These secret proxy wars that the Pentagon is waging abroad

For years, the various U.S. administrations have been waging proxy wars under the secret 127th program, writes the U.S. website Intercept. Between 2017 and 2020, the Pentagon launched 23 proxy war programs, including in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. This has cost US taxpayers $310 million.

"Through the 127th program the U.S. arms, trains and provides intelligence to foreign forces. But unlike traditional foreign aid programs, 127th partners then go on missions under U.S. command against U.S. enemies and to achieve U.S. objectives," the news outlet writes. Military activities related to the 127th can take place without the congressional authorization required by the Constitution.

The 127th program authorizes U.S. Special Forces to conduct "counterterrorism operations" in cooperation with foreign and irregular partner forces around the world with minimal outside oversight.

Retired generals familiar with the 127th program, known in military jargon as 127-echo, say it is extremely effective in combating combatant groups while reducing risk to U.S. forces.

Virtually no information about these operations is shared with Congress or the government. It is generally not even known where these operations are taking place, how often they are taking place, what their objectives are, or which foreign forces the United States is cooperating with. Critics of the program warn that it could lead to unanticipated armed escalation and U.S. involvement in dozens of conflicts around the world, since the 127th program does not allow for oversight by foreign affairs officials.

The Pentagon and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) decline to comment on actions under the 127th program. "We don't provide information on 127th programs because they are classified," Ken McGraw, a representative of SOCOM, told the Intercept. The Pentagon prefers to conduct its operations with minimal oversight and has done so for years.

As the Italian newspaper Giornale noted in commenting on the Intercept investigation, compared to traditional U.S. military aid, the 127th program is surrounded by a halo of secrecy. The daily points out that crimes have often been committed during operations under this program. For example, "arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, torture, summary executions and probably illegal air and ground attacks against civilians" have taken place in Egypt.

According to a study organized by Brown University's Watson Institute, there are 85 countries where the U.S. government conducted counterterrorism operations in 2018, 2019 and 2020, ranging from air strikes against military sites and ending with the training of foreign military and police forces.

The fact that the Pentagon systematically organizes secret military operations abroad had been reported before. In 2021, Newsweek magazine wrote that in the last ten years the Pentagon had created the largest secret army in history. 60,000 people with fake names and fake lives are actively interfering in the real lives of other countries. "These forces are ten times larger than the entire network of CIA agents, they carry out secret missions both in uniform and in civilian clothes, in real life and on the Internet, sometimes hiding in well-known private agencies and companies," the media wrote.

The Pentagon's secret army could be divided into three main groups. About half of the 60,000 men are combat units, conspiracy fighters to conduct special operations. They traditionally operate in the Middle East and Africa, but lately they have been involved in covert operations behind U.S. enemies such as Iran and North Korea. The second group deals with counterintelligence, data processing, and includes military linguists. And the third is cybercombatants.

Nearly 130 private companies, using subcontractors under false names, are involved in controlling the "new secret world," as Newsweek called it. Behind them are dozens of little-known government organizations that sign contracts and control their implementation. Maintaining the secret forces requires almost $1 billion a year. Newsweek also claimed that the Pentagon's "secret army" is also an instrument to fight Russia and China in the conditions of "lower level of armed conflict".

The Pentagon is doing the same in Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities have authorized the deployment of nine sites where American military personnel were present before the start of the Russian special military operation. These include the Yavoriv training camp near Lviv. Nearly 300 American instructors were permanently deployed there. According to the most modest estimates, more than 10,000 Ukrainians were trained in Yavoriv according to Nato standards. There is a US naval base in Ochakiv. The port of Yuzhny, 30 km from Odessa, is used by the British armed forces, etc.

It is quite possible that these actions of the American military in Ukraine were carried out within the framework of secret programs of the Pentagon 127th.

Alexandre Lemoine

https://www.observateurcontinental.fr/?module=articles&action=view&id=4077
via: https://diasp.org/posts/21510234
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