Even Top US Jets Face Risks: F-15 Incident Highlights Complex Airspace Over Iran – Analysis

April 5, 2026 
RFE RL
By Alex Raufoglu


A reported incident involving a US F-15 over Iran is drawing renewed scrutiny to the risks American aircraft face when operating in heavily defended airspace, underscoring a broader reality: Even one of the world’s most successful fighter jets is not immune in contested environments.

For decades, the F-15 has been a symbol of US air superiority. Across multiple conflicts, it has recorded more than 100 air-to-air kills — and, notably, has never been lost in air-to-air combat.

That record still stands. But recent events, alongside historical losses to ground-based defenses, are adding new context to the aircraft’s long combat history.

Earlier in March, three US F-15E Strike Eagles were reportedly shot down in a friendly fire incident involving a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet during the opening stages of the ongoing Operation Epic Fury conflict with Iran.

The episode, still under investigation, did not result in fatalities, with all crews safely ejecting. Even so, it marks one of the more unusual friendly fire incidents involving the US Air Force in recent years and is expected to be closely studied.

Beyond such incidents, a small number of F-15s have been lost in combat zones — primarily to ground-based air defenses rather than enemy aircraft.

During operations over Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, several F-15s were downed by surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft systems, highlighting a persistent vulnerability that remains relevant today.

Investments In ‘Advanced Technologies’

“The US has invested in advanced technologies — stealth, electronic attack, and space communications/PNT — that help provide an advantage over other air forces,” retired US Air Force Brigadier General Houston R. Cantwell, a senior resident fellow for airpower studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told RFE/RL on April 4.

“This, combined with careful planning and precise intelligence on the adversary, has minimized losses to fighter aircraft,” he said.

That investment has significantly reduced risk over time. The last confirmed US warplane shot down in combat was an A-10 during the 2003 Iraq War.

Since then, advances in stealth technology — reducing radio-frequency signatures and complicating radar detection — have further improved survivability.

Yet, Cantwell cautioned, those advantages have limits — especially over a country like Iran.

“Countries like Iran have a very advanced integrated air defense system (IADS),” he said. “This system has been degraded over the past month, but that does not mean it has been 100 percent destroyed.”

Iran retains a mix of radar-and infrared-guided missiles, along with antiaircraft artillery. Its size alone complicates efforts to neutralize threats.

“Iran is a huge country. The US cannot hope to completely eliminate any air threat just based on its size,” Cantwell said. “So long as combat missions are flown over Iran, there will be some threat to the aircraft.”

Even advanced fighters like the F-15 rely on defensive countermeasures such as chaff and flares — tools that improve survivability but offer no guarantees. “Even these systems are not 100 percent effective,” he said.

Adapting To Evolving Threats

The risks highlighted by the F-15 incident reflect a broader shift in how US adversaries prepare for conflict.

“I will say that the US [and Israeli] preference for stand-off warfare — fighting from the sky and avoiding the deployment of land forces — has likely increased our potential adversaries’ preparation for conflict with the US,” retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Amos Fox, a fellow at Arizona State University’s Future Security Initiative, told RFE/RL.

“They understand how the US wants to fight — airpower and long-range strike — and thus they’ve invested in ways to offset that preference,” he said.

Fox pointed to growing cooperation among US rivals and the spread of military technology.

“As we’ve seen in both Ukraine and now in Iran, our adversaries also see us as an adversary and will work together to see us fail,” he said.

“The diffusion of targeting information, weapons systems, and defensive systems shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — and we’ve likely only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

Lessons From Past Conflicts

Historically, US air campaigns have faced higher losses under different conditions. During the 1991 Gulf War, coalition forces lost dozens of aircraft.

“The coalition lost nearly 100 aircraft in Desert Storm, but that campaign had very different objectives and timelines compared to Epic Fury,” Cantwell said.

Since then, US strategy has focused heavily on neutralizing enemy air defenses early in a conflict.

“IADS continue to evolve — making them the priority target at the beginning of any air campaign,” Cantwell said. “The US and Israel have focused on these systems to permit use of the air by numerous other assets.”

Still, suppressing such systems remains a complex and ongoing effort. “Keeping these assets degraded or destroyed is difficult,” he added.

