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President Biden has signed an order authorizing the military to once again deploy hundreds of Special Operations forces inside Somalia — largely reversing the decision by President Donald J. Trump to withdraw nearly all 700 ground troops who had been stationed there, according to four officials familiar with the matter. In addition, Mr. Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda, three of the officials said. Since Mr. Biden took office, airstrikes have largely been limited to those meant...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. Navy said Wednesday it will begin a new task force with allied countries to patrol the Red Sea after a series of attacks attributed to Yemen's Houthi rebels in a waterway that's essential to global trade. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, who oversees the Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet, declined four times to directly name the Iran-backed Houthis in his remarks to journalists announcing the task force. However, the Houthis have launched explosive-laden drone boats and mines into the waters of the Red Sea, which runs from Egypt's Suez Canal in the north, down...

Va. National Guard task force begins federal active duty for security mission in Africa

Four Americans gunned down in a withering, four-hour firefight in the Sahara -- part of a 10-man Green Beret team said to have gone rogue and been ambushed by ISIS while hunting down a top terrorist to "capture or kill" -- were ill-prepared, poorly trained and "not indicative" of their high-performing peers on the continent, U.S. military officials said. And in the strangest twist of all, they had been trying to locate an American aid worker who was being held hostage by the terrorist commander they were trying to kill. That story, as presented by the Pentagon, sounded like an...

The U.S. military conducted an airstrike against Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shabaab jihadists on Tuesday, the first airstrike in the country since President Joe Biden took office, the Pentagon said. The US military command for Africa (AFRICOM), in coordination with the Somali government, 'conducted one air strike in the vicinity of Galkayo, Somalia today against al-Shabaab,' Pentagon spokeswoman Cindi King told AFP. The strike, 430 miles northeast of Mogadishu, targeted Shabaab Islamists....

Libya's weak new government needs to strike a deal with strongman Haftar to stay afloat.A businessman with Gaddafi regime ties, Abdelhamid Debaiba defied the odds when a UN-led dialogue chose him as prime minister earlier this month, despite French and Egyptian backing for a rival list led by the east Libyan parliament speaker Aguileh Saleh and west Libyan interior minister Fathi Bashagha. One powerbroker, however, breathed a sigh of relief. Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who launched a devastating war on Tripoli in 2019 only to be defeated and increasingly marginalised, was back in the saddle.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a town in northern Mozambique last week that forced hundreds of foreign contractors to flee amid fierce fighting. Local police and soldiers were reported to have secured control of most of Palma on Monday, after hundreds of Islamist insurgents who overran the small port last week withdrew to surrounding forests and fields leaving a trail of devastation. In a statement issued on official media channels, the Islamic State claimed insurgents killed more than 55 members of local security forces and Christians, including those from “Crusader nations”, and destroyed official buildings...

Last week, Human Rights Watch quoted witnesses in the city as saying they saw bodies on the streets and that militants were firing indiscriminately at people and buildings. "Al-Shabab fired on civilians in their homes and on the streets in Palma, as they tried to flee for their lives," Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said. He called on Mozambique to protect civilians "and bring all those responsible for abuses to account." The Cabo Delgado LNG project has been a recurring concern due to the fragile security situation in the region. Paris-based Total had to shut down...

Seven people have died after trying to escape a hotel in Mozambique, according to reports. Updated 3 hours ago An attack by Islamist militants in northern Mozambique has seen seven die after a siege on a local hotel and dozens more have lost their lives after hundreds of militants stormed the town. Militants believed to be linked to the Islamic State (IS) group are behind the attack which has also seen shops, banks and military barracks targeted. The BBC has reported how seven people were killed while trying to escape the Amaarula Hotel, including locals and foreigners working nearby. A...

Defense Secretary Mark Esper met with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune today in the first visit of a Pentagon chief to the North African country since 2006. It was also the highest-level US diplomatic meeting with the new Algerian president since longtime ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted amid popular protests last year. The meeting came a day after Esper signed a 10-year road map for defense cooperation agreement with Tunisia's defense minister and one day before an expected stop in Morocco. The trip is the latest sign that the United States sees strategic opportunity in bolstering its partnerships in North Africa...

