US President Barack Obama’s administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, US officials said.
One of the installations is being established in Ethiopia, a US ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.
The US military has also flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.
The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which US officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by US counterterrorism operations.
The US government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in Seychelles illustrate the efforts the US is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons.
The nation of 85,000 people has hosted a small fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the US Navy and Air Force since September 2009. US and Seychellois officials have previously acknowledged the drones’ presence, but have said that their primary mission was to track pirates in regional waters. However, classified US diplomatic cables show that the unmanned aircraft have also conducted counterterrorism missions over Somalia, 1,287km to the northwest.
The cables, obtained by Wiki-Leaks, reveal that US officials asked leaders in the Seychelles to keep the counterterrorism missions secret. The Reapers are described by the military as “hunter-killer” drones because they can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs.
To allay concerns among islanders, US officials said they had no plans to arm the Reapers when the mission was announced two years ago. However, the cables show that US officials were thinking about weaponizing the drones. A US military spokesman declined to say whether the Reapers in the Seychelles have ever been armed.
The aim in assembling a constellation of bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula is to create overlapping circles of surveillance in a region where al-Qaeda offshoots could emerge for years to come, US officials said.
The locations “are based on potential target sets,” a senior US military official said. “If you look at it geographically, it makes sense — you get out a ruler and draw the distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from.”
One US official said that there had been discussions about putting a drone base in Ethiopia for as long as four years, but that plan was delayed because “the Ethiopians were not all that jazzed.” Other officials said Ethiopia has become a valued counterterrorism partner because of threats posed by al-Shabab.
An Ethiopian embassy spokesman in Washington could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
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