U.S. steps up Somalia war

Troops rotating through region in clandestine fight

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black HawkDown” battle in 1993.

The Somalia campaign, as it is described by U.S. and African officials and international monitors of the Somali conflict, is partly designed to avoid repeating that debacle, which led to the deaths of 18 American soldiers. But it carries enormous risks — including more U.S. casualties, botched airstrikes that kill civilians and the potential for the United States to be drawn even more deeply into a troubled country.

But the Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare that the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria to Libya — despite President Barack Obama’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in war zones.

U.S. officials said the White House had quietly broadened the president’s authority for the use of force in Somalia by allowing airstrikes to protect U.S. and African troops as they combat fighters from al-Shabab, a militant group that has proclaimed allegiance to al-Qaida.

America’s role in Somalia has expanded as al-Shabab has become bolder and more cunning. The group carried out the 2013 attack at the Westgate mall, which killed more than 60 people in Nairobi, Kenya. More recently it has branched into more sophisticated forms of terrorism, including nearly downing a Somali airliner in February with a bomb hidden in a laptop computer.

About 200 to 300 U.S. Special Operations troops work with soldiers from Somalia and other African nations like Kenya and Uganda to carry out more than a half-dozen raids per month, according to senior U.S. military officials. The operations are a combination of ground raids and drone strikes. The Navy’s classified SEALTeam6has been heavily involved in many of these operations.

The Pentagon has acknowledged only a fraction of these operations. The Pentagon has announced 13 ground raids and airstrikes in 2016 — including three operations in September — up from five in 2015, according to data by the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.