Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 00:53:37 +0200
American proxy wars in Africa
Nick Turse
2014-04-02, Issue <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/672> 672
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91210>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91210
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/>
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/672/usa.jpg
The US military is making deeper inroads into Africa, including military
involvement with at least 49 of 54 nations. But there is nothing to suggest
that these interventions actually help end Africa’s post-colonial conflicts
Lion Forward Teams? Echo Casemate? Juniper Micron?
You could be forgiven if this jumble of words looks like nonsense to you. It
isn’t. It’s the language of the U.S. military’s simmering African
interventions; the patois that goes with a set of missions carried out in
countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/> map; the argot of
conflicts now primarily fought by proxies and a former colonial power on a
continent that the U.S. military views as a hotbed of instability and that
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ohanlon-troops-to-africa-20
140216,0,572595.story> hawkish pundits increasingly see as a
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/frances-counterterrorism-operations-
in-africa-deserve-us-support/2014/01/24/ab55e8aa-851a-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9
_story.html> growth area for future armed interventions.
Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been making inroads in Africa, building
alliances, facilities, and a sophisticated logistics network. Despite
repeated assurances by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) that military
activities on the continent were minuscule, a 2013
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175743> investigation by TomDispatch
exposed surprisingly large and expanding U.S. operations -- including recent
military involvement with no fewer than 49 of 54 nations on the continent.
Washington’s goal continues to be building these nations into stable
partners with robust, capable militaries, as well as creating regional
bulwarks favorable to its strategic interests in Africa. Yet over the last
years, the results have often confounded the planning -- with American
operations serving as a catalyst for blowback (to use a term of CIA
tradecraft).
A U.S.-backed uprising in Libya, for instance, helped
<http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/#/?chapt=2> spawn hundreds of
militias that have increasingly caused chaos in that country, leading to
repeated attacks on Western interests and the killing of the U.S. ambassador
and three other Americans. [url=]Tunisia[/url] has become ever more
destabilized,
<http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/120134-return-of-jihadist-fighters-from-
syria-sparks-fear-in-tunisia?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+
-+Media+Review+for+February+25+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=em
ail> according to a top U.S. commander in the region.
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-kenya-security-idUSBREA1O0XP20
140225> Kenya and
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/25/in-amenas-timeline-siege-alger
ia> Algeria were hit by spectacular, large-scale terrorist attacks that left
Americans
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/21/algeria-hostages-milita
nts-gas-plant/1850707/> dead or
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/kenya-mall-attack-97157.html>
wounded. South Sudan, a fledgling nation Washington recently midwifed into
being that has been slipping into civil war, now has more than 870,000
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/99704/fear-persists-among-south-sudan-s-disp
laced> displaced persons, is facing an imminent
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-cahalan-phd/south-sudan-the-clock-is-t
icking_b_4849841.html?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media
+Review+for+February+25+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=email>
hunger crisis, and has recently been the site of
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/99699/the-mass-graves-of-bor-south-sudan>
mass atrocities, including rapes and killings. Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed
military of Mali was repeatedly
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Keep-Calm/2012/0322/Outgunned-against-rebels
-Mali-soldiers-overthrow-government> defeated by
<http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/world/africa/mali-military-offensive/>
insurgent forces after managing to overthrow the elected government, and the
U.S.-supported forces of the Central African Republic (CAR) failed to stop a
ragtag rebel group from
<http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/10/car-state-lawlessne
ss-201310128612722300.html> ousting the president.
In an effort to staunch the bleeding in those two countries, the U.S. has
been developing a back-to-the-future military policy in Africa -- making
common cause with one of the continent’s former European colonial powers in
a set of wars that seem to be spreading, not staunching violence and
instability in the region.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
After establishing a <http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91210>
tradingtradinghttp://savingsslider-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.p
ng post in present-day Senegal in 1659, France gradually undertook a
conquest of West Africa that, by the early twentieth century,
<http://www.africa.upenn.edu/K-12/French_16178.html> left it with a vast
colonial domain encompassing present-day Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Guinea,
Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, and Senegal, among other places. In the process,
the French used Foreign Legionnaires from
<http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=qqeOMjr9kqYC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=french,+a
frica,+algerian+legionnaires,+tirailleurs,+Moroccan+Goumiers&source=bl&ots=5
GGUinRL05&sig=hTHb_JHFwEoFphwXAkPVOvaAbOQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VSEdU6_YJKmM1AG11YCg
Bw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false> Algeria, Goumiers from Morocco, and
Tirailleurs from Senegal, among other African troops, to bolster its ranks.
Today, the U.S. is pioneering a twenty-first-century brand of expeditionary
warfare that involves backing both France and the armies of its former
colonial charges as Washington tries to accomplish its policy aims in Africa
with a
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-af
rica-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=1> limited expenditure of
blood and treasure.
