Fighting terrorists from afar is not as easy as proponents like to portray it. Without reliable intelligence we risk killing innocents by shooting and risk letting terrorists escape by not shooting.
Since U.S. forces withdrew from Somalia earlier this year, they have been “commuting to work” via aircraft to help train Somali troops and for potential counter terror missions, but without a ground presence there is limited intelligence understanding, the head of U.S. Africa Command told lawmakers. ...
There is still a “limited footprint” of less than 100 troops remaining in Somalia with the U.S. embassy, and other forces are based at locations outside the country, such as Kenya and Djibouti. AFRICOM forces work virtually with partners from these bases, and “then we fly in to conduct training and to advise and assist our partners,” Townsend said. ...
Specifically, limited intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, along with less interaction with Somali forces, means “our understanding of what is happening in Somalia is less now than when we were there on the ground physically located with our partners,” he said.
What did I say about this decision to bug out and fight terrorists from outside Somalia?
Yes. You may recall that I noted that both Trump's decision to pull troops out of Somalia and Biden's decision to require White House approval strikes there would harm our ability to kill jihadis. If The AFRICOM Queen was sailing off the coast, as I wrote about in Military Review, we'd be in a much stronger position.
As I wrote in that post about Trump's decision:
Without American special forces on the ground in Somalia with our local allies, our drone strikes seeking to kill jihadis could actually be counter-productive. People forget that without old fashioned meat sack sources on the ground, the high tech strike systems could just be a means to kill the wrong people for the wrong people.
It is only April and already we have a "limited intelligence understanding" of the environment.
