Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:16:36 +0200
The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and Obama’s Scramble for Africa
By <http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/nick-turse> Nick Turse
Global Research, June 19, 2013
The Gulf of Guinea. He said it without a hint of irony or embarrassment.
This was one of U.S. Africa Command’s big success stories. The Gulf… of
Guinea.
Never mind that
<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurve
y.pdf> most Americans couldn’t
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/> find it on a
<http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/883/americans-geographical-
ignorance-and-disinclination-to-travel-abroad/> map and haven’t heard of the
nations on its shores like Gabon, Benin, and Togo. Never mind that just five
days before I talked with AFRICOM’s chief spokesman, the Economist had asked
if the Gulf of Guinea was on the verge of becoming “
<http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21578409-piracy-west-a
frica-rise-another-somalia> another Somalia,” because piracy there had
jumped 41% from 2011 to 2012 and was on track to be even worse in 2013.
The Gulf of Guinea was one of the primary areas in Africa where “stability,”
the command spokesman assured me, had “improved significantly,” and the U.S.
military had played a major role in bringing it about. But what did that say
about so many other areas of the continent that, since AFRICOM was set up,
had been wracked by coups, insurgencies, violence, and volatility?
A careful examination of the security situation in Africa suggests that it
is in the process of becoming Ground Zero for a veritable terror diaspora
set in motion in the wake of 9/11 that has only accelerated in the Obama
years. Recent history indicates that as U.S. “stability” operations in
Africa have increased, militancy has spread, insurgent groups have
proliferated, allies have faltered or committed abuses, terrorism has
increased, the number of failed states has risen, and the continent has
become more unsettled.
The signal event in this tsunami of blowback was the U.S. participation in a
war to fell Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi that helped send neighboring
Mali, a U.S.-supported bulwark against regional terrorism, into a downward
spiral, prompting the intervention of the French military with U.S. backing.
The situation could still worsen as the U.S. armed forces grow ever more
involved. They are already expanding air operations across the continent,
engaging in spy missions for the French military, and utilizing other
previously undisclosed sites in Africa.
The Terror Diaspora
In 2000, a report prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s
Strategic Studies Institute
<http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=199>
examined the “African security environment.” While it touched on “internal
separatist or rebel movements” in “weak states,” as well as non-state actors
like militias and “warlord armies,” it made no mention of Islamic extremism
or major transnational terrorist threats. In fact, prior to 2001, the
United States did not <http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm>
recognize any terrorist organizations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a senior Pentagon official
<http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=44256> claimed that the
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan might drive “terrorists” out of that country
and into African nations. “Terrorists associated with al Qaeda and
indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue to be a presence in this
region,” he said. “These terrorists will, of course, threaten U.S. personnel
and facilities.”
When <http://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rm/8801.htm> pressed about actual
transnational dangers, the official pointed to Somali militants but
eventually admitted that even the most extreme Islamists there “really have
not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia.” Similarly, when
questioned about connections between Osama bin Laden’s core al-Qaeda group
and African extremists, he offered only the most tenuous links, like bin
Laden’s “salute” to Somali militants who killed U.S. troops during the
infamous 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident.
Despite this, the U.S.
<http://www.hoa.africom.mil/pdfFiles/Fact%20Sheet.pdf> dispatched personnel
to Africa as part of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA)
in 2002. The next year, CJTF-HOA took up residence at Camp Lemonnier in
Djibouti, where it resides to this day on the only officially avowed U.S.
base in Africa.
As CJTF-HOA was starting up, the State Department
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Africa-t.html?ref=magazine&_r=
0> launched a multi-million-dollar counterterrorism program, known as the
Pan-Sahel Initiative, to bolster the militaries of Mali, Niger, Chad, and
Mauritania. In 2004, for example, Special Forces training teams were
<http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=27112> sent to Mali as part
of the effort. In 2005, the program
<http://web.archive.org/web/20070115212856/http:/www.defenselink.mil/news/Ma
y2005/20050516_1126.html> expanded to include Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco,
Algeria, and Tunisia and was
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/6155/trans-saharan-conference-focus
es-on-expanding-part> renamed the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism
Partnership.
Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Nicholas Schmidle
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Africa-t.html?ref=magazine&_r=
0> noted that the program saw year-round deployments of Special Forces
personnel “to train local armies at battling insurgencies and rebellions and
to prevent bin Laden and his allies from expanding into the region.” The
Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership and its Defense Department
companion program, then known as Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans-Sahara,
were, in turn,
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/09/30/africans-fear-hidden-us-agenda-in-n
ew-approach-to-africom/> folded into U.S. Africa Command when it took over
military responsibility for the continent in 2008.
As Schmidle noted, the effects of U.S. efforts in the region seemed at odds
with AFRICOM’s stated goals. “Al Qaeda established sanctuaries in the
Sahel, and in 2006 it acquired a North African franchise [Al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb],” he
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Africa-t.html?ref=magazine&_r=
2&> wrote. “Terrorist attacks in the region increased in both number and
lethality.”
In fact, a look at the official State Department list of terrorist
organizations indicates a steady increase in Islamic radical groups in
Africa alongside the growth of U.S. counterterrorism efforts there — with
the <http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm> addition of the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in 2004, Somalia’s al-Shabaab in 2008, and
Mali’s Ansar al-Dine in 2013. In 2012, General Carter Ham, then AFRICOM’s
chief,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/africa/three-terrorist-groups-in-af
rica-pose-threat-to-us-general-ham-says.html> added the Islamist militants
of Boko Haram in Nigeria to his own list of extremist threats.
The overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya by an interventionist coalition
<http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2013/01/will-the-west-regret-toppling-gaddafi
/> including the U.S., France, and Britain similarly empowered a host of new
militant Islamist groups such as the Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, which have
since carried out multiple
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/world/africa/libya-attack-jihadists> attacks
on Western interests, and the al-Qaeda-linked
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-16/world/37133600_1_rafallah-al-
sahati-islamist-militia-ansar-al-sharia> Ansar al-Sharia, whose fighters
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/world/africa/attack-in-libya-was-major-bl
ow-to-cia-efforts.html?pagewanted=all> assaulted U.S. facilities in
Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, killing Ambassador Christopher
Stevens and three other Americans. In fact, just prior to that attack,
according to the New York Times, the CIA was
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/world/africa/attack-in-libya-was-major-bl
ow-to-cia-efforts.html?pagewanted=all> tracking “an array of armed militant
groups in and around” that one city alone.
According to <http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/?fa=709> Frederic
Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and an expert on Libya, that country is now “fertile
ground” for militants arriving from the Arabian Peninsula and other places
in the Middle East as well as elsewhere in Africa to recruit fighters,
receive training, and recuperate. “It’s really become a new hub,” he told
me.
Obama’s Scramble for Africa
The U.S.-backed war in Libya and the CIA’s efforts in its aftermath are just
two of the many operations that have proliferated across the continent under
President Obama. These include a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign
against militants in Somalia, consisting of intelligence operations, a
secret prison, helicopter attacks,
<http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/24/us-drone-strike-kills-4-in-somalia/
> drone strikes, and U.S. commando raids; a special ops
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/obama-sends-100-us-troops-to-u
ganda-to-combat-lords-resistance-army/> expeditionary force (bolstered by
<http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/us-hackers-take-cyber-war-to-alqae
da-sites-20120524-1z7rs.html> State Department experts) dispatched to help
capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and his top
commanders in the
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-centralafrica-rebels-uganda-id
USBRE9320QW20130403> jungles of the Central African Republic, South Sudan,
and the Democratic Republic of Congo; a massive influx of funding for
counterterrorism operations across East Africa; and, in just the last four
years, hundreds of millions of dollars spent arming and training West
African troops to
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/world/africa/west-fears-for-malis-fate-af
ter-french-forces-leave.html?pagewanted=all> serve as American proxies on
the continent. From 2010-2012, AFRICOM itself burned through $836 million
as it expanded its reach across the region, primarily via programs to
mentor, advise, and tutor African militaries.
