Pentagon Research Center Quietly Refuted Austin’s Positive Assessments in Africa
Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the accomplishments of U.S. Africa Command, commending its leaders and personnel for tackling terrorism and making the continent more secure and stable. “Every day, AFRICOM works alongside our friends as full partners — to strengthen bonds, to tackle common threats, and to advance a shared vision of an Africa whose people are safe and prosperous,” he announced at a ceremony honoring the new AFRICOM commander, Gen. Michael Langley.
That very same day, the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, issued a devastating report that directly refuted Austin’s positive assessments. “Militant Islamist group violence in Africa has risen inexorably over the past decade, expanding by 300 percent during this time,” reads the analysis. “Violent events linked to militant Islamist groups have doubled since 2019.”
Austin’s commentary and the Pentagon’s contradictory report come as the Biden administration has ramped up the U.S. war in Somalia, turning the impoverished Horn of Africa nation into one of the prime fronts in the two-decade long war on terror. After a lull in the spring, when AFRICOM conducted no airstrikes in Somalia, President Joe Biden approved a plan to redeploy close to 500 U.S. ground forces there — reversing an eleventh-hour withdrawal of most U.S. troops by then-President Donald Trump in late 2020 — and authorized the targeted killings of about a dozen leaders of the terrorist group al-Shabab.
In June, AFRICOM conducted an airstrike in Somalia, reportedly killing five members of al-Shabab. Just over a month later, AFRICOM announced another attack that killed two militants. In August, AFRICOM conducted at least five airstrikes that reportedly killed 17 “al-Shabaab terrorists.”
“Despite President Biden’s campaign promise to end the forever wars, Somalia remains one of the most active areas in the world for U.S. counterterrorism operations,” said Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and formerly associate general counsel at the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs. “That is a direct result of President Biden’s new policies, which include repositioning hundreds of U.S. forces back to Somalia and, over this summer, ramping up airstrikes. This obviously diverges from the administration’s rhetoric on winding down the U.S. war on terror and, in my opinion, is not helpful absent an internationally coordinated strategy to address conflict drivers, which are mainly political.”
Over the last 15 years, the United States has conducted no fewer than 260 airstrikes and ground raids in Somalia. Under the auspices of the secretive 127e authority — which allows U.S. Special Operations forces to train, arm, and direct local surrogates to carry out missions on behalf of America — the U.S. has also employed no fewer than five proxy forces in Somalia. The U.S. has also spent more than $2.2 billion on security assistance to the Somali military, including its elite Danab Brigade, since 2009. This is in addition to more than $3.2 billion in humanitarian and development assistance provided since 2006.