Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[Bawon Samedi]

Coast Region tipped to become industrial hub

The fresh spice into efforts to industrialise the country came as part of the economic and technical agreement the two countries signed in Dar es Salaam.

Industries, Trade and Investment Minister Charles Mwijage, said the 1.2 million tone production capacity of the industry scheduled for construc- tion in Mland i z i , Coast Region, will be over t w o times t h e country’s demand of only 500,000 tonnes annually, enabling the country to export the surplus.

The iron industry will be producing various beams for construction. The Chinese delegation, led by Vice-Minister for Commerce Qian Keming, also pledged to construct roof clay tiles production plant within the same period.

The giant factory, with capacity to manufacture 80,000 square metres of the roof clay tiles daily, is planned for Mkuranga, Coast Region. Mr Mwijage who met the Chinese delegation for talks yesterday, said: “I have directed that the roof clay tiles factory must be opened this year, it will be a very big industry.” He said the factory is expected to generate 150 million US dollars (about 330bn/-) annually, creating jobs for 1,500 Tanzanians.

During the meeting it was also resolved that the Chinese firm injects money in textile investments, with the government saying it’s currently looking for 700 hectares at Mkuranga for the purpose.

Mr Mwijage noted that the textiles manufacturing plant expects to employ 14,000 Tanzanians to produce 240 million kilometres of cloth per year. “When we say we envisage getting rid of second hand clothes by 2019, we indeed mean it,” boasted the minister.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has provided a 97bn/- grant to improve education and health sectors as well as boost security at airports by purchasing cargo scanners.

The minister called for sustained good relations between the two countries, hinting that China has invited Tanzanians to participate to trade exhibitions in the Asian nation in October and November, this year. Many Tanzanians have already applied for the opportunity to participate.

Mr Keming said his delegation will spend four days in Tanzania over the invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, East Africa, Regional and International Cooperation. He said the meeting with Tanzania government would see the two countries planning the future priority projects for China-Tanzania commercial cooperation. “At the meeting, the two parties have appreciated the achievements that we have made in terms of commercial cooperation,” he said.

“I believe that this visit to Tanzania has consolidated our friendship and deepened our future cooperation, my visit has been very fruitful,” he said, acknowledging the great achievements that Tanzania has recorded in terms of industrialisation, economic growth and improved people’s lives. The meeting also deliberated the opening up of business centres linking the envisaged Bagamoyo Port to facilitate trade.

China promised to support construction of the central railway line to standard gauge and build a modern port in Zanzibar. The meeting was attended by top government officials and Chinese investors.
http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/home-news/45668-coast-region-tipped-to-become-industrial-hub

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Coast Region tipped to become industrial hub

The fresh spice into efforts to industrialise the country came as part of the economic and technical agreement the two countries signed in Dar es Salaam.

Industries, Trade and Investment Minister Charles Mwijage, said the 1.2 million tone production capacity of the industry scheduled for construc- tion in Mland i z i , Coast Region, will be over t w o times t h e country’s demand of only 500,000 tonnes annually, enabling the country to export the surplus.

The iron industry will be producing various beams for construction. The Chinese delegation, led by Vice-Minister for Commerce Qian Keming, also pledged to construct roof clay tiles production plant within the same period.

The giant factory, with capacity to manufacture 80,000 square metres of the roof clay tiles daily, is planned for Mkuranga, Coast Region. Mr Mwijage who met the Chinese delegation for talks yesterday, said: “I have directed that the roof clay tiles factory must be opened this year, it will be a very big industry.” He said the factory is expected to generate 150 million US dollars (about 330bn/-) annually, creating jobs for 1,500 Tanzanians.

During the meeting it was also resolved that the Chinese firm injects money in textile investments, with the government saying it’s currently looking for 700 hectares at Mkuranga for the purpose.

Mr Mwijage noted that the textiles manufacturing plant expects to employ 14,000 Tanzanians to produce 240 million kilometres of cloth per year. “When we say we envisage getting rid of second hand clothes by 2019, we indeed mean it,” boasted the minister.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has provided a 97bn/- grant to improve education and health sectors as well as boost security at airports by purchasing cargo scanners.

