Craig Whitlock / Washington Post – 2012-06-15 21:58:59

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/15/MND91P1OHT.DTL

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (June 15, 2012) — The US military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project.

At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns and vacuum up radio and cell-phone signals, the planes refuel on isolated airstrips favored by African bush pilots, extending their effective flight range by thousands of miles.

About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior US commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports.

The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by US Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops.

The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing suspected terrorists.

The establishment of the Africa missions also highlights the ways in which Special Operations forces are blurring the lines that govern the secret world of intelligence, moving aggressively into spheres once reserved for the CIA. The CIA has expanded its counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations in Africa, but its manpower and resources pale in comparison to those of the military.

US officials said the African surveillance operations are necessary to track terrorist groups that have taken root in failed states on the continent and threaten to destabilize neighboring countries.

A key hub of the US spying network can be found in Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo), the flat, sun-baked capital of Burkina Faso, one of the most impoverished countries in Africa.

Under a classified surveillance program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of US personnel and contractors have come to Ouagadougou in recent years to establish a small air base on the military side of the international airport.

The unarmed US spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara, where they search for fighters from al Qaeda in the Islamic North Africa, a regional network that kidnaps Westerners for ransom.

Elsewhere, commanders have said they are increasingly worried about the spread of Boko Haram, an Islamist group in Nigeria blamed for a rash of bombings there. US forces are orchestrating a regional intervention in Somalia to target al-Shabab, another al Qaeda affiliate. In Central Africa, about 100 American Special Operations troops are helping to coordinate the hunt for Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of a brutal guerrilla group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.

The results of the American surveillance missions are shrouded in secrecy. Although the US military has launched air strikes and raids in Somalia, commanders said that in other places, they generally limit their involvement to sharing intelligence with allied African forces so they can attack terrorist camps on their own territory.

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