U.S. Africa Command says that at least two MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets, possibly piloted by shadowy Russian mercenaries, have crashed in Libya. Jared Szuba, the Pentagon correspondent for AI-Monitor, Tweeted out that one of the jets was apparently lost on June 28, while the other went down on September 7, 2020. This information had come in a statement from Rear Admiral Heidi Berg, U.S. Africa Command's (AFRICOM) director of intelligence. Another tweet indicates that Berg believes that "Russian fighter aircraft," presumably MiG-29s too, but potentially also Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft, have conducted airstrikes in Libya. AI-Monitor's Szuba follows that up...

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has taken out a high-value member of the Al Shabaab terror group in Somalia on Thursday. AFRICOM confirmed the successful airstrike in an emailed statement to American Military News. The Al Shabaab member, who was not named, had a history of making explosives and was reportedly working to place Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) on a public road at the time of the strike near the vicinity of Kurtun Warey, Somalia.

More than a week after an attack by al-Shabaab that killed three Americans, including a soldier, the Pentagon announced a deadly airstrike was carried out in Somalia on the designated terrorist group. U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, said the strikes were conducted in the area of Qunyo Barrow, Somalia, on Thursday, killing two members of the group. The State Department has designated al-Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organization affiliated with al-Qaeda. “Al-Shabaab presents a threat to America, the African people, and our international partners,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Gayler of AFRICOM. No civilians were killed or injured in...

New information regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya and on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt has been brought forward by former U.S. military personnel who were on duty that fateful night. These whistleblowers reveal that the attackers in Benghazi were led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, under the command of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. “Qassem Suleimani, a fanatical Islamic revolutionary, has rapidly become one of the world’s top terrorist suspects, as well as a powerful and sinister force within Iran” according to The Telegraph. U.S....

The Chinese military is guilty of “irresponsible actions” toward American forces stationed at Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier on the Horn of Africa, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said. The home of U.S. military operations in the region and the biggest U.S. base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier is near the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas military base, and the proximity has been a continuing source of tension. Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, director of intelligence at the U.S. Africa Command, told a small group of African-based journalists in a telephone media roundtable that China tried to “constrain international airspace” by barring...

U.S. forces killed an estimated 52 members of the militant Islamic terrorist group al Shabab in airstrikes in Jilib, Somalia, on Saturday, U.S. Africa Command reported. "U.S. Africa Command conducted the airstrike in response to an attack by a large group of al-Shabaab militants against Somali National Army Forces," U.S. Africa Command, the branch of the military that coordinates with allies on the continent, said in a statement. The strike was part of a broader effort to prevent the terrorist group from "taking advantage of safe havens from which they can build capacity and attack the people of Somalia."

In an interview with CBS News, General (retired) John Allen, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition To Counter ISIL, or the Islamic State, attempted to assure Americans that they should not be concerned with the US providing military and other support for Shiite militias, many of which are backed by Iran. Allen attempts to separate the “extremist elements” from the Popular Mobilization Force (or Committee), when the distinction is practically meaningless. From the interview, which was published on the US State Department’s website (emphasis is mine): With regard to militias, it’s really important to understand that the militias...

No one has been charged in Sergeant Melgar’s death, which a military medical examiner ruled to be “a homicide by asphyxiation,” or strangulation, said three military officials briefed on the autopsy results. The two Navy SEALs, who have not been identified, were flown out of Mali shortly after the episode and were placed on administrative leave. The biggest unanswered question is why Sergeant Melgar was killed. “N.C.I.S. does not discuss the details of ongoing investigations,” Ed Buice, the agency’s spokesman, said in an email, confirming that his service had taken over the case on Sept. 25. Neither the Army nor...

Special Report: US State Dept., CIA War Against Pentagon Breaks Into the Open With Profound Impact on Strategic Policy Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor. Senior bureaucrats in the US Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have begun bringing their "war" with the Department of Defense into the open, strenuously advising foreign leaders to avoid meetings with key US Defense officials. This was particularly evident during the visit of some 12 African leaders to Washington, DC, for the June 24-26, 2003, Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) conclave. At least one visiting African head-of-state was told by a...

Edward Bernays believed that society could not be trusted to make rational and informed decisions on their own, and that guiding public opinion was essential within a democratic society. Bernays founded the Council on Public Relations and his 1928 book, Propaganda cites the methodology used in the application of effective emotional communication. He discovered that such communication is capable of manipulating the unconscious in an effort to produce a desired effect – namely, a capacity to manufacture mass social adherence in support of products, political candidates and social movements. Nearly a century after his heyday, Bernays’ methodology is apparent in...