The minister called for sustained good relations between the two countries, hinting that China has invited Tanzanians to participate to trade exhibitions in the Asian nation in October and November, this year. Many Tanzanians have already applied for the opportunity to participate.

Mr Keming said his delegation will spend four days in Tanzania over the invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, East Africa, Regional and International Cooperation. He said the meeting with Tanzania government would see the two countries planning the future priority projects for China-Tanzania commercial cooperation. “At the meeting, the two parties have appreciated the achievements that we have made in terms of commercial cooperation,” he said.

“I believe that this visit to Tanzania has consolidated our friendship and deepened our future cooperation, my visit has been very fruitful,” he said, acknowledging the great achievements that Tanzania has recorded in terms of industrialisation, economic growth and improved people’s lives. The meeting also deliberated the opening up of business centres linking the envisaged Bagamoyo Port to facilitate trade.

China promised to support construction of the central railway line to standard gauge and build a modern port in Zanzibar. The meeting was attended by top government officials and Chinese investors.
http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/home-news/45668-coast-region-tipped-to-become-industrial-hub

That's how its done

 

[Bawon Samedi]

That's how its done

Tanzania keeps surprising me day by day. Can hardly find any negative news about the country. One of my only grips is that it was foolish of them to switch their education from English to Swahili

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Tanzania keeps surprising me day by day. Can hardly find any negative news about the country. One of my only grips is that it was foolish of them to switch their education from English to Swahili

That, Zanzibar election stupidity and Magufuli seems like's extremely insecure.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

That, Zanzibar election stupidity and Magufuli seems like's extremely insecure.

Agreed.

 

[BigMan]

Tanzania keeps surprising me day by day. Can hardly find any negative news about the country. One of my only grips is that it was foolish of them to switch their education from English to Swahili

why is it foolish?

 

[Bawon Samedi]

why is it foolish?

Don't feel like going over it again as there was a big thread about it with a big discussion.

 

[BigMan]

Don't feel like going over it again as there was a big thread about it with a big discussion.

yeah i remember i posted in it. i think it's foolish to expect kids to learn in a foreign language and excel

 

[Bawon Samedi]

yeah i remember i posted in it. i think it's foolish to expect kids to learn in a foreign language and excel

Yet English isn't exactly "foreign" to Tanzania, especially when Tanzanians themselves even complained about it.

 

[Yehuda]

yeah i remember i posted in it. i think it's foolish to expect kids to learn in a foreign language and excel

They already learn in Swahili, English is only used in secondary education.

 

[Poitier]

Eritrea; The African Cuba

Submitted by Thomas C. Mountain on Tue, 10/11/2016 - 18:23

• 
  by Thomas C. Mountain
  Eritrea and Cuba have a great deal in common. Both are relatively small countries attempting to build socialism in the crosshairs of imperialist embargoes, sanctions and constant military threats. In both nations, the basic means of production “belong to the people, through their governments,” and “education and medical care are accessible, universal and paid for by the state.”
  
  Eritrea: The African Cuba
  by Thomas C. Mountain
  This article was originally published on telesurtv.net.
  
  “Both countries have been maliciously accused of supporting terrorism and seen their peoples life's made hard due to the embargoes.”
  
  Eritrea is the African Cuba with the similarities between the two small, revolutionary, socialist countries almost too many to list. To start with, Cuba is the only country in Latin America to come to power by the armed struggle just as Eritrea is the only country in Africa to come to power at the barrel of a gun.
  
  Both Cuba and Eritrea are genuinely socialist, with both spurning the corrupt system of electoral “democracy” which is the main tool of western social control in the neo colonial era.
  
  Being socialist Eritrea and Cuba own the means of production in their countries with all land belonging to the people through their governments. Individual share holders are allowed use of the land registered under their names but the land, the basic means of all production, belongs to the state.
  
  Land cannot be bought or sold in either country for the land belongs to the people in its entirety. This is the first most essential step in the development of genuine socialism, not the phony variety claimed by the electoral fraudsters in the west and internationally.
  
  “Both are subject to onerous sanctions by the USA and its minions at the UN.”
  
  Both Cuba and Eritrea are independent and non-aligned internationally and both are subject to onerous sanctions by the USA and its minions at the UN. Both countries have been maliciously accused of supporting terrorism and seen their peoples life's made hard due to the embargoes,
  
  both official and unofficial, inflicted on their populations.
  
