And the military industrial complex marches on……

NAIROBI, Kenya - The State Department has hired a major military contractor to help equip and provide logistical support to international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role in the critical mission without assigning combat forces.

DynCorp International, which also has U.S. contracts in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, will be paid $10 million to help the first peacekeeping mission in Somalia in more than 10 years.

It’s a potentially dangerous assignment. When the first 1,500 Ugandans peacekeepers arrived in Somalia’s capital Tuesday, they were greeted with a mortar attack and a major firefight. And on Wednesday, attackers ambushed the peacekeepers in Mogadishu, setting off another gunfight.

The support for the Ugandans is part of a larger goal to improve African forces across the continent and promote peace and stability in a region that’s often lawless and a haven for terrorists, including some tied to al-Qaida. The U.S. has also begun to depend more on African nations for oil and minerals, and wants to expand its influence.

Read more at YahooNews

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MOGADISHU, Somalia - Three Somali police speedboats and a U.S. military vessel were headed Monday toward a U.N.-chartered cargo ship hijacked by pirates, a senior police official said. Piracy has been rampant off the Somali coast.

Somali pirates boarded the MV Rozen - which had just delivered a total of 1,884 tons of food aid in northern Somalia - on Sunday, taking the crew hostage, officials said. It is the third U.N.-chartered ship to be hijacked in Somali waters since 2005.

Police boats were within sight of the ship “but we asked them to stop going further because our biggest concern is the safety of the crew of 12 on board,” said Col. Abdi Ali Hagaafe, police chief of the Bari region.

“We have asked the U.S. navy in the Red Sea … to help us in the operation, and they told us they have started to move towards the ship,” he said.

The ship is not in international waters, but “U.S./Coalition forces are in the area and are monitoring the situation,” said Lt. Denise Garcia of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command based in Bahrain.

Read more at Chron.com

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Wait a minute…..I thought they DIDN’T get any Al Qaeda officials as they first stated?

WASHINGTON: 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.

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From YahooNews:

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A top U.S. official in the region said Thursday that none of the al-Qaida suspects believed to be hiding in Somalia died in a U.S. airstrike this week, but Somalis with close ties to the terrorist group were killed.

A day earlier, a Somali official said a U.S. intelligence report had referred to the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the three senior al-Qaida members blamed for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But the U.S. official in Kenya, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that Ethiopian troops and U.S. special forces were still pursuing the three suspects in southern Somalia.

U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday that a small team of U.S. special operations forces are in Somalia hunting suspected al-Qaida fighters and providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground.

The U.S. forces entered Somalia with Ethiopian forces late last month when Ethiopians launched their attack against a Somali Islamic movement said to be sheltering al-Qaida figures, one of the officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

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MOGADISHU, Somalia: Somali officials said Tuesday that more than 50 people were killed by American airstrikes on Sunday and that most were Islamist leaders fleeing in armed pick- up trucks across a remote stretch of the Kenya-Somalia border.

News of the attack immediately set off new waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, which has been devastated by years of war.

“They’re just trying to get revenge for what we did to them in 1993,” said Deeq Salad Mursel, a taxi driver, referring to the infamous “Black Hawk down” episode in which 18 American soldiers were killed by Somali gunmen.

President Bill Clinton abruptly curtailed a large American-led aid mission in the 1990s after the 18 soldiers were killed, sending Somalia into a spiral of chaos and bloodshed where much of the country still remains.

Last summer, American efforts to fund a band of warlords as a bulwark against a growing Islamist movement backfired when many Somalis learned of the hidden American hand and threw their support behind the Islamists.

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Related story: U.S. Strike in Somalia Concerns U.N. Chief

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Published: December 28, 2006
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 28 - Just hours after the Islamist forces abandoned Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, militias loyal to the transitional government seized the city today in a stunning reversal of fortunes.

According to residents, troops from the transitional government, along with Ethiopian soldiers who had been backing them up, poured into the capital from the outskirts of the city while militiamen within Mogadishu occupied key positions, like the port, airport and dilapidated presidential palace.

“The government has taken over Mogadishu,” a transitional government leader, Jama Fuuruh, told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu’s port.

” We are now in charge.”

Read more at the NYTimes

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