An Air Force Predator drone in New Mexico in 2010. Photo: Air Force

The Pentagon’s secretive drone and commando base in the Horn of Africa is getting a lot bigger and a lot busier as the U.S. doubles down on its shadowy campaign of air strikes, robot surveillance and Special Operation Forces raids in the terror havens of Yemen and Somalia.

Camp Lemonnier, originally a French colonial outpost in Djibouti, a tiny, impoverished nation just north of Somalia, has been the epicenter of America’s Indian Ocean shadow war since just after 9/11. What was once little more than a run-down compound adjacent to Djibouti city’s single-runway international airport is now a sprawling complex of hangars and air-conditioned buildings housing eight Predator drones and eight F-15E fighter-bombers plus other warplanes, as well as around 300 Special Operations Forces and more than 2,000 other U.S. troops and civilians.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

By air, land and sea the U.S.-backed Kenyan military has liberated the port of Kismayo, the last major stronghold of the Al Shabab militant group in southern Somalia.

Six months after Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, also with American support, recaptured the capital city of Mogadishu from Al Shabab, the insurgent and terror group with ties to Al Qaeda is scattered and discredited. Al Shabab spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamed Rage said the militants were in “tactical retreat.”

What happens next is unclear. Somalia hasn’t possessed a strong central government since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Siad Barre. The current administration, heavily reliant on foreign assistance, is weak and mostly confined to the capital.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

Photo: Flickr user carneasadaburrito

It’s finally happened. I got flamed by Code Pink, the fringe anti-war group famous for … well, wearing pink and being annoying. Toby Blome from Code Pink’s San Francisco operations wrote to scold me for my recent Wired article “Hidden History: America’s Secret Drone War in Africa,” in which I detailed drone operations over Somalia since 2007.

I concluded the article by noting the lack of popular backlash in Somalia against the robot strikes. Blome found that reported fact unacceptable. He wrote:

Is this the sign of a tired reporter, who worked so hard on this story, and failed to think about the deeper meaning of the words you decided to close with?  With drone war so secretive as it is, and few Americans having any idea of the violence that we propagate with these deadly weapons, and the enemies that are created, ten-fold, by their use, I would have hoped that you could have said something more thought provoking and conscientious. … One day this country will reap the whirlwind of the terror that we propagate with drone weapons. I’m hoping that in the future you think more deeply and write more responsibly, so America is awakened before it is too late.

As a reporter on the military beat, you can’t please everyone — not that pleasing anyone is the point. The liberals think you’re a fascist. The conservatives think you’re a hippy. War advocates think you’re a pacifist. Anti-war types like Code Pink think you’re a warmonger.

I’d welcome Blome to take up reporting himself, if he thinks he can do a better job.

Tuareg fighters in Mali. Photo: Flickr user Magharebia.

Mali
There hasn’t been much of a change in the overall situation during the last weeks: the northern half of Mali — an area about the size of France — is occupied by a range of rebel groups. While neighboring states and the international community are deeply concerned over the Islamist policies of some of these groups, the Malian state has proven to be incapable to act, due to a coup d’etat which send the government into a deep crisis.

There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what lies ahead. The regional organization ECOWAS and especially its member Niger would like to send an intervention force to set things straight in the north and south.

But that doesn’t sit well with Mali’s top military brass, who fear that an ECOWAS force in the capital would curtail their influence on the nominally civilian transitional government in place. They would appreciate some support to oust the rebels in the north, though.

Northern neighbor Algeria is largely silent on its objectives, but its clear that an intervention force in North Mali is seen critically in Algiers, as the area is traditionally interpreted as their own sphere of influence there. The Algerians would in any case vehemently oppose any large French involvement, but without French air and logistics support, the ECOWAS troops will have no chance to seriously challenge the seasoned desert fighters of the rebels.

Some governments, like that of Burkina Faso to the south of Mali, are still trying their hand at negotiations. But these face some huge obstacles, as the largest rebel group — Ansar Dine — has strong links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Serious negotiations under these circumstances are unlikely, especially as the Malian government is not the most legitimate either.

Côte d’Ivoire
A series of attacks on police and military posts is shaking the Ivory Coast. Among the targets of the various attackers were a border post, a police station and a military camp in the capital Abidjan. In the latter attack, 10 soldiers died and the assailants made off with “significant” amounts of weaponry.

The government was quick to put the blame on forces loyal to former Pres. Laurent Gbagbo, who was ousted last year by rebel, French and U.N. forces after refusing to step down after an election. Gbagbo himself currently faces trial in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. More than 150 of his allies have been charged in Ivorian courts for war crimes committed during the brief but fierce civil war following the elections.

