U.S. military operations in Africa exceed publicly disclosed scope

Evidence

In Burundi and outside Kampala, Uganda, at the Singo Training School, U.S. contractors and military advisers have been training African soldiers as part of a more than $500 million U.S. effort to train and equip African Union troops fighting in Somalia. Africom has also deployed around two dozen military advisers directly into Somalia to lead efforts to defeat the country’s al-Qaeda-linked group, al-Shabab. The military has pursued a covert war in the country and launched raids to capture and extradite at least two al-Shabab fighters to the United States. The CIA has secretly had a permanent presence for several years. … It may be reasonably assumed,” the independent nonprofit Oxford Research Group concluded about the total U.S. military presence, “that much more is happening than has yet been disclosed and there will be more to come.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 996

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader themes of covert base expansion and the ‘lily pad’ network discussed elsewhere in the book.