In recent years, the U.S. has
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-13/world/35457783_1_somalia-al-q
aeda-qaeda> trained and outfitted soldiers from Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya,
among other nations, for missions like the
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-centralafrica-rebels-uganda-id
USBRE9320QW20130403> hunt for Kony. They have also served as a
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-11-24/world/35282573_1_shabab-somal
ia-somali-americans> proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia, part of the
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/world/africa/somalia-thousands-of-peaceke
epers-have-died-during-mission-un-says.html?_r=0> African Union Mission
(AMISOM) protecting the
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Transcript/7260/transcript-us-policy-in-som
alia--no-direct-support> U.S.-supported government in that country’s
capital, Mogadishu. Since 2007, the State Department has anted up about
$650 million in logistics support, equipment, and training for AMISOM
troops. The Pentagon has kicked in an extra $100 million since 2011.
The U.S. also continues funding African armies through the Trans-Sahara
Counter-Terrorism Partnership and its Pentagon analog, now known as
Operation Juniper Shield, with increased support flowing to Mauritania and
Niger in the wake of Mali’s collapse. In 2012, the State Department and the
U.S. Agency for International Development poured approximately $52 million
into the programs, while the Pentagon chipped in another $46 million.
In the Obama years, U.S. Africa Command has also built a sophisticated
logistics system officially <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175574/> known
as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network, but colloquially referred to as
the “
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175567/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_america%27s
_shadow_wars_in_africa_/> new spice route.” Its central nodes are in Manda
Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui
and Djema in Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in
Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier.
In addition, the Pentagon has
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-21/world/37905284_1_drone-bases-
unarmed-predator-drones-surveillance-drones> run a regional air campaign
using drones and manned aircraft out of airports and bases across the
continent including Camp Lemonnier, Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/world/africa/in-niger-us-troops-set-up-dr
one-base.html?pagewanted=all> Niamey in Niger, and the Seychelles Islands in
the Indian Ocean, while private contractor-operated surveillance aircraft
have flown missions out of
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-int
elligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html> Entebbe,
Uganda. Recently, Foreign Policy
<http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/01/mapped_the_us_military
s_presence_in_africa_this_spring> reported on the existence of a possible
drone base in Lamu, Kenya.
Another critical location is Ouagadougou, the capital of
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-13/world/35462541_1_burkina-faso
-air-bases-sahara/3> Burkina Faso, home to a Joint Special Operations Air
Detachment and the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support
initiative that, according to military documents, supports “high risk
activities” carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task
Force-Trans Sahara. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for
Special Operations Command Africa, told me that the initiative provides
“emergency casualty evacuation support to small team engagements with
partner nations throughout the Sahel,” although official documents note that
such actions have historically accounted for just 10% of monthly flight
hours.
While Rawlinson demurred from discussing the scope of the program, citing
operational security concerns, military documents indicate that it is
expanding rapidly. Between March and December of last year, for example,
the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative flew
233 sorties. In just the first three months of this year, it carried out
193.
AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson has confirmed to TomDispatch that U.S. air
operations conducted from Base Aerienne 101 in Niamey, the capital of Niger,
were providing “support for intelligence collection with French forces
conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region.”
Refusing to go into detail about mission specifics for reasons of
“operational security,” he added that, “in partnership with Niger and other
countries in the region, we are committed to supporting our allies… this
decision allows for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
operations within the region.”
Benson also confirmed that the U.S. military has used Léopold Sédar Senghor
International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops as well as the
“transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities”
like training missions. He confirmed a similar deal for the use of Addis
Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia. All told, the U.S. military
now has agreements to use 29 international airports in Africa as refueling
centers.
Benson was more tight-lipped about air operations from Nzara Landing Zone in
the Republic of South Sudan, the site of one of several shadowy forward
operating posts (including another in Djema in the Central Africa Republic
and a third in Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo) that have been
used by U.S. Special Operations forces. “We don’t want Kony and his folks
to know… what kind of planes to look out for,” he said. It’s no secret,
however, that U.S. air assets over Africa and its coastal waters include
Predator, Global Hawk and Scan Eagle drones, MQ-8 unmanned helicopters, EP-3
Orion aircraft, Pilatus planes, and E-8 Joint Stars aircraft.
Last year, in its ever-expanding operations, AFRICOM planned 14 major
joint-training exercises on the continent, including in Morocco, Uganda,
Botswana, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria. One of them, an annual event known
as <http://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/exercises/atlas-accord> Atlas Accord,
saw members of the U.S. Special Forces travel to Mali to conduct training
with local forces. “The participants were very attentive, and we were able
to show them our tactics and see theirs as well,”
<http://www.army.mil/article/74378/> said Captain Bob Luther, a team leader
with the 19th Special Forces Group.
