From the Saudi-Yemen border to Somalia and the north-central African desert, the US military is more engaged in armed conflicts in the Muslim world than the US government openly acknowledges, according to cables released by the WikiLeaks website. US officials have struck relationships with regimes that generally arent considered allies in the war against terrorism, and while the cables show US diplomats admonishing the regimes to respect the laws of war, they also underscore the perils of using advanced military technologies in complex, remote battlefields with sometimes shifty friends. Cables released this week indicate that the United States: -Provided Saudi Arabia with satellite imagery to help direct airstrikes against Shia rebels after earlier strikes resulted in civilian casualties. -Collaborated with Algerian forces in 2006 and 2007 to capture militants allegedly bound for Iraq and, more recently, obtained permission to fly US surveillance planes through Algerian airspace to hunt suspected al Qaeda members. -Killed a Muslim leader in a 2008 airstrike in Somalia and, later, fielded requests from Somali officials to take out more suspected militants. Experts said that the revelations of secretive American operations in Muslim countries could offer fodder to militants who accuse the US of aggression against Muslims and of siding with authoritarian and unpopular regimes. This kind of feeds the al Qaeda narrative, that were doing it everywhere, said Lawrence J Korb, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress in Washington and a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. The Pentagon hasnt acknowledged its role in Saudi Arabias sporadic fight against a Yemeni Shiite group known as the Houthi. But a cable from the US embassy in Riyadh says that in February, a senior Saudi defence official asked the US for satellite maps of its border with Yemen to help the underequipped Saudi air force target the rebels, and the US ambassador, James B Smith, agreed. A previous Saudi airstrike had hit a medical clinic, while another bombing run turned back when pilots learned that the target - selected by the Yemeni government - wasnt a rebel site but instead the headquarters of a political opponent of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The strikes were necessarily being conducted without the desired degree of precision, said the Saudi official, Prince Khaled bin Sultan. When Smith produced a satellite image of the bomb-damaged clinic, bin Sultan suggested that his air force needed more advanced aircraft. If we had the Predator, maybe we would not have this problem, he said, referring to a drone aircraft the US has used extensively in strikes on suspected terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. The cable said that Smith agreed to furnish the Saudis with the satellite imagery because, while the Houthi clashes appeared to be dying down, the imagery would help Saudi forces keep a better eye on suspected al Qaeda activity in that area. In the meeting, however, bin Sultan said that the more immediate priority for his government was reaching a cease-fire with Yemen and the Houthi. Then, the prince said, we can concentrate on al Qaeda. Peter Singer, the director of the 21st Century Defence Initiative at the centre-left Brookings Institution in Washington, said the exchange illustrates the dangers of US forces relying on local allies who have other objectives. Cables also show that the US military has established a partnership with Algeria to combat al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In February 2008, US officials in Algiers reported that theyd worked with Algerian military intelligence - a prickly, paranoid group, according to a cable - to root out networks funnelling dozens of militants to Iraq. However, the cable noted that Algerian authorities do not like to discuss our cooperation publicly, and that while the FBI had opened an office at the US Embassy, the Algerians are not rushing to cooperate. In Somalia, the Pentagon acknowledged at the time that a 2008 US airstrike killed Aden Hashi Ayro, an Afghanistan-trained jihadist who US officials thought was al Qaedas point man in the East African nation. A May 2009 account of a meeting between US officials and the Somali prime minister didnt specifically refer to the Ayro strike, but it said that the Somali government thought such strikes were necessary and discussed a phone call two weeks earlier in which the countrys prime minister had asked the US to take out insurgents that Somali officials had learned were meeting in a remote southern town. The cable was the result of a brief meeting between US officials from the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Somali prime minister, Omar Sharmarke, whod stopped over at Nairobis airport on his way from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to a meeting in Libya. The US has no diplomats in Somalia. During the meeting, Sharmarke mentioned that his May 16 phone call to US military officials in Kenya asking for actions against the militants had been made with the consent of Somalias President Sheikh Sharif. McClatchy