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

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

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

Israel and Somaliland
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
U.S. and Israeli Interference in Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia
25 September 2026
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African Newswire, discusses Israeli recognitio
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Israel's Recognition of Somaliland Destabilizes the Horn of Africa
09 January 2026
Israel is the first and only nation to recognize the Somaliland region of Somalia as an independent state.
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


  • BAR Book Forum: Candice M. Jenkins’s “Black Bourgeois ”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Candice M. Jenkins’s “Black Bourgeois ”
    29 Apr 2020
    The zeitgeist of Black literature shifted in the past decade, from Black progress to precarity.
  • Black Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death
    Black Oakland Leaders and Allies
    Black Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death
    29 Apr 2020
    Unless Black people are healthy and safe then no community is healthy and safe.
  • As Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People
    Victoria Law
    As Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People
    29 Apr 2020
    Although prisons have become hot spots of the pandemic, most of the penal overseers have taken only token measures, if any, to evacuate inmates.
  • ​​​​​​​Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx
    Granma International Staff
    ​​​​​​​Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx
    29 Apr 2020
    In the South Bronx, Dr Melissa Barber battles COVID-19, putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba, at the Latin American School of Medicine.
  • Debating Black Freedom
    Robert Greene II 
    Debating Black Freedom
    29 Apr 2020
    Time and again, Black radicals have pressed for an expanded scope of political and economic freedoms, for Americans at home and for people abroad.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us