"U.S. Africa Command has bolstered its anti-piracy forces with the recent addition of maritime patrol aircraft and more personnel in the Seychelles islands.
"The Navy last month deployed three P-3 Orion aircraft from the Maine-based VP-26 Tridents, along with 112 sailors, to the Seychelles to patrol the waters off East Africa....Patrol Squadron 26's insignia, a skull over a compass and two bombs or torpedoes that form an X, resembles the Jolly Roger flag, which symbolizes piracy." [25]
What sort of pirates the Pentagon is using as the pretext for its military buildup in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa as a whole was demonstrated last September when "Foreign troops in helicopters strafed a car...in a Somali town...killing two men and capturing two others who were wounded, witnesses said. U.S. military officials said American forces were involved in the raid."
"Two U.S. military officials said forces from the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were involved." [26] The Joint Special Operations Command was headed up by Stanley McChrystal from 2003 to 2008. He has moved on from overseeing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq during those years to assuming control over all U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
A witness also reported that "the helicopters took off from a warship flying a French flag" [27] and a rebel source said "We are getting information that French army gunships attacked a car, destroying it completely and taking some of the passengers." [28]
French military forces remain in the former colony of Djibouti where they train for operations not only in Afghanistan but in several former African possessions. Troops, warplanes and armored vehicles from NATO nations - under the flags of NATO itself, the European Union, France and the United States - have intervened in civil and cross-border conflicts across the entire width of Africa over the past few years: Somalia, Djibouti-Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Darfur region of Sudan and the Ivory Coast; from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.
A report from last month provides some indication of the French role on the continent. Radio France Internationale described "French soldiers in Djibouti train[ing] for Afghanistan and keep[ing] an eye on Africa" with the following details:
"Twelve special forces commandos arrived first" and "the army...storm[ed] the beach....The exercise, seen as crucial for battle preparedness in a region infamous for its fractious politics, included all the country's military sectors - sea, land and air.
"As desert tanks zoomed onto the shore Mirage jets criss-crossed the open sky. Meanwhile, land troops were dispatched from the mouths of armoured personnel carriers and helicopters airlifted artillery guns onto the ground.
"'It's a show of force. It shows what France is able to do militarily,' said one army officer.
"In recent years French troops in Djibouti have been involved in a number of...military missions in Africa. They helped reinforce the UN brigade patrolling Cote d'Ivoire and last year provided logistical and tactical help to Djiboutian soldiers warding off an attack from neighbouring Eritrea.
"For the time being, the first theatre of combat these troops will see is Afghanistan, where France is part of the Nato contingent. The mountainous, arid countryside closely resembles Djibouti's own undulating moonscape.
"The troops taking part are a contingent of a 2,500-strong force based in Djibouti." [29]
In addition to intermittent armed clashes between troops from Djibouti and Eritrea, in the past weeks reports have surfaced of deadly fighting within Eritrea and between that nation and neighboring Ethiopia. Djibouti and Ethiopia are the West's client regimes and military proxies in the Horn of Africa and, as is demonstrated above, the integration of the South Asian and Northeast African war fronts is proceeding rapidly.
Starting in the autumn of 2008 NATO began what it calls counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and further into the Gulf of Aden, often in league with comparable deployments by the European Union, with which it shares warships, commanders and "common strategic interests" under the Berlin Plus and other arrangements. [30]
The NATO naval surveillance and interdiction operation in and near the Horn of Africa is an extension of its effective takeover of the entire Mediterranean Sea with Operation Active Endeavor [31] initiated in 2001 under the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and augmented by the blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast by NATO nations' warships under UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) auspices that began after Israel's assault on the country in 2006. The latter's Maritime Task Force (MTF) "has hailed some 27,000 ships and referred nearly 400 suspicious vessels to Lebanese authorities for further inspection.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
