THE SECRET FRONT: INSIDE HEART OF CIA WAR AGAINST AL-QAEDA

THE SECRET FRONT: INSIDE HEART OF CIA WAR AGAINST AL-QAEDA

► http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/africa/article2566864.ece

► The Times / by Damian Whitworth and Michael Evans

► Stringer: Martin Rudner [ret.] / Carleton University / Ottawa / www.carleton.ca/cciss

Jun 22 2010 ► Jun 22. The new front line in America's War on Terror is a motley collection of dilapi-dated colonial-era buildings, temporary huts and rows of tents on the dusty outskirts of an airport in one of Africa's smallest and least-known countries. FRINGE INTELLIGENCE - year 10 - no.207 – July 1 – 2010 - page 23

Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion barracks in Djibouti, is at the heart of rapidly expanding covert operations against al-Qaeda in Somalia, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. From here the CIA tracks al-Qaeda operatives in neighbouring countries and targets them with missiles fired from drones.

The American operation is shrouded in secrecy but The Times was given rare access to the base. On one side of Ambouli airport is a modest civilian terminal from which travellers can fly to Dubai and Addis Ababa. On the other side of the runway is the growing military facility.

Hercules transport aircraft, Marine helicopters and US Army personnel buzzing around in golf carts are the outward signs of the military presence but in the small town of buildings sprawling away from the airfield — many of them just large shipping containers — the very modern, secret war is being orchestrated.

About 900 American troops arrived in 2002. The CIA, with its own section at Camp Lemonier, had an early success, firing a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone that killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, suspected of being the planner of the attack on USS Cole off Aden in 2000 in which 17 American sailors died. Another CIA strike, using a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle last year, killed Aden Hashi Ayro, a senior figure linked to al-Qaeda.

Today there are about 3,000 US troops here, up to 1,000 of them believed to be special operations forces, assigned to US Africa Command (Africom). Half of the 3,000 are attached to Combat Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, whose mission is to work openly with nations in the region to build their capacity for confronting terrorism in their countries.

The secret war against al-Qaeda is carried out from Djibouti by the potent combination of CIA paramilitary operatives and special operations troops — a CIA/Defence Department counterterrorism warfare formation initiated by President George W Bush and, under great secrecy, expanded by President Obama.

Only this month it emerged that President Obama had authorised the deployment of special opera-tions troops into 75 countries, an increase of 15 territories since the Bush Administration. Operations have been stepped up in particular in Somalia and Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden. The use of drones has also been increased significantly since President Obama took office.

One key US target is Anwar alAwlaki, the first US citizen to be placed on the CIA's list of targets it wants to kill. Thought to be in hiding in Yemen, he has been linked to some of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas Day, and the US Army gunman charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood.

From Camp Lemonier, the CIA is acting in a warfighting role, not in its more traditional intelligence-gathering and analysis function. Although the CIA controls Predator strikes in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Djibouti CIA paramilitary operatives and special operations troops are fighting against al-Qaeda so closely that some senior American defence figures are concerned at the apparent lack of political control over their activities.

 

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