Friday, October 26, 2012 by Common Dreams
Remote US Base at Heart of Drone Wars Revealed in New Report
US base has 'crowded the skies over the Horn of Africa' with drones
- Common Dreams staff
Deadly US drone attacks in the Middle East and Northern Africa have
greatly escalated in the past few years, thanks largely in part to a
quickly expanding, yet remote, US base in the Horn of Africa,
according to military documents obtained by the Washington Post.
Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has operated as a central command for US
attacks in the region for ten years, but in the past two years it has
become the pinnacle centerpiece of drone operations in the region,
"the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone," and a
vehicle for the US's expanding war in the region.
A new Washington Post exposé on the base paints a telling picture of
the increasingly deadly scenario.
"Taken together, the previously undisclosed documents show how the
Djibouti-based drone wars sharply escalated early last year after
eight Predators arrived at Lemonnier. The records also chronicle the
Pentagon’s ambitious plan to further intensify drone operations here
in the coming months," the Post reports.
Camp Lemonnier, is home to over 1,666 drone and F-15E Strike Eagle
fighter jet flights per month, doubling that of two years ago,
according to Defense Department contracting documents obtained by the
Post.
In an Aug. 20 letter to Congress from Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton
B. Carter, Carter explains that 16 drones and four fighter jets take
off or land at the Djibouti airfield each day on average. Such flights
are expected to increase.
The Defense Department delivered a master plan to Congress in August
showing expansions of the base over the next quarter-century. Roughly
$1.4 billion in construction projects are now planned, including a
massive housing compound holding up to 1,100 Special Operations
forces.
These documents "point to the central role played by the Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC), which President Obama has repeatedly relied
on to execute the nation’s most sensitive counterterrorism missions,"
the Post reports, and represent the "clearest example" of how the
United States via AFRICOM is "laying the groundwork to carry out these
operations overseas," for years to come.
Dijibouti sits between Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia to
its Southeast, two of the countries facing the most incessant US drone
attacks as of late.
"The drones and other military aircraft have crowded the skies over
the Horn of Africa so much that the risk of an aviation disaster has
soared," the Post reports. Drone accidents have skyrocketed, including
multiple software malfunctions that lead to nearly fatal crashes in
residential areas of Djibouti. Last year, drones were involved in “a
string of near mid-air collisions” with NATO planes off the Horn of
Africa, according to a safety alert discovered by Post reporters.
The base is also home to over 3,000 U.S. troops, civilians and
contractors, including highly secretive "task force" special ops who
plan raids and coordinate drone flights. "Most of the special ops
commandos work incognito, concealing their names even from
conventional troops on the base," the Post reports. Personnel in the
camp collectively refer to themselves as the "East Africa Air
Pirates."
The remote-control drones, however, are flown via satellite by pilots
at the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and Cannon Air Force Base in
New Mexico.
The Post's exposé on the previously obscured destination comes as the
last part on a three part investigative series, showing the Obama
administration's ongoing development of a complex database now known
as the “disposition matrix,” and a classified “playbook,” which maps
out US drone strikes and targeted killing missions for the next
decade.
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Source URL:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/26-8
Received on Sat Oct 27 2012 - 19:32:57 EDT