The Collapse of Mali
As the U.S.-backed war in Libya was taking down Qaddafi, nomadic Tuareg
fighters in his service looted the regime’s extensive weapons caches,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/africa/tuaregs-use-qaddafis-arms-fo
r-rebellion-in-mali.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> crossed the border into their
native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that country.
Anger within the country’s armed forces over the democratically elected
government’s ineffective response to the rebellion resulted in a military
coup. It was led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who had
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/africa/in-mali-coup-leaders-seem-to
-have-uncertain-grasp-on-power.html?_r=0> received extensive training in the
U.S. between 2004 and 2010
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9ebaa02-6191-11e2-9545-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Up
K3ectW> as part of the Pan-Sahel Initiative. Having overthrown Malian
democracy, he and his fellow officers proved even less effective in
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/africa/in-mali-coup-leaders-seem-to
-have-uncertain-grasp-on-power.html?_r=0> dealing with events in the north.
With the country in turmoil, the Tuareg fighters declared an independent
state. Soon, however, heavily-armed Islamist rebels from homegrown
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/africa/faction-splits-from-islamist
-group-in-northern-mali.html> Ansar al-Dine as well as
<http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/203726.pdf> Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb, Libya’s
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=
0CEcQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.potomacinstitute.org%2Fattachments%2Farticle%
2F1358%2FTerrorism%2520in%2520North%2520Africa%2520%26%2520the%2520Sahel.pdf
&ei=VgitUcySAo384APF3YCwAQ&us> Ansar al-Sharia, and Nigeria’s
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-31/world/39642133_1_northern-mal
i-boko-haram-nigerian-islamist> Boko Haram, among others, pushed out the
Tuaregs, took over much of the north, instituted a harsh brand of Shariah
law, and created a humanitarian crisis that caused widespread
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/98161/displaced-malians-turn-to-survival-sex
> suffering, sending refugees streaming from their homes.
These developments raised serious questions about the efficacy of U.S.
counterterrorism efforts. “This spectacular failure reveals that the U.S.
probably underestimated the complex socio-cultural peculiarities of the
region, and misread the realities of the terrain,”
<http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/french/sebe-berny.aspx#mediadeta
ils> Berny Sèbe, an expert on North and West Africa at the University of
Birmingham in the United Kingdom, told me. “This led them to being grossly
manipulated by local interests over which they had, in the end, very limited
control.”
Following a further series of Islamist victories and widespread
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/opinion/when-malis-democracy-ended-the-at
rocities-followed.html?_r=0> atrocities, the French military
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/11/france-intervene-mali-conflict>
intervened at the head of a coalition of Chadian, Nigerian, and other
African troops, with support from the
<http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123333791> U.S. and the
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/12/mali-somalia-france-rebels-isla
mist-francois-hollande> British. The foreign-led forces beat back the
Islamists, who then shifted from conventional to guerrilla tactics,
including suicide bombings.
In April, after such an attack killed three Chadian soldiers, that country’s
president announced that his forces, long supported by the U.S. through the
Pan-Sahel Initiative, would withdraw from Mali. “Chad’s army has no ability
to face the kind of guerrilla fighting that is emerging,” he
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/15/chad-pulls-troops-from-mali>
said. In the meantime, the remnants of the U.S.-backed Malian military
fighting alongside the French were
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21166537> cited for gross human
rights violations in their bid to retake control of their country.
After the French intervention in January, then-Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta said, “There is no consideration of putting any American boots on
the ground at this time.” Not long after, 10 U.S. military personnel were
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-30/world/38921208_1_robert-firma
n-mali-bamako> deployed to assist French and African forces, while 12 others
were assigned to the embassy in the Malian capital, Bamako.
While he’s quick to point out that Mali’s downward spiral had much to do
with its corrupt government, weak military, and rising levels of ethnic
discontent, the Carnegie Endowment’s
<http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/?fa=709> Wehrey notes that the war in
Libya was “a seismic event for the Sahel and the Sahara.” Just back from a
fact-finding trip to Libya, he added that the effects of the revolution are
already rippling far beyond the porous borders of Mali.
