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US Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducted an airstrike against al-Shabaab southwest of the city of Bariire in central Somalia last Sunday.
Antiwar keeps a record of operations in Somalia, and reported it was the 58th such bombing since the start of 2025, an uptick of violence that has rarely been reported on in mainstream media.
The Somali Defense Ministry said the operation was carried out with support from “international partners” and that it targeted “fortifications and hideouts used by al-Shabaab militants”.
“From August 1 to August 8, AFRICOM provided air support to government forces and the African Union force, known as AUSSOM, in a battle to retake Bariire,” Antiwar reported. “AFRICOM told Antiwar.com that it launched five airstrikes during the week-long battle”.
Operations against al-Shabaab represent the longest-running conflict the US is currently involved in. While US partners AUSSOM and the Somali army took back Bariire, it was a rare victory in a year where al-Shabaab has seen significant territorial gains. Born as a small insurgency in the wake of the US-sponsored invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in the early 2000s, “the Boys,” as the name translates to, have become one of the most formidable of the African Islamist groups.
On July 28th, al-Shabaab took the “strategically important” town of Maxaas in central Somalia north of Mogadishu with an operation consisting of heavily-armed fighters preceded by car bombs. A mixture of Somali military and militias held the town before retreating to a pre-prepared position beyond the outskirts.
Maxaas is one of several towns and villages captured by the terrorist group this year.
The federally-administered government of Somalia is divided between 5 autonomous regions. Mogadishu recently severed relations with one of these, called Jubaland, after a powerful military leader was re-elected for a third consecutive term as regional leader. Clashes between Jubaland and the central government have created “openings” as Defense Post called them, for al-Shabaab to reverse nearly all the territorial gains made by the federal government between 2022 and 2023.
Previous remote US air wars like the one in Pakistan between 2006 and 2011, Afganistan between 2012 and 2018, and Syria between 2014 and 2019, were documented to have seen extremely high numbers of civilian deaths, collateral damage that Central Command, the CIA, or the Pentagon either kept secret or never bothered to look into at all.
This year in Somalia, AFRICOM has just so happened to determine through its own civilian casualty assessments that no civilians have been harmed in the 58 air strikes. In an explanatory statement, AFRICOM said it handles its own assessments based on “reliable and multi-layered intelligence sources, as well as classified operational reporting,” neither of which the public is privy to, and is why, AFRICOM continued, “Africa Command civilian harm assessment reports occasionally differ from other organizations’ reports”. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: An al-Shabaab military parade. PC: Shahada News Agency.
