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


  • A War Criminal Chastises Children
    BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
    A War Criminal Chastises Children
    20 Nov 2019
    “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised  and you’re always politically woke  and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.”
  • Texas Court Halts Rodney Reed Execution Over Questions of Withheld Evidence, False Testimony
    Jordan Smith
    Texas Court Halts Rodney Reed Execution Over Questions of Withheld Evidence, False Testimony
    20 Nov 2019
    A Black man gets a reprieve from execution in the death of a white woman who may have been killed by her cop husband.
  • The Electoral College’s Racist Origins
    Wilfred Codrington III
    The Electoral College’s Racist Origins
    20 Nov 2019
    The nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    20 Nov 2019
    This week readers discuss Trump and Syria, Obama’s presidency, and the return of McCarthyism.  We share your letters for “
  • BAR Book Forum: Nicholas Jones’s “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Nicholas Jones’s “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain”
    20 Nov 2019
    “Behaving, talking, and sounding too  black”—will never be separate from larger issues and questions of language and race. 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us