For the first time since U.S. troops were pulled out of Somalia following the “Black Hawk Down” incident in 1993, the U.S. military has quietly sent “a small number of trainers and advisers..to the war-ravaged country,” The Washington Post reports.
According to the newspaper, a group of U.S. military personnel has been in the Somali capital of Mogadishu since October, with orders to “advise and coordinate operations with African troops fighting to wrest control of the country from the al-Shabab militia.”
Army Col. Thomas Davis, a spokesman for the Africa Command, confirmed the deployment on Friday, saying the military cell “is now fully operational.”
A U.S. presence has not been absent from the country by any means, as the “CIA has quietly operated a base in Somalia for years and finances Somali security forces, but largely keeps its activities there under wraps,” the Washington Post notes. And the U.S. has conducted numerous drone strikes in the country in the last decade.
However, the move to place active military personnel there marks a new shift in the U.S.’s approach in the region, The Washington Post reports:
The previously undisclosed deployment — of fewer than two dozen troops — reverses two decades of U.S. policy that effectively prohibited military “boots on the ground” in Somalia. Even as Somali pirates and terrorists emerged as the top security threat in the region, successive presidential administrations and the Pentagon shied away from sending troops there for fear of a repeat of the Black Hawk Down debacle.
In recent years, the Obama administration has slowly and cautiously become more directly involved in Somalia.[…]
U.S. intentions to become more involved militarily became apparent last summer, when Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, visited Mogadishu.
Source: Common Dreams
In 1993 they could not achieve with 30,000 Men and all the equipment to invade several countries and so they return in 2014 with a hand full of advisers?
Muuqdisho streets are paved over the blood of US Marines from 1993 when the dead marines were dragged on those streets for days till there was no flesh left on their bones.
They may be wearing suits today but leopards seldom change their spots, let us hope those advisers are not mopped of the same old streets.
The US is admitting of physically present in Mogadishu now, but the truth is CIA and its operations has never left Mogadishu the last 20 years.Who is fooling who here?
I, SUPPORT THE RETURN OF U.S.A MILITARY ADVISERS TO SOUTH SOMALIA TO MAINTAIN PEACE , AND SECURITY IN THIS COUNTRY.THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH SOMALIA HAVE TO REALIZE THIS IS FOR THE INTEREST OF THE COUNTRY. AGAIN I AM WRITING ON THIS COMMENTS, CONDOLENCES TO THE FAMILIES OF THE U.S.A SOLDIERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN MOGADISHU AT THAT TIME.