Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2014 23:07:15 +0200
The Huge U.S. Counterterrorism Operation You've Probably Never Even Heard
About
The Huffington Post | By <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlotte-alfred/>
Charlotte Alfred
Posted: 09/06/2014 10:41 am
As many headlines around the country focus on President Obama's
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-sending-350-more-military-personnel-to-ir
aq/> moves in Iraq to contain the violence wreaked by Islamist militants,
the news of U.S.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/us-strike-somalia_n_5751658.html>
airstrikes in Somalia this week targeting the leader of the extremist group
al-Shabab may have seemed out of the blue.
Yet the U.S. has quietly been building up a large counterterrorism operation
in Africa in recent years. The tiny African nation Djibouti, which neighbors
Somalia, is home to the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war
zone,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/remote-us-base-at-cor
e-of-secret-operations/2012/10/25/a26a9392-197a-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story
.html> according to The Washington Post. The 500-acre base, called Camp
Lemonnier, has
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/world/africa/us-signs-new-lease-to-keep-s
trategic-military-installation-in-the-horn-of-africa.html> 4,000 U.S.
civilians and military personnel mostly engaged in counterterrorism in East
Africa and Yemen, including a secretive Special Operations task force which
coordinates drone missions. The U.S. is investing
<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp113sJKdk&r_n=hr102.113&dbname
=cp113&&sel=TOC_1112542&> almost $1 billion to expand the base, according to
a congressional report for fiscal year 2014.
Although the U.S. military pulled out of Somalia after
<http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/09/02/us_officials_unsure_if_so
malia_airstrike_killed_top_militant_shabab> two Black Hawk helicopters were
shot down in 1993, counterterrorism operations in the country
<http://www.cfr.org/content/thinktank/Lyman_chapter_Terrorism.pdf> never
stopped. After 9/11, the CIA worked with Somali warlords to hunt down al
Qaeda-linked militants and take them to secret jails -- the so-called
"extraordinary renditions" program -- according to an
<http://www.armytimes.com/article/20111114/NEWS/111140317/Clandestine-Somali
a-missions-yield-AQ-targets> investigation by the Army Times. The U.K.'s
Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented
<http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/22/get-the-data-somalias-hidde
n-war/> up to 20 covert American operations in Somalia since 2001. And in
2011, The Nation's Jeremy Scahill reported that the CIA had recently
<http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia>
established a more permanent base at the airport in Mogadishu to train
Somali intelligence officers.
Over the past year, American operations in the country have started to
emerge from the shadows. Last October, U.S.
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/09/us-raid-al-shabaab-somalia-nav
y-seals> Navy SEALs raided a Somali beach town seeking to capture a senior
commander from the al-Shabab militant group, but were forced to retreat.
That same month,
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/01/u-s-military-advisers-deployed
-to-somalia-first-time-since-blackhawk-down/> U.S. military advisers started
arriving in Mogadishu to set up a longer-term coordination center.
The U.S. military has said that it has
<http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=116696> no more than a
"light footprint" in Africa. But it has a
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/21/map-the-u-s-cu
rrently-has-troops-in-these-african-countries/> string of troops deployed
across the continent, and has been
<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/us-military-africa-mission-pres
ence> rapidly but quietly expanding its operations since the Pentagon
established an Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007. With the secrecy
surrounding
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-int
elligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html>
intelligence operations and
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/29/where_the_drones_are>
drone bases across the world, the full scale of America's footprint in
Africa may remain largely unknown.
LEMONNIER DJIBOUTI
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)