Free Republic

JIBOUTI, Nov. 16 — For the first time since American troops withdrew from Somalia after a bloody firefight in the streets of Mogadishu, the United States military is rebuilding its combat power in the horn of Africa. The main goal this time is to put American forces in position to strike cells of Al Qaeda in Yemen or East Africa. But the Pentagon has also begun to use Djibouti to train its forces in desert warfare — skills that could be applied in Washington's campaign against terrorist groups or on the battlefields of Iraq. "We are getting heavy weapons ashore...

SNIPPET: "The home secretary is to designate the Somalia-based group Al-Shabaab as a terrorist organisation and ban its operation in the UK. The Home Office says the group is committed to violence, deploys terror tactics and has been implicated in attacks on Somali citizens." SNIPPET: "In a statement released in February, the group said that the "jihad of Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network". Recently, Mr Johnson has also banned Islam4UK, the group run by al-Muhajiroun founder Anjem Choudary, and which had threatened to march through Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire."

reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others...

SNIPPET: "An al Qaeda leader wanted by the US for a string of deadly attacks has been named the new leader of terror group's network in East Africa. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of several al Qaeda leaders charged with carrying out the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was appointed the leader of al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. Fazul was "inaugurated" during an open ceremony in the southern city of Kismayo, according to a translation received by The Long War Journal of an article posted Waaga Cusub, a website operated by the Hawiye clan,...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the US will "take action" against Eritrea if it does not stop supporting militants in Somalia. She said after talks with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that Eritrea's actions were "unacceptable". She also said the US would expand support for Somalia's unity government. Eritrea denies supporting Somalia's al-Shabab militants, who are trying to overthrow Somalia's government. Al-Shabab is growing in strength and 250,000 Somalis have fled their homes in fighting between militants and government forces over the past three months.

St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison said the U.S. government is trying to ensure the safe return of some of the young Somali-American men believed to be fighting with a terrorist group in their homeland. Ellison said he has been included in classified briefings about efforts to bring the missing men back to the Twin Cities. At least four Somali-American men from Minnesota who left to fight in the Horn of Africa have died there in recent months. One of youngest, a skinny teenager from Minneapolis named Burhan Hassan, was trying to leave the fighting and make his...

(English-language translation) Over 400 Puerto Rico National Guard troops left yesterday for Fort Lewis in Washington, where they will receive training to accomplish their mission in the Horn of Africa. Puerto Rico National Guard Adjutant General Antonio J. Vicéns said that, following the month-long training, the 65th Infantry Battalion will head to Africa to support a security mission. "This is the first 65th Infantry Battalion of National Guardsmen from all states that will perform a mission in the Horn of Africa," Vicéns stated. The soldiers departed in the morning from Luis Muñoz Marín Airport, where Vicéns and their relatives bid...

May 16, 2009 SNIPPET: "There have been a number of reports of foreign fighters, with possible links to al-Qaeda, fighting alongside hardline Islamists of al-Shabaab and Hisbul-Islam, said Mr Carson, the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. "We're extremely worried about the reports." "There seem to be fairly serious and creditable reports that al Shabaab does have, amongst its fighters, a number of individuals of South Asian and Chechen origin," said Mr Carson. "This is a very disturbing situation and reflects the seriousness of the problem in Somalia." Mr Carson also expressed concern about flights from Eritrea were...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard will require U.S.-flagged ships sailing around the Horn of Africa to post guards and ship owners to submit anti-piracy security plans for approval, a Coast Guard official said on Tuesday. The new requirements, which respond to a surge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, allow ship owners to decide whether to use armed or unarmed guards, Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson told shipping industry representatives at a maritime security meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The revised Maritime Security Directive, highly anticipated by the shipping industry, was signed on Monday...

Piracy never really disappeared; it plagues maritime commerce as much today as it did in the Caribbean in the 18th century and on the Barbary Coast in the 19th century. But until recently, modern-day pirates mostly rustled some cargo and let their captives continue, leaving the crew unharmed. That's changed. Pirates in the waters off Somalia, and from the Gulf of Aden to south of the equator, are no longer simply interested in seizing ships and cargo. Now they are out for the multimillion dollar ransoms paid by ship operators to rescue their crews. They've come up with a good...

