CAMP LEMONIER (Djibouti): When US troops got their first look at this former French Foreign Legion fort six months ago there wasn’t much to behold — just a few dilapidated buildings and an abandoned swimming pool.

Now a maze of concertina wire, moatlike trenches and dirt berms hide a rapidly expanding outpost in the secret ‘war on terrorism’ in the Horn of Africa.

Earthen fortifications shelter helicopters, fixed wing aircraft and warrens of camouflaged tents that blend into the flat scrublands on the fringe of Djibouti’s international airport.

About 900 US troops, many of them special operations forces, are here. They are the brawn of a 1,300-member military task force assembled to hunt down and capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders in the region.

The brains is Marine Major General John Sattler who will command the task force from his headquarters aboard the USS Mount Whitney, a command ship that has just arrived in the region.

In the past six months, no known military operations have been mounted against Al Qaeda from here although the CIA has been active, launching a missile strike last month that killed a top Al Qaeda leader in Yemen.

But, active or not, the US military is clearly settling in for a long stay.

“The whole place has changed every day I’ve been here, mostly for the better” said Army Captain David Connolly, the base’s public affairs officer.

The camp’s boundaries have been pushed out well beyond the seven acre plot that French legionnaires once occupied, he said.

The military contractor, which has built and serviced US bases from the Balkans to Central Asia, has taken over construction at the base from military engineers, Connolly said.

Its employees are building sturdier, more comfortable living quarters and serving soldiers four hot meals a day, a welcome change from the packaged field rations known as MREs, or meals ready to eat.

There are other signs of digging in.

The base just opened its second gymnasium and the old swimming pool is being refurbished.

Air conditioners now blow cool air through tents, taking the edge off the blazing African sun which can send temperatures soaring to 55 degrees Celsius (130 Fahrenheit) in the summer.

Security is so tight that even the soldiers are kept in the dark about the base’s special operations.—AFP