Some excerpts and remarks:
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.
As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.
As covered previously, the contractor for the airport operations & reconstruction was reported to be the Dubai-based SKA Air & Logistics. A February 2010 sales pitch in International Business Review Online titled The Art of Risk Mitigation presented the following primer on SKA:
Established in 2003 by its President and CEO Mike Douglas, a former Royal Marine [and soldier in the South African Special Forces], SKA prides itself on being a leading provider of aviation and transportation logistics solutions - ranging from air charter and air freight services, fuel supply services, cargo handling services, and supply chain management. While such services are run of the mill for any transportation and logistics solutions provider, SKA’s differentiating factor can be seen in its other services which include providing safety and security solutions, life support services, and medical evacuation (Medevac) services.
SKA, after all, is not only a leading provider of aviation and transportation logistics solutions; it is the leading provider of such solutions in harsh and hazardous environments.
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While SKA’s home office is in Dubai, its main thrust - or two main thrusts - of operations are in Afghanistan and Iraq. In such countries where life is cheap and risks of being caught in a terrorist attack, murder, or abduction are high, the fact that SKA has established and consolidated a presence there is testimony to its excellence. After all with its comprehensive fleet of aircraft, an extensive network of partners, and with its senior management team having a combined 150 years of experience in the aviation industry; SKA has everything to ensure that it provides the best to its clients. And a good example of this is its operations in Iraq.
For some, Iraq is a country that represents the metaphoric “where” to which fools rush but angels fear to tread. Since the US-led Coalition invasion of the country in 2003, and the subsequent civil and sectarian conflict that has broken out, around 130,000 civilians have been killed by the fighting or as part of collateral damage.
However, as mentioned above, a country like Iraq also provides great potential returns as it boasts vast oilfields, the full wealth of which have been left untapped for the better part of 20 years since the First Gulf War in 1991. It is estimated that Iraq’s oil fields has the capacity to provide 11.7 million barrels of crude oil per day, but similar to Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, there is “oil, oil everywhere but it is too dangerous to explore.”
Too dangerous, that is, for normal companies. And this is where SKA’s expertise comes into play…
DynCorp International, under contract w/ the DOS, has also for a long time had an office in the airport compound.
Probably not much of chance of getting an investigative journalist to explore the links b/w the CIA, SKA and DynCorp in Mogadishu.
While the size of the CIA's physical presence inside Mogadishu is something new, that presence itself is, of course, not. As Gettlemen ended his September 16, 2009 article article for the NYT w/ these final two paragraphs:
And Somali officials say the C.I.A. will open a base in the old officer quarters near Mogadishu`s airport. They said three C.I.A. officers visited Villa Somalia in late August to discuss training Sheik Sharif`s struggling intelligence services.
American officials acknowledged that the United States was helping in unconventional ways, but would not specify further. At the palace, a tall, thickly built white man, wearing khaki fatigues and carrying an American assault rifle, stood guard outside a meeting room. It was not clear whom the man was working for. When he saw a journalist looking at him, he stepped inside and quietly closed the door.
Getting back to Scahill's current article in The Nation:
The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents.
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According to well-connected Somali sources, the CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. “They support us in a big way financially,” says the senior Somali intelligence official. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”
Some of those Somali sources are obviously misleading Schahill. The agency may not deal directly w/ the political leadership's handling of affairs in Mogadishu, or even give a fig about a functioning authority being in place, but it definately has played a leading role in shaping the transitional government, having turned Sh. Sharif into an asset (via Michael Ranneberger) after the counter-revolutionary invasion toppled the ICU, and supporting the past three transitional PM's.
Rather than nation-building, the goal has always been to weaken the influence of the Islamists in Somalia and prevent them from gaining political ascendancy. As Johnnie Carson reinforced in remarks made last July in Kamapala,
It is important that the TFG be strengthened, for if it is not, Shabaab will continue to emerge as a significant political threat not only in the south, but also throughout the region.