  Both countries have a long history of being attacked and slandered by the USA. While both countries are trying to normalize relations with Pax Americana, so far only token offers of peace have been proffered by US Imperialism. Real change, such as the lifting of sanctions, has not
  
  been delivered yet, despite international pressure for the USA to do so against both countries.
  
  Cuba and Eritrea both share the socialist goal -- as we say in Eritrea, of a “Rich Eritrea without Rich Eritreans,” a hallmark of real socialism and a long term process that will absorb the energy of many generations to come.
  
  Both countries actually practice social justice where the needs of the most needy have priority and education and medical care are accessible, universal and paid for by the state.
  
  Life in both countries remains hard for the people with blockades, sanctions and embargoes crippling their economies and limiting the ability of their governments to provide a better standard of living. In both Cuba and Eritrea the people support popular governments despite the difficulties and hardships in their day to day lives.
  
  The similarities between Cuba and Eritrea are to many to list. To put is simply Eritrea is the African Cuba, with both uniquely revolutionary, independent and socialist.
  
  Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles can be viewed on facebook at thomascmountain or he can best be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com

Eritrea; The African Cuba | Black Agenda Report

 

[BigMan]

Yet English isn't exactly "foreign" to Tanzania, especially when Tanzanians themselves even complained about it.

And some Haitians complain about use of Creole in schools and some in the ABC islands complain about using Papiamento in schools. There's examples of this worldwide

Teaching kids in their native language is exponentially better than teaching them in a foreign language.

They already learn in Swahili, English is only used in secondary education.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

And some Haitians complain about use of Creole in schools and some in the ABC islands complain about using Papiamento in schools. There's examples of this worldwide

Teaching kids in their native language is exponentially better than teaching them in a foreign language.

like I said I don't feel like arguing this again.

 

[Yehuda]

Senegalese wrestle with ethnicity while reaching for dreams of success

September 29, 2016 9.27am SAST

Bombardier (right), the reigning champion and ‘King of the Arenas’, prepares to defend his crown against the popular young challenger Modou Lô. Mark Hann/ Global Sport

On my mother’s side I’m Diola. That’s why I’m a good wrestler. Well, actually my family is Socé from Sédhiou, in Casamance. Before my next fight, I want to go to Casamance to solicit prayers from the marabouts there.

It came as something of a surprise to me when Omar, an aspiring Senegalese wrestler whom I had come to know during my fieldwork, revealed to me his Casamançais ancestry. Of course, there was nothing really surprising about the fact itself.

Dakar’s ever-expanding suburban areas are populated by people who have moved to the capital from all over Senegal as part of an ongoing rural exodus since the mid-20th century. There are Diola and Mandinka from Casamance, Peulh from the Senegal river valley, Sereer from the Saloum delta, and Wolof from the country’s interior, to name just some of the groups that make up Dakar’s complex ethnic landscape. What was surprising to me was that Omar himself brought up the topic.

Among young Dakarois, ethnicity often appears to be a somewhat vague category that they rarely mention. It is less central to urban identity than, say, religious affiliation or place of residence. In other words, the district in which one lives today is more significant than the village where one’s parents or grandparents were born.

Observers have suggested that urbanisation in this west African country has been accompanied by processes of de-ethnicisation and Wolofisation. Urbanites adopt “Dakar Wolof” – a French influenced Wolof dialect – as their lingua franca and develop urban ways of life that blur boundaries of ethnic differentiation.

For young men like Omar and his friends, these urban ways of life are a source of pride and a key part of their identity. Being from the “ghetto” – as they often refer to their neighbourhood on the fringes of Dakar’s sprawling commuter zone – gives them a sense of toughness, urban knowledge and a style that eludes their rural cousins.

In such representations, the city is portrayed as a site of modernity and progress, a gateway to the world – albeit one where morality is at risk. Conversely, village life is considered backward and underdeveloped, while simultaneously venerated as the site of “pure” language, “pure” culture – and also “pure” wrestling.

A truly national sport?
Wrestling is popularly presented as Senegal’s national sport and is considered to be a shared heritage of Senegambian peoples. Yet, today it comes in a variety of forms. These include Olympic wrestling, numerous styles of “traditional” wrestling, and the commercially popular “lutte avec frappe”, loosely translated as “wrestling with punches”. It is a hybrid sport that combines elements of traditional wrestling with bare knuckle boxing.

