America Bombing Somalia at Near-Record Pace, but Terrorists Undeterred

America is bombing Somalia at a near-record pace this year in an ongoing but unsuccessful campaign to root out terrorist groups, according to a range of analysts.An airstrike hit al-Shabaab fighters earlier this month near Jamaame, a farming town in southern Somalia about 25 miles northeast of the port city of Kismayo, U.S. Africa Command disclosed the next day, in a brief statement. By the command’s count it was the 91st American strike in Somalia this year.No year before 2025 came close to that number. The previous record for American strikes in Somalia in a single year was 63, set in 2019, during President Trump’s first term. President Biden ordered 51 strikes in Somalia over four years, and President Obama ordered 48 over eight, according to a Washington think tank that tracks the air war. Last year the total hit 124.The bombing has picked up as American troops leave the area. The last American service member left Baledogle Military Airfield, about 60 miles northwest of Mogadishu, its counterterrorism hub for more than a decade.The air campaign, however, is the latest front in a costly quarter-century effort. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimated in 2021 that America had spent about $355 billion on counterterror operations outside the Afghanistan and Iraq-Syria war zones, which includes Africa.Jihadist violence across the continent has climbed steeply over those same years. In 2002 and 2003, the State Department counted 23 casualties from terrorist attacks, across the entire continent. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, tallied 23,322 deaths linked to militant Islamist groups in 2023 alone, an increase of 101,300 percent. The count rose again to 23,968 last year, 24 percent higher than in 2024. An August update found the annual toll had topped 20,000 for the fourth year running.Washington has rarely been pressed on what a quarter century of spending and a record air campaign have bought.“It hasn’t worked because it does not address the root causes of terrorism in the region, which are government corruption, poor governance, and food insecurity,” a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, Will Walldorf, tells The New York Sun.Bigger, Richer and Flying DronesA June assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies ranked al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s Somali branch, as Africa’s most capable terrorist group. It also found African affiliates using drones and artificial intelligence. In Somalia, the Africa Center counted a record 8,813 deaths linked to al-Shabaab and the Islamic State last year, a 93 percent jump over 2024.The Somali group now operates less like a guerrilla band and more like a shadow government.“Al-Shabaab are a greater threat than IS-Somalia: larger, more strategically astute, and on a sound financial footing. They provide services in areas they control and effectively levy taxation,” a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former British diplomat, Edmund Fitton-Brown, tells the Sun. “They can afford to pay new recruits; hence, they can always replace fallen fighters.”Most of that money comes from ordinary Somalis. The Africa Center estimates that al-Shabaab takes in up to $200 million a year. The bulk comes from extortion and “taxes” imposed on nearly every sector of Somalia’s economy, from road checkpoints to property, often in regions where the group has no permanent presence. Humanitarian relief gets skimmed, too.“They also extort humanitarian aid, something made easier by the UN’s humanitarian carve-out, which has been in force in Somalia longer than in other, analogous arenas, and which means paying for access and protection from al-Shabaab is not punishable under the sanctions regimes,” Mr. Fitton-Brown says.The regional problem isn’t limited to Somalia. In the Sahel, no government has come closer to collapse than Mali’s. In April, JNIM, al-Qaeda’s West African affiliate, joined Tuareg separatists in the largest coordinated assault on the country in more than a decade. The attack killed Defense Minister Sadio Camara, and the jihadists then moved to blockade the capital, Bamako. In July, the alliance ambushed a convoy of Malian troops and Russian paramilitaries in the north, killing at least 50 soldiers. In September, JNIM killed more than 100 soldiers in one attack on the central town of Dioura.Security has worsened under each of the juntas that seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and traded Western partners for Russian mercenaries, a swap one analyst says backfired.