United States intervention in Somalia

Uncommon card · No. 182871

Since the mid-2000s, the United States has provided military support to the Ethiopian National Defence Force, African Union troops, the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its successor, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), in their conflicts with Somali Islamist non-state actors. U.S. military involvement in Somalia dates back to the 1990s with the UNITAF and UNOSOM II operations. With the global war on terror in the early 2000s, renewed U.S. military action was framed as counterterrorism. Successive administrations under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have conducted airstrikes, special forces missions, intelligence operations, and training programs against Islamist groups in the country. In the early 2000s, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) emerged as a major political and military force, becoming the de facto government over much of southern Somalia by mid-2006 after defeating a CIA-backed coalition of warlords. The U.S. backed the Ethiopian...

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