Friday, June 15, 2012

Spying on Africa

 Following on from Socialist Banners earlier posts on AFRICOM and the growing American military presence in the continent we read that the United States military is expanding a secret network of air bases across Africa in order to spy on al-Qaeda and other such groups, a US newspaper said.

The surveillance is carried out by small, unmarked turboprop planes with hidden state-of-the-art sensors that fly thousands of kilometres between air bases and bush landing strips across the vast continent, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

 Bases in Burkina Faso and Mauritania are used to spy on al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), while bases in Uganda are used in the hunt for the Lord's Resistance Army. In East Africa, US aircraft operating out of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Seychelles archipelago spy on Somalia's Qaeda-inspired Al-Shebab militia and have reportedly launched attacks on wanted fighters. There are plans to open another base in South Sudan

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