Somalia

Will the Somalia Bombing Get a Rise out of Trump?

The media and military haven’t said much. But the U.S. has been quietly stepping up its capabilities in Somalia for months.
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Somali soldiers patrol on the scene of the explosion of a truck bomb in the center of Mogadishu, on October 15, 2017.By MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB/AFP/Getty Images.

The body count continues to climb in Mogadishu after a massive truck bomb exploded Saturday in the capital of Somalia. On Monday morning, the Somalian information minister announced that 276 people had been killed; hours later, Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Amin ambulances, said his service had confirmed 300 people had died. As rescue workers continue to pick through the rubble, the toll is expected to keep rising. Ultimately, the number of fatalities might never be known. The intense heat generated in the blast means the remains of some victims will never be found. Others might have been buried quickly by families.

While the media response in the West was muted, Somalis are grappling with what is likely the single deadliest terror attack in Somalia since the Islamist group al-Shabab began its insurgency in 2007. Sunday, as fires still smoldered at the scene of the bombings, doctors raced to save the wounded. Declaring three days of national mourning, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed donated blood and urged his fellow citizens to follow suit. “Today’s horrific attack proves our enemy would stop nothing to cause our people pain and suffering. Let’s unite against terror,” he wrote on Twitter. “Time to unite and pray together. Terror won’t win.”

So far, no group has claimed responsibility, but the culprits are widely expected to be members of the militant al-Shabab, which often avoids claiming responsibility for attacks that might damage its reputation among the public. It is thought that Saturday’s blast, likely targeting Somalia’s foreign ministry, was substantially larger than expected. After a truck packed with military-standard and homemade explosives accelerated through a barrier and blew up, it ignited a nearby fuel truck, creating a fireball and flattening nearby buildings in an area replete with government offices, restaurants, and kiosks. Two hours later, another blast went off in the Medina part of the city. For many years, al-Shabab has operated among Somalia’s fragile political landscape, which has seen chaos since the central government collapsed 25 years ago. Recently, it has suffered setbacks, but, exploiting the weaknesses of a flailing administration, has retained significant power; on Saturday, it also seized the town of Bariire, 31 miles from Mogadishu.

Although al-Shabab has launched a series of brutal attacks in East Africa, including one on Kenya’s Westgate shopping mall in 2013, it has largely avoided the direct gaze of Western governments, which remain more focused on ISIS and other factions plotting atrocities in the United States and Europe. Earlier this year, however, the organization vowed to escalate attacks after both the Trump administration and Somalia’s recently elected president announced new military efforts against the group. In 1993, America mostly withdrew from Somalia after 19 American soldiers were killed and two helicopters were shot down over Mogadishu.

President Donald Trump has said nothing about Saturday’s horrific attack, despite always making a point of commenting on terror attacks in the West—often even before the details are confirmed. But the U.S. has become more active in the region again in recent years, as the global war on terror has expanded into Africa. In March, Trump designated Somalia an “area of hostilities,” loosened combat regulations that will allow more airstrikes with greater latitude for civilian casualties, and reauthorized deploying regular U.S. forces in Somalia. In April, he authorized a “few dozen” troops to be deployed to Somalia to assist local forces. And in June, U.S. forces carried out their first airstrike against al-Shabab forces, hitting a “command and logistics node” in the southern part of the country, killing eight militants. Saturday’s blasts, then, could alter the paradigms within which al-Shabab operates and also shift the priorities of Trump’s presidency, which, hammering home its “America First” message ahead of the 2018 primaries, repeatedly finds itself having to look beyond its own borders.