No supporters of incumbent Pres. Alassane Ouattara are facing charges though, despite ample evidence that both sides committed crimes ranging from extrajudicial killings to mass rape. This extreme form of one-sided justice is widely seen as the main reason for the continuing instability in West Africa’s one-time economic powerhouse.

Democratic Republic of the Congo
The mutiny of Rwandan-supported troops in eastern Congo still shakes the region. In a move which sounded nice in theory, heads of state from the Great Lakes region decided to solve the crisis by sending in a “neutral” force, designed to engage the mutineers and other “negative forces,” as well as securing the borders against arms smuggling.

It all fell apart on a summit in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where the details of this force were supposed to be fleshed out. The main sticking point is the question which countries should contribute the troops. The Congolese government understandably objected to Rwandan soldiers, seen as part of the problem, not of a potential solution. Angolan and South African contributions were in turn turned down by Rwanda, as it sees these states potentially threatening its economic interests in the mineral trade in the region.

The proposal to just enhance the mandate of the U.N. force already in the country met with little love from the U.N. itself, as there is little chance that the main troop contributors to this mission (Pakistan and Uruguay) would like to see their soldiers taking up more active (and dangerous) roles in the conflict than they have anyway.

On the whole, it became clear that the deployment of the force is likely many months away, if it will happen at all. A political solution to the underlying reasons for the larger conflict is still not discussed with any enthusiasm by the actors involved though.

Somalia
The Kenyan army has started its attack against the southern Somali town of Kismayo. This port, the largest south of Mogadishu and a huge price due to the charcoal business running through it, is the last bastion of the Al Shabaab militia, which used to dominate most of Somalia and is aligned with Al Qaeda.

After a ground offensive of African Union troops, among them the Kenyan contingent, Al Shabaab has lost much of its territorial control. It is unlikely though that taking Kismayo will destroy the group. Instead, losing the last large town could speed up its transformation into a classical terrorist/criminal network with substantial economic interests in the real estate market in Kenya and links to other African outlets of Al Qaeda.

The attack also bears a great risk for the civilian population, with many people expecting intense bombardment by land, sea and air forces.

Not all is bad in Somalia though. Security in Mogadishu has greatly improved over the last months and the political process to finally end the decades long civil war is finally making some progress as well.

An MQ-9 Reaper in Iraq in 2008. Photo: Air Force

More secret bases. More and better unmanned warplanes. More frequent and deadly robotic attacks. Some five years after a U.S. Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flew the type’s first mission over lawless Somalia, the shadowy American-led drone campaign in the Horn of Africa is targeting Islamic militants more ruthlessly than ever.

Thanks to media accounts, indirect official statements, fragmentary crash reports and one complaint by a U.N. monitoring group, we can finally begin to define — however vaguely — the scope and scale of the secret African drone war.

The details that follow are in part conjecture, albeit informed conjecture. They outline of just one of America’s ongoing shadow wars — and one possible model for the future U.S. way of war. Along with the counterterrorism campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and the Philippines, the Somalia drone war demonstrates how high-tech U.S. forces can inflict major damage on America’s enemies at relatively low cost … and without most U.S. citizens having any idea it’s even happening.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

A Ugandan soldier in Mogadishu in 2007. Photo: David Axe

In the past four years, the Pentagon and State Department have forged a close, and largely unreported, alliance with the Ugandan military. A force of 120 American advisers based in Uganda provides training, weapons and supplies — $100 million worth since 2011 — and in exchange Ugandan soldiers bear the brunt of the close fighting in Somalia, a stronghold for Islamic militants.

The Ugandans’ “superb” fighting ability “was directly responsible” for driving militants out of Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu this year, according to one American official close to the U.S. train-and-equip program. But there’s a ticking time bomb inside the outwardly strong alliance. Uganda’s escalating crackdown on its gays, lesbians and transgenders has the U.S. indicating that it might just cut off that military aid. “LGBT issues” are a “caveat on U.S. support,” says the official, who spoke to Danger Room on condition of anonymity.

Uganda’s gays, lesbians and transgenders have long faced persecution. Homosexuality has been against the law since Uganda’s colonial days. But twice in recent years hardline legislators have proposed laws that would make homosexuality a capital offense. These so-called “Kill the Gays” bills have drawn harsh criticism from Washington and other governments. The official White House strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa, released this month, specifically prioritizes human rights, including “opposing discrimination based on disability, gender or sexual orientation.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.