“In several cases, the brutal manner with which Russian mercenaries conducted their operations has aided the growth of terrorist networks as these terrorist networks could present themselves as protectors of the civilian population,” the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, Hans-Jakob Schindler, tells the Sun.The Trump administration has courted the junta regardless. In February, Washington lifted sanctions on General Camara and other officials tied to Russian mercenaries while it negotiated the return of American surveillance drones to Malian skies. By July, officials were weighing strikes on JNIM.Fewer Troops, Less Aid, More StrikesAmerica’s military footprint in Africa, for its part, has shrunk by about 75 percent over the past decade. The head of Africa Command, General Dagvin Anderson, told lawmakers in May that the reduction had left “an intelligence black hole.”Much of that retreat was not Washington’s choice. In 2024, Niger’s junta expelled about 1,000 American troops from a $110 million drone base, and Chad demanded Americans leave one of their bases. The rest reflects Pentagon priorities. Africa Command gets less than a tenth of one percent of the defense budget, General Anderson says, and his stated aim is for African partners to take the lead. Analysts say bombs alone cannot take and hold ground.“The U.S. airstrike plays a vital role in the fight against Al Shabaab only when paired with active ground operations. Most airstrike targets are positions and bases in Al Shabaab strongholds where the Somali security forces have never conducted a ground offensive,” a Somalia analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, or ACLED, Mohamed Daud, tells the Sun.In other words, many of the bombs fall on ground no Somali soldier is poised to retake. The strikes kill fighters and commanders, yet the territory stays in al-Shabaab’s hands.“No, the strikes have not weakened al-Shabaab at all. The Somali government made gains against the group in 2022–23, but those gains have been erased in the last two years,” Mr. Walldorf says.Civilian programs fared worse. Dismantling the United States Agency for International Development wiped out more than 90 percent of foreign aid contracts, roughly $60 billion. A study published in May in Science found a significant and sustained rise in conflict across the African regions most dependent on the agency.The cuts have reached the American-trained troops doing the fighting.“Somali elite from the Danab brigade, trained and supported by the US, have seen their operation against Al Shabaab drop due to the recent aid cuts, which have left them facing a lack of salaries, allowances, and food rations,” Mr. Daud explains.Hunger, meanwhile, hands the militants a recruiting pitch.“If you have large swaths of the population with limited economic opportunity, and thus unable to feed themselves, and no remediation, these jihadist groups, who have systems for providing food, financial assistance, and other forms of material support, become significantly more alluring, incentivizing cooperation with them,” an analyst at the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, or TRAC, Liam Carnes-Douglas, tells the Sun.Washington’s other levers have weakened, too.“While some of the programming from USAID has shifted to various State Department agencies and partners, there is an overall decline in American soft power options at the disposal of the Trump administration after the cuts by DOGE,” the senior Africa analyst at ACLED, Ladd Serwat, tells the Sun.A War Few Americans SeeThe Trump administration’s National Security Strategy mentions Somalia only in passing, as part of a potential regional clash with Ethiopia and Eritrea, and says nothing of the air war. Early last year, Africa Command stopped putting casualty estimates and initial civilian-harm assessments in its strike announcements.When the change came, a command spokesman described it as a pause “as the new administration settles in.” By spring, officials had settled on another rationale, operational security. The cost of that secrecy came into view in June, when an investigation found American strikes near Jamaame in November 2025 had killed at least 12 civilians, eight of them children. Africa Command, however, disputes the findings.In April 2025, Washington also rejected a plan to fund the African Union force fighting al-Shabaab, largely through United Nations dues. American officials argued the arrangement lacked accountability, and would have put nearly 90 percent of the mission’s costs on assessed contributions, of which America pays the largest share. Now the countries supplying its troops want a phased exit ahead of the mission’s December renewal vote.What comes next may be harder still. The United Nations projects sub-Saharan Africa’s population will grow from about 1.3 billion today to 2.1 billion by 2050, with Somalia, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo among the fastest-growing countries on earth. Half of all Africans are about 19 or younger.Mr. Fitton-Brown sees harder years ahead.“But the demographics of Africa are alarming, hinting at future competition for scarce resources, more frequent famines, conflict, and desperation to emigrate,” he adds. “Counter terrorism will never be easy against that backdrop.”

America Bombing Somalia at Near-Record Pace, but Terrorists Undeterred

America Bombing Somalia at Near-Record Pace, but Terrorists Undeterred

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