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, April 13, 2009 – For U.S. Africa Command’s new deputy director of operations and logistics, the words “I can’t do it” won’t cut it. Not from his soldiers, not from the people he serves with, and certainly not from himself. And this Army National Guardsman, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt “Rose” Barfield, knows what it means to be able to “do it.” Barfield was encouraged by a friend to enlist in the Army National Guard fresh out of high school at the age of 17. He served for five years as a soldier in the Kansas Guard while...

Scouring the deserts and highlands of present and future terrorists in the troubled, war-torn region that comprises Yemen, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia demands urgent, skillful, measures that are as much social, economic, and political as they must be military. Al Qaeda operatives and sleepers in this region are few, but dangerous. Additionally, there are cells linked both loosely and more tightly to Al Qaeda throughout the region, and beyond into Kenya, Tanzania, and the Comoros. Those cells need to be found and eradicated through concerted diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, and military means. Since internal conflict is a...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress09/mueller032509.htm Congressional Testimony Robert S. Mueller, III Director Federal Bureau of Investigation Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 25, 2009 Good morning Chairman Leahy, Senator Specter, and Members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here today. As you know, we in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have undergone unprecedented transformation in recent years, from developing the intelligence capabilities necessary to address emerging terrorist and criminal threats, to creating the administrative and technological structure necessary to meet our new mission as a national security service. Today, the FBI is a...

WASHINGTON -- Authorities monitored a rush of intelligence leads Tuesday at the largest security operation in presidential inauguration history, including a possible threat from an East Africa radical Islamic terrorist group. Law enforcement and intelligence officials received information that people associated with a Somalia-based group, al-Shabaab, might try to travel to the U.S. with plans to disrupt the inauguration, according to a joint FBI/Homeland Security bulletin issued Monday night. The information had limited specificity and uncertain credibility, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke. U.S. counter-terror officials have grown concerned in recent months about the threat posed by the militant al-Shabaab...

On the same day Somali gunmen seized two more ships, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of the Horn of Africa country. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush's last major foreign policy initiatives. Rice said the resolution will have a significant impact, especially since "pirates are adapting to the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden by traveling further" into sea lanes not guarded by warships sent by the U.S. and...

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month. The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5...

"Sir, you have done India proud." That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden. Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595. Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude...

"For Odinga it was a PR triumph of the first order. The rock star’s glitter rubbed off on his putative cousin by the bucket. Nor did Obama limit his role to boosting Odinga’s image. The senator also criticized the incumbent Kenyan president. Mike Flannery, political editor for CBS2 in Nairobi, reported that Obama had accused the Kibaki government (Odinga’s opponent) of corruption “almost every day since he arrived.” The political temperature grew hotter than the Nairobi summer. Dr. Alfred Matua, a government spokesman, accused Odinga of “using Obama as his stooge, as his puppet.” Matua added, “Sen. Obama has to...

ON THE DJIBOUTIAN-ERITREAN BORDER — The distance between the rival armies is shorter than the barrel of a gun. Hundreds of opposing troops are lined up on the border, staring each other down, from just inches away. On one side are the Djiboutians, a relatively well-equipped African military with combat boots, CamelBak strap-on water bottles and the occasional buttery croissant in the field. On the other side are skinny Eritrean soldiers, covered in dust and wearing plastic sandals, camped out in thatch-roofed huts that look like fortified tropical bungalows. < > “No pictures, no pictures,” one Eritrean soldier yelled....

Soldiers become American citizens in Africa DJIBOUTI (March 16, 2008) — Seven Soldiers supporting the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa mission became U.S. citizens during a Military Naturalization Ceremony at the U.S. Embassy March 13. After enlisting in the Army and serving the United States, Four Soldiers assigned to 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry (Light), Delta Company, and three Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, Delta Company, raised their right hands and said the Oath of Allegiance. During the ceremony, Ambassador W. Stuart Symington, U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti and keynote speaker, addressed the candidates reminding them about the oath...