In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President Barack Obama and French
President François Hollande
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-hollande-france-and-the-us
-enjoy-a-renewed-alliance/2014/02/09/039ffd34-91af-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_st
ory.html> outlined their efforts in glowing terms:
“In Mali, French and African Union forces -- with U.S. logistical and
information support -- have pushed back al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, allowing
the people of Mali to pursue a democratic future. Across the Sahel, we are
partnering with countries to prevent al-Qaeda from gaining new footholds. In
the Central African Republic, French and African Union soldiers -- backed by
American airlift and support -- are working to stem violence and create
space for dialogue, reconciliation, and swift progress to transitional
elections.”
Missing from their joint piece, however, was any hint of the Western
failures that helped facilitate the debacles in Mali and the Central African
Republic, the continued crises plaguing those nations, or the potential for
mission creep, unintended consequences, and future blowback from this new
brand of coalition warfare. The U.S. military, for its part, isn’t saying
much about current efforts in these two African nations, but official
documents obtained by TomDispatch through the Freedom of Information Act
offer telling details, while
<http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-future-role-of-u-s-counterterrorism-opera
tions-in-africa> experts are sounding alarms about the ways in which these
military interventions have already fallen short or failed.
OPERATION JUNIPER MICRON
After 9/11, through <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175714/> programs like
the Pan-Sahel Initiative and the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership,
the U.S. has
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/world/africa/west-fears-for-malis-fate-af
ter-french-forces-leave.html?pagewanted=all> pumped hundreds of millions of
dollars into training and arming the militaries of Mali, Niger, Chad,
Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in order to
promote “stability.” In 2013, Captain J. Dane Thorleifson, the outgoing
commander of an elite, quick-response force known as Naval Special Warfare
Unit 10, described such efforts as training “proxy” forces in order to build
“critical host nation security capacity; enabling, advising, and assisting
our African CT [counterterror] partner forces so they can swiftly counter
and destroy al-Shabab, AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], and Boko
Haram.” In other words, the U.S. military is in the business of training
African armies as the primary tactical forces combatting local Islamic
militant groups.
The first returns on Washington’s new and developing form of “light
footprint” warfare in Africa have hardly been stellar. After U.S. and French
forces
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/world/africa/27military.http:/www.nytimes
.com/2011/08/27/world/africa/27military.html> helped to topple Libyan
dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, neighboring Mali went from bulwark to
basket case. Nomadic
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/africa/tuaregs-use-qaddafis-arms-fo
r-rebellion-in-mali.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> Tuareg fighters looted the
weapons stores of the Gaddafi regime they had previously served, crossed the
border, and began taking over northern Mali. This, in turn, prompted a
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/africa/in-mali-coup-leaders-seem-to
-have-uncertain-grasp-on-power.html?_r=0> U.S.-trained officer -- a product
of the Pan-Sahel Initiative -- to stage a military coup in the Malian
capital, Bamako, and oust the democratically elected president of that
country. Soon after, the Tuareg rebels were muscled aside by heavily-armed
Islamist rebels from the homegrown Ansar al-Dine movement as well as
al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Libya’s Ansar al-Shariah, and Nigeria’s
Boko Haram, who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, creating a
humanitarian crisis that caused widespread suffering and sent refugees
streaming from their homes.
In January 2013, former colonial power France launched a military
intervention, code-named
<http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130723/post-mortem-french-opera
tion-mali> Operation Serval, to push back and defeat the Islamists. At its
peak, 4,500 French troops were fighting alongside West African forces,
<http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minusma/background.shtml> known
as the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA), later
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/world/africa/un-security-council-establis
hes-peacekeeping-force-in-mali.html> subsumed into a U.N.-mandated
Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The
AFISMA force, as detailed in an official U.S. Army Africa briefing on
training missions obtained by TomDispatch, reads like a who’s who of
American proxy forces in West Africa: Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Côte
d’Ivoire, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Liberia, Chad, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, and
Sierra Leone.
Under the moniker Juniper Micron, the U.S. military
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/africa/us-weighing-how-much-help-to
-give-frances-military-operation-in-mali.html> supported France’s effort,
<http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2013/November%202013/1113m
ali.aspx> airlifting its soldiers and materiel into Mali, flying
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/20/us-flies-more-200-air-refue
l-missions-mali/> refueling missions in support of its airpower, and
providing “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” (ISR) through
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175743> drone operations out of Base
Aerienne 101 at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, the capital of
neighboring Niger. The U.S. Army Africa AFISMA document also makes reference
to the deployment to Chad of an ISR liaison team with communications
support. Despite repeated pledges that it would put no boots on the ground
in troubled Mali, in the spring of 2013, the Pentagon
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-deploys-smal
l-number-of-troops-to-war-torn-mali/2013/04/30/2b02c928-b1a0-11e2-bc39-65b0a
67147df_story.html> sent a small contingent to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako
and others to support French and MINUSMA troops.
