan support for warlords in a semi-autonomous region in the south of the country, called Jubaland.

Though Somali government and international forces had significant success against Al-Shabaab between 2012 and 2013, the group experienced a certain resurgence in the past year.  As a result violence and international attention have again shifted to the country.  In November, the UN authorized a significant expansion of the AMISOM force, which operates under a UN mandate.  AMISOM also began planning a new offensive against Al-Shabaab and just today  Kenya announced that it had conducted an airstrike against militants near the tri-border area between Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.  It is likely that any new effort against Al-Shabaab in Somalia is benefiting at least in some part from US supplied intelligence, which is likely one of the main reasons for establishing a formal US military presence on the ground in the country.

Top UN Official in Somalia Calls for Comprehensive Approach to Terrorism

In a videoconference with the United Nations Security Council today, Special Representative of the Secretary-General Nicholas Kay, the top UN official in Somalia, called for a “comprehensive political, military and development approach is needed to tackle terrorism in the country.”  Kay added that while challenges remain, Somali’s fledgling institutions had survived a number of crises in the past months suggesting to him that “the dawn of a new era is abundantly evident.”

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013. This map does not show the semi-autonomous region Jubaland centered in Kismayo in the country’s south, instead lumping it in with “pro-government” territory.

Still, according to the UN news piece linked to above, the priority outlined for the country remains the establishment of a “new government,” in spite of the work having been done by the various Somali administrations and the international community in the last decade.  This is especially difficult at moment as the majority of the country is broken into a loose confederation, with established power structures separate from the country’s recognized government running most of the northern part of the country.  The regions of Somaliland and Puntland continue to work hard to maintain their largely independent status.  In the country’s south, the semi-autonomous region of Jubaland also has a complex relationship with the central government.

In the meantime, Islamist militants in the country belonging to Al Shabaab, a group claiming to have connections with Al Qaeda, have continued to exploit the lack of coherent government control.  There have been reports of a resurgence in the group’s numbers, which had suffered significant losses to African-led forces and US strikes in the last few years.  More recently, reporting suggested, unsurprisingly, that the Al Shabaab had helped secure income by accepting payoffs from aid agencies.  This would be in keeping with experiences humanitarian groups have previously had in the country.  One of the possible origins of the word “technical” is said to come from UN payoffs to militants in the country to either provide security for or to otherwise ignore aid convoys in the 1990s, which were said to have been labeled as “technical expenses” in budget documents.  The term “technical” is now a colloquialism for a small truck or car of non-military origin with a mounted weapon or weapons used by militants, such as the seemingly omnipresent Toyota Hilux pickup truck.  A new campaign against Al Shabaab is reportedly part of the comprehensive approach suggested by Kay.  This would no doubt be an important step in preparing for credible elections, currently scheduled for 2016.

UN Authorizes Boost for AU Force in Somalia

The United Nations Security Council today authorized a boost for the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Somalia, the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), of over 4,000 troops, from 17,731 to a maximum of 22,126 uniformed personnel.  The resolution, adopted unanimously, also expanded the force’s logistical package and extended its mandate until October 31st, 2014.

Map released by AFRICOM in its 2013 posture statement showing governance in Somalia in 2012 and 2013. One can see the decline in areas reported to be under Al-Shabaab control.

The UN Security Council made clear that the increase was temporary, in order to give AMISOM the capability to maintain basic security and respond to the evolving threat from Al-Shabaab insurgents.  This was said to be part of a larger exit strategy for the international force and after eighteen to twenty-four months it was hoped that a drawdown of the force could begin.  The UN Security Council also called for increased cooperation between the UN, AU, and the Federal Government of Somalia.  To this end, the UN established its own Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) in June.  In addition to bolstering the AMISOM force, recently Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the intention to deploy a static guard unit to protect UNSOM facilities.

Operations against Al-Shabaab conducted both by AMISOM, as well as other countries like the US, have steadily increased and the influence of the group has declined.  The US launched a raid against the group during the night of 5-6 October and there was a reported drone strike against a senior leadership figure on October 28th.  However, a significant amount of southern Somalia remains disputed and central government control is often exercised through largely independent political actors.  The northern regions of the country remain largely in the hands of the autonomous governments in the Somaliland and Puntland regions.   In May, nominally pro-government warlords reportedly funded by Kenya claimed to have established a new state, Jubaland, centered around the port city of Kismayo,  and promptly began fighting with each other for control of it.  It remains to be seen whether the Somalia authorities will be able to effectively govern in the absence of international forces.

Terrorism Arrests and Charges in Mali and Kenya

Reports are coming out today that suspects have been detained or charged in Mali over the killing of RFI journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, and in Kenya relating to the Westgate shopping center attack.

France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who described the journalists’ killings as “cold and calculated assassinations,” declined to comment on whether suspects had been arrested, but reports by AFP and AP indicate that some number of individuals had been detained.  The arrests were reportedly made by French forces operating in the country and the suspects were transferred from the Kidal area, which remains disputed and a key element of peace negotiations between the government and Tuareg militants, to Gao, which is more firmly under government control.

Meanwhile, Kenya authorities have charged four men in connection with the Westgate shopping center attack.  Kenyan officials named them as Mohammed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah, Adnan Ibrahim, and Hussein Hassan and said that they were foreign nationals.  Their nationalities were not disclosed, but it is believed that they are ethnic Somalis.  One of the possible reasons that Kenyan authorities may not have disclosed the nationalities is that American citizens or permanent residents may be among them.  Recruiting by Al-Shabaab among the Somali diaspora in the United States has become a more pressing concern and reporting about the Westgate incident as it was happening suggested that Americans could have been among the attackers.

AMISOM Destroys Al-Shabaab Camp

An official with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) told Voice of America’s Somali Service yesterday that the AU force had launched an attack on training camp used by the Al Qaeda-linked militant organization Al-Shabaab Somalia’s Dinsoor region in the south of the country.

The Kenyan Defense Ministry said that its contingent specifically was responsible for the attack, which it said consisted of an airstrike that “completely destroyed” the camp.  It was estimated that over three hundred recruits were in the camp at the time of the attack and that many of them had been killed.

The Kenyan Defense Ministry indicated that militants responsible for the attack on the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi in September had been directly linked to the camp.  The attack followed a strike in the town of Jilib on Monday, believed to have been a US strike involving an unmanned aerial vehicle.  This strike was reported to have killed Ibrahim Ali Abdi, said to be the mastermind behind Al-Shabaab’s suicide missions.  The US also provides considerable training and material support for AU forces deploying to Somalia as part of AMISOM through the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, which is led and funded by the US Department of State.