Free Republic

Another Joe Biden foreign policy disaster is in the works. Joe Biden already turned over the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan to Taliban terrorists in September 2021. Biden abandoned Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years in July by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ secret departure more than two hours after they left. The Taliban quickly took control of Bagram Air Base, which is only 30 miles north of Kabul, on August 15th and released thousands of terrorists held at its prison. The Americans and Afghans...

Days after a deadly suicide attack at a French-run uranium mine in Niger, a FRANCE 24 team that was given access to the high security site found evidence that the assailants had meticulously studied their target and likely received inside help. The explosives-packed car that rammed a grinding unit at a uranium mine in Arlit, a remote town in northern Niger, last week is in tatters. The shell of the car’s transmission system stands upright in the rubble, while the twisted frame was flung about ten meters away. Days after suicide bombers attacked a uranium mine in this West African...

The U.S. has removed all remaining personnel from Yemen as Shiite rebels controlling the country’s capital called for others to join its battle against government forces. The State Department said in a statement it is removing personnel due to the “deteriorating security situation” in the country. The State Department also said it will continue to engage the Yemeni people and international community to support the country’s political transition. […] The U.N. Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen as well. The closed-door meeting is expected to take place Sunday. …

Aden (AFP) - The United States said it had evacuated all its staff from Yemen, whose embattled president has appealed for "urgent intervention" by the UN Security Council as attacks by Iran-backed rebels bring his country nearer to civil war. Due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the US government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement. The evacuation comes after several suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group killed 142 people in Sanaa on Friday, with the jihadists seeking to exploit the chaos gripping the country....

NIAMEY, Niger — The newest outpost in the U.S. government’s empire of drone bases sits behind a razor-wire-topped wall outside this West African capital, blasted by 110-degree heat and the occasional sandstorm blowing from the Sahara. The U.S. Air Force began flying a handful of unarmed Predator drones from here last month. The gray, mosquito-shaped aircraft emerge sporadically from a borrowed hangar and soar north in search of al-Qaeda fighters and guerrillas from other groups hiding in the region’s untamed deserts and hills. ... Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has relied heavily on drones for operations, both declared...

The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border...

Military Pact With Niger Brings American Forces Closer to Conflict in Mali. The U.S. signed an agreement Monday with the West African country of Niger that clears the way for a stepped-up American military presence on the edges of the conflict in neighboring Mali. The U.S. and France are moving to create an intelligence hub in Niger that could include a base, near Mali's border, for American drones that could monitor al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali's vast desert north, U.S. officials said. The moves show the extent to which the U.S. and France are girding for what could be an...