US Spent $10B and 42 American Lives Trying to Help SomaliaA fake famine got us into Somalia. Now we can’t seem to get out.January 8, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield In 2024, the Biden administration bragged that the “U.S. government is the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Somalia.”
A year earlier, the Biden administration had spent $1.1 billion on Somalia. And the same was true of the year before. U.S. spending on Somalia had shot up from $103 million under a Republican House to $300 million under Pelosi’s Democrats. By 2017, foreign aid to Somalia had passed the half a billion dollar mark, by 2018, it was over $800 million and by 2020, after Rep. Ilhan Omar joined Congress, our spending on Somalia had passed over $1 billion.
Over the last decade, $9.3 billion was spent on Somalia. Over $10 billion since 9/11. While the spending has dropped in the second Trump administration, another $150 million was allocated for 2025. Not only have we provided humanitarian aid for Somalia’s perennial famines, which like most UN declared famines remain dubious, but “Somalia (is) among the most significant recipients of security aid in sub-Saharan Africa” even though other countries are more troubled.
The skyrocketing spending on Somalia was intimately tied to the growing political power of Somalis who had migrated to America. The origins of America’s disastrous involvement in Somalia which would cost 42 American lives and countless billions of dollars began in Maine.
Sen. George Mitchell of Maine championed intervention to aid Somalis after the United Nations faked a famine, claiming that millions of Somalis were “on the brink of starving to death.” “The worst humanitarian disaster in the world today,” the former director of OFDA, the predecessor to USAID, claimed. There was no actual famine, millions were not starving and any food shortages were limited to a handful of rural areas, not the city of Mogadishu where our soldiers were sent.
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https://www.frontpagemag.com/us-spent-10b-and-42-american-lives-trying-to-help-somalia/
