Craig Whitlock: US Drone Base in Ethiopia IS Operational

The US Air Force has been secretly flying Reaper Drones on counter-terrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethiopia as part of a rapidly expanding US-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, US mikitary officials said. The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda. Mindful of the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" debacle in which two US military helicopters were shot down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu and 18 Americans killed, the Obama administration has sought to avoid deploying troops to the country. As a result, the United States has relied on lethal drone attacks, a burgeoning CIA presence in Mogadishu and small-scale missions carried out by US Special Forces. In addition, the United States has increased its funding for and training of African peacekeeping forces in Somalia that fight al-Shabab.