Technology And The Future Fight

To reduce risk to pilots, the US has increasingly turned to unmanned systems such as the MQ-9 Reaper and RQ-170 Sentinel.

“The evolution of unmanned assets like the MQ-9 and RQ-170 permits penetration of these threats without risk to aircrew,” Cantwell said. “MQ-9s have been very effective searching for mobile targets and destroying them without risking aircrew deep in Iran.”

Next-generation concepts, including collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), aim to push this approach further by pairing unmanned systems with crewed jets.


“These aircraft will team with manned aircraft and permit the penetration of dense threat environments, while providing additional weapons at the disposal of a ‘quarterbacking’ fighter or bomber jet,” Cantwell said. “These CCAs might be essential to penetrate IADS in the early days of any campaign.”

A Record — With Caveats

For pilots forced down behind enemy lines, the risks remain immediate and severe.

“Evasion and health are primary,” Cantwell said. “You need to blend in while ensuring you’re taking care of your health — food, water, and shelter. Evade until you can find an appropriate pick-up location.”

Rescue missions have grown more complex as air defenses improve.

“These missions require advanced packages of aircraft and space capabilities,” he said. “The helicopter carries the pararescue team, but they require tanker support, air cover from fighters and attack aircraft, and timely intelligence from ISR assets like the MQ-9.”

The F-15’s unmatched air-to-air record remains intact. But its history — and recent incidents — underscore a more nuanced reality: Dominance in the air does not eliminate danger from the ground, human error, or evolving adversary tactics.

As Cantwell put it, as long as aircraft operate over heavily defended territory, “there will be some threat to the aircraft.”Alex Raufoglu is RFE/RL’s senior correspondent in Washington, D.C.

China's invisible hand in Iran’s F-35 success

/ Airman 1st Class Alexander Cook - PD

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By Mark Buckton in Taipei April 5, 2026

Just days before Iran claimed to have hit one of the US Air Force's most formidable jets - an F-35 stealth fighter - a Chinese social media account published a detailed guide on how such an attack could be carried out.

The video, posted in mid-March by an account called Laohu Talks World – laohu being Chinese for tiger with the first character ‘lao’ (老) also the first character used in the Chinese word for teacher – laoshi (老师), showed how Tehran could use run of the mill Iranian air defence systems to track and target America’s most advanced fighter jet.

The video in question quickly went viral, in the process attracting tens of millions of views. Then just days later, on March 19, Iran said its air defences, long-deemed backward by Western standards given its mix of older Soviet-era and domestically developed systems – had engaged an F-35A during an early morning mission over central Iran. In doing so, Iranian officials claimed to have forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing. The timing of the Iranian success against an F-35 prompted an immediate response from Chinese netizens with some describing it as strikingly prescient.

Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, a growing number of Chinese online accounts with science, technology, engineering, and mathematical backgrounds have been posting wide-ranging military analysis on how Iran can and should counter US air capabilities. These posts, which include in-depth technical explanations and tactical advice, are shared without subscription fees or obvious official support. However, given China’s use of its so-called civilian fishing fleets in the East China Sea to stretch Taiwanese and Japanese defence capabilities over the past five years, that such a form of decentralised knowledge-sharing during wartime should have no official backing is suspect at best.

The F-35 tutorial’s central argument, that forces in Iran could use low-cost systems against a fifth-generation stealth fighter, has at least a degree of technical credibility, however.

The F-35 Lightning II was designed to evade radar using its shape coupled to specialised production materials and hidden weapons bays. But stealth capabilities alone do not make the aircraft invisible, and its limitations are well known and recorded. Electro-optical and infrared sensors, which operate passively, do not trigger radar warning systems, and while the F-35 carries its own infrared sensor capabilities, it may not react fast enough to counter close-range threats. In the days after the March 19 incident it was noted that what happened was likely a passive EO/IR intercept. This in turn suggests the aircraft and pilot likely received no radar warning before the aircraft was damaged.

Analysts have since suggested that using a sudden radar burst against fifth-generation fighters to allow immediate tracking and firing of air defences, particularly once the aircraft has passed overhead, is easier than as it approaches; the long-standing reality being that attacking aircraft from behind is more successful than from any other angle. Whether or not the Chinese PLA Air Force is somehow involved, though, remains questionable. Officially China has kept its distance from the conflict, though reports point to Beijing having at least sold offensive drones and components to Iran in the months before the strikes began.

