President Trump Is “Bringing the Troops Home” from Somalia

Well, he’s not actually bringing the troops home from Somalia.  What he’s doing is moving almost all of the 700 troops currently in Somalia to Kenya and Djibouti, where they will do pretty much the same thing they are doing now, i.e., counterterrorism missions against al-Shabaah and Islamic State militants in Somalia.  Except they won’t be able to do them as well from Kenya and Djibouti.  But President Trump will be able to claim he got our troops out of Somalia.

While the Trump administration will claim we can still do the same counterterrorism missions, even if we aren’t in Somalia, it’s not true.  First, how is the Somalian government going to feel about us pulling out and then coming back, whenever we want to, to conduct counterterrorism raids in their country?  We need their consent and cooperation to do this.  Will they agree?  Will they cooperate with us as much?

Second, to do counterterrorism right, you need a lot of on-the-ground intelligence.  It’s not just satellite pictures and airplane overflights.  You need to know what’s happening on the ground, where people are, etc.  But why should the Somalians, whether the government or regular people, cooperate with us and give us information so we can target the terrorists, if we’re not going to be there to help protect them when the terrorists come looking for whoever passed on information about them?  Help is a two-way street.  People aren’t going to help us and give us information if we are there one day and gone the next.

If we are leaving Somalia, then we’re saying the counterterrorism missions we have been conducting in Somalia aren’t as important as they used to be.  Just don’t claim we can leave and still do the same job.  We can’t.