The US military secretly deployed a number of trainers and advisers to Somalia in October, the first time regular troops have been stationed in the war-torn country since 1993, when two helicopters were shot down and 18 Americans killed in the “Black Hawk Down”disaster.
A cell of US military personnel has been in the Somali capital of Mogadishu to advise and coordinate operations with African troops fighting to gain control of the country from the al-Shabab militia, an Islamist group whose leaders have professed loyalty to al-Qaeda, according to three U.S. military officials.
Among other black operations in Somali is a series of killer drone attacks which the US had been carrying out for years without openly acknowledging the fact. It was in 2012 when the White House eventually lifted the lid of secrecy on its black ops in the African Horn and admitted committing a crime for the first time. America justifies the attack as the eradication of the al-Qaeda elements.
Further to this, there is an active CIA station in Mogadishu. In August, Jeremy Scahill reported on the CIA’s compound at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport, sating, “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. At the facility, the CIA runs a counter-terrorism 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.”
The CIA has no interest in dealing directly with Somali political leaders, who they say are corrupt and do not deserve trust.
A look at the natural resources of this country is enough to provide an answer to the question what the States are really doing in this troubled African country.
An LA Times article reveals that nearly two-thirds of Somalia’s resources were allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre was taken down and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration’s decision to send US troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.
Officially, the Administration and the State Department insist that the US military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian.
New estimates of the country’s oil reserves, onshore and offshore, run as high as 110 billion barrels. According to the reports, there are likely vast natural gas reserves in Somali waters in the Indian Ocean. Add to that a series of fields which have been found off Mozambique and Tanzania and which contain an estimated 100 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Voice of Russia, the Washington Post
