Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The Known Unknowns of the Secret US Drone War in Somalia
This Is Hell
06 Mar 2019

US troops landed in oil-rich Somalia in 1992 and never really left. Over the years some have been replaced with drones and mercenary contractors, but Americans still prop up their version of a Somali government, headed by a US citizen whose writ doesn't go much beyond the capital. Obama bombed Somalia regularly, but under Trump the number of drone strikes have tripled, killing unknown numbers of Africans and terrorizing large swaths of the countryside. The US government doesn't even reveal which agency is conducting many of the bombing strikes, and next to no reporting on the long war in Somalia appears in the US press or broadcast media.

ThisIsHell host Chuck Mertz interviews Mogadishu based journalist Amanda Sperber. Amanda wrote the article "Inside the Secretive US Air Campaign In Somalia" for The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/somalia-…et-air-campaign/

This interview was originally broadcasted by our friends at ThisISHell.com on Saturday February 16, 2019.

Somalia
drone warfare

Related Podcasts

Map of the Horn of Africa
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Trump Administration Continues U.S. Destabilization of Somalia
21 February 2025
Abayomi Azikiwe, is the editor of Pan-African Newswire.

More Stories


  • Janvieve Williams Comrie
    U.S. Settler State Violence Claims New Victims
    18 Jun 2025
    From ICE courtroom ambushes to sheriffs' execution threats, America's domestic repression now openly wields the tools it honed in overthrowing foreign governments.
  • Terri Frick
    Unhoused Why? It’s Always About the Land
    18 Jun 2025
    Homelessness isn’t policy failure—it’s policy. From 19th-century British 'clearings' to today’s police sweeps and Blackstone evictions, the playbook stays the same: displace the poor, privatize the…
  • Jermain Ostiana , Kerry Sinanan
    Decolonizing the Caribbean Intellectual Betrayal of Palestine: What Fanon and Ture Never Would Have Done
    18 Jun 2025
    To honor Kwame Ture is to condemn Zionism. Yet the lecture bearing his name platformed a speaker who calls anti-Zionism 'hate', erasing Ture’s clarity that Palestine’s liberation is inseparable from…
  • Black Alliance For Peace
    The Middle East is On Fire Because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match
    18 Jun 2025
    Decades of U.S. military aid and Israeli occupation created the conditions for the attack on Iran in an unbroken chain of imperial violence.
  • Community Movement Builders - Newark
    CMB Newark Statement on the Delaney Hall Uprising
    18 Jun 2025
    When oppression becomes unbearable, resistance erupts. The uprising at Delaney Hall exposes the brutality of immigrant detention and the power of collective defiance.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us