2019 saw record U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. Why is al-Shabab surging?

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NAIROBI — Just as soon as the U.S. military closed out a year in which it struck al-Shabab militants more times than ever — at a pace of just over one airstrike per week — the Somali militant group carried out its most brazen and successful attack on U.S. forces in its history, killing one soldier and two private contractors, and destroying six aircraft at an airstrip in Kenya.

It was symbolic of the greater U.S. effort against al-Shabab: Since the Trump administration loosened rules of engagement in Somalia in March 2017, leading to a more aggressive use of airstrikes, the group has staged nearly 900 attacks on civilians alone, not counting hundreds more against U.S., Somali, Kenyan and other armed forces.

“The rate of al-Shabab’s attacks, at least against civilians, is higher now than before,” said Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a former national security adviser to the Somali president who took part in discussions with Pentagon officials as they weighed changing their rules of engagement in 2017.

Nearly 2,000 Somali civilians have probably been killed by al-Shabab since that change, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, a nonprofit research group that aggregates reports of violence. Al-Shabab continues to control almost the entirety of rural southern and central Somalia, while staging such regular attacks on the capital, Mogadishu, where residents know any trip into the city center could be their last.

Al-Shabab is not at its strongest point. In 2011, before a 20,000-strong African Union force intervened, and before the United States ramped up its airstrikes, al-Shabab controlled every city in southern Somalia and appeared on the verge of taking Mogadishu. The group’s goal is still the same, however: to chase away, or at least outlast, foreign troops in Somalia, clearing the way for a broader takeover in which it could impose a strict version of Islamic law.

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SOURCE: The Washington Post 

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