Jeffrey Gettlemen, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt explain how US tax dollars are funding the fighting on the Horn of Africa:
Bancroft Global Development [is] an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops who have fought a pitched urban battle in the ruins of this city against the Shabab, the Somali militant group allied with Al Qaeda.
The company plays a vital part in the conflict now raging inside Somalia, a country that has been effectively ungoverned and mired in chaos for years. The fight against the Shabab, a group that United States officials fear could someday carry out strikes against the West, has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies out of reluctance to send American troops back into a country they hastily exited nearly two decades ago.
The Economist speculates about the future of this shadow war. Clinton Watts focuses on the immediate implications al-Shabaab's pullout from Mogadishu.
The Dish 