As such, what makes these civilian tutorials different is their public, unpaid, and supposedly unofficial nature and it remains unclear whether or not Beijing views this grassroots support as a problem, or is in some way behind it.

Syria's Kurds caution Iranian Kurds against aligning with US

Kurdish residents of northeast Syria have warned Iran's Kurds against aligning with the US to fight the Iranian government, citing their own experience in Syria in recent months as evidence their Iranian counterparts would be "abandoned." 

Iranian Kurdish militias based in northern Iraq have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether and how to attack security forces in western Iran, in a move that has alarmed Turkey and stoked fears of a wider regional conflagration. 

But Syria's Kurds warned their Iranian counterparts against partnering with Washington. 

"I hope that the Kurds of Iran will not ally themselves with America, because they will abandon them," said Saad Ali, a 45-year-old resident of the northeastern Syrian Kurdish town of Qamishli. 

"Tomorrow, if an agreement is made between them (the US) and the Iranians, they will eliminate you. Do not make our mistakes," he told Reuters. 

Kurdish forces in the region have a long history of being used as pawns in Washington’s games. Click on the link below for more. 

FRANCE 24

US reaches out to Iran’s Kurds, but will they also be ‘hung out to dry’?

The US has made an outreach to Iranian Kurdish dissident groups as “Operation Epic Fury” rattles the pieces of the Middle East geostrategic chess game. The Kurds in other countries have a history of…

Read the article on  https://www.france24.com

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Trump says he’s told Kurdish forces not to enter Iran war

Kurdish inhabited areas of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. / CIA, public domain

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By bne IntelliNews March 8, 2026

Donald Trump said on March 7 that he has told Kurdish forces not to enter the Iran war.

Bloomberg reported the US president as outlining his position as he spoke on Air Force One on his way back to Florida after attending a military service for six fallen American soldiers.

“We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is. I have ruled that out. I don’t want the Kurds going in,” Trump was reported as saying.

He added that the Kurds had told him that they were “willing to go into Iran”, “but we really, I’ve told them, I don’t want them to go.”

Iranian Kurdish militia opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran regime that is under attack from US and Israeli forces, are gathered in Kurdistan, Iraq. A cross-border attack into western Iran, perhaps with US and Israeli air cover, would likely draw an angry response from Iraq and Turkey, concerned that Trump would be stirring a hornet’s nest in the region. Some reports say Israel has been actively pushing for the US to back a Kurdish attack. However, some analysts have cast doubt on whether the various Kurdish groups are united on whether or not such an incursion into Iran would be wise.

Turkey said on March 5 that its state institutions were keeping a close eye on the actions ​of the Iranian Kurdish Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) militant group.

"The activities of groups that fuel ethnic separatism, such as the terrorist organisation PJAK, negatively affect ​not only Iran's ​security but ⁠also the overall peace and stability of the region," Turkey's defence ministry told ​a weekly press briefing in Ankara, Reuters reported on March 5.

PJAK is aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), through the Kurdistan Communirties Union (KCK), an umbrella group of Kurdish political and insurgent groups in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. The PKK, based in mountainous northern Iraq, fought a four-decade-long armed insurgency against Turkish forces, prior to the declaration of a ceasefire and a peace negotiation, which remains fragile, a year ago. Both the PKK and PJAK are designated as terrorist groups by Turkey.

On March 4, CNN reported that the CIA has been working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran. 

As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’

By AFP
March 7, 2026


A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan - Copyright AFP Ozan KOSE

Anne Chaon

On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.

Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.

Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.

Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.

The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night”, he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometres from the border.

He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.

“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan… We just want to live.”

Erbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.

American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.

But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.

“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.

He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.



– ‘Dangerous people’ –



The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkey.

“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.

The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.

“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.

The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.

They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.

A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.

“People are afraid,” said Nasr al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister”.

“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting”.

Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home… and all of a sudden a drone hits your house”.

“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.



– ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ –



Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.

There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.

But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it”.

He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war”.

“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”

Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.

Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.

“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”

From Mogadishu to Minneapolis

The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota ignores a longer history: decades of US intervention that helped produce the violence and displacement Somalis fled.

