All of the roughly 700 US troops currently in Somalia to fight terrorist group al-Shabaab are being sent elsewhere, many to Kenya.
The Trump administration will pull virtually all of the US’s roughly 700 troops in Somalia out of the country just five days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. The withdrawal, announced Friday by the Pentagon, ostensibly marks the latest attempt by President Donald Trump to scale back US presence overseas in what he’s described as costly and ineffective military operations across regions like the Middle East. Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller announced in November that the US plans to reduce US troops from 4,500 to 2,500 in Afghanistan and from 3,000 to 2,500 in Iraq. But the strategy shift in Somalia appears to be something different. Rather than a case of troops being brought home, many of the forces will be repositioned to neighboring Kenya, according to a Defense Department official, although it’s unclear so far what percentage of the Somali-based troops will be restationed there. “As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa,” the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday. “However, the remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighboring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces.”What the US was doing in Somalia The US forces stationed in Somalia were largely tasked with counterterrorism missions, with a particular focus on fighting the presence of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group. And US troops have also worked on training Somali forces to conduct raids and capture al-Shabaab leaders.
