The Militant - December 5, 2011 -- Decade-long history of U.S. operations in Somalia

Vol. 75/No. 44 December 5, 2011

Decade-long history of
U.S. operations in Somalia

BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Washington has been expanding use of hunter-killer aerial drones in Somalia since it began using them this summer against al-Shabab, an Islamist group labeled by Washington as “terrorist” that controls much of the central and southern parts of the country. The drone assassination campaign—which now operates from air bases in Ethiopia, the Seychelles Islands, and Djibouti—is a supplement to U.S. operations in Somalia, which go back more than a decade.

In 2008 the Pentagon set up the Africa Command, which together with the CIA is working to establish a regime compliant to U.S. imperialism in Somalia, similar to their role in Libya. Through its largely clandestine Somali war, Washington is also strengthening its relationship with governments and other armed forces in the region and deepening its foothold in Africa.

A series of articles titled “The Secret War” by Sean Naylor in the Army Times in November details some of Washington’s operations in Somalia over the last 10 years.

Starting in 2003, teams of CIA and U.S. military special forces flew from Nairobi, Kenya, into Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, “to build relationships with the warlords,” Naylor wrote. Their aim was to convince “warlords” to capture al-Qaeda personnel who would then turn them over to U.S. military officials for “extraordinary rendition”—torture in CIA secret prisons outside the U.S.

John Bennett, at the time chief CIA officer in Nairobi and currently head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, laid out four “ground rules” for U.S. special forces operating inside the country, the Army Times reported. These were: “We will work with warlords. We don’t play favorites. They don’t play us. We don’t go after Somali nationals.”

However, the paper reported, the latter rule “applied only to operations conducted by, with and through the warlords” not to other “unilateral efforts” conducted by Washington.

“The Americans used a carrot-and-stick approach,” wrote Naylor, “offering the warlords cash if they helped, with the implicit threat of U.S. air power if they didn’t.”

Kenya’s invasion of southern Somalia in October in a drive to take control of the southern port city of Kismayo is “faltering,” notes the November 17 Los Angeles Times. In response, Nairobi has made an “urgent appeal” to the Barack Obama administration for “military surveillance and reconnaissance that could include imagery from drone aircraft,” the paper notes.

While Washington has supplied the Nairobi with $700 million in “aid” this year, much of it for the military.

In a related development, the African Union is considering sending thousands of Ethiopian troops into Somalia to operate around the city of Baidoa, reported the New York Times. This move, together with the several thousand Kenyan troops, would double to 20,000 the AU’s occupation force in Somalia.

Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in December 2006 in a U.S.-backed operation that ousted the ruling Somalia Islamic Courts Council. In the face of rising popular anger over arbitrary shelling of urban areas and killings of thousands of civilians, the troops withdrew about two years later.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota two Somali women—Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan—face up to 30 years in prison after being framed-up by the FBI and convicted October 20 for allegedly raising money for al-Shabab. The case is among the latest example of trials that serve to advance the U.S. government’s persistent erosion of constitutional protections in the name of combating “terrorism.”

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