It is this discipline that has succeeded in capturing the attention of the Senegalese public. This style provides young men like Omar and his teammates with dreams of lucrative careers. It is this dream of wealth and success that drives the wrestling boom in Dakar.

When the first wrestling associations, known as écuries, were established in Dakar, ethnicity and geographical provenance were the main organisational principle: écurie Sereer, écurie Diola, écurie Halpulaar, écurie Baol and écurie Walo each brought together wrestlers of a specific ethnic group or historical region. Only the écuries of Pikine and Fass defied this logic in grouping together athletes from a specific area of Dakar.

Today, however, this form of organisation dominates and the associations are generally multi-ethnic. At the same time, other ethnically specific elements of wrestling – notably the bakk or self-praise singing – have been gradually erased from the sport. Contemporary wrestling in Senegal is now a professionalised commercial sport dependent on individual stars who are widely seen as aspirational celebrities.

The famous wrestler Mohammed “Tyson” Ndao did much to popularise the image of the wrestler as an entrepreneurial self-made man. Fashioning his image on that of his boxing namesake, he engaged heavily in marketing and commercial activities. He promoted himself as an icon of youthful rebellion.

Wrestling’s commercial explosion
Wrestling’s development from a village pastime to an urban and entrepreneurial pursuit has led to a commercial explosion of the sport since the 1990s. Still, ethnicity has not completely disappeared. In fact, it persists in a number of particular ways. It surfaces in discourses of physical qualities associated with wrestlers of specific groups. Political and economic alliances are forged along ethnic lines between wrestlers and their patrons.

‘Faux lions’, traditional figures at major events in Senegal, provide pre-fight entertainment. Mark Hann/Global Sport

Ethnicity features in narratives of pre-destination, in which wrestlers of specific ethnic backgrounds – especially Diola and Sereer – claim that wrestling is “in their blood”. Ethnically specific clothing, objects or cultural performances are displayed at fights. Magico-religious powers are also associated with wrestlers of certain ethnicities – again, especially Diola and Sereer.

Established star wrestlers regularly evoke their ethnic provenance in the buildup to big fights. As in any other sport, young hopefuls are quick to copy their idols. Omar’s (technically incorrect) insistence on his Diola heritage was just one of several examples I came across during my fieldwork of young wrestlers referring to ethnicity to strengthen their claims of athletic prowess.

Another young wrestler, Modou, would regularly tell me that his Sereer heritage meant wrestling was an ancestral calling. He said he was unable to follow another path in life. Ama, an aspiring wrestler from the city of Pikine, visited his mother’s Sereer village for the first time after starting to train for a career in the arena. He told me that he has sought out the services of Sereer marabouts and diviners ever since, reconnecting with his grandparents’ belief system.

There is a shared motif in these stories. Young men who do not seem to have grown up with a clearly defined ethnic identity return to paradigms of ethnic difference to strengthen their identities as wrestlers. In the context of urbanisation and Wolofisation in Dakar, this seems almost paradoxical. In the context of a professionalising sport and an increasingly globalised society, even more so.

This return to ethnicity disrupts commonly held assumptions about rural and urban relations. It also calls into question the nature of Senegal’s modernities. In addition, it poses a challenge to Senegalese nationalism: Does the presence of an ethnic discourse within the sporting arena threaten the notion of the multi-ethnic nation state?

It is impossible to adequately address these questions without further enquiry into the state of ethnic relations and discourses in society at large. This, particularly in politics where accusations of ethnic favouritism are never far away.

At the very least, one might conclude from these observations that sport can intervene in social dynamics in surprising ways. The re-ethnicisation of wrestling leads us to reconsider what we mean when we speak of a national sport and a traditional sport - and by extension, the very categories of tradition and nationhood.

Mark Hann is part of GLOBALSPORT research team. GLOBALSPORT (@GlobalSportUVA) is a multi-sited comparative ethnographic project. GLOBALSPORT is funded by the European Research Council and based at the University of Amsterdam.

