Is the U.S. Ramping Up a Secret War in Somalia?

Islamists in East Africa were supposed to be on the run. But the raids and spy flights keep increasing.

A rigid-hull inflatable boat from the guided-missile destroyer USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) approaches the Japanese-owned commercial oil tanker M/V Guanabara (L) in the Arabian Sea off the Coast of Somalia on March 6, 2011 in this picture released to Reuters March 7, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Seaman Anna Wade/U.S. Navy photo/Handout

BY COLUM LYNCH

Is the U.S. Ramping Up a Secret War in Somalia?

The Obama administration earlier this year expanded its secret war in Somalia, stepping up assistance for federal and regional Somali intelligence agencies that are allied against the country's Islamist insurgency. It's a move that's not only violating the terms of an international arms embargo, according to U.N. investigators. The escalation also could be a signal that Washington's signature victory against al-Qaeda's most powerful African ally may be in danger of unraveling.

Just last year, Obama's team was touting Somalia as unqualified success. "Somalia is a good news story for the region, for the international community, but most especially for the people of Somalia itself," Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters last October at the New York Foreign Press Center. Carson praised African forces, principally Uganda and Kenya, for driving the terror group al-Shabab out of the Somalia's main cities, Mogadishu and Kismayo. "The U.S.," he boasted, "has been a significant and major contributor to this effort." Indeed, the United States has emerged as a major force in the region, running training camps for Ugandan peacekeepers destined for battle with Somalia's militants, and hosting eight Predator drones, eight more F-15E fighter jets, and nearly 2,000 U.S. troops and military civilians at a base in neighboring Djibouti.

But despite the array of forces aligned against it, Al-Shabab is demonstrating renewed vigor. "The military strength of al-Shabaab, with an approximately 5,000-strong force, remains arguably intact in terms of operational readiness, chain of command, discipline and communications ability," according to a report by the U.N. Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea. "By avoiding direct military confrontation, it has preserved the core of its fighting force and resources."

"At present, al-Shabaab remains the principal threat to peace and security in Somalia," the report adds. "The organization has claimed responsibility for hundreds of assassinations and attacks involving improvised explosive devices, ambushes, mortar shelling grenades and hit and run tactics."

Not coincidentally, perhaps, American involvement in the region is again on the rise, as well. Last year, according to the U.N. group, the United States violated the international arms embargo on Somalia by dispatching American special operations forces in Russian M-17 helicopters to northern Somalia in support of operations by the intelligence service of Puntland, a breakaway Somali province.

(The U.N. Security Council in 1992 imposed an embargo "on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Somalia" The embargo was eased in March, 2013, allowing for the transfer of weapons, equipment or military advisors for the development of the federal government's security forces. But the Somali government is required to inform the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee when it receives foreign military assistance.)

Two U.S. air-charter companies linked to American intelligence activities in Somalia have increased the number of clandestine flights to Mogadishu and the breakaway province of Puntland by as much as 25 percent last year.

Florida-based Prescott Support Co. and RAM Air Services, flew at least 84 civilian flights between August 2012 and March 2013. During the previous year, the two companies flew only 65 flights, "indicating an increase in United States support," the U.N. report notes.

The flights -- which have not been reported to the U.N. Security Council -- suggest a further strengthening of American cooperation with Somalia's National Intelligence Agency in Mogadishu and the Puntland Intelligence Service, which has been cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism operations for more than a decade.

Several flights last November by Prescott have been linked by the U.N. group with the construction of two buildings at the Puntland Intelligence Service compound, north of the town of Galkayo. "The construction of these two buildings during the month of November 2012 coincides with four Prescott Support Co. L-100-30 flights that landed at Galkayo airport between 3 and 9 November 2012 and constituted a load capacity of up to 80 tons of cargo," according to the report.

It's one of many ways that Western intelligence agencies -- including those of the United States, Britain and France -- have been secretly and "directly supporting intelligence services" in Mogadishu, Puntland and Somaliland, another breakaway Somali province, according to the U.N. investigators. At times, this assistance has been in violation of U.N. resolutions, claims their latest report, which runs nearly five hundred pages -- not counting several classified annexes.

Since the report was finalized, al-Shabab has been riven by internal fighting that has splintered the movement, left one of its leaders dead, and sent several others fleeing from the group's southern stronghold. But the insurgents's well-financed secret service - Amniyat - remains intact, capable of carrying out terror operations at will. And al-Shabab's leader, Ahmed Godane, remains firmly in charge of the movement's terror apparatus, according to experts on Somali politics.

The survival of al-Shabab's terror infrastructure has dealt a blow to what had appeared to be a signature achievement of the Obama administration: backing an African led effort to deny an al-Qaeda affiliated insurgency a strategic toehold in the heart of East Africa.

In August, 2011, a U.S.-backed African peacekeeping mission wrested control of the capital of Mogadishu, helping to deliver a rare respite of calm. It set the stage for the September 2012, election of a new, Western-backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Another key American ally, Kenya, last year joined forces with a Somali clan and seized control of al-Shabab's principle stronghold, Kismayo.

But those gains are being threatened by rampant corruption within the U.S. backed government's weak institutions, al-Shabab's infiltration in the "highest levels" of the Somali government, and continued attacks against targets inside Somali, including a recent deadly strike on a U.N. humanitarian aid compound in Mogadishu.

Even worse, Kenyan forces in Kismayo have clashed with clans loyal to the U.S.-backed federal government while colluding with financial backers of al-Shabab in the lucrative and illicit charcoal trade, enabling the Islamist movement to refill its war chest. "The revenue that al-Shabaab currently derives from its Kismayo shareholding, its ... exports and the taxation of ground transportation likely exceeds the estimated U.S. $25 million it generated in charcoal revenue when it controlled Kismayo," the report stated.