Wehrey cited recent findings by the United Nations Security Council’s Group
of Experts, which monitors an arms embargo imposed on Libya in 2011. “In
the past 12 months,” the panel
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/un-libyan-weapons-all-over-now-89846.
html#ixzz2UuKn55iA> reported, “the proliferation of weapons from Libya has
continued at a worrying rate and has spread into new territory: West Africa,
the Levant [the Eastern Mediterranean region], and potentially even the Horn
of Africa. Illicit flows [of arms] from the country are fueling existing
conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of
non-state actors, including terrorist groups.”
Growing Instability
The collapse of Mali after a coup by an American-trained officer and Chad’s
flight from the fight in that country are just two indicators of how
post-9/11 U.S. military efforts in Africa have fared. “In two of the three
other Sahelian states involved in the Pentagon’s pan-Sahelian initiative,
Mauritania and Niger, armies trained by the U.S., have also taken power in
the past eight years,”
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9ebaa02-6191-11e2-9545-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Up
K3ectW> observed journalist William Wallis in the Financial Times. “In the
third, Chad, they came close in a 2006 attempt.” Still another coup plot
involving members of the Chadian military was reportedly
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/09/chad-alleged-coup-attempt-no-excuse-igno
re-rights> uncovered earlier this spring.
In March, Major General Patrick Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Africa,
told interviewer Gail McCabe that northwestern Africa was now becoming
increasingly “problematic.” Al-Qaeda, he said, was at work destabilizing
Algeria and Tunisia. Last September, in fact, hundreds of Islamist
protesters
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-tunisia-us-embassy-idUSBRE94S1
0Y20130529> attacked the U.S. embassy compound in Tunisia, setting it on
fire. More recently, Camille Tawil in the CTC Sentinel, the official
publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy
at West Point,
<http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/moroccos-stability-in-the-wake-of-the-arab-sp
ring> wrote that in Tunisia “jihadis are openly recruiting young militants
and sending them to training camps in the mountains, especially along
Algeria’s borders.”
The U.S.-backed French intervention in Mali also led to a January revenge
terror <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21056884> attack on the
Amenas gas plant in Algeria. Carried out by the al-Mulathameen brigade, one
of various new al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb-linked militant groups
emerging in the region, it led to the deaths of close to 40 hostages,
including three Americans. Planned by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of the
U.S.-backed war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was only
the first in a series of blowback responses to U.S. and Western
interventions in Northern Africa that may have far-reaching implications.
Last month, Belmokhtar’s forces also
<http://news.yahoo.com/group-linked-algeria-gas-plant-attack-claims-niger-10
4542968.html> teamed up with fighters from the Movement for Unity and Jihad
in West Africa — yet another Islamist militant group of recent vintage — to
carry out coordinated attacks on a French-run uranium mine and a nearby
military base in Agadez, Niger, that
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/24/us-niger-attacks-idUSBRE94N0B9201
30524> killed at least 25 people. A recent attack on the French embassy in
Libya by local militants is also
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/28/libya-mali-islamist-violence-tr
ipoli> seen as a reprisal for the French war in Mali.
According to the Carnegie Endowment’s Wehrey, the French military’s push
there has had the additional effect of reversing the flow of militants,
sending many back into Libya to recuperate and seek additional training.
Nigerian Islamist fighters driven from Mali have
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigerian-islamist-militants-retu
rn-from-mali-with-weapons-skills/2013/05/31/d377579e-c628-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4
000a_print.html> returned to their native land with fresh training and
innovative tactics as well as heavy weapons from Libya. Increasingly
battle-hardened, extremist Islamist insurgents from two Nigerian groups,
Boko Haram and the newer, even more radical
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21510767> Ansaru, have escalated a
long simmering conflict in that West African oil giant.
For years, Nigerian forces have been trained and supported by the U.S.
through the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program.
The country has also been a beneficiary of U.S. Foreign Military Financing,
which provides grants and loans to purchase U.S.-produced weaponry and
equipment and funds military training. In recent years, however, brutal
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigerian-islamist-militants-retu
rn-from-mali-with-weapons-skills/2013/05/31/d377579e-c628-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4
000a_print.html> responses by Nigerian forces to what had been a
<http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-rise-of-boko-haram-in-nigeria> fringe
Islamist sect have transformed Boko Haram into a
<http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/boko-harams-international-connections>
regional terrorist force.
