Far-left Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is apoplectic over President Donald Trump freezing all foreign funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Speaking at a press conference outside USAID’s headquarters in Washington, she said that the U.S. international aid agency’s “essential” programming kept her family fed and safe when they lived in a Dabaab refugee camp for four years at the outbreak of the Somali civil war. (From there, the U.S. granted Omar refugee status and ultimately naturalized citizenship, a process which involved Omar taking an oath renouncing all allegiances.)
Omar, the first Somali American congresswoman, has a record of advancing a Somalia First agenda while in office, seeming to view her job in Congress as representing the interests of her home country. “While I am in Congress, no one will take Somalia’s sea,” Omar once declared in Somali, according to an English translation. “The lady you sent to Congress is on this, and she is as cognizant of this interest as you are.” Omar, who was addressing her Somali American constituents in response to a dispute over Somalia’s waters, reportedly said, “The U.S. government will do what we ask it to do. We should have this confidence in ourselves as Somalis.”
So it’s no wonder why she went ballistic about USAID’s funding freezing. Through USAID, the United States is the single largest donor of humanitarian aid in Somalia. Since fiscal year 2022, USAID has sent Somalia massive sums of taxpayer money, nearly $2.3 billion to date, including direct cash transfers to Somali families in need, who receive monthly payments and vouchers for a period of time.
As recently as December, USAID dispensed another $29 million to help feed 7 million Somalis facing food insecurity. The latest USAID funding came as part of two five-year programs aimed at assisting 880,000 households in south central Somalia.
In FY 2022 alone, the U.S. poured $1.3 billion of assistance into Somalia, four times greater than the contributions of all other countries combined and accounting for more than 80 percent of the World Food Program’s emergency operations in the Horn of Africa. That year, USAID and the U.S. State Department gave $275 million in “other assistance,” a majority of it military aid for Somali and African Union (AU) forces, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Also in 2022, President Joe Biden approved the deployment of U.S. troops there to “reestablish a small, persistent U.S. military presence in Somalia,” reversing Trump’s decision to pull some U.S. special forces out. As of July 2023, roughly 450 U.S. military personnel were deployed in Somalia to advise and assist Somali and AU forces. As one of Somalia’s top national security partners, the U.S. has donated weapons and ammunition to the Somalia National Army (SNA). According to the U.S. Embassy in Somalia, in February 2023, two U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes landed at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport carrying 61 tons of AK-47s, heavy machine guns, and ammunition destined for the ground component of the Somali Armed Forces.
However, one of USAID Somalia’s main concerns is tackling the purported threat of climate change in the East African nation.
In the spring of 2024, USAID officials met with Somalia’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change to discuss how to “mitigate the impacts of climate change in Somalia,” which climate alarmists say is the second-most vulnerable country to climate change in the world despite apparently contributing only 0.03 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. Then that September, USAID hosted a summit in Mogadishu that assembled Somalia’s top thinkers to pitch ways to address “climate challenges.”
Accordingly, USAID Somalia has heavily invested in “climate-resilient” farming practices.
In June, USAID announced the launch of TRANSFORM, a $25 million USAID-funded project promoting “climate-smart” agriculture in Somalia and revitalizing the Jowhar Canal’s irrigation infrastructure after it fell into disrepair during the country’s civil war. The program, which teaches Somali farmers to use their land more productively and “sustainably,” involves conflict mitigation, land tenure management, as well as brainstorming durable solutions for displaced populations. “Together, we will foster a brighter future for all Somalis,” said USAID spokesperson Sheri-Nouane Duncan-Jones, the mission’s director.
Some of USAID’s similar initiatives include introducing “climate-tolerant” fodder seeds to Somalia’s terrain, thereby bolstering their livestock-dependent populace against droughts; sponsoring farming schools that have, so far, trained more than 64,000 “climate-smart” Somali farmers on “climate-sensitive” techniques; installing a solar grid in the city of Baidoa; and supplying “clean” cookstoves to help refugees, who are displaced due to droughts or flooding, reduce their environmental impact.
USAID claims that Somalia’s natural disasters like droughts and floods are linked to climate change. To combat the “climate impact” and empower “climate resilience,” USAID’s “safety net” Long-Term Cash and Livelihood Assistance Programme provides immediate relief in impacted areas, focusing specifically on those who previously benefited from emergency cash aid. The primary goal of the program is to disrupt the cycle of Somalis returning to a state of food scarcity after emergency intervention by training them to save money and invest. Approximately 13,300 agro-pastoral households have participated in the USAID-financed program.
USAID also funds “sexual and reproductive health” services for Somali women and girls at medical clinics across the city of Beletweyne.
Since 2016, USAID has additionally focused on helping Somalia reestablish itself as an international exporter of sesame seeds. Once one of the world’s leading exporters of sesame, Somalia lost its competitive edge, with Somali sesame farmers planting poor-quality seeds and lacking adequate training. USAID saw Somalia’s “potential” to return to its former glory. Under the auspices of USAID, experts have trained over 5,740 Somali farmers and set up 75 demonstration plots to test new seeds. This effort was part of a five-year, $74 million USAID program promoting “inclusive economic growth” in Somalia.
In order to restabilize the region, USAID has worked to implement rule of law in Somalia, where Shari’ah law holds high legitimacy. Legislation, which has not been reviewed in decades, is rarely applied, and most court officials have not been trained in Somali law (standardized curriculum doesn’t exist), possess a rudimentary understanding of Somalia’s statutes, and follow customary procedures in practice, a five-year USAID study found. According to federal funding records, between 2007 and 2013, USAID spent $10.8 million on strengthening Somalia’s elections process and legislative systems.