Politics
WASHINGTON
— The United States military said on Sunday that it had carried out a
drone strike in southern Somalia against the Shabab, the Qaeda-linked
insurgent group — apparently the first such strike since President Trump
relaxed targeting rules for counterterrorism operations in that country in March.
The
strike, which the military said targeted a command and logistics
portion of a Shabab camp, came two and a half months after Mr. Trump
cleared the way for offensive strikes in Somalia, a chaotic nation in
the Horn of Africa, without a specific self-defense rationale.
The
military said it believed that the strike, which took place around 2:20
a.m. Eastern time about 185 miles southwest of Mogadishu, the capital,
had killed eight militants. Military officials said the United States
had seen no reports that any civilians were killed.
“The
U.S. conducted this operation in coordination with its regional
partners as a direct response to al-Shabab actions, including recent
attacks on Somali forces,” Dana W. White, the Pentagon’s chief
spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The
attack was carried out by at least one armed Reaper drone flying from a
secretive air base in Djibouti, an American official said. The Reaper
dropped multiple Hellfire missiles on the Shabab camp, which American
military surveillance aircraft had been monitoring for months.
The
official said that more such strikes should be expected now that
American and Somali officials have closely analyzed potential targets
that could be attacked using the new authorities that Mr. Trump
approved.
In
a statement, the United States Africa Command portrayed the camp as
part of a broader Shabab stronghold from which the group has launched
attacks, including operations over the last eight months in which it
overran three African Union bases for peacekeeping soldiers from
Burundi, Kenya and Uganda, and seized military weapons.
“The
terror organization has taken advantage of safe haven,” the Africa
Command statement said. The group, it added, has cemented its control
over southern and central Somalia, used the area to plot and direct
terrorist attacks, stolen humanitarian aid and sheltered other
terrorists.
The
Somali government said in a statement that the Shabab command and
supply hub had been destroyed, a loss that would “ultimately disrupt the
enemy’s ability to conduct new attacks within Somalia.” A government
official said that eight militants had been killed.
The
United States military has been training and advising African Union and
Somali government forces in the country while becoming more directly
involved in its civil war for the past several years. Last month, two
American Marines were wounded and one was killed
while accompanying Somali forces on a raid against Shabab militants,
the first American combat death in Somalia since the 1993 “Black Hawk
Down” battle in Mogadishu.
Toward the end of the Obama administration, the White House signed off on a proposal to deem the Shabab an affiliate of Al Qaeda.
That brought the insurgent group — which sprouted up in 2007 after
Ethiopia, with American backing, invaded Somalia and overthrew an
Islamist council that had briefly taken control of the country — under
the congressional authorization to use military force against the
perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Soon after Mr. Trump took office, the Defense Department proposed a further escalation.
It wanted Mr. Trump to declare parts of Somalia to be an area of active
hostilities, exempting it from the need to obey special targeting
limits, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance, that Mr. Obama imposed in 2013 for counterterrorism strikes outside conventional war zones.
Those
limits included an obligation to receive high-level interagency
approval before carrying out such a strike; a need for the target, and
an individual, to pose a threat to Americans, not just to be part of the
enemy force; and a requirement of near certainty that no civilians
would be killed.
Aspects
of those limits had been eroding in Somalia, because in 2016, the
United States military increasingly invoked an exception for airstrikes
carried out under the rubric of self-defense — including, sometimes, the
defense of Somali government forces even when no American advisers were
under threat.
For instance, in March 2016, American aircraft struck a Shabab training camp, killing around 150 people
who American officials said were newly minted fighters assembled for a
graduation ceremony. Africa Command officials justified the strike,
which they undertook without going through the 2013 process, as a matter
of self-defense, saying they believed the militants intended to attack a
peacekeeping base.
Late this March, Mr. Trump signed off on the Pentagon’s proposal
to exempt much of Somalia from the 2013 limits, clearing the way for
the Pentagon to carry out purely offensive strikes, and without going
through interagency vetting.
Still,
the head of Africa Command, Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, has said that he
is exercising caution in using his new authorities, and that he has
decided to keep the standard of near certainty that there will be no
civilian deaths. A famine in Somalia has prompted many civilians, often
armed, to move around in search of food and water, which has made it
harder to identify militants.
Against that backdrop, months passed without Africa Command carrying out strikes under the new authorities — a surprising forbearance that seemingly came to an end on Sunday.
The
military’s statements about the strike did not invoke a specific
self-defense rationale, instead portraying the operation as part of a
broad strategy to degrade the Shabab’s ability to recruit, train and
plot terrorist attacks.
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