By Elizabeth Schmidt

March 7, 2026

Source: Africa Is A Country

A street fair during Somali Week in Minneapolis, 2016. Image credit Fibonacci Blue via Flickr CC BY 2.0.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somali refugees, immigrants, and US citizens of Somali descent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the home of some 80,000 people of Somali heritage, has been headline news in recent weeks—especially since the Immigration and Customs Enforcement killing of two American citizens—both white—who witnessed ICE brutality.

The presence of so many Somalis in Minneapolis and the special antipathy the Trump administration has for them has roots that go far deeper than the president’s hostility toward Minneapolis Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of his most forceful and outspoken critics. Rather, it has strong roots in the history of US intervention in Somalia from the Cold War to the “war on terror.”

Although Somalis are not the only people targeted by the Trump administration—which has a long list of “enemy” nations—they are a prominent group, a group that entered the US with refugee or Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a result of the mayhem in their homeland, much of it sparked by US intervention.

President Trump has disparaged Somalis and other Africans since his first administration. In 2018, he notoriously referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” In December 2025, he upped the ante, making scathing, xenophobic remarks about Somali immigrants and their US-born descendants. Labeling them “garbage,” he told reporters that he wanted to expel Somalis from the country—and that they should go home and “fix” their problems. The dehumanization of targeted populations was a tactic employed by the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany to justify their murder.

In particular, Trump has villainized Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a US citizen who was born in Somalia,  accusing her of “political crimes” and declaring that she should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which [she] came.” Omar has been plagued by death threats since Trump began targeting her.

Subjected to a series of travel bans during the first Trump administration, Somalis have again been targeted during his second term. Following a tirade about Somalia’s inability to drive al-Qaeda and Islamic State elements from their country, Trump announced that he would end the TPS status of nearly 2,500 Somalis, who would then be subject to deportation.

What caused the turmoil in Somalia that drove so many people from their homes, and what role has the US played? Since an abortive US military mission to Somalia in the early 1990s, the country has most often been featured in the US mainstream media as a terrorist haven that launches attacks on neighboring countries or as the source of piratical raids on international shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.

Much of this coverage gives readers the impression that Somalia’s problems are self-generated and that the rest of the world has been trying to save it. In reality, there is a protracted history of outside interference in Somali affairs that has worsened its long crisis. From the Cold War to the “war on terror,” the US has turned Somalia into a battleground for its geopolitical schemes, with profoundly destructive consequences for the Somali people.

Somalia’s early attempts at democracy ended in 1969, when its second president was assassinated and Major General Mohamed Siad Barre seized power. The next year, he announced that Somalia would pursue a scientific socialist agenda, beginning with a massive public works program. While the country made significant strides in mass literacy, primary education, public health, and economic development, the Siad Barre regime also suspended the constitution, banned political parties, and assassinated rivals.

Wary of Somalia’s socialist orientation, the US suspended economic aid and the Soviet Union became the country’s main source of military and economic assistance. By 1976, Somalia boasted one of the largest armies in sub-Saharan Africa. Cuban technicians trained Somali troops, while Soviet and East German agents strengthened the country’s repressive National Security Service.

Meanwhile, a revolution in Ethiopia ousted the feudal regime of Haile Selassie, a staunch ally of the West. It was replaced by a military dictatorship that described itself as Marxist-Leninist. Viewing Ethiopia’s Marxist credentials as stronger than Somalia’s, Moscow initially embraced both governments. However, in 1977, when Somalia invaded Ethiopia in an attempt to claim land occupied by ethnic Somalis, the Soviet Union threw its full support to Ethiopia.

In 1978, without Soviet assistance, Somalia was forced to withdraw. The US resumed its support, and by 1986, Mogadishu was one of the largest recipients of US military aid in sub-Saharan Africa. This aid notwithstanding, Somalia was in dire straits by the mid-1980s. The cost of the Ethiopian war, along with corruption and mismanagement, had run the economy into the ground. Onerous taxes stimulated rural unrest, which was brutally suppressed. Government critics were drafted or killed. Members of Barre’s own clan increasingly dominated the regime. By 1989, clans that had suffered from harassment or discrimination had united in their opposition to Siad Barre’s rule, as had Islamists, whom the dictatorship had also repressed.