Senegalese wrestle with ethnicity while reaching for dreams of success

 

[Poitier]

In Somalia, U.S. Escalates a Shadow War


By MARK MAZZETTI, JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ERIC SCHMITTOCT. 16, 2016

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Photo

Ugandan troops serving with the African Union Mission in Somalia in 2012. About 200 to 300 American Special Operations troops work with soldiers from African nations to carry out raids, senior American military officials said. CreditReuters
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993.

The Somalia campaign, as it is described by American and African officials and international monitors of the Somali conflict, is partly designed to avoid repeating that debacle, which led to the deaths of 18 American soldiers. But it carries enormous risks — including more American casualties, botched airstrikes that kill civilians and the potential for the United States to be drawn even more deeply into a troubled country that so far has stymied all efforts to fix it.

The Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare that President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor. It is a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria to Libya — despite the president’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones. This year alone, the United States has carried out airstrikes in seven countries and conducted Special Operations missions in many more.

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American officials said the White House had quietly broadened the president’s authority for the use of force in Somalia by allowing airstrikes to protect American and African troops as they combat fighters from the Shabab, a Somali-based militant group that has proclaimed allegiance to Al Qaeda.

In its public announcements, the Pentagon sometimes characterizes the operations as “self-defense strikes,” though some analysts have said this rationale has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is only because American forces are now being deployed on the front lines in Somalia that they face imminent threats from the Shabab.

America’s role in Somalia has expanded as the Shabab have become bolder and more cunning. The group has attacked police headquarters, bombed seaside restaurants, killed Somali generals and stormed heavily fortified bases used by African Union troops. In January, Shabab fighters killed more than 100 Kenyan troops and drove off with their trucks and weapons.

The group carried out the 2013 attack at the Westgate mall, which killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 175 in Nairobi, Kenya. More recently it has branched into more sophisticated forms of terrorism, including nearly downing a Somali airliner in February with a bomb hidden in a laptop computer.

Photo

United States Marines advancing in Mogadishu, Somalia, to quell violence in 1993, about seven months before the “Black Hawk Down” battle. CreditCorinne Dufka/Reuters
About 200 to 300 American Special Operations troops work with soldiers from Somalia and other African nations like Kenya and Uganda to carry out more than a half-dozen raids per month, according to senior American military officials. The operations are a combination of ground raids and drone strikes.

The Navy’s classified SEAL Team 6 has been heavily involved in many of these operations.

Once ground operations are complete, American troops working with Somali forces often interrogate prisoners at temporary screening facilities, including one in Puntland, a state in northern Somalia, before the detainees are transferred to more permanent Somali-run prisons, American military officials said.

The Pentagon has acknowledged only a small fraction of these operations. But even the information released publicly shows a marked increase this year. The Pentagon has announced 13 ground raids and airstrikes thus far in 2016 — including three operations in September — up from five in 2015, according to data compiled by New America, a Washington think tank. The strikes have killed about 25 civilians and 200 people suspected of being militants, the group found.

The strikes have had a mixed record. In March, an American airstrike killed more than 150 Shabab fighters at what military officials called a “graduation ceremony,” one of the single deadliest American airstrikes in any country in recent years. But an airstrike last month killed more than a dozen Somali government soldiers, who were American allies against the Shabab.

Outraged Somali officials said the Americans had been duped by clan rivals and fed bad intelligence, laying bare the complexities of waging a shadow war in Somalia. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Pentagon was investigating the strike.

Some experts point out that with the administration’s expanded self-defense justification for airstrikes, a greater American presence in Somalia would inevitably lead to an escalation of the air campaign.

“It is clear that U.S. on-the-ground support to Somali security forces and African Union peacekeepers has been stepped up this year,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. “That increases the likelihood that U.S. advisers will periodically be in positions where Al Shabab is about to launch an attack.”

Peter Cook, the Department of Defense spokesman, wrote in an email, “The DoD has a strong partnership with the Somali National Army and AMISOM forces from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi operating in Somalia. They have made steady progress pressuring Al Shabab.”

The escalation of the war can be seen in the bureaucratic language of the semiannual notifications that Mr. Obama sends to Congress about American conflicts overseas.

Photo

The ruins of the Jazeera Palace Hotel in Mogadishu last year. The Shabab claimed responsibility for the fatal bombing. CreditFeisal Omar/Reuters
The Somalia passage in the June 2015 notification is terse, saying American troops “have worked to counter the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’ida and associated elements of al-Shabaab.”

