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


  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Navi Pillay’s Nobel Rewards an Epic Lie
    28 Oct 2026
    Navi Pillay’s participation in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) should have disqualified her for consideration for the Nobel or any other peace prize. 
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    U.S. Liberal Media Literacy Guide: Wealthy People
    28 Oct 2026
    The media uses vague language to protect billionaires from judgment and pressures people to pursue change through polite, respectable channels. The result is that readers become spectators of…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Exorcising AI: The Ghost in the Machine is white “supremacy,” and it Aims to Haunt the World with Human Redundancy, Neocolonialism, and Militarism
    28 Oct 2026
    Reflections on Valerie Veatch's documentary, Ghost in the Machine.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    For a neighbor: Hall of Fame Herb
    28 Oct 2026
    "For a neighbor: Hall of Fame Herb" for Herb Boyd from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Francy Natalia Mosquera Garcia , Caroline Shenaz Hossein
    Afro-Colombian Women and the Making of the Black Social Economy
    28 Oct 2026
    Colombia's constitution recognizes Black communities as collective rights-holders, but extractivism and dispossession have undermined those guarantees, inspiring people to build their own…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us