Trump Eases Combat Rules in Somalia Intended to Protect Civilians
WASHINGTON — President Trump has relaxed some of the rules for preventing civilian casualties when the American military carries out counterterrorism strikes in Somalia, laying the groundwork for an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa.
The decision, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations, gives commanders at the United States Africa Command greater latitude to carry out offensive airstrikes and raids by ground troops against militants with the Qaeda-linked Islamist group Shabab. That sets the stage for an intensified pace of combat there, while increasing the risk that American forces could kill civilians.
Mr. Trump signed a directive on Wednesday declaring parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” where war-zone targeting rules will apply for at least 180 days, the officials said.
The New York Times
reported the Pentagon’s request for the expanded targeting authority on March 12, and Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the top officer at Africa Command, publicly acknowledged that he was seeking it at a
news conference last Friday.
“It’s very important and very helpful for us to have little more flexibility, a little bit more timeliness, in terms of decision-making process,” General Waldhauser said. “It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.”
In a statement issued several hours after The New York Times first published news of the directive, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged that Mr. Trump had approved the Pentagon’s proposal to expand its targeting authority “to defeat Al Shabab in Somalia” in partnership with African Union and Somali forces.
“The additional support provided by this authority will help deny Al Shabab safe havens from which it could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the region,” he said.
Previously, to carry out an airstrike or ground raid in Somalia, the military was generally required to follow standards that President Barack Obama imposed in 2013 for counterterrorism strikes away from conventional war zones, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those rules, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance, required high-level, interagency vetting of proposed strikes. They also said that the target must pose a threat to Americans and that there must be near-certainty that no civilian bystanders would die.
Under the new guidelines, Africa Command may treat Somalia under less-restrictive battlefield rules: Without interagency vetting, commanders may strike people thought to be Shabab fighters based only on that status, without any reason to think that the individual target poses a particular and specific threat to Americans.
In addition, some civilian bystander deaths would be permitted if deemed necessary and proportionate. Mr. Trump’s decision to exempt much of Somalia from the 2013 rules follows a similar decision he made for parts of Yemen shortly after taking office.
The new directive for Somalia is another example of how the American military is accelerating the ways it carries out combat missions under the Trump administration, reducing constraints on the use of force imposed by the Obama administration.
As the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has recently moved into the city of Mosul,
civilian casualties have spiked. One American strike on March 17
may have killed scores of civilians, and human rights groups have questioned whether the rules of engagement were to blame.
While American commanders say the formal rules of engagement have not changed in Iraq, they acknowledge that the system for calling in airstrikes there has been accelerated. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of United States Central Command, said on Wednesday that the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.
The loosening of the rules in Somalia comes against the backdrop of a broader, continuing Trump administration policy review about whether to scrap the 2013 rules altogether. The decision was described by officials familiar with the new directive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.
