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Ed Webb

Pentagon Asks for More Cash to Cut Down Civilian Deaths - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...vilian-casualties-human-rights

US USA war military death statistics Somalia Iraq Syria

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Apr 20 - Cached
  • Under fire from human rights groups, the Pentagon is asking lawmakers for funding to improve its ability to track civilian casualties in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups
  • It’s not immediately clear how much the new setup, which includes funds to set up a database that would allow members of the public to directly submit claims of U.S.-caused deaths, will ultimately cost. Those estimates are expected to come later as the Pentagon appears set to unveil a new policy to curb civilian casualties in combat later this year, first prompted by former Defense Secretary James Mattis and continuing under his successor, Mark Esper.  
  • The Pentagon has been under increased scrutiny to improve its civilian casualty reporting since the London-based Airwars outfit began reporting higher tallies of civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria
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  • At the end of last month, U.S. Africa Command announced it would begin issuing a new report revealing ongoing civilian casualty investigations, after Amnesty International said that retaliatory American strikes against the al Qaeda-linked Somalian group al-Shabab killed two civilians in February, contradicting U.S. findings
  • “Currently, information from the public is received in a variety of ways — such as through email, reports by impartial humanitarian organizations and civil society groups, media reports, and social-media,” a defense spokesperson told Foreign Policy. “We are looking at additional options for receiving information from the public, such as creating a webpage that identifies what types of information helps in conducting assessments and how to submit it.”
  • after a U.S.-led coalition drove the Islamic State out of the self-described caliphate’s twin capitals of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017, spearheaded by foreign troops backed by American advisors and strikes, rights groups that accused the Pentagon of vastly undercounting the number of civilian dead are pushing the agency to fold in public assessments to get smarter about choosing its targets.
  • The Defense Department has also chafed at building a fund to pay back the families of innocent victims of U.S. strikes, allowing only $3 million to be authorized each year, despite a tabletop exercise meant to reconcile the differences between the agency and the NGO community
Ed Webb

USA/Somalia: Shroud of secrecy around civilian deaths masks possible war crimes | Amnes... - 0 views

www.amnesty.org/...aths-masks-possible-war-crimes

Somalia US USA military war crimes Amnesty

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Forensic investigation yields credible evidence 14 civilians were killed in just five strikes More than 100 strikes by US drones and manned aircraft since early 2017 Strikes in Somalia tripled under Trump, outpacing Yemen and Libya combined
  • The Hidden US War in Somalia details how 14 civilians were killed and eight more injured in just five of the more than 100 strikes in the past two years. These five incidents were carried out with Reaper drones and manned aircraft in Lower Shabelle, a region largely under Al-Shabaab control outside the Somali capital Mogadishu. The attacks appear to have violated international humanitarian law, and some may amount to war crimes.
  • US Africa Command (AFRICOM) repeated its denial that any civilians have been killed in its operations in Somalia.
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  • “The civilian death toll we’ve uncovered in just a handful of strikes suggests the shroud of secrecy surrounding the US role in Somalia’s war is actually a smokescreen for impunity,”
  • Our findings directly contradict the US military’s mantra of zero civilian casualties in Somalia. That claim seems all the more fanciful when you consider the USA has tripled its air strikes across the country since 2016, outstripping their strikes in Libya and Yemen combined.”
  • Amnesty International researchers travelled to Somalia, conducted more than 150 interviews with eyewitnesses, relatives, persons displaced by the fighting, and expert sources – including in the US military – and rigorously analysed corroborating evidence, including satellite imagery, munition fragments, and photos from the aftermath of air strikes.
  • US forces carried out 34 strikes in Somalia in the last nine months of 2017 – more than in the entire five years from 2012 to 2016. This increased again in 2018, to 47 strikes; and there have already been 24 in the first two months of 2019 alone.
  • the General also believes that the Executive Order widened the net of potential targets to include virtually any adult male living in villages sympathetic to Al-Shabaab and seen in proximity to known fighters. Such a broad targeting mandate would violate international humanitarian law and lead to unlawful killing of civilians.
  • For Somalis affected by US air strikes, there has been little, if any, chance of obtaining justice. It is near impossible to even report the killing or injury of family or community members, given the location of these attacks and the security risks associated with doing so.
Ed Webb

DoD Unprepared For The Global War On Terror's Next Front: Africa - 1 views

taskandpurpose.com/trump-africa-terror-threat

Africa AFRICOM military US USA Libya Tunisia Egypt Somalia hornofafrica Chad Mali

