Somalia violence rises as Trump’s ISIS strategy expands

Somalia violence – A White House counterterrorism push that began with a vowed “kill him” order has coincided with rising deaths in Somalia, where Pentagon-linked figures and aid reports describe a surge tied to al Shabaab and ISIS. While officials celebrate repeated airstrikes

Eight days after Donald Trump took office for a second time, Sebastian Gorka walked into the Oval Office with a counterterrorism team member and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

In front of Trump at the Resolute desk. Gorka said the group laid an intelligence “place mat” describing a man in Somalia. presenting him as an ISIS leader who had killed Americans and was planning more attacks. Gorka recalled telling the president: “Sir. ISIS leader. killed Americans. planning to kill more Americans. ” and adding that the Biden administration had been watching the man for about a year and a half.

Gorka said Trump’s response was immediate. “What do you mean, we’ve been watching him? Kill him!’”

What followed. Gorka described. was operational momentum—one of Trump’s “go box” checkmarks on the operation orders in the Oval Office with a presidential Sharpie marker. then a call arranging the strike from outside the office to Fort Bragg and “elsewhere.” By Gorka’s account. the team went from briefing the target to watching the action on massive televisions in the White House Situation Room in less than 30 hours. with “go time” set for 8:45 in the morning.

He said Waltz arrived two minutes before the launch window. and “60 seconds after” the platform fired. the target “disappears from the earth.” Gorka later repeated the story in a version told during a softball interview with Dean Cain. a MAGA influencer best known for his role in the 1990s TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. ” and again on Breitbart’s Alex Marlow Show and other pro-administration outlets.

After that first strike, Trump posted on social media to boast about it. He wrote: “This morning I ordered precision Military air strikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia. ” adding that the message to ISIS and others would be. “WE WILL FIND YOU. AND WE WILL KILL YOU!”.

Gorka said that line became the motto of his directorate, and he described custom lanyards for his team that read “WWFY & WWKY,” which he called “the most coveted lanyard in the U.S. government.”

In the months since. the administration has repeatedly echoed the motto in official channels and public remarks. from Pentagon social media posts to Trump’s foreword to Gorka’s recently released “Counterterrorism Strategy.” Gorka told Newsmax that since the administration’s first operation on day 11 of this administration—about 15 months ago—it had killed 860 jihadis across the globe. He added that the figure does not include those killed in wars in Iran, Venezuela, or Yemen. Gorka later claimed the lethal-strike total was 815, and the White House did not reply to a request for clarification.

But a central measure of the strategy—its effect on the ground—appears to be worsening in Somalia.

While other conflicts have dominated headlines. Trump’s escalation of the “forever war” in Somalia has surged with little notice. according to the Pentagon and figures cited in an April report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. a Pentagon research institution. The report said Somalia saw “the biggest surge in reported fatalities across all regions. ” and that “the 8. 813 deaths linked to al Shabaab and the Islamic State (ISIS) over the past year represent a 93-percent increase from the previous year.”.

The contradiction is sharpened by competing claims. The War Department statistics described in the reporting indicate attacks and fatalities in Somalia have reached “epic proportions. ” even as the War Department appeared to claim ISIS-Somalia has been annihilated and Trump has said ISIS was wiped out years ago.

Loosened rules of engagement in Trump’s first term also played a role, the reporting says. It states that strikes tripled after Trump relaxed targeting principles. The U.S. conducted 219 declared attacks in Somalia during Trump’s first four years in the White House—more than a 350 percent increase over the eight years of the Obama presidency.

Under a review of Trump-era rules by the Biden administration. the reporting says a requirement for “near certainty” that civilians would “not be injured or killed in the course of operations” was reportedly enforced only if civilians were women and children. while a lower standard was applied to adult men. The reporting quotes retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc. who led Special Operations Command Africa at the time. saying all military-age males were considered legitimate targets if they were observed with suspected al-Shabab members in the group’s territory.

A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that Trump’s directive contributed to an attack in Somalia that killed at least three—and possibly five—civilians. including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter. Mariam Shilow Muse. The mother and child survived the initial strike but were killed by a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. Abdi Dahir Mohamed. one of Luul’s brothers. said: “They know innocent people were killed. but they’ve never told us a reason or apologized. ” adding. “No one has been held accountable.”.

The reporting also lays out a comparison of strike tempo across administrations. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military conducted 51 strikes in Somalia over four years, according to the D.C.-based think tank New America. Last year alone, Trump oversaw 126 attacks, exceeding the previous one-year record of 66 under Trump in 2019. It says Trump had already conducted 64 attacks in Somalia this year and that the total of at least 190 there in his second term includes an attack a top U.S. commander called the “largest airstrike in the history of the world.” The reporting says Trump and Gorka are on pace to eclipse the 219 strikes of his first term in just a year and a half in office.