The situation has grown so serious that President Goodluck Jonathan recently
declared a state of emergency in northern Nigeria. Last month, Secretary of
State John Kerry
<http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/05/209576.htm> spoke out
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/world/africa/nigerian-refugees-accuse-arm
y-of-excess-force.html?ref=africa> about “credible allegations that Nigerian
security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in
turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism.” After a Boko Haram
militant killed a soldier in the town of Baga, for example, Nigerian troops
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/01/nigeria-massive-destruction-deaths-milit
ary-raid> attacked the town, destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing an
estimated 183 people.
Similarly,
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13308&Lang
ID=E> according to a recent United Nations report, the Congolese army’s
391st Commando Battalion, formed with U.S. support and
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/7727/750-congolese-soldiers-graduat
e-from-us-led-milita> trained for eight months by U.S. Special Operations
forces, later took part in mass rapes and other atrocities. Fleeing the
advance of a recently formed, brutal (non-Islamic) rebel group known as M23,
its troops
<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-13/world/39226624_1_m23-rights-a
buses-minova> joined with other Congolese soldiers in raping close to 100
women and more than 30 girls in November 2012.
“This magnificent battalion will set a new mark in this nation’s continuing
transformation of an army dedicated and committed to professionalism,
accountability, sustainability, and meaningful security,”
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/7727/750-congolese-soldiers-graduat
e-from-us-led-milita> said Brigadier General Christopher Haas, the head of
U.S. Special Operations Command Africa at the time of the battalion’s
graduation from training in 2010.
Earlier this year, incoming AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez told
the Senate Armed Services Committee that a review of the unit found its
“officers and enlisted soldiers appear motivated, organized, and trained in
small unit maneuver and tactics” even if there were “limited metrics to
measure the battalion’s combat effectiveness and performance in protecting
civilians.” The U.N. report
<http://monusco.unmissions.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Pj7jOWjAxWo%3d&tabi
d=10662&language=en-US> tells a different story. For example, it describes
“a 14 year old boy… shot dead on 25 November 2012 in the village of Kalungu,
Kalehe territory, by a soldier of the 391 Battalion. The boy was returning
from the fields when two soldiers tried to steal his goat. As he tried to
resist and flee, one of the soldiers shot him.”
Despite years of U.S. military aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, M23
has dealt its army heavy blows and, according to AFRICOM’s Rodriguez, is now
destabilizing the region. But they haven’t done it alone. According to
Rodriguez, M23 “would not be the threat it is today without external support
including evidence of support from the Rwandan government.”
For years, the U.S.
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2010/04/politics-obama-expands-military-involvement-
in-africa/> aided Rwanda through various programs, including the
International Military Education and Training initiative and Foreign
Military Financing. Last year, the U.S.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/africa/us-cutting-military-aid-to-r
wanda-for-the-year.html> cut $200,000 in military assistance to Rwanda — a
signal of its disapproval of that government’s support for M23. Still, as
AFRICOM’s Rodriguez admitted to the Senate earlier this year, the U.S.
continues to “support Rwanda’s participation in United Nations peacekeeping
missions in Africa.”
After years of U.S. assistance, including support from Special Operations
forces advisors, the Central African Republic’s military was recently
defeated and the country’s president ousted by another newly formed
(non-Islamist) rebel group known as
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/10/central-african-republic-rampant-abuses-
after-coup> Seleka. In short order, that country’s army chiefs
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-centralafrica-rebels-idUSBRE92
R0RL20130328> pledged their allegiance to the leader of the coup, while
hostility on the part of the rebels
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-centralafrica-rebels-uganda-id
USBRE9320QW20130403> forced the U.S. and its allies to suspend their hunt
for Joseph Kony.
A strategic partner and bulwark of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, Kenya
receives around $1 billion in U.S. aid annually and elements of its military
have been
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/11/rumblings_along_the_coast>
trained by U.S. Special Operations forces. But last September, Foreign
Policy’s Jonathan Horowitz
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/11/rumblings_along_the_coast>
reported on allegations of “Kenyan counterterrorism death squads… killing
and disappearing people.” Later, Human Rights Watch
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/11/22/kenya-end-security-force-reprisals-north
> drew attention to the Kenyan military’s response to a November attack by
an <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20401136> unknown gunman that
killed three soldiers in the northern town of Garissa. The “Kenyan army
surrounded the town, preventing anyone from leaving or entering, and started
attacking residents and traders,” the group reported. “The witnesses said
that the military shot at people, raped women, and assaulted anyone in
sight.”