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • It appears that Africa will almost certainly become the next major front in the Global War on Terror. According to Congressional Research Service Africa analyst Lauren Ploch, the return of foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria to their home countries in Africa will pose a huge problem for DoD. Tunisia has the highest recorded number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Iraq and Syria ever; Libya’s weak borders and milieu of non-state armed actors make it an appealing safe haven for ISIS escapees; in the Lake Chad Basin, Boko Haram has split into two factions aligned with ISIS and al Qaeda, respectively; Somalia remains fertile ground for al Shabaab terror recruits; even Egypt may reach the limit of its security capabilities in responding to cascading regional threats.
  • U.S. involvement in the Saudi military intervention in Yemen has plunged the Pentagon into two distinct engagements: one in support of the Saudis, and one against al Qaeda and ISIS. These tensions are most pronounced not in the Lake Chad Basin, according to Ploch, but the Horn of Africa and countries bordering the Red Sea that are subject to the overlapping geopolitical rivalries the Trump administration detailed in its National Defense Strategy.
  • “Waterfront property in the African countries along the Red Sea seems to be an increasingly hot commodity: The U.S. and France have had military facilities in Djibouti for over a decade, but the country is getting increasingly crowded. China just opened a base and Saudi Arabia is in talks for one.”
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  • “Fragile states, governments not in control of their territory …  People can set up camp and do whatever they want. Nothing will change in Libya or Somalia or parts of the Sahel like Mali or Niger. There are terror groups operations there that aren’t even connected to international terror … who we used to go in and target in places like the eastern Congo. We’re not doing those things. There’s no appetite for that.”
  • “In terms of AFRICOM’s ‘bread and butter’ activities — namely security cooperation — it is still somewhat unclear how DoD and the [Trump] administration will prioritize limited resources; AFRICOM’s security cooperation spending was down in 2017 from the previous few years.”
  • These training missions “are five guys deploying to a country they’ve never heard of and trying to professionalize military justice, or even just get troops to walk in a straight line,” she told Task & Purpose. “[AFRICOM] was given an impossible task and no money to do it, and they have to deal with lots of people who like to operate without oversight and take advantage of this. It is not their fault.”
  • ‘training and equipping’ — or more often ‘equipping and training’ — isn’t enough,”
Ed Webb

The Hidden Damage of Trump's Secret War in Somalia - Defense One - 0 views

www.defenseone.com/...160339

Somalia US USA military analysis drones militants civilians

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Oct 19 - Cached
  • The number of U.S. airstrikes, drone strikes, and ground raids in Somalia have risen each year of the Trump administration: from 13 under Obama in 2016, the annual totals rose to 38 in 2017, 47 in 2018, and 55 so far in 2019, by New America’s count.
  • Officials with U.S. Africa Command, which carries out these strikes, asserts that these they have resulted in the targeted killing of hundreds of al-Shabaab militants, and no civilians have been killed in any U.S. airstrikes since April 2018. 
  • In 2017, American troops deployed to Somalia for the first since the “Black Hawk Down” incident a quarter-century ago.
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  • the most recent Global Terrorism Index report found that terrorist activity in Somalia increased 93 percent from 2016 to 2017. This moved the country into the index’s top six countries most affected by terrorism, including economic impact and death toll. (And on September 30, al-Shabaab carried out concurrent attacks on a European military convoy and against the U.S. airstrip in Baledogle, where special operators train Somali forces and launch drones. One U.S. service member received treatment for a concussion.)
  • In January 2018 and September 2019, local reporting found other U.S. operations with civilian casualties not publicly released. These discrepancies raise questions about how many strikes are actually occurring, and whether or not militant death counts are possibly absorbing civilian death counts. 
  • the United States has consistently stated that there have been no civilian casualties
  • “It’s clear from the reporting about tempo of strikes in Somalia that the Trump administration has taken a different approach, striking a broader set of al-Shabaab targets, resulting in a much higher number of reported deaths of militants. What’s not yet clear, at least to me, is whether this approach is contributing to a lessening of the extremism/terrorism problem in East Africa,” says Nicholas Rasmussen, who ran the National Counterterrorism Center earlier in the Trump administration and is now Senior Director for National Security and Counterterrorism at the McCain Institute.
  • Supporting the government of Somalia and its National Army are critical to stabilizing the country, but airstrikes are not making Somalia more secure or reducing terrorist activity. The increased precision airstrike approach by the United States feels as if it is setting Somalia up for failure by primarily choosing military intervention instead of assisting Somalia with addressing driving forces of the conflict
Ed Webb

Revealed: The U.S. military's 36 code-named operations in Africa - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/tions-in-africa-090000841.html