In June, however, the president told Congress that the United States had become engaged in a more expansive mission.

Besides hunting members of Al Qaeda and the Shabab, the notification said, American troops are in Somalia “to provide advice and assistance to regional counterterrorism forces, including the Somali National Army and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces.”

American airstrikes, it said, were carried out in defense of the African troops and in one instance because Shabab fighters “posed an imminent threat to U.S. and AMISOM forces.”

At an old Russian fighter jet base in Baledogle, about 70 miles from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, American Marines and private contractors are working to build up a Somali military unit designed to combat the Shabab throughout the country.

Soldiers for the military unit, called Danab, which means lightning in Somali, are recruited by employees of Bancroft Global Development, a Washington-based company that for years has worked with the State Department to train African Union troops and embed with them on military operations inside Somalia.

Michael Stock, the company’s founder, said the Danab recruits received initial training at a facility in Mogadishu before they were sent to Baledogle, where they go through months of training by the Marines. Bancroft advisers then accompany the Somali fighters on missions.

Mr. Stock said the goal was to create a small Somali military unit capable of battling the Shabab without repeating the mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to build up large armies.

Still, American commanders and their international partners are considering a significant expansion of the training effort to potentially include thousands of Somali troops who would protect the country when African Union forces eventually left the country.

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Continue reading the main story
From the Pages of Times Past: ‘Black Hawk Down’
FROM THE ARCHIVE | OCTOBER 5, 1993

Clinton Sending Reinforcements After Heavy Losses in Somalia
President Clinton ordered several hundred fresh United States troops to Somalia, plus heavy tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters and gunships, in the aftermath of heavy American losses in a United Nations military operation in Mogadishu.

The New York Times

See full article in TimesMachine

Maj. Gen. Kurt L. Sonntag, the commander of the American military’s task force in Djibouti, the only permanent American base in Africa, said the proposed training plan would increase and enhance the Somali national security forces, including the army, national guard and national police.

“The specific numbers of forces required is currently being assessed,” General Sonntag said. He added that it must be large enough to protect the Somali people but “affordable and sustainable over time, in terms of Somalia’s national budget.”

Independent experts and aid organizations say the Somali Army is still largely untrained, poorly paid and poorly equipped, and years away from coalescing regional militias into a unified army.

American policy makers tried to avoid direct involvement in Somalia for years after the Black Hawk Down episode. But in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Special Operations troops and the Central Intelligence Agency began paying Somali warlords to hunt down Qaeda operatives in the country.

In 2006, the United States gave clandestine support to Ethiopian troops invading the country to overthrow an Islamist movement that had taken control of Mogadishu. But the brutal urban warfare tactics of the Ethiopian troops created support for an insurgent movement that called itself Al Shabab, which means “The Youth.”

American involvement in Somalia was intermittent for several years afterward, until the Westgate attack refocused Washington’s attention on the threat the Shabab posed beyond Somalia.

The Shabab still control thousands of square miles of territory across Somalia. A Somali university student who travels in and out of Shabab areas said the group’s fighters were becoming increasingly suspicious, even paranoid, checking the phones, cameras, computers and documents of anyone passing through their territory, constantly on guard for another American attack. He said Shabab fighters were becoming younger, with a vast majority under 25 and many as young as 10.

American law enforcement officials think that the bomb that nearly brought down the commercial jet in February was most likely made by a Yemeni who is believed to have constructed other laptop bombs in Somalia. Pictures from an airport X-ray machine show the explosive packed into the corner of the laptop, next to a nine-volt battery. Several aviation experts said that the bomb was obvious and that airport security officials in Mogadishu might have intentionally allowed it through.

The bomb exploded about 15 minutes after takeoff, punching a hole through the fuselage and killing the man suspected of carrying the bomb on board, though the pilot was able to land safely. Aviation experts said that if the bomb had exploded a few minutes later, with the cabin fully pressurized, the fuselage would have most likely blown apart, killing all of the approximately 80 people on board.

Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya.

A version of this article appears in print on October 16, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Somali Strategy Reveals New Face of U.S. Warfare. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/w...lia-secret-war.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur