Secretive U.S. Base in Somalia Signals New Phase of War
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MOGADISHU, Somalia —On September 3, shortly after sunset, U.S. surveillance drones began carrying out reconnaissance missions in two areas of the Al-Miskad mountains in Puntland, Somalia, according to Puntland security officials that spoke with Drop Site. The two localities—Togga Miraale and Togga Baalade—are considered strongholds for ISIS militants by local authorities.
During the mission, the drones spotted alleged ISIS militants traveling with a donkey cart in the locality of Togga Baalade, the security officials said, and began carrying out airstrikes nearby at around 8:30 p.m. The strikes, which were accompanied by more drone surveillance missions further northwest in the Sanaag region, broke a relative lull in U.S. attacks in Somalia, justified as a means of bolstering local government forces against ISIS and Al-Shabaab militants.
AFRICOM did not respond to a request for comment, but Puntland security officials told Drop Site they expect the U.S. air campaign in Somalia only to intensify in the foreseeable future. Key to that expanded effort is the development of a new U.S. military base in the port city of Bosaso announced last month. Though the officials argue that U.S. air support is necessary for the war against ISIS in Somalia, U.S. operations have been blamed for killing and displacing thousands of civilians.
Bosaso straddles the northern Somali coast on the shores of the Gulf of Aden. Home to around 1 million people, it is also known as a major route for human trafficking and refugee flows, with East African migrants crossing the Gulf of Aden in a bid to reach Yemen and the Arab world.
The area is now becoming the focal point in a planned U.S militarization of one of the most strategic waterways in the world. An estimated 25% of global maritime traffic flows through the Gulf of Aden, while nearby on land a near two-year war continues to rage in the Al-Miskad mountains between Puntland regional forces backed by the U.S. and ISIS militants.
The U.S. has described the dry and rugged mountains of northern Somalia as the main hub from which ISIS controls its global operations. Amid an increasing number of U.S. drone strikes and raids supporting the Somali government in the war against ISIS, the United States is now expanding its presence in the port city of Bosaso and effectively building a new military base, which will be used for combat and surveillance operations targeting “terror groups” in the region as well enhancing maritime security, according to Somali security officials in Puntland. The CIA will also expand its operations there, the officials said.
On August 2, a U.S. delegation spearheaded by AFRICOM, which oversees military operations on the African continent, met with Said Abdullahi Deni, the president of the semi-autonomous Puntland region in the port city of Bosaso. Puntland is a region of Somalia that enjoys self-government of some of its affairs, while being nominally loyal to the central government in Mogadishu. Hours after the meeting, Puntland’s State House released an official statement on X announcing a new agreement.
“The United States will expand its military base in Bosaso to improve operations against terrorism and to help protect maritime security,” the statement read. The U.S. delegation, led by commander for special operations Major General Claude Tudor, also discussed “fighting terrorism and improving security in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden” with Deni, according to the read-out.
However, five separate Somali security officials in Puntland interviewed by Drop Site after the August 2 agreement say that the announcement mischaracterized the real significance of the agreement. The U.S. did not previously have a military base in Bosaso, they said, and the new expansion would effectively create an entirely new military footprint in the region. The officials described the current U.S. presence as an “office” used as an intelligence center for both AFRICOM and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Currently AFRICOM personnel stationed at the office in Bosaso coordinate between Puntland ground forces and the main AFRICOM headquarters in neighboring Djibouti when airstrikes or air support are needed. However, once the new U.S. base on the grounds of the airport in Bosaso is complete, the U.S. will be conducting airstrikes directly from Bosaso, Puntland security officials told Drop Site.
When the August 2 deal was announced, however, many of the Somali officials who took part in the meeting and were photographed with their U.S. counterparts were not privy to the details of the deal.
A week earlier, President Said Deni had already cemented much of the agreement in a closed-door meeting in Ethiopia with AFRICOM officials on July 27, according to Puntland security sources. One security official said that the meeting in Addis Ababa had been “where the deal for the (U.S.) base was cooked up.”
“The Americans entered the room and pulled out the agreement, which was then signed by Deni. Things were already agreed upon in Addis Ababa,” a second Puntland official confirmed. “All he did was sign on the line after [AFRICOM] handed him the document,” another official added.
The U.S. has carried out more airstrikes in Somalia under Donald Trump than under any other president combined. Ten days after being inaugurated for his second term, Trump announced that the U.S. had carried out strikes targeting a senior ISIS figure in Somalia. In the time since, the U.S. has carried out a total of 205 airstrikes in the country, with 53% of those airstrikes targeting ISIS, according to New America, a think tank that monitors U.S. military operations overseas.
In 2015, during the height of ISIS rule in Iraq and Syria, the British-Somali cleric Abdiqadir Mumin along with many fighters loyal to him broke away from Al-Shabaab, declared allegiance to the Islamic State, and founded a new branch of the group in Somalia.
The following year, ISIS militants occupied the coastal town of Qandala on the Gulf of Aden for 38 days, before withdrawing into the Al-Miskad mountains. In the years that followed, the group has expanded in size, assassinating local officials and extorting businesses in Bosaso. As it has continued to do battle with the Somali government, the ranks of ISIS have swelled with foreign fighters—mainly from neighboring Ethiopia—who now make up the majority of the fighters in the group’s Somali branch.
Puntland security officials who spoke to Drop Site described the role of CIA personnel currently stationed in Bosaso as “significant,” stating that in addition to other duties supporting operations against ISIS, CIA personnel are currently tasked with interrogating captured ISIS fighters, in particular high-value targets and foreign fighters.
Abdiweli Mohamed Yusuf, better known as Abdiweli Walalac, the most high-profile case of any ISIS-Somalia member captured, was handed over to CIA personnel stationed at the “office” in Bosaso, according to Puntland security officials.
Abdiweli was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury in 2019 for being the head of the finance office for the ISIS branch in Somalia and simultaneously was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
On July 25 of last year, Abdiweli was captured in a joint U.S.-Somali operation. According to all five separate Puntland security officials who spoke with Drop Site, the operation to capture him was actually U.S.-led rather than U.S.-supported, as initially reported—signaling America’s deepening role in counterterrorism operations under the Trump administration.
The officials who spoke to Drop Site described a helicopter raid near Xumbeys in the mountains of Somalia’s Bari region in which U.S. forces, with a Somali interpreter and commanders of the Puntland Intelligence and Security Agency (PISA), captured Abdilweli Walalawac after targeting his location in a rural area. “As soon as the Americans and PISA touched down, the U.S. had assets in the air providing cover,” a Puntland security official told Drop Site.
“He was captured while hiding with two men, who were identified as local Bedouins. They were both released after it was confirmed that they were not Daesh (ISIS) and that Abdiweli Walalac was hiding amongst the local Bedouin community to avoid detection and arrest,” he added.
After his capture, two Puntland officials said, he was taken to the CIA-run office in Bosaso where he was interrogated. The following day Abdiweli was renditioned to neighboring Djibouti. Djibouti hosts several major foreign military bases, including the U.S.’s Camp Lenoir, which has been a hub for CIA renditions across Africa since 9/11.
A 2014 joint report by U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve and New York University’s Global Justice Clinic released a chilling report revealing how the tiny Horn of Africa nation had become a major hub for the CIA’s vast rendition network across Africa.
“Here they are like a big brother,” a Puntland security official told Drop Site in reference to the influence CIA personnel have on security decisions related to ISIS in Puntland. “What they say or do goes without any questions.”
The agreement for the U.S. base in Bosaso is not limited to supporting U.S. military operations in the region, but also entails the U.S. creating a new local counterterrorism strike force tasked with fighting terrorist groups in the region, Puntland security officials told Drop Site.
The exact number of local Somali troops who would be part of this new local counter terrorism force is not yet clear, since the process is still in its early stages, according to the Puntland security officials interviewed by Drop Site.
“It’s been confirmed but the numbers haven’t been decided yet, there are a lot of technicalities that needed to be decided beforehand, but it’s the Americans that will be overseeing their salaries, equipping them and their training,” a Puntland security official privy to the matter told Drop Site.
This wouldn’t be the first time that the United States sought to create a counter terrorism unit in Somalia. Following 9/11, the U.S. created the Puntland Security Force (PSF). Although, the U.S. ended support for the PSF in 2020, the elite counterterror unit has continued carrying out operations in the years since, while also being implicated in using U.S. weapons to conduct attacks in densely populated civilian neighborhoods that have led to the deaths of numerous civilians, including children.
During his first term, President Barack Obama oversaw the creation of the Danab, an elite U.S.-backed, funded, and trained indigenous counterterrorism force active in south-central Somalia, tasked with combatting Al-Shabaab.
Former officials from the PSF told Drop Site that initially new recruits to Danab, whose name translates to “lightning” in Somali, were trained at PSF camps in the cities of Galkayo and Bosaso.
Puntland security officials who spoke with Drop Site say that the new U.S. base in Bosaso will also include aircraft used for combat and surveillance.
“Right now, there is a team of AFRICOM [personnel] at the office at Bosaso airport that we coordinate with when we need air support, and they coordinate with Djibouti but soon it will change,” a Puntland security official told Drop Site.
U.S. drones engaged in reconnaissance missions targeting armed non-state Islamist actors in northern Somalia’s Al-Miskad and Golis mountains are not only persisting but escalating as part of the Trump administration’s shadow war in the Horn of Africa. “U.S. airstrikes have been responsible for the death of at least two-thirds of the ISIS fighters killed since the war began last year,” a Puntland security official told Drop Site.
After nearly 18 months of war, ISIS has largely been cleared out of the Al-Miskad mountains in Bari province, but the insurgents are still holed up in pockets of the vast mountain range, which one Puntland security official simply dubbed “Tora Bora”—a reference to the mountain range in Afghanistan that once hosted Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.
Most of the displaced Bedouin population that once resided in the Al-Miskad mountains has yet to return, as insurgents continue to loot livestock and carry out bomb attacks.
The new U.S. base in Bosaso raises many legal questions for the local government, which enjoys a degree of autonomy that is still contested by the Somali central government based in Mogadishu. Under Somalia’s constitution, only the central government can sign agreements with foreign governments or foreign entities.
Somalia’s Ministries of Defense and Information did not respond to questions about whether they had prior knowledge about the U.S. decision to sign an agreement with Puntland to build a new military base.
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