{"id":342112,"date":"2018-01-03T00:04:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T23:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-counter-terror-airstrikes-double-in-trumps-first-year\/"},"modified":"2018-01-03T00:04:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T23:04:45","slug":"us-counter-terror-airstrikes-double-in-trumps-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-counter-terror-airstrikes-double-in-trumps-first-year\/","title":{"rendered":"US Counter-Terror Airstrikes Double in Trump&#8217;s First Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_12\/2018_0102str_.jpg\" alt=\"President Donald Trump speaks during an event with US military personnel at Yokota Air Base at Fussa in Tokyo on November 5, 2017. (Photo: Jim Watson \/ AFP \/ Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">President Donald Trump speaks during an event with US military personnel at Yokota Air Base at Fussa in Tokyo on November 5, 2017. (Photo: Jim Watson \/ AFP \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The number of\u00a0US air strikes jumped in Yemen and\u00a0Somalia in 2017, pointing to an escalation of the global war on terror.<\/p>\n<p>President Donald Trump inherited the framework allowing US aircraft to hit suspected terrorists outside of declared battlefields from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Bar some tinkering, his administration has largely stuck within the framework set by the previous one.<\/p>\n<p>However, the quantity of operations has shot up under President Trump. Strikes doubled in Somalia and tripled in Yemen.<\/p>\n<p>In Afghanistan, where the Bureau has been monitoring US airstrikes since it was officially declared a noncombat mission at the end of 2014, the number of weapons dropped is now approaching levels last seen during the 2009-2012 surge.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, there are signs that the drone war may be returning to Pakistan, where attacks were also up, compared with 2016.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 630px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2017_12\/2018_0102ch_1.jpg\" alt=\"Strikes in Somalia since 2007. (Via the Bureau)\" width=\"630\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Strikes in Somalia since 2007. (Via the Bureau)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We should keep a close eye on the increase in strike volume, as it does suggest a more aggressive approach, but it&#8217;s not yet clear to me that it represents a truly gloves off approach,&#8221; said Luke\u00a0Hartig, a former counterterrorism advisor in the Obama administration and now a fellow at the New America Foundation, a US thinktank.<\/p>\n<p>Hartig told the Bureau he was concerned that there had not been any significant\u00a0public explanation of what the US government was now\u00a0trying to achieve:\u00a0&#8220;we don&#8217;t have any real basis to assess, for example, why strikes have doubled in Somalia, or if any of these operations are being conducted in direct support of partner forces on the ground rather than as unilateral actions against the threats we face as a nation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration paved the way for the dramatic increase in the number of strikes in Yemen and Somalia when, in March this year, it was reported that parts of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/43092-us-counter-terror-air-strikes-double-in-trump-s-first-year\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump speaks during an event with US military personnel at Yokota Air Base at Fussa in Tokyo on November 5, 2017. (Photo: Jim Watson \/ AFP \/ Getty Images) The number of\u00a0US air strikes jumped in Yemen and\u00a0Somalia in 2017, pointing to an escalation of the global war on terror. President Donald Trump [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":342113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-342112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}