After issuing five media releases between January and March of 2013 about
efforts to aid the military mission in Mali, AFRICOM simply
<http://www.africom.mil/about-africa/west-africa/Mali> stopped talking about
it. With rare
<http://codebookafrica.wordpress.com/operations/recent-us-military-operation
s-relating-to-africa-2000-present/recent-us-counter-terrorism-operations/ope
ration-juniper-micron/> exceptions, media coverage of the operation also
dried up. In June, at a joint press conference with President Obama,
Senegal’s President Macky Sall did
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/27/remarks-president-oba
ma-and-president-sall-republic-senegal-joint-press-> let slip that the U.S.
was providing “almost all the food and fuel used by MINUSMA” as well as
“intervening to assist us with the logistics after the French response.”
A January 2014 Stars and Stripes article
<http://www.stripes.com/news/no-end-in-sight-for-1-year-old-air-force-missio
n-over-mali-1.262401#.UzvrnV54x68> mentioned that the U.S. air refueling
mission supporting the French, run from a U.S. airbase in Spain, had already
“distributed 15.6 million gallons of fuel, logging more than 3,400 flying
hours” and that the effort would continue. In February, according to
military reports, elements of the Air Force’s 351st Expeditionary Refueling
Squadron delivered their one millionth pound of fuel to French fighter
aircraft conducting operations over Mali. A December 2013 briefing document
obtained by TomDispatch also mentions 181 U.S. troops, the majority of them
Air Force personnel, supporting Operation Juniper Micron.
Eager to learn where things stood today, I asked AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin
Benson about the operation. “We’re continuing to support and enable the
French and international partners to confront AQIM and its affiliates in
Mali,” he told me. He then mentioned four key current mission sets being
carried out by U.S. forces: information-sharing, intelligence and
reconnaissance, planning and liaison teams, and aerial refueling and the
airlifting of allied African troops.
U.S. Army Africa documents obtained by TomDispatch offer further detail
about Operation Juniper Micron, including the use of Lion Forward Teams in
support of that mission. I asked Benson for information about these small
detachments that aided the French effort from Chad and from within Mali
itself. “I don’t have anything on that,” was all he would say. A separate
briefing slide, produced for an Army official last year, noted that the U.S.
military provided support for the French mission from Rota and Moron, Spain;
Ramstein, Germany; Sigonella, Italy; Kidal and Bamako, Mali; Niamey, Niger;
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; and N’Djamena, Chad. Benson refused to offer
information about specific activities conducted from these locations,
preferring to speak about air operations from unspecified locations and only
in generalities.
Official military documents obtained by TomDispatch detail several U.S.
missions in support of proxy forces from the Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilization Mission in Mali, including a scheduled eight weeks of
pre-deployment training for troops from Niger in the summer of 2013, five
weeks for Chadian forces in the autumn, and eight weeks in the autumn as
well for Guinean soldiers, who would be sent into the Malian war zone. I
asked Benson about plans for the training of African forces designated for
MINUSMA in 2014. “In terms of the future on that... I don’t know,” was all
he would say.
Another official briefing slide produced by U.S. Army Africa notes, however,
that from January through March 2014, the U.S. planned to send scores of
trainers to prepare 1,400 Chadian troops for missions in Mali. Over the same
months, other U.S. personnel were to team up with French military trainers
to ready an 850-man Guinean infantry force for similar service. Requests for
further information from the French military about this and other missions
were unanswered before this article went to press.
OPERATION ECHO CASEMATE
Last spring, despite years of U.S. assistance, including support from
Special Operations forces advisors, the Central African Republic’s military
was swiftly
<http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/preventing-genocide-blog/genocide-pr
evention-blog/central-african-republic-the-path-to-mass-atrocities> defeated
and the country’s president was ousted by Seleka, a mostly Muslim rebel
group. Months of violence followed, with Seleka forces
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/world/africa/central-african-republic-lea
der-resigns.html> involved in widespread looting, rape, and murder. The
result was growing sectarian clashes between the country’s Muslim and
Christian communities and the rise of Christian
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/99634/briefing-who-are-the-anti-balaka-of-ca
r> “anti-balaka” militias. (“Balaka” means machete in the local Sango
language.) These militias have, in turn, engaged in an orgy of
<http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/report-details-atrocities-in-ce
ntral-african-republic/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=centralafricanrepublic&_r=
0> atrocities and
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/world/asia/rights-groups-warn-of-ethnic-c
leansing-in-central-african-republic.html?ref=centralafricanrepublic> ethnic
cleansing directed against
<http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/70-Muslims-killed-in-CAR-town-20140224?ut
m_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+25+
2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=email> Muslims.
In December, backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution and in a
bid to restore order, France
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/africa/stopping-bloodshed-in-the-ce
ntral-african-republic-amid-ghosts-of-genocide.html> sent troops into its
former colony to bolster peacekeepers from the African-led International
Support Mission in the Central African Republic (MISCA). As with the Mali
mission, the U.S. joined the effort,
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11547/ussupports-peacekeeping-effor
ts-in-central-african-republic> pledging up to $60 million in military aid,
pouring money into a
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/political-wrangling-stymies-car-peacekeeping
-force/?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