The Secret War in Africa

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

About this series

This series is the result of a six-month investigation by Army Times senior staff writer Sean D. Naylor.
Naylor reached out to dozens of current and former diplomatic and military leaders and special operators about their activities in the Horn of Africa.
It is a war few will acknowledge and even fewer will discuss.
Nevertheless, Army Times was able to piece together a mosaic that shows the level of involvement by U.S. forces in Africa and the significant resources that have been employed — with mixed success — to hunt terrorists in Africa.

Part 4

Years of detective work led to al-Qaida target

His tour over, John Bennett was preparing to fly home. The CIA’s station chief in Nairobi, Kenya, Bennett had been running the United States’ secret war in East Africa, negotiating with Somali warlords while hunting al-Qaida members across the region. On his watch, the United States and its proxies had managed to capture or kill at least 10 or so al-Qaida militants.
However, the most wanted al-Qaida figure in East Africa, who went by a variety of aliases but whom U.S. officials called Harun Fazul, was still on the loose. A native of the Comoros Islands wanted in connection with al-Qaida’s 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as well as the November 2002 attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya, Fazul had proved “a very savvy” enemy, according to an intelligence source with long experience in the Horn of Africa.
Continue reading part 4...

Maps

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