US Africa Command said in a press release on Monday that its forces launched an airstrike in Somalia on November 8, marking at least the 90th time that the US has bombed the country this year.
AFRICOM said the strike targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region and that it was launched about 40 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bosaso, a remote area of the Cal Miskaad mountains. The command offered no other details about the strike, as it had stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on civilian harm earlier this year.
“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said.
The US backs local security forces in Puntland, as the US-backed Federal Government, which is based in Mogadishu, doesn’t control the territory. In 2024, the Puntland government withdrew from the federal system in response to President Hassan Sheikh’s move to amend the constitution.
The Puntland government has come under criticism recently over reports that the UAE has been shipping weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan through an air base in Bosaso. The RSF has been accused of committing genocide in Sudan, and its fighters committed atrocities against civilians after it took the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region in October.
The US has been providing Puntland with significant air support in its war against Somalia’s ISIS affiliate. At the end of October, AFRICOM conducted airstrikes in Puntland’s Caal-Miskaad mountains for three consecutive days.
Somalia’s ISIS affiliate is an offshoot of al-Shabaab, a group the US has been fighting since 2007, when it emerged following a US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. This year, the US has also been providing air support to the Federal Government in battles against al-Shabaab in southern and central Somalia.
The US air war in Somalia receives virtually no media coverage in the US despite the Trump administration bombing the country at a record pace. President Trump has shattered the annual record for US airstrikes in Somalia, which he previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019.
For context, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years.
War and more war. Surprised they haven’t run out of soldiers yet. You’d think these young folks would by now have the story. Well, a paycheck is a very alluring thing. And regarding ‘foreign wars,’ who alive is not hard-pressed to know the truth of all conflicts. Well, the truth is they always lie to us. And since today is Veterans Day, a’ little light must be shed:
“The only just war is one fought to defend one’s own soil from invasion. There is no other. Every other conflict reeks of statist opportunism and yen to expand tax jurisdictions and the power to rob others of their wealth and resources.”
— Bill Buppert, ‘The Shame of Veterans Day: The Mass Marketing of Mass Murder’
“The notion that foreign wars and entanglements are wrong still emanates from a sparsely populated philosophical quarter that has no majority presence in the academy or the government–media complex. It is a true voice in the wilderness. That voice has one signature message: you cannot thank a veteran for your freedom because they have actively done nothing more than endanger its very existence. In fact, American military power abroad (and increasingly, at home) has made civilians more unsafe than they have ever been.”
— Bill Buppert, ‘The Shame of Veterans Day: The Mass Marketing of Mass Murder’
“Veterans don’t need gratitude but a self-realization on their part that the machine they worked for was never an engine for liberty but a device whose single purpose was aggrandizement of American political power at home and abroad. And that political hammer always extinguishes liberty and never expands it.”
— Bill Buppert, ‘The Shame of Veterans Day: The Mass Marketing of Mass Murder’
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and ‘democracy?’”
— Gandhi
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Re:
“The US air war in Somalia receives virtually no media coverage in the US despite the Trump administration bombing the country at a record pace. President Trump has shattered the annual record for US airstrikes in Somalia, which he previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019. For context, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years.”
What google said about Somalia:
Mineral and energy resources:
Oil and gas: Geo-seismic studies suggest billions of barrels of oil and significant natural gas reserves, though development is hindered by poor infrastructure and past conflict.
Minerals: Somalia has potential reserves of uranium, iron ore, tin, gypsum, bauxite, copper, and salt.
Sepiolite: The country has one of the world’s largest known reserves of the clay mineral sepiolite.
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