Somalia welcomes US redeployment to fight Al-Shabaab

Somalia’s newly elected president thanked US Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday for ordering the redeployment of American troops to the Horn of Africa country to combat the Al-Shabaab militant group.

The move contradicts an order issued by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who withdrew nearly all US forces from Somalia in late 2020 as he sought to wind down US military engagements abroad during his final weeks in office.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who won a long-overdue election on Sunday to become Somalia’s president, thanked Biden for sending US troops back to conduct operations against the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists in his country.

“The #US has always been a reliable partner in our quest to stability and fight against terrorism,” the president’s office posted on Twitter on Tuesday.

The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab has been trying to overthrow the central government in Mogadishu for more than a decade, and has staged deadly attacks in neighbouring nations Kenya and Uganda.

The re-established US troop presence would involve fewer than 500 troops engaged in a “small persistent” effort in Somalia, a senior American official told reporters on Monday.

The official said the decision taken by Trump to withdraw US troops from Somalia went against the advice of senior military leaders and since then Al-Shabaab had only grown stronger.

The troops withdrawn from Somalia were rebased in Kenya and Djibouti. The US military command for Africa continued to conduct drone strikes in Somalia against Al-Shabaab targets.

By reinserting US troops, Washington will reduce the risks involved in back-and-forth mobilizations of forces that have been conducting counterterrorism operations inside Somalia.

The move would boost the efficiency and the effectiveness of special operators and allow for uninterrupted training periods with local partners.

Al-Shabaab were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 by an African Union force, but still control swathes of countryside and the capacity to launch deadly attacks on civilian and military targets.

Somalia’s international partners had repeatedly warned that postponing the presidential election would divert attention away from the fight against Al-Shabaab, which earlier this month killed ten Burundian peacekeepers in a high-profile attack.

Mohamud was elected on Sunday in an indirect vote that was over a year late, marred by political infighting that turned violent at times and sowed division in the fragile central government.