Gorka, in turn, frames the dispute as a matter of what professionals are allowed to do. He told Dean Cain that the Biden administration’s approach created “soul-crushing” conditions for intelligence and special operations forces. “The morale was so bad. ” he said. describing a targeter on his team working “in the bowels of an intelligence agency. ” tracking “jihadis” for “10 hours a day with headphones watching a screen.” He said officials could see coordinates and ask for action. only to be told “No.”.

Wes Bryant, a special operations joint terminal attack controller who called in thousands of strikes against ISIS, disputed that characterization. He told The Intercept that prolonged monitoring can provide more than the single “whack-a-mole” cycle of killing a visible target. “Often. we gain more by watching senior operatives for extended periods because we can then piece together more of an entirety of an operation or organization. ” Bryant said. “Otherwise. all it becomes is whack-a-mole.” He added that targeting and intelligence collection resemble an undercover law-enforcement operation: collecting evidence and characterizing associates to take down “every piece of it” instead of just “one guy that we found.”.

Bryant was also skeptical of Gorka’s motives, saying: “I’m not sure if he doesn’t know better and just wants to deliver the superfluous talking point to his uneducated far right audience that ‘Trump kills more bad guys’ and is therefore keeping America safer.”

The reporting says The Intercept attempted to interview Gorka through Anna Kelly, the special assistant to the president and White House principal deputy press secretary. Kelly did not reply to the request or to questions about Gorka’s claims.

The resulting picture is stark: a strategy built around speed and repeated lethal action, paired with official assurances about eliminating ISIS—yet Somalia’s death toll, linked to al Shabaab and ISIS, has climbed sharply.

In Trump’s 2024 campaign. he pledged to end foreign wars and measure success “by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly. the wars we never get into.” But the reporting lists military interventions and attacks attributed to the administration in Ecuador. Iran. Iraq. Nigeria. Somalia. Syria. Venezuela. and Yemen. as well as boat attacks in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and CIA operations in Mexico.

Despite claiming to be “the peace president. ” Trump’s second-term strike posture is described as an effort to “kill his way to victory. ” with Gorka saying. “We are bringing down the hammers of hell on our enemies.” Yet the reporting says official statements from the Pentagon. the intelligence community. and the White House demonstrate that lethal strikes have failed.

The reporting notes that ISIS was one of the top threats in Trump’s 2018 counterterrorism strategy. and that Trump said in a 2024 election-night speech. “We defeated ISIS in record time.” It says Trump claimed his first lethal strike of his second term in February 2025 was against “the Senior ISIS Attack Planner … in Somalia. ” and that at his West Point commencement speech three months later he again claimed. “I defeated ISIS in three weeks.”.

That claim is described as being undermined by Africa Command’s ongoing statements in the year since. amid “scores of pronouncements” about attacks targeting “ISIS-Somalia.” It says this month AFRICOM commander Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson admitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria remain a threat to the homeland today. ” and that “ISIS-West Africa and ISIS-Sahel [are] becoming increasingly more collaborative.” The next day. the reporting says Trump undercut his own assertions by announcing on Truth Social that U.S. forces had “eliminate[d] the most active terrorist in the world … Abu-Bilal al-Minuki. ” whom Trump described as “second in command of ISIS globally.”.

The reporting also says Gorka’s praise of Trump continues—he told Cain Trump is the “most incredible commander-in-chief we’ve had of the modern age”—but that the recently unveiled “2026 Counterterrorism Strategy” rebuts Trump’s assertions. The document. the reporting says. lists ISIS as one of the “top five Islamist terror groups” with intent and capabilities to execute “External Operations against the United States. ” and it spotlighted ISIS-Khorasan active in South Asia. It says the National Counterterrorism Center lists additional ISIS threats including ISIS’ network in Bangladesh. ISIS–Central Africa. ISIS-East Asia. ISIS-Libya. ISIS-Mozambique. and ISIS-Sinai.

Still, Gorka continues to defend the approach publicly. On the New York Post podcast “Pod Force One,” he described the “find, fix, finish model” as “peerless,” and he boasted that the U.S. is “crushing it when it comes to jihadis.”

For communities in Somalia, the violence and the death toll do not read like “crushing it.” They read like escalation meeting resistance, and a strategy measured in operations that—by the reported numbers—has not produced the clear endgame the administration has repeatedly projected.

United States Trump administration ISIS Somalia al Shabaab Sebastian Gorka Mike Waltz Africa Center for Strategic Studies strikes counterterrorism strategy