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

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


  • Notes From the Underground
    Scott McLernee
    Notes From the Underground
    29 Apr 2021
    Richard Wright’s 1942 novel was testing the limits of what the white novel-reading public would have found imaginable.
  • “Anti-Blackness, Bioethics, and Public Health: 200 Introductory Resources for Community Study”
    Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent
    “Anti-Blackness, Bioethics, and Public Health: 200 Introductory Resources for Community Study”
    29 Apr 2021
    Writers, artists, community organizers and scholars have all contributed their analysis of the resource documents listed, below, and how they might be useful in assessing anti-Black structures arou
  • BAR Book Forum: Davarian Baldwin’s “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Davarian Baldwin’s “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower”
    29 Apr 2021
    Universities have become today’s companies and our cities their company towns.
  • Radical Black political actors played a leading role in making the Atlantic world
    Steven Hahn
    Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution
    28 Apr 2021
    The Age of Revolution (1770–1850), bookended by the American and French Revolutions on the one side and the Revolutions of 1848 on the other, is widely viewed as the progenitor of the modern Euro-A
  • Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly
    Brian Shuffler
    Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly
    28 Apr 2021
    The struggle for workers’ rights in this country has been an ongoing battle for hundreds of years.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us