Another longtime recipient of U.S. support, the Ethiopian military, was also
involved in abuses last year, following an attack by gunmen on a commercial
farm. In response,
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/28/ethiopia-army-commits-torture-rape>
according to Human Rights Watch, members of Ethiopia’s army raped,
arbitrarily arrested, and assaulted local villagers.
The Ugandan military has been the primary U.S. proxy when it comes to
policing Somalia. Its members were, however,
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/uganda-no-justice-april-2011-killings>
implicated in the beating and even killing of citizens during domestic
unrest in 2011. Burundi has also
<http://www.army.mil/article/61835/U_S__Army_Africa_conducts_deployment_capa
bility_training_in_Burundi/> received significant U.S. military
<http://www.army.mil/article/84113/Texas_National_Guard_troops_mentor_Burund
i_soldiers/> support and high-ranking officers in its army have recently
been linked to the illegal mineral trade,
<http://news.yahoo.com/officers-congo-benefitting-mineral-trade-172010005.ht
ml> according to a report by the environmental watchdog group Global
Witness. Despite years of
<http://www.army.mil/article/34759/senegals-chief-of-defense-makes-history-a
t-africom> cooperation with the U.S. military, Senegal now appears more
vulnerable to extremism and increasingly unstable,
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/98122/senegal-looking-more-vulnerable-to-ext
remism-instability> according to a report by the Institute of Security
Studies.
And so it goes across the continent.
Success Stories
In addition to the Gulf of Guinea, AFRICOM’s chief spokesman pointed to
Somalia as another major U.S. success story on the continent. And it’s true
that Somalia is
<http://news.yahoo.com/somalia-cases-killing-maiming-abuse-children-halved-u
-211302304.html> more stable now than it has been in years, even if a
weakened al-Shabaab
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0530/Kenya-attacks-raise-worries
-Somalia-s-Al-Shabab-are-reorganizing> continues to
<http://allafrica.com/stories/201305310294.html> carry out attacks. The
spokesman even pointed to a recent CNN
<http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/business/mogadishu-holidays-business-econ
omy/index.html> report about a trickle of tourists entering the war-torn
country and the construction of a luxury beach resort in the capital,
Mogadishu.
I asked for other AFRICOM success stories, but only those two came to his
mind — and no one should be surprised by that.
After all, in 2006, before AFRICOM came into existence, 11 African nations
<http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2006-sortable> were among the top 20 in
the Fund for Peace’s annual Failed States Index. Last year, that number had
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed_states_index_2012_interactive> risen to
15 (or 16 if you <http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2012-sortable> count
the new nation of South Sudan).
In 2001, according to the Global Terrorism Database from the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the
University of Maryland, there
<http://www.start.umd.edu/datarivers/vis/GtdExplorer.swf> were 119 terrorist
incidents in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2011, the last year for which numbers
are available, there
<http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?start_yearonly=2001&end_ye
aronly=2011&start_year=&start_month=&start_day=&end_year=&end_month=&end_day
=®ion=11&asmSelect0=&asmSelect1=&dtp2=all&success=yes&casualties_type=b&c
asualties_max=> were close to 500. A recent report from the International
Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=
0CEcQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.potomacinstitute.org%2Fattachments%2Farticle%
2F1358%2FTerrorism%2520in%2520North%2520Africa%2520%26%2520the%2520Sahel.pdf
&ei=VgitUcySAo384APF3YCwAQ&us> counted 21 terrorist attacks in the Maghreb
and Sahel regions of northern Africa in 2001. During the Obama years, the
figures have fluctuated between 144 and 204 annually.