The Mogadishu government’s resettlement of hundreds of thousands of war refugees in Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Somaliland threatened the economic interests of the indigenous population. In the early 1980s, the Somali National Movement, backed by Ethiopia, instigated an insurgency in the region. In response, Somali military planes, piloted by white South African and former Rhodesian mercenaries, bombed the northern capital of Hargeisa. Tens of thousands of people were killed.

By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was weakening politically and economically. The US, no longer needing a regional policeman, expressed newfound concern for Siad Barre’s human rights abuses and again suspended military and economic aid.

Without US support, the Siad Barre government was an easy target. In January 1991, warlords and their clan-based militias overthrew his regime. Conflict between competing warlords destroyed much of Mogadishu. State institutions and basic services crumbled, the formal economy ceased to function, and southern Somalia disintegrated into fiefdoms ruled by rival warlords and their militias, which clashed with a resurgent Islamist movement.

As the fighting intensified in 1991, war-induced famine, compounded by drought, threatened much of the population. Massive population displacement, the theft of food and livestock by marauding soldiers and militia members, and crop failure rendered 4.5 million people at risk of starvation. By late 1992, some 300,000 Somalis had died from starvation and war-related disease and violence, while two million people had fled their homes.

Concerned about instability in this strategic region, the US, backed by the United Nations, launched a multinational military intervention in 1992. Its mission was to ensure the delivery of humanitarian relief. In 1993, another UN mission permitted US-led forces to disarm and arrest Somali warlords and militia members. As a result, the United States took sides in what had become a civil war—favoring one warlord (Ali Mahdi Muhammad) and opposing another (Mohamed Farah Aidid). Civilians were caught in the crossfire. Many were killed in US airstrikes, eliciting a furious backlash from the population. US troops, in turn, increasingly regarded Somali civilians as hostile actors.

Although the delivery of food aid had been the priority of the US military in early 1993, it was not the objective eight months later. From late August to early October, the US armed forces were bent on capturing or killing Aidid and his top lieutenants. The final raid took place in October 1993, when US Army Rangers and Delta Force troops attempted to capture key leaders of Aidid’s militia in Mogadishu. Aidid’s forces shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, which crashed into children in the streets below. Angry crowds attacked the surviving soldiers and their rescuers. Eighteen American soldiers and hundreds of Somali men, women, and children were killed in the ensuing violence.

In 1994, having stirred up a hornet’s nest, the US hastily withdrew from Somalia. However, the emergence of al-Qaeda elsewhere in East Africa sparked new US concerns about violence in the Horn. The bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, followed by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, led to increased US collaboration with the post-Marxist government in Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, Islamist groups had gained significant popular support in Somalia by offering essential social services no longer provided by the government, including schools, health clinics, and courts that brought some semblance of order to the war zone. Ignoring the reasons for the appeal of Islamism, Washington set out on a violent campaign to stamp it out.

Worried that Somalia could become an al-Qaeda outpost, Washington joined Somali warlords and the Ethiopian government in opposing Islamist advances, imposing an ineffectual government in 2004. Two years later, Washington supported an Ethiopian invasion and occupation that lasted until 2009.

Foreign intervention precipitated a domestic insurgency led by al-Shabaab, originally a youth militia organized to defend the Islamic courts. Provoked by outside meddling, it had transformed into a violent jihadist organization. By 2007, al-Shabaab had taken control of large swaths of central and southern Somalia, prompting the UN, the African Union, and neighboring countries to intervene. In 2012, the youth militia affiliated with al-Qaeda.

The US worked in the shadows, launching low-intensity warfare against al-Shabaab operatives, deploying both private contractors and Special Operations Forces to train and accompany Somali and African Union troops in combat operations. US drones and airstrikes killed key al-Shabaab leaders, who were rapidly replaced by others.

In 2012, outside forces again imposed a new political dispensation that was mediated by the UN, backed by the international community, and disavowed by large segments of Somali civil society, which had had little input in the process. Al-Shabaab was again diminished, but not defeated. A decade and a half later, al-Shabaab maintains its powerful foothold in Somalia, and the central government still cannot provide basic services, law, order, and justice.

