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US Air Strikes Kill Hundreds In Somalia As Conflict Escalates
[RADIOSHABELLE] The US military has escalated a battle against al-Shabaab
... the personification of Somali state failure...
, an Death Eater group affiliated with al-Qaeda, in Somalia even as president Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
 seeks to scale back operations against similar Islamist insurgencies elsewhere in the world, from Syria and Afghanistan to West Africa.

A surge in US Arclight airstrikes over the past four months of 2018 pushed the annual corpse count of suspected al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia to the third record high in as many years. Last year, the strikes killed 326 people in 47 disclosed attacks, defence department data show.

And this year, the intensity is on pace to eclipse the 2018 record. During January and February alone, the US Africa Command reported killing 225 people in 24 strikes in Somalia. Double-digit corpse counts are becoming routine, including a bloody five-day stretch in late February in which the military disclosed that it had killed 35, 20 and 26 people in three attacks.

Africa Command maintains that its corpse count includes only al-Shabaab krazed killers, even though the Death Eater group claims regularly that civilians are also killed. The Times could not independently verify the number of civilians killed.

The rise in airstrikes has also exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in the country, according to UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations working in the region, as civilians are displaced by ongoing conflict and extreme weather.

"People need to pay attention to the fact that there is this massive war going on," said Brittany Brown, who worked on Somalia policy at the National Security Council in the Obama and Trump administrations and is now chief of staff of the International Crisis Group.

The war in Somalia appears to be "on autopilot", she added,
...another way to read that is President Trump told the generals to win, then got out of their way, like they did ISIS in Iraq and Syria...
and one that is drawing the United States significantly deeper into an armed conflict without much public debate. The intensifying bombing campaign undercuts the Trump administration’s intended pivot to confront threats from great powers like China and Russia, and away from long counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns that have been the Pentagon’s focus since 2001.

Gen Thomas D. Waldhauser, head of Africa Command, said planned cutbacks elsewhere would not affect what the military was doing in Somalia. "We’ll maintain our capability and capacity there," Waldhauser told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
Posted by: Fred 2019-03-12
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=536275