“My answer to those running this program is if you want this to be a covert
program, don’t notify the civil-aviation authorities of your flights,”
Bryden said. “Our job is to investigate flights just like this. And the
flights are what led us to ask questions and dig deeper about undeclared
U.S. programs in Somalia.”
Obama’s Not-So-Secret Terror War
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/24/obama-s-not-so-secret-terror-war.html
Obama’s Not-So-Secret Terror War
The U.S. is breaking a 20-year arms embargo on Somalia by training the
country’s intelligence agency and deploying special forces without
notifying the United Nations, according to a new report. by Eli Lake |
July 24, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
The United States is breaking a 20-year arms embargo on Somalia by
providing unauthorized intelligence training to regional governments and
special-forces missions, according to a forthcoming United Nations report
that discloses new details of the U.S. war against al Qaeda in the war-torn
African nation.
A Somali soldier at the port of Bosaso, Somalia. (Kate Holt, Eyevine / Zuma
Press)
The report, issued by the U.N.’s Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG)
and reviewed by The Daily Beast, details three covert U.S. programs to aid
local Somali security services in their fight against Al-Shabab, the
Somalia affiliate of al Qaeda. It says Central Intelligence Agency officers
are helping the government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region not
recognized by the U.N., and U.S. special forces are fighting alongside
Puntland soldiers. It also says the U.S. hasn’t notified the U.N. of these
activities, as is required by the terms of the embargo. The U.S. helped
establish the embargo in 1992 when Somalia erupted in a civil war.
The report says 12 countries, including the U.S., aren’t complying with the
arms embargo, having failed to inform the U.N. of cargo flights to supply
various parties in the Somalia conflict. The country is one of the world’s
most violent, lacking a functioning central government and overrun by
warring militias, Islamist insurgents, and pirates who threaten large parts
of the coast.
“We are trying to establish a norm of compliance with the sanctions regime
on Somalia,” said Matthew Bryden, the head of the SEMG*. *“We can’t do that
if members of the U.N. Security Council themselves are not compliant.”
Spokespeople for the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Council, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and the Pentagon all
declined to comment on allegations made in the forthcoming SEMG report.
Hillary Renner, a spokeswoman for the State Department’s Bureau of African
Affairs, declined to comment on “military operations or intelligence
matters,” but said that since 2007, the U.S. has given $106 million to
support the Somali National Army. “This support is intended solely for the
purpose of helping develop security-sector institutions consistent with the
U.N.-supported political process in Somalia and in compliance with the arms
embargo on Somalia. The Department of State has continued to submit
notifications for its support to the SNA,” said Renner.
Eli Lake on the hellish conditions of Somali prisons.
The report illustrates how President Barack Obama’s often-secret war
against al Qaeda can sometimes conflict with his administration’s
commitment to work cooperatively with the U.N. As recently as 2010, the
administration said it wasn’t directly involved in Somali military
operations. “The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not
coordinate the military operations of Somalia’s [Transitional Federal
Government],” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson in
March 2010. “Further, we are not providing nor paying for military
advisers.”
The report illustrates how Obama’s often-secret war against al Qaeda can
sometimes conflict with his administration’s commitment to the United
Nations.
Yet press reports in recent years have alleged that the CIA has trained
Somali intelligence officers and that U.S. military personnel and drones
were helping the Somali Army in an offensive against Al-Shabab, the local
arm of al Qaeda. An article in *The Nation* last year detailed CIA
assistance to Somalia’s national-security agency and the existence of an
intelligence headquarters and detention center known as the “pink house.”
Only recently did Obama publicly acknowledge direct assistance. In a June
15 letter to Congress, the president said, “[I]n a limited number of cases,
the U.S. military has taken direct action in Somalia against members of
al-Qa'ida, including those who are also members of al-Shabaab.” He didn’t
provide specifics, saying only that the moves were intended to “counter the
terrorist threat.”
The new SEMG report offers fresh details about U.S. training and aid to the
Somali National Security Agency. The agency operates something called the
“alpha group,” according to one U.N. official involved in the report, that
is “used as proxy for U.S. intelligence operations” in areas controlled by
the country’s Transitional Federal Government.
When the U.S. government was asked about an “alpha group” by the SEMG it
responded in a May 7 letter that it “does not acknowledge any form of
direct support to the Somali National Security Agency,” according to the
report.
The SEMG usually compiles its report on the arms embargo every year. Past
reports, including from 2007 and 2008, said the U.S. had notified the U.N.
of its activities. “A number of foreign Governments are reportedly involved
in training the National Security Agency,” the 2008 SEMG report said. “But
only the Government of the United States has notified the Security Council
that it is doing so.”
That appears to have changed. The 2012 SEMG report lists among the
unauthorized U.S. activities direct support for the intelligence service
and security forces of the government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region
of Somalia that is not recognized by the U.N.
Mohammed Abdirahman Farole, the media adviser to and son of Puntland’s
president, said in an interview that the CIA provides non-lethal assistance
to the Puntland Intelligence Agency. “They do not bring us weapons,” he
said. “The CIA gives us intelligence training and equipment. This is part
of the global fight against the terrorists.” Farole added that his father’s
government would “welcome the United Nations to come to Puntland and
collect all the weapons.” But, he said, until that happens, the Puntland
forces would need to be armed to fight terrorists and pirates.
The report alleges the CIA has indeed been training its Puntland equivalent
for ten years, including in Qaw, a small town on the outskirts of the
Puntland port of Bosaso. The report alleges that Puntland trainees use the
same shooting range as security contractors training a Puntland maritime
police unit.
Also in the report are allegations that an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency
is* *operating a fleet of four Russian-made Mi-17a helicopters to transport
special forces from Camp Lemonier, a U.S. base in Djibouti, to locations in
northeastern Somalia to fight alongside Puntland forces. This was first
reported in the Somalia Report,** a website that tracks intelligence and
military developments in the country, which said the forces were deployed
to fight pirates. The report says the U.N. has confirmation of this from a
“reliable military source.”
The report also says there were 64 reports of activities of foreign jet
fighters, helicopters, and drones in Somalia between June 2011 and April
2012. The report doesn’t say whether any of these were U.S. drones. The
report says the African Union Mission in Somalia has complained about
unidentified drones flying in Somali airspace. “Some of these reports
concern attacks mistakenly targeting an [Internal Displaced Persons] camp
and a humanitarian feeding center, targeted killings by drones of Al-Shabab
commanders, and Special Forces covert operations in Somalia.”
Bryden, the report’s author, said his group began investigating these
alleged U.S. programs in 2010 after discovering two private American
operators of cargo planes, Prescott Support Co. and RAM Air Services, were
registering flights into Somalia with the U.N. International Civil Aviation
Organization.
“We didn’t know the full extent of it,” said Bryden. “All we had was
confirmation that the flights took place.”
Spokesmen from Prescott Support Co. and RAM Air Services declined to
respond to requests for comment.
“My answer to those running this program is if you want this to be a covert
program, don’t notify the civil-aviation authorities of your flights,”
Bryden said. “Our job is to investigate flights just like this. And the
flights are what led us to ask questions and dig deeper about undeclared
U.S. programs in Somalia.”
Received on Tue Jul 24 2012 - 21:46:01 EDT
