Obama’s Wages Secret War In Somalia And May Have Violated UN Embargo
The Obama Administration is arming and training 15,000 Africans from 5 different countries to fight a proxy war in Somalia. They are arming the army with surveillance drones, ammunition, small arms, armored personnel carriers, night-vision goggles, communications gear, medical equipment and other sophisticated aid and training, documents show.
On July 20th, Obama signed an Executive order banning charcoal import from Somalia. Days after the EO was issued, drones were spotted in Somalia.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has collected the comprehensive database of reported drone attacks in Somalia. The use of drones in Somalia the U.S. may have violated the 1992 United Nations Security Council arms embargo.
In a recently completed report, U.N. officials describe several narrowly averted disasters in which drones crashed into a refugee camp, flew dangerously close to a fuel dump and almost collided with a large passenger plane over Mogadishu, the capital.
The report, from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, noted that some of small drones were attached to African Union troops. However, the use of US Reapers or Predators in kill operations would ‘be operating in violation of the embargo’, according to the UN’s Matthew Bryden. As the Washington Post notes
The United Nations said it had documented 64 unauthorized flights of drones, fighter jets or attack helicopters in Somalia since June 2011. At least 10 of those flights involved drones, according to the report, which provided dates and locations but few other details. UN officials said they catalogued the flights from ‘confidential international agency security reports’ and press reports.’
(via theamericanbear)