Africa AFRICOM US USA military terrorism

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • These programs are “specifically designed for us to work with our host nation partners to develop small — anywhere between 80 and 120 personnel — counterterrorism forces that we’re partnered with,” said Bolduc. “They are specially selected partner-nation forces that go through extensive training, with the same equipment we have, to specifically go after counterterrorism targets, especially high-value targets.”
  • Between 2013 and 2017, U.S. special operations forces saw combat in at least 13 African countries
  • Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Tunisia
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  • code-named operations cover a variety of different military missions, ranging from psychological operations to counterterrorism
  • Eight of the named activities, including Obsidian Nomad, are so-called 127e programs, named for the budgetary authority that allows U.S. special operations forces to use certain host-nation military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions
  • a panoply of named military operations and activities U.S. forces have been conducting from dozens of bases across the northern tier of Africa. Many of these operations are taking place in countries that the U.S. government does not recognize as combat zones, but in which U.S. troops are nonetheless fighting and, in several cases, taking casualties
  • Yahoo News does not claim that this list is comprehensive.
  • The umbrella operation for the mission that resulted in the deadly ambush in Niger, Juniper Shield is the United States’ centerpiece counterterrorism effort in northwest Africa and covers 11 nations: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia. Under Juniper Shield, U.S. teams rotate in every six months to train, advise, assist and accompany local partner forces to conduct operations against terrorist groups, including ISIS-West Africa, Boko Haram and al Qaida and its affiliates.
  • In 2010, the first head of Africa Command, Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Operation Objective Voice was an “information operations effort to counter violent extremism by leveraging media capabilities in ways that encourage the public to repudiate extremist ideologies.” Coordinated with other government agencies, this propaganda effort included “youth peace games” in Mali, a film project in northern Nigeria, and, according to his successor, Army Gen. Carter Ham, a “variety of messaging platforms, such as the African Web Initiative, to challenge the views of terrorist groups.” Objective Voice continues today.
  • OBSIDIAN LOTUS: A 127e activity concentrated on Libya, in which U.S. commandos trained and equipped Libyan special operations forces battalions. One of those units ended up under the control of renegade warlord Gen. Khalifa Haftar
  • Information on which operations the following bases support was partially redacted: Douala, Garoua and Maroua (all Cameroon); N’Djamena, Chad; Bangui, Central African Republic; Diffa, Dirkou, Madama and Niamey (all Niger). The list of operations supported by Tobruk and Tripoli (both Libya) was fully redacted. Other data were likely withheld completely.
Ed Webb

US military accuses Russia of sending fighter jets to Libyan war | Financial Times - 0 views

www.ft.com/...a6-3f05-4867-9675-5b12a9802adc

Libya Russia US USA Syria military Turkey UAE France

shared by Ed Webb on 26 May 20 - Cached
  • The US military has accused Russia of deploying fighter jets to Libya to support renegade general Khalifa Haftar in a sign of Washington’s mounting concerns about Moscow’s role in the conflict in the north African state.
  • the US military said it had tracked the fourth-generation fighter jets as they flew from a Russian airbase to Libya, via Syria, where it believed the aircraft were repainted to camouflage their origin.
  • they are expanding their military footprint in Africa using government-supported mercenary groups like Wagner
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  • Libya’s interior ministry has said the aircraft included at least six MiG-29s and two Sukhoi 24s, and had flown to Libya from Hmeimim air base in Syria. Russia and the Wagner group have deployed forces in Syria to back president Bashar al-Assad in the country’s nine-year civil war.
  • Western diplomats view Russia’s role in Libya as opportunistic — a chance for Moscow to assert its influence in the region and expand its foothold in the east Mediterranean.
  • Diplomats say hundreds of Wagner fighters have been deployed to support Gen Haftar in Libya for some time. But more recently, an estimated 2,000 Syrian fighters have been dispatched to bolster Gen Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army.
  • Meanwhile, Turkey has increased its support for the government in Tripoli by dispatching several thousand Syrian militias and equipment, including Hawk air defence systems, that have negated Gen Haftar’s air superiority.
  • Fighters loyal to the UN-backed government took control of al-Watiya air base this month after a battle in which Turkish drones destroyed Russian-made Pantsir air-defence systems.
  • “That will be Russian mercenary pilots flying Russian-supplied aircraft to bomb Libyans.”
  • Frederic Wehrey, Libya specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the Africom statement “as a major bold move against Russia” but expressed doubt on whether it would “translate into a more muscular US policy on Libya”.“The big unknown is the White House . . . because there are other allies that still have a hand in the fight like France and the Emirates, so will the US want to expend the political capital [by opposing those countries too].”
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