This has been pointed out numerous times, but it's no secret that the CIA has been running US policy in Somalia for years now. One of the sources cited in Scahill's article even alludes to this:
It is unclear how much control, if any, Somalia’s internationally recognized president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has over this counterterrorism force or if he is even fully briefed on its operations. The CIA personnel and other US intelligence agents “do not bother to be in touch with the political leadership of the country. And that says a lot about the intentions,” says [Abdirahman “Aynte” Ali, a Somali analyst who has researched the Shabab and Somali security forces]. “Essentially, the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States. You should have had State Department people doing foreign policy, but the CIA seems to be doing it across the country.”
While the Somali officials interviewed for this story said the CIA is the lead US agency on the Mogadishu counterterrorism program, they also indicated that US military intelligence agents are at times involved. When asked if they are from JSOC or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the senior Somali intelligence official responded, “We don’t know. They don’t tell us.”
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In the battle against the Shabab, the United States does not, in fact, appear to have cast its lot with the Somali government. The emerging US strategy on Somalia—borne out in stated policy, expanded covert presence and funding plans—is two-pronged: On the one hand, the CIA is training, paying and at times directing Somali intelligence agents who are not firmly under the control of the Somali government, while JSOC conducts unilateral strikes without the prior knowledge of the government; on the other, the Pentagon is increasing its support for and arming of the counterterrorism operations of non-Somali African military forces.
In an interview that Schahill gave on Democracy Now this week, he says
I also met a man who claimed that he had been held in an underground prison in the basement of the National Security Agency, which is one of the facilities where the CIA has its personnel, and it’s literally behind the presidential palace in Villa Somalia, which is the semi-fortified area where Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the U.S.-backed government, is based. ... And he said that he had seen both U.S. and French agents, white men, interrogating prisoners, and that some of the prisoners claimed that they had been snatched in neighboring Kenya and brought, rendered, to Somalia. And so, I started that investigation, and more sources came forward when I was in Mogadishu to describe this and confirmed that CIA personnel and possibly U.S. military intelligence personnel are interrogating prisoners held in that basement facility.
Also in that interview, Scahill says
I also was told by a very senior Somali official — and I’m going to be writing about this in the coming weeks—that JSOC actually has forces on the ground that are directly targeting Shabab, not just flying in and hitting them, but actually on the ground onducting operations.-- -- --
Stars and Stripes: AFRICOM Marine task force to help train militaries fighting al-Qaida-linked groups in Somalia, Maghreb region
With an eye on insurgent movements in Somalia and volatile parts of northern Africa, a new Marine task force has been assigned to U.S. Africa Command as part of an effort to ramp up training partnerships with militaries fighting al-Qaida-linked groups on the continent.
The addition of the Marine infantrymen, coupled with the recent commissioning of an Africa-focused Naval Special Warfare unit based is Stuttgart, home of the AFRICOM headquarters, suggests AFRICOM is starting to add some muscle.
The Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, expected to be based in southern Europe, will focus on training African troops deploying as peacekeepers to Somalia, while also bolstering militaries attempting to take on groups affiliated with al-Qaida that are operating across the Maghreb region.
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“We’re not going to go hunt down al-Qaida in the Maghreb,” said Col. Dale Vesely, plans and operations chief for Marine Forces Africa, which is also based in Stuttgart, “but we’re training [African militaries] to go fight it.”
The unit, which includes air and ground elements, could grow from 123 Marines to about 364 troops in the next few years, if the initial missions prove successful, said Brig. Gen. Paul Brier, deputy commander of MARFOR Africa.
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The plan to send small numbers of troops to train other militaries to target terrorist groups is in line with a U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Africa that puts a premium on maintaining a low profile, said Rick Nelson, a counterterror expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“The United States is certainly in a challenging position because we constantly have to balance our presence against the potential negative impacts of that presence,” Nelson said. “We’ve also learned a large-scale military intervention to combat al-Qaida is no longer economical or politically feasible.”
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Marine officials say that ... the new task force will ... [provide] local forces with better tactics for confronting the threats that surround them.