U.S. Navy SEAL commandos deployed to the Horn of Africa have refined hostage rescue to a lethal art. But their recent success in retrieving kidnapped Westerners comes at a cost. Every rescue forces Somali criminals and terrorists to change their own tactics. The result is an arms race of sorts as SEALs and kidnappers try to stay ahead of the other. Aid workers, journalists and ship’s crews — the usual targets of Somali ransom plots — are caught in the middle.

Sustained U.S. Special Forces operations in the Horn of Africa date to the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon established a multi-national counter-terrorism force at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti that, over time, expanded to also support operations against Somali pirates and criminal gangs.

In April 2009, pirates hijacked the U.S. merchant vessel Maersk Alabama and kidnapped captain Richard Phillips. Navy SEALs positioned on the deck of the destroyer USS Bainbridge shot and killed three pirates and captured a fourth, freeing Phillips from the lifeboat where he was being held. The rescue drew world attention to the growing capabilities of Navy commando forces in East Africa. The SEALs support, and are supported by, a powerful mix of Navy, Army and Air Force special operators, CIA agents, covert aircraft, armed drones and warships.

Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the SEALs’ rescue skills occurred after the October kidnapping by Somali criminals of American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Thisted, employees of a Danish demining organization working in central Somalia. On Jan. 25, SEALs parachuted from a military cargo plane at night, silently descending on the compound where the deminers were being held. The SEALs killed nine guards and rescued Buchanan and Thisted. U.S. helicopters swooped in to spirit away the deminers and the SEALs.

But that had a chilling effect on another kidnapping case. In early January, German-American writer Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped in central Somalia while reporting on piracy and development. Moore was being held near the town of Hobyo when the SEALs came for the deminers. “The rescue changed the dynamics of Somali kidnapping,” Somalia Report magazine noted in its extensive coverage of the SEALs’ operations.

Moore’s captors moved him to a remote area, doubled the number of men guarding him and boosted his ransom from the usual $1 million to $20 million. In a video obtained by Somalia Report, the kidnappers said the high ransom was payment for the nine men — clansmen of Moore’s abductors — who were killed by the SEALs on Jan. 25.

The kidnappers also truncated their timetable for obtaining a ransom. In the past, Somali criminals have been willing to hold onto captives for many months or even years while negotiating for payment. But with the threat of killer SEALs descending from the sky, on May 18 Moore’s abductors demanded payment within three days or they would sell the writer to the Al Shabab terror group, they said.

Al Shabab is less likely to even want to ransom a captive when it could merely execute them for the terror value.  At the time of writing it was unclear whether the captors had made good on their threat.

In any event, the stakes are getting higher in Somalia’s decades-long crisis of terror, piracy and criminality. Navy SEALs are better than ever at rescuing heavily-guarded captives from remote locations. But as the desperate kidnappers counter with more guards, better defensive positions and tougher demands, will the SEALs be able to continue their impressive record of rescues?

Originally published in Warships International Fleet Review.

An F-15E at an air show last year. Photo: Air Force

An innocuous-seeming U.S. Air Force press release. A serendipitous satellite image in Google Earth. Snapshots from a photographer on assignment at a Spanish air base. The crash of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber in the United Arab Emirates. These are some of the fragments of information that Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti has assembled to reveal the best picture yet of the Pentagon’s secretive war in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

In a series of blog posts over the past two weeks, Cenciotti has described in unprecedented detail the powerful aerial force helping wage Washington’s hush-hush campaign of air strikes, naval bombardments and commando raids along the western edge of the Indian Ocean, including terror hot spots Yemen and Somalia. Cenciotti outlined the deployment of eight F-15Es from their home base in Idaho to the international air and naval outpost at Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti north of Somalia.

Over the years there have been hints of the F-15s’ presence in East Africa, but “their actual mission remains a (sort-of) mystery,” Cenciotti writes. Based on the evidence, he proposes the twin-seat fighter-bombers — one of the Air Force’s mainstay weapon systems in Afghanistan — are dropping bombs on Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Yemen. If true, that means the U.S. intervention in the western Indian Ocean is far more forceful, and risky, than previously suggested.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

In this video posted to Liveleak yesterday, an English-speaking shipboard private security team fires upon, and apparently wounds or kills, at least two groups of pirates attempting to hijack what seems to be a large tanker ship. The incident probably occurred off the Somali coast.

After years of fruitless efforts to deter piracy by naval forces, shipping companies have increasingly turned to private guards to defend ships.

Tuareg rebels. Al Jazeera photo.

BBC art.