Drone Strike in Somalia as US War on Terror By Another Name Expands

A U.S. drone strike in Somalia
reportedly targeted the chief of Al-Shabaab, Ahmed Godane, who
is believed to be responsible for the Nairobi mall attack last
year.

Al-Shabaab is a militant Islamist group in Somalia that
affiliated with Al-Qaeda in 2012,
after about six years of U.S. intervention including a joint
Ethiopian-U.S. invasion of Somalia in 2006 that contributed to the
Al-Shabaab, the youth wing of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU),
breaking away from the ICU and embracing Islamist extremism even
further.

Reuters reports on the drone strike:

The U.S. Department of Defense said late on Monday that its
forces had carried out the operation against al Shabaab and would
provide more information “when appropriate”. The Somali government
and al Shabaab officials could not be immediately reached for
comment.

“There was an air strike at a base where senior members of al
Shabaab had a meeting last night,” a senior intelligence official
who gave his name as Ahmed told Reuters on Tuesday.

“So far [al-Shabaab’s leader Ahmed] Godane’s death is a strong
rumour that may or may not turn to be true. What we know is that
the militants were bombarded. However, it is difficult to know how
many of them or who particularly died,” he added.

Although this is the most prominent U.S. drone strike in
Somalia, it’s not the first. According to the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism, there have been
between 6 and 9 drone strikes in Somalia over the last seven
years.

In related news,  the U.S. is
planning to open a second drone base in Niger. In 2012, the
Washington Post reported on a vast military intelligence
network being set up by the U.S. across Africa: the military
operates surveillance planes disguised as civilian aircraft as well
as drones from remote airstrips in Africa. The U.S. also has bases
in Mauritania, Djibouti (used for forward operations in the Middle
East), Uganda (where U.S. military personnel continue to hunt
Joseph Kony), Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Seychelles.

Although the Obama Administration may have
dropped the terminology of the “war on terror” and
admits to not having a strategy against the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), it certainly
continues to wage a war on terror.