Prelude to a Redeployment

The main reason you can feel, rather than see, the Americans is because you can hear their planes most nights. According to everyone I speak to—Somali officials and humanitarian aid staffers, South African security contractors, British technicians, Kenyan hotel managers, and soldiers—they are the only people who fly in at night; presumably, they’re allowed to do so specially by the Jubaland state government. The president of Jubaland, who everyone calls Madobe, is the former leader of a group at one point aligned with al-Shabaab, the fundamentalist insurgent group the United States is fighting in Somalia and who maintain control over some 70 percent of the southern and central parts of the country. Now, Madobe allegedly has a terrific relationship with the United States. [The] Americans have the best ally in the war on terror in Ahmed Madobe, a former Jubaland official tells me over WhatsApp.

At one point, an official who seems like he would know mentions offhandedly that the United States is purportedly going to build a new base in Jubaland, in an area called Afmadow, about seventy miles west of Kismayo. I get the contact for the mayor of Afmadow, and he tells me, yes, the Americans (that is, white men in military uniform) came less than a year ago. They said they’d be in Afmadow more often. But he tells me he doesn’t know anything about any specific building, and that he hasn’t seen them since.

…

It was months before Biden’s announcement of a redeployment that I heard the Americans coming into Kismayo at night, though. In fact, it was after the AFRICOM Commander, General Stephen J. Townsend, testified to the House Armed Services Committee and said, of returning to Somalia, “I have submitted advice to my chain of command, and my chain of command is still considering that advice, and I would like to give them space to make that decision.”

The planes always sounded like an enormous fan. Sometimes, the noise would start at dinner, but usually the sound came after I’d eaten, when I was back in my container. A friend in Brooklyn asked me why they came at night; they said maybe the Americans were worried about the planes getting shot down. But that’s not realistic. It might have been a factor, but the United Nations and other international organizations know how to land without getting shot down. When they’re coming into Mogadishu, they do a corkscrew spiral, which is fun but overdramatic. No, the Americans came at night because they didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. The sound of the plane (or planes) was annoying, but it’s more distracting knowing something intentionally secretive is happening near you.

I asked a South African security contractor who was working with the Somali special forces, or maybe the Jubaland security forces, to build out another base on the airport about the planes. He chuckled and said, with a heavy Afrikaans accent, they’re bringing in their toys.

The man was with a group of other Afrikaaners, who were all employed by a security firm called Integrated Experts, or something else ingeniously vague. They said they didn’t entirely know which militia they were apparently helping to secure the state of Jubaland and stabilize the nation of Somalia; over the course of weeks, I asked them enough—casually, coyly, and directly—that I believed them. They were here for money, to do what they were told, and to not get in trouble. One of the men used to guard the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria. They had all been in Mozambique, where there’s some sort of insurgency. They were also in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the men had been running around helping to secure places since 2004. One said he expects he’ll end up in Ukraine. He laughed. That’s always how it goes, he said.

…

A few days after my night-time adventure, I mentioned to the translator I’d hired that I was trying to do a story about the new base in Afmadow that the official had mentioned to me. I asked him if he’d heard anything about this quasi-confirmed rumor bluntly—like it was gossip, like I was asking if he’d heard some spicy information. In response, his face fell; he cringed lightly and said something about how he couldn’t believe more was coming.