Several senators want to send U.S. troops back into Somalia to fight al-Shabaab terrorists, about 16 months after former President Donald Trump pulled them out of the country and put them elsewhere in Africa.
The push came at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday with Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of U.S. Africa Command.
Townsend told senators he has given his chain of command advice on whether to redeploy to Somalia. While he would not specify his recommendation in a public setting, Townsend made clear he does not think the current arrangement of what he described as “commuting” to Somalia is working.
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“It is not effective, it's not efficient, and it puts our troops at greater risk,” he said.
The comments were blunter than what Townsend told the committee a year ago, when he warned that positioning troops outside Somalia “introduced new layers of complexity and risk” to the U.S. mission there.
Tuesday's hearing came after The Wall Street Journal reported last week that U.S. military officials have asked President Joe Biden to station several hundred troops in Somalia to stem growing threats from al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliate.
During the waning days of Trump's presidency, he pulled all of the 700 or so U.S. special operators who were in Somalia out.
Trump framed the move as part of his efforts to end…
