Some State Department officials have proposed closing the embassy in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, as a precaution after recent gains by Al Shabab militants.
Recent battlefield gains by an Islamist insurgency in Somalia have prompted some State Department officials to propose closing the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu and withdrawing most American personnel as a security precaution, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
But other Trump administration officials, centered in the National Security Council, are worried that shutting the embassy could diminish confidence in Somalia’s central government and inadvertently incite a rapid collapse. Instead, they want to double down on U.S. operations in the war-torn country as it seeks to counter the militant group, Al Shabab, the officials said.
The rival concerns are being fueled by memories of foreign policy debacles like the 2012 attack by Islamist militants who overran the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the abrupt collapse of the Afghan government as American forces withdrew in 2021.
They also underscore the broader dilemma for the Trump administration as it determines its strategy for Somalia, a chaotic and dysfunctional country rived by complex clan dynamics, where the United States has waged a low-intensity counterterrorism war for some two decades with little progress.
The considerations are appearing to pit President Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser, Sebastian Gorka, who has a hawkish approach to using force against militant Islamists, against more isolationist elements of Mr. Trump’s coalition. That group, sick of the “forever wars” that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, does not see a major U.S. interest in Somalia.
Last week, Mr. Gorka convened an interagency meeting at the White House to begin to grapple with an approach, according to officials briefed on its findings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. The meeting is said to have ended without any clear resolution.