US analysts and counterterrorism officials are playing up the threat posed by Somalia’s al-Shabaab group, saying they are increasingly looking to attack US interests in Africa, and potentially even attack the United States itself.
Officials say the growing threat is a big reason why the US has been carrying out a growing number of drone strikes against Somalia, trying to kill as many plotters as they can. They add that al-Shabaab is trying to get anti-aircraft missiles, which could threaten US aircraft in the area.
Inevitably, though, it must be asked if the US is attacking al-Shabaab more because they’re a bigger threat, or if the group is a bigger threat to the US because the US has been attacking them at growing rates throughout the past couple years.
Africom commander Gen. Stephen Townsend says al-Shabaab is a “very real threat to Somalia, the region, the international community and even the US homeland.” Clearly Africom wants to emphasize that, as most of their other operations are being drawn down, and Somalia seems to be one military engagement that they can continue to escalate.
The US has been hammering away at Somali for 30 years, constant drone assassinations and wild murders of unknown people including women and children, and by proxy invasions from Ethiopia and Kenya.
The US has quite deliberately prevented the emergence of any government in the nation, pretending instead to install a government in a hotel guarded by the US, which governs nothing, not even that hotel.
Of course the only organized groups in that place wish to be threats if they can. Why wouldn’t they? We’ve done everything humanly possible to ensure they think like that.
We could have settled for a not-too-unfriendly government decades ago. Instead, we treated them like subhuman vermin to be killed in wild excess. Now we say they want to be a threat to us, somewhere, somehow? I would assume so.
Finally! What took them so long?
East Africa is reeling from locust swarms; the most devastating in recent history by some accounts. Somalia is particularly bad off.
Translation: Let’s kick’em while they’re down!
Somalia was once a critical node in the Old Silk Road, and has a promising place in the Belt and Road project. China established its first naval base outside China at Djbouti.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-strategic-djibouti-a-microcosm-of-chinas-growing-foothold-in-africa/2019/12/29/a6e664ea-beab-11e9-a8b0-7ed8a0d5dc5d_story.html
Business as usual for the War Machine. Somalia is prime geopolitical real estate.
Yes, it is valuable to remember that the Old Silk Road was not just the camel route across Asia, it was also a sea route to northern Somalia, then down the Nile. That could be much safer, much cheaper, and faster too, depending on the politics in places like Sudan and Oman.
Today, that would be in competition with railroads. Once again, a vital link in such a sea route is a sea terminus. Today though it is likely to be via the Suez Canal, perhaps with a Free Trade Zone just south of the Canal sorting onto SuezMax ships. Look for China to find such a Zone in a place like Djbouti.