U.S. troops used Ethiopia as a staging ground to attack Somalia

[Jabhad]

Uganda vows training, security for Somali government

 

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN

Associated Press

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Uganda's top military officials promised to help train a national army for Somalia and help provide security for its government, a Somali official said today.

 

The Ugandans traveled to Somalia ahead of a planned African Union peacekeeping deployment, a day after Islamic extremists threatened suicide attacks against Ugandan and other foreign troops.

 

"We expect the troops to be here in two weeks," Hassan Abshir Farah, who represented the Somali government at one meeting, told The Associated Press.

 

Uganda's Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga and Chief of Defense Forces Aronda Nyakairima said their forces would help train a Somali army and provide security to Somalia's transitional government, said Farah, who represented the Somali government at one meeting.

 

AU officials say they have more than $70 million through donations from the European Union, U.S. and Britain to pay for the Somali peacekeeping mission. The AU force is planned to include 8,000 troops.

 

Somalia's government, backed by Ethiopian troops, drove out a radical Islamic movement that had gained control of the capital Mogadishu and most of the south. The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved its deployment.

 

Ethiopian troops have started to leave, to be replaced by the peacekeeping force, which will have to confront the growing violence that has plagued Mogadishu since the interim government took over.

 

Insurgents have staged near-daily attacks since the Islamic militants were driven out, with Mogadishu's civilian population suffering the worst of the violence. Hundreds of families have begun fleeing the coastal city of 2 million people, and hospitals are struggling to cope with the daily influx of wounded.

 

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved the capital into armed, clan-based camps, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned. A transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help. Weakened by clan rivalries, it struggled to assert authority, leaving a vacuum the Islamic movement moved to fill.

 

The Islamic movement chased the warlords from Mogadishu last year and was credited with restoring order in areas of southern Somalia it controlled. But some Somalis chafed at its fundamentalist version of Islam and the U.S. and the Somali government accused it of harboring al-Qaida suspects.

 

Meanwhile, an Ethiopian official today denied a report that U.S. troops used Ethiopia as a staging ground for attacks against al-Qaida leaders in Somalia last month.

 

The report in The New York Times citing unnamed American officials from several U.S. agencies said U.S. soldiers used an airstrip in Ethiopia to mount strikes against Islamic militants in Somalia.

 

"This is simply a total fabrication," Bereket Simon, special adviser to the Ethiopian prime minister, told The Associated Press.

 

The report went on to say that the U.S. and Ethiopia relationship included the sharing of intelligence on the militants.

 

U.S. officials earlier acknowledged two airstrikes over Somalia in January, but had given few details. The strikes were reported to have been conducted by U.S. forces based in another Horn of Africa country, Djibouti, though officials had not confirmed that.

 

U.S. ships had also patrolled off Somalia's coast in search of al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia following Ethiopia's December invasion.

[Jabhad]

U.S. hunted al Qaeda suspects from Ethiopia: paper

 

February 23, 2007

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military used bases inside Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders in the Horn of Africa, The New York Times reported on its Web site on Thursday, citing U.S. officials.

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The Times said the campaign included the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to conduct air strikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia.

 

Officials were quoted as saying the clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant information-sharing on the militants' positions and information from U.S. spy satellites with the Ethiopian military, the newspaper reported.

 

Members of a secret U.S. special operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya and ventured into Somalia, the officials added.

 

But Ethiopia denied the report.

 

"Ethiopia has not provided any air base for the Americans to strike Somalia," said Bereket Simon, close adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

 

"The New York Times has fabricated this story and if there is any Pentagon official whom they are quoting, then that official does not have the slightest knowledge of the region or Ethiopia," Simon, a minister without portfolio, told Reuters.

 

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss details of the operation with the Times, but the paper said some officials agreed to provide specifics because they considered it relatively successful. They said the campaign disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia and led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants.

 

The mission was in support of Ethiopian troops' recent drive to enter Somalia to help the government oust the militant Islamist movement.

 

According to the Times, Washington resisted an official endorsement of the Ethiopian invasion, but U.S. officials from several agencies said the Bush administration decided last year an incursion was the best way to remove the Islamists from power.

 

The United States has been seeking two al Qaeda leaders -- Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam -- for their suspected roles in the attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

 

The sharing of battlefield intelligence on the Islamists' positions was a result of an Ethiopian request to Gen. John Abizaid, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command. John Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, also authorized spy satellites to be diverted to provide information to Ethiopia, officials told the Times.

 

The secret operation in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach the Pentagon has taken to send Special Operations troops to hunt high-level terrorism suspects. President George W. Bush gave the Pentagon powers after the September 11 attacks to carry out such missions, the report said.

 

The newspaper said that Ethiopian troops have received U.S. training for counterterrorism operations for several years in camps near the Somalia border.

 

(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)

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http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2007/02/23/us_hunted_al_qaeda_suspects_from_ethiopia_report/

[Jabhad]

Report: U.S. troops engaged in secret campaign in Horn of Africa

www.chinaview.cn 2007-02-23 22:33:05

 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 (Xinhua)-- The U.S. military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, the New York Times reported on Friday.

 

The U.S. Air Force made use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia, the newspaper quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying.

 

The close and largely clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant sharing of intelligence on the Islamic militants' positions and information from U.S. spy satellites with the Ethiopian military.

 

Members of a secret U.S. Special Operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ventured into Somalia, the officials said.

 

The counter terrorism effort was described by American officials as a qualified success that disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia, led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants and involved a collaborative relationship with Ethiopia that had been in development for years.

 

It has been known for several weeks that U.S. Special Operations troops have operated inside Somalia and that the United States carried out two strikes on Al-Qaeda suspects using AC-130 gunship.

 

However, the New York Times noted the extent of U.S. operations with the recent Ethiopian invasion into Somalia and the fact that the Pentagon secretly used an airstrip in Ethiopia to carry out attacks had not been previously reported.

 

The secret campaign in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach taken in recent years by the Pentagon taken to dispatch Special Operations troops globally to hunt high-level terrorism suspects.

 

U.S. President George W. Bush gave the Pentagon powers to carryout these missions after Sep. 11, 2001, which previously had been reserved for intelligence operatives, the newspaper said.

 

So far, the tally of the dead and captured does not include some Al-Qaeda leaders, such as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, who the U.S. is hunting for their suspected roles in the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/23/content_5765748.htm