CounterVortex

The New York Times‘ increasingly questionable Michael R. Gordon has yet another report Feb. 23 (with Mark Mazzetti) based largely on anonymous sources. But this one, “U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa,” is just telling us what an astute reading-between-the-lines could have gleaned from previous reportage from the Horn of Africa. It does, however, have some vindicating tidbits for those of us who were prematurely correct in warning of a US proxy war in the Horn. Here are the relevant parts, emphasis and interjections added:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The American military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, including the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia, according to American officials.

The close and largely clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant sharing of intelligence on the Islamic militants’ positions and information from American spy satellites with the Ethiopian military. Members of a secret American Special Operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ventured into Somalia, the officials said.

The counterterrorism effort was described by American officials as a qualified success that disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia, led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants and involved a collaborative relationship with Ethiopia that had been developing for years.

But the tally of the dead and captured does not as yet include some Qaeda leaders — including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam — whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998…

It has been known for several weeks that American Special Operations troops have operated inside Somalia and that the United States carried out two strikes on Qaeda suspects using AC-130 gunships. But the extent of American cooperation with the recent Ethiopian invasion into Somalia and the fact that the Pentagon secretly used an airstrip in Ethiopia to carry out attacks have not been previously reported. The secret campaign in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach the Pentagon has taken in recent years to dispatch Special Operations troops globally to hunt high-level terrorism suspects. President Bush gave the Pentagon powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to carry out these missions, which historically had been reserved for intelligence operatives.

When Ethiopian troops first began a large-scale military offensive in Somalia late last year, officials in Washington denied that the Bush administration had given its tacit approval to the Ethiopian government. In interviews over the past several weeks, however, officials from several American agencies with a hand in Somalia policy have described a close alliance between Washington and the Ethiopian government that was developed with a common purpose: rooting out Islamic radicalism inside Somalia.

Indeed, the Pentagon for several years has been training Ethiopian troops for counterterrorism operations in camps near the Somalia border, including Ethiopian special forces called the Agazi Commandos, which were part of the Ethiopian offensive in Somalia.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to discuss details of the American operation [then why mention his name?—WW4R], but some officials agreed to provide specifics because they saw it as a relative success story. They said that the close relationship had included the sharing of battlefield intelligence on the Islamists’ positions — the result of an Ethiopian request to Gen. John P. Abizaid, then the commander of the United States Central Command. John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence at the time, then authorized spy satellites to be diverted to provide information for Ethiopian troops, the officials said.

The deepening American alliance with Ethiopia is the latest twist in the United States’ on-and-off intervention in Somalia… After a failed C.I.A. effort to arm and finance Somali warlords, the Bush administration decided on a policy to bolster Somalia’s weak transitional government. [There seems to considerable overlap between the “warlords” and the “transitional government.”—WW4R] This decision brought the American policy in line with Ethiopia’s.

As the Islamists’ grip on power grew stronger, their militias began to encircle Baidoa, where the transitional government was operating in virtual exile. Ethiopian officials pledged that if the Islamists attacked Baidoa, they would respond with a full-scale assault.

While Washington resisted officially endorsing an Ethiopian invasion, American officials from several government agencies said that the Bush administration decided last year that an incursion was the best option to dislodge the Islamists from power.

When the Ethiopian offensive began on Dec. 24, it soon turned into a rout, somewhat to the Americans’ surprise. Armed with American intelligence, the Ethiopians’ tank columns, artillery batteries and military jets made quick work of the poorly trained and ill-equipped Islamist militia.

“The Ethiopians just wiped out entire grid squares; it was a blitzkrieg,” said one official in Washington who helped develop the strategy toward Somalia.

As the Islamists retreated, the Qaeda operatives and their close aides fled south toward a swampy region. Using information provided by Ethiopian forces in Somalia as well as American intelligence, a task force from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command began planning direct strikes.

On Dec. 31, the largely impotent transitional government of Somalia submitted a formal request to the American ambassador in Kenya asking for the United States to take action against the militants.

General Abizaid called Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and informed him that the Central Command was sending additional Special Operations forces to the region. The deployment was carried out under the terms of an earlier, classified directive that gave the military the authority to kill or capture senior Qaeda operatives if it was determined that the failure to act expeditiously meant the United States would lose a “fleeting opportunity” to neutralize the enemy, American officials said.

On Jan. 6, two Air Force AC-130 gunships, aircraft with devastating firepower, arrived at a small airport in eastern Ethiopia. American Special Operations troops operating in Kenya, working with the Kenyan military, also set up positions along the southern border to capture militants trying to flee the country.

A Navy flotilla began to search for ships that might be carrying fleeing Qaeda operatives. Support planes were deployed in Djibouti. F-15Es from Al Udeid air base in Qatar also flew missions. Intelligence was shared with Ethiopia and Kenya through C.I.A. operatives in each country. American military planners also worked directly with Ethiopian and Kenyan military officials.

On Jan. 7, one day after the AC-130s arrived in Ethiopia, the airstrike was carried our near Ras Kamboni, an isolated fishing village on the Kenyan border.

According to American officials, the primary target of the strike was Aden Hashi Ayro, a young military commander trained in Afghanistan who was one of the senior leaders of the Council of Islamic Courts.

Several hours after the strike, Ethiopian troops and one member of the American Special Operations team arrived at the site and confirmed that eight people had been killed and three wounded, all of whom were described as being armed. After sifting through the debris, they found a bloodied passport and other items that led them to believe Mr. Ayro was injured in the strike and probably died. Several members of the Special Operations team were also in Somalia at the time of the strike, one official said.

The second AC-130 strike, on Jan. 23, had another of the Islamic council’s senior leaders, Sheik Ahmed Madobe, as its target. Mr. Madobe survived and was later captured by the Ethiopians, Americans say.

American officials said that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the mastermind of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the alleged ringleader of Al Qaeda’s East African cell, remains at large. Some officials caution that while the Ethiopians have said additional “high-priority targets,” including Abu Talha al-Sudani, a leading member of the cell, were killed in their own airstrikes, American intelligence officials have yet to confirm this.

In late January, American officials played a role in securing the safe passage of Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the second-highest-ranking Islamist leader, from southern Somalia to Nairobi, Kenya. The exact role of American involvement is still not clear, but some American officials consider him to be a moderate Islamist.

Gee thanks, New York Times. Now Sheik Ahmed is a marked man, if he wasn’t already.

See our last post on the struggle for the Horn of Africa.