Similarly, an <http://www.acleddata.com/> analysis of 65,000 individual
incidents of political violence in Africa from 1997 to 2012, assembled by
researchers affiliated with the International Peace Research Institute,
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=
0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Freliefweb.int%2Fsites%2Freliefweb.int%2Ffiles%2Fr
esources%2FACLED-Working-Paper-on-Violent-Islamist-Groups_August-2012.pdf&ei
=RTSrUefyOLS84APqyIHICg&usg=A> found that “violent Islamist activity has
increased significantly in the past 15 years, with a particular[ly] sharp
increase witnessed from 2010 onwards.” Additionally, according to
researcher
<http://strausscenter.org/armed-conflicteam/item/231-caitriona-dowd>
Caitriona Dowd, “there is also evidence for the geographic spread of violent
Islamist activity both south- and east-ward on the continent.”
In fact, the trends appear stark and eerily mirror statements from AFRICOM’s
leaders.
In March 2009, after years of training indigenous forces and hundreds of
millions of dollars spent on counterterrorism activities, General William
Ward, the first leader of U.S. Africa Command, gave its inaugural status
report to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was bleak. “Al-Qaeda,”
he
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Transcript/6544/written-testimony-in-annual
-posture-statement-ward> said, “increased its influence dramatically across
north and east Africa over the past three years with the growth of East
Africa Al-Qaeda, al Shabaab, and al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM).”
This February, after four more years of military engagement, security
assistance, training of indigenous armies, and hundreds of millions of
dollars more in funding, AFRICOM’s incoming commander General David
Rodriguez explained the current situation to the Senate in more ominous
terms. “The command’s number one priority is East Africa with particular
focus on al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda networks. This is followed by violent
extremist [movements] and al-Qaeda in North and West Africa and the Islamic
Maghreb. AFRICOM’s third priority is Counter-LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army]
operations.”
Rodriguez warned that, “with the increasing threat of al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb, I see a greater risk of regional instability if we do not
engage aggressively.” In addition to that group, he declared al-Shabaab and
Boko Haram major menaces. He also mentioned the problems posed by the
Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar al-Dine. Libya, he
told them, was threatened by “hundreds of disparate militias,” while M23 was
“destabilizing the entire Great Lakes region [of Central Africa].”
In West Africa, he admitted, there was also a major narcotics trafficking
problem. Similarly, East Africa was “experiencing an increase in heroin
trafficking across the Indian Ocean from Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In
addition, “in the Sahel region of North Africa, cocaine and hashish
trafficking is being facilitated by, and directly benefitting, organizations
like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leading to increased regional
instability.”
In other words, 10 years after Washington began pouring taxpayer dollars
into counterterrorism and stability efforts across Africa and its forces
first began operating from Camp Lemonnier, the continent has experienced
profound changes, just not those the U.S. sought. The University of
Birmingham’s Berny Sèbe ticks off post-revolutionary Libya, the collapse of
Mali, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the coup in the Central African
Republic, and violence in Africa’s Great Lakes region as evidence of
increasing volatility. “The continent is certainly more unstable today than
it was in the early 2000s, when the U.S. started to intervene more
directly,” he told me.
As the war in Afghanistan — a conflict born of blowback — winds down, there
will be greater incentive and opportunity to project U.S. military power in
Africa. However, even a cursory reading of recent history suggests that
this impulse is unlikely to achieve U.S. goals. While correlation doesn’t
equal causation, there is ample evidence to suggest the United States has
facilitated a terror diaspora, imperiling nations and endangering peoples
across Africa. In the wake of 9/11, Pentagon officials were hard-pressed to
show evidence of a major African terror threat. Today, the continent is
thick with militant groups that are increasingly crossing borders, sowing
insecurity, and throwing the limits of U.S. power into broad relief. After
10 years of U.S. operations to promote stability by military means, the
results have been the opposite. Africa has become blowback central.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of <http://www.tomdispatch.com/>
TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning
journalist, his work has appeared in the
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and
-vietnam-20120424> Los Angeles Times,
<http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club> the Nation, and
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175635/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_a_war_victi
m%27s_question_only_you_can_answer/> regularly at TomDispatch. He is the
author most recently of the New York Times bestseller
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086919/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> Kill
Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (The American Empire
Project, Metropolitan Books). You can catch his conversation with Bill
Moyers about that book by
<http://billmoyers.com/segment/nick-turse-describes-the-real-vietnam-war/>
clicking here. His website is <http://www.nickturse.com/> NickTurse.com.
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