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The plan to establish a Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force dedicated exclusively to AFRICOM missions has been in development for two years.
The unit’s members have now been selected, and preparations are under way to forward-deploy them in Europe in a matter of months, according to Marines at the command’s Panzer Kaserne headquarters in Stuttgart. However, officials say negotiatons are still under way with the host nation, so they are not yet saying exactly where the task force will be located.
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As a back-up plan, the Marines could operate out of the U.S., if efforts to forward-deploy fall through, Vesely said. New troops will be rotated into the unit every six months.
Brier, the outgoing deputy commander of Marine Forces Africa, acknowledged the SPMAGTF is being formed at a time when troops and resources are stretched thin. However, the unit should be able to grow over time as the Corps looks for efficient ways to return Marines to their more expeditionary roots after years spent on combat outposts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brier said.
“We’re doing it with the idea of, how do we sustain it for the long-haul,” Brier said.
Another Stars and Stripes article just three days earlier: U.S. nearing 'strategic defeat' of al-Qaida, Panetta says
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he is convinced the U.S. is within reach of “strategically” defeating al-Qaida if military and intelligence operations can nab fewer than 20 key leaders remaining between Pakistan and North Africa.-- -- --
“I think we have them on the run. I think now is the moment,” he said Friday. “… I do believe that if we continue this effort, we can really cripple al-Qaida as a threat to this country.”
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“I’m not going to list all the names that we have,” Panetta said of al-Qaida, “but we’re talking about, at this stage in the game, I would say somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders ... between Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) in North Africa. Those are — if we can go after them, I think we really can strategically defeat al-Qaida.”
Shabelle Media: Parliament unanimously approves Kampala Accord
The transitional federal parliament on Monday overwhelmingly approved the Kampala Accord that extended the current government’s term for an additional 12 months.
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With the presence of 436 lawmakers out of 550 Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adam, the speaker of the parliament, chaired Monday's session and ended in peaceful atmosphere in contrast of yesterday’s session that ended in uproar and shouting.
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After hours of discussions on the deal articles, which Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and parliament speaker signed in Kampala on June 9, was endorsed by 393 MPs, 36 voted against it while 7 abstained, Somali parliament speaker announced.
Shabelle Media: Mahiga arrives at Mogadishu and meets with top TFG officials
A high level delegation led by the UN special envoy for Somalia, Augustine Mahiga on Tuesday arrived at the seaside city of Mogadishu to meet with Somali government’s top leaders.-- -- --
In his visit to Mogadishu, Mahiga separately held meetings with Somali president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, and speaker of the parliament Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adam.
Speaking to the press in Somalia’s war-torn capital, the UN envoy warmly welcomed the move by the parliament in which they approved the Kampala Accord.
Reuters: Uganda's Museveni calls for air support in Somalia
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday called for foreign air support to help root out Islamist militants in Somalia, one year after suicide bombings killed 79 people in his country's capital city.-- -- --
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"This Somali problem appears to be a conservation project because of the one dimensional involvement: just involvement by the land forces. Why don't we use the air? What is the air for?" Museveni said.
He said "international" air and sea support for AMISOM was necessary to defeat the Islamists and to fight piracy off Somali's shores.
"Why does the international community preserve this? We are ready to solve this problem decisively," Museveni said.
Nairobi Star: US to partner with Kenya in Somali border security
The US government has pledged to partner with Kenya to ensure security threats arising from opening of the Somali border are addressed. US Deputy Assistant Secretary Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration Reuben Brigety said the American government shares Kenya’s concerns over the security threats but promised that all will be done to support the security systems.
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Further, Brigety said the US supports the creation of more refugee camps in the Northern Kenya to assist in containing the influx. He said more camps will enable the UNHCR to account for the refugees entering the country and help the government to physically identify them. America, he said was also keen on ensuring the stability of Somalia to restore permanent [non-Islamist, subordinate] political and [non-Islamic, neo-liberal] economic order.
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