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In a recent video released by the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared, “The inspiration of America to the rest of the world has been extraordinary.” The video, which commemorates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, hails the legacy of the framers while a voiceover praises the generations who “dedicated themselves to building a more peaceful and prosperous world.”

Just weeks before the video was released, the U.S. carried out its most intensive recent bombing campaign in Somalia, launching a blitz of airstrikes in a five-day operation in the port city of Kismayo — a contradiction that seems lost on this administration. On July 5, an additional airstrike was carried out in the Juba Valley. AFRICOM, the U.S. military command that oversees security operations across Africa, has released no information about casualties or the identities of those killed, leaving the human toll of the campaign unknown. In 2025, AFRICOM spokesperson Lt. Col. Doug Halleaux confirmed it would no longer release specific details about airstrikes to ensure “operations security.”

The first Trump presidency ended with 219 U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, the highest recorded total across previous administrations. His current administration is already on track to surpass that number at more than 207. Kismayo and the surrounding region are frequent AFRICOM targets. Last year, a series of airstrikes in Jamaame, a neighboring town, killed at least 12 people, including eight children and a pregnant woman, according to an investigation by The Guardian. The bombing was the deadliest U.S. airstrike for civilians in East Africa in recent history.

As the intensity of U.S. operations grows, the conflict has become increasingly opaque, making independent monitoring by journalists and human rights groups nearly impossible. Mohamed Gabobe, a Mogadishu-based journalist who investigated the Jamaame massacre, describes a widening gap between events on the ground and the State Department’s official account. “The narrative has been hijacked,” he told Truthout. The authority to exercise military power confers the authority to shape public record, allowing the U.S. narrative to go “unopposed and unchallenged.” The result is a conflict that persists with little scrutiny or oversight — effectively a shadow war, a concept that can be traced back to the Cold War, when superpowers fought through covert operations and proxy conflicts rather than direct confrontation on the battlefield.

In the decades that followed, the so-called global “war on terror” transformed the Cold War doctrine of a war without fronts into an enduring counterterrorism framework: sustained, low-visibility military engagement with no clear endpoint or objective, transforming conflict from a discrete event into a permanent condition. In an interview with Truthout, Samar Al-Bulushi, a professor of anthropology at University of California, Irvine, described this post-9/11 security landscape as one of both “continuity and change.” The U.S. has long sought to “cultivate partners” by training foreign militaries that could “serve as extensions of U.S. power.” In Somalia, this has allowed the U.S. government to conduct military operations for over two decades without a formal declaration of war.

Trump Perpetuates Undeclared War in Somalia With Renewed Airstrikes

The Making of a Shadow War

U.S. military involvement in Somalia is not new. Following the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, the United States joined a UN mission to secure the delivery of humanitarian aid amid civil war, drought, and famine. The operation evolved into a nation-building campaign to capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a military officer, whose forces played a key role in overthrowing Siad Barre’s government.

AFRICOM, the U.S. military command that oversees security operations across Africa, has released no information about casualties or the identities of those........

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