Meanwhile, the US has continued to wage a shadow war. Reducing the number of American feet on the ground, the Obama administration escalated the use of drones and airstrikes to kill al-Shabaab insurgents. While this method diminished the number of US deaths, it slaughtered hundreds of Somali civilians. The first Trump administration withdrew most US forces, but carried out 219 air strikes in Somalia. The Biden administration increased the number of US Special Operations Forces whose job was to train and assist Somali forces in counterterrorism operations focused on killing extremist leaders deemed a threat to the US, its interests, and its allies.

In its first year, the second Trump administration oversaw more air strikes than the number carried out by the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden administrations combined. A top US Navy admiral described a February 2025 strike as the “largest air strike in the history of the world.” The US military has refused to provide information on civilian casualties.

In 1991, when Siad Barre was ousted and the central government disintegrated, Somaliland, the semi-autonomous region in the north that had been brutalized by the central government, declared independence. The region is strategically located along the Gulf of Aden—the gateway to Europe for Middle Eastern oil. The city of Berbera is home to a port and one of the longest landing strips in Africa, both coveted by the Trump administration. Access to these facilities would offer the US a strong presence on the oil shipping route and enable it to monitor conflicts in the region. Moreover, new studies have shown that Somaliland has numerous deposits of rare earth minerals that have not yet been claimed or exploited.

In a letter to Trump in March 2025, the Somali president offered the US exclusive control of two air bases and two ports, including the air base and port in Berbera. Trump hopes that the addition of military facilities in Somaliland, one of the few African governments that recognizes Taiwan, rather than Beijing, will weaken China’s stronghold on the continent. In December 2025, the Netanyahu government in Israel, a staunch US ally, became the first country to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. News reports claim that Israel hopes to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Somaliland—a forced relocation, which is in clear violation of international law.

How has foreign meddling shaped the Somalia of today? It has internationalized what had been a local conflict, strengthening violent extremist factions and precipitating al-Qaeda involvement. Far from containing the bloodshed, external intervention increased it, provoking internal actors to affiliate with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, establishing extremist outposts where none had been before.

This, President Trump, is the country the Somalis of Minnesota fled—a country that has been brutalized by both the US and violent extremists provoked by the actions of outsiders. This is the mayhem that qualified Somalis for refugee and Temporary Protected Status in the United States. And yes, Mr. President, it is this population and its US-born descendants who have been targeted by ICE for incarceration and deportation. Shame on the United States of America.

In Spain, Amazon Workers Win with Quick-Hit Walkouts

By Alfonso Martínez Valero

March 3, 2026

Source: Labor Notess

Image by General Confederation of Labor (CGT)

At an Amazon fulfillment center in Spain, we used a flurry of brief walkouts late last year to force the company to improve wages and time off.

We struck for three days in November and in December in a series of “flexible strikes,” timed to hit production with intermittent walkouts during the holiday “peak” season. On December 22, the union committee announced a settlement, negotiated through government mediators.

The facility, RMU1 in the city of Murcia, employed 2,000 workers at the time, and our union the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) was one of four unions that represented them. [European countries don’t have the same “exclusive representation” system as the U.S., so multiple unions can have a presence at the same worksite. –Editors]

About 75 percent of the workforce, made up of workers from Spain and immigrants from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Morocco, participated in the strike, reaching beyond the ranks of the CGT to include other union members.

Our experience shows what’s possible, even at a multinational corporation designed to neutralize organizing. Building from below, workers can organize a well-planned strike—over the objections of more conservative unions—draw on their knowledge of the production process, hit the company where it hurts the most, and wrest real gains.

Here’s how we got Amazon to negotiate with us when it didn’t want to.

Overcoming the institutional blockade

Union representation at Amazon RMU1, is structured through union sections that make up comités de empresa, or Works Council, employee representative bodies linked to unions that meet with management.

In the last union elections in 2023, the CGT became the second-largest union in the fulfillment center, after the Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), or Workers’ Commissions, the largest trade union federation in Spain. CGT’s representation within the plant increased thanks to a campaign based almost exclusively on direct contact with the workforce, shift by shift and area by area.

From the outset, we hit up against a strong obstacle at RMU1: the majority of the CCOO and the General Union of Workers (Unión General de Trabajadores), a major labor federation affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, refused to call a workers’ assembly to discuss a strike vote. Workers felt growing discontent over stagnating standards since 2018, as skyrocketing inflation has bitten into their wages.

In 2024, we collected more than 800 signatures to hold a workers’ assembly, which the law says must be held if one-third of the workforce supports it. An assembly hadn’t happened in Murcia in over 40 years.

But Amazon managers pressured workers not to hold the assembly, saying signatures were illegitimate, questioning whether they were actually from Amazon workers in the fulfillment center. Other unions chose to remain quiet and not rock the boat. Labor authorities failed to enforce the law.

Bowing to Amazon, the regional labor bodies requested a list of the workers who had signed, but the union refused because it would put workers on a blacklist, exposing workers to company reprisals.

Preparing the terrain

The setback forced us to halt our efforts for a time, but also gave us time to analyze and map out a strategy.

By last September, the mood in the warehouse was unsustainable. Workers were getting more and more frustrated with health and safety violations and stagnant wages—especially in Murcia, where wages had been frozen since 2018. (Amazon’s sectoral agreements vary across provinces.)

We launched a campaign on these issues and decided to keep our tactics simple: talking with people, publishing our union newsletter (La Cegetera), and openly talking about a strike. There weren’t any grand events or symbolic gestures. The aim was to stir up a hornet’s nest through daily and constant organizing.

In an assembly for the CGT union section, we decided, by an overwhelming majority, to call the strike in two phases: November as a dress rehearsal and December as the main offensive.

Breaking the script

From the beginning, we knew a traditional strike wouldn’t work—Amazon would be prepared for that. Our central tactic was to go to work, and stop at the right moment.

The key was breaking the script the company had expected. During the strike, workers showed up to their stations as usual. There weren’t any visible pickets at the start of shifts. For management, the lack of any visible conflict generated a false sense of control.

The strike began at peak production times, when every minute counts. At those moments, workers left their posts in a coordinated fashion and went outside, where CGT activists were organized and ready.

The impact was immediate. On the first day of the strike in November, more than 40 trucks didn’t leave on time, a huge problem for a logistics company. When workers returned to their posts after the peak production period, the damage was already done, and the company descended into organizational chaos, unable to reassign the workforce or restore production flows.

Adapting on the fly

Another decisive element of strategy was decentralized decision-making. The strike wasn’t directed from above, though the union selected the strike days to maximize our impact on Amazon’s shopping bonanza.

Within those selected strike days, workers organized themselves into small groups by area or department, deciding collectively exactly when to strike, for how long, and how to coordinate with other groups.

The union encouraged this dynamic and reinforced it: we provided information, not orders. When Amazon tried to neutralize the strike by changing peak production schedules, workers were the ones who picked up on that, and adjusted their tactics in real time.

This approach allowed us to adapt to every move the company made, and it also reduced the individual cost of the strike, since no one lost a full workday. That flexibility allowed massive and sustained participation.

The most decisive departments were shipping and inbound, though participation was high throughout the warehouse. The shifts with a greater CGT presence were especially strong, but the strike even extended to workers affiliated with other unions.

Turning a strike blow into a conquest

The strike didn’t stay confined to Amazon. The impact on production and the visibility of the conflict attracted the attention of civil society organizations and political groups. The Regional Assembly of Murcia unanimously approved a declaration of support for the Amazon workforce.

This support, coupled with the economic damage, shifted the balance of power. Although Amazon avoided direct negotiations, our ally Unión Sindical Obrera (Workers Union), used the momentum generated by the strike to unblock the renewal of a sectoral agreement that had been expired for over 10 years. The wins were clear and measurable:

• Cumulative salary increase of 14 percent by 2026, with additional increases of 4 percent in 2027 and 2028
• Bonus of 40 euros before taxes per Sunday worked
• One additional personal day and one additional vacation day
• Improved sick leave benefits up to 100 percent of the base salary
• Progressive increases in the night shift bonus
• Integration of the transportation allowance into the base salary, cementing this right for the long haul

Our strike succeeded because workers knew the production process better than the company, we trusted in the collective intelligence of the workforce, and we broke with predictable mobilization models that the company could have anticipated.

Amazon keeps being Amazon, but during those weeks we demonstrated something fundamental: even at the heart of global logistics, a well-planned, surgical strike from below can bring the machine to a standstill and win.Email

Alfonso Martínez Valero

Alfonso Martínez Valero is an Amazon worker and Secretary of the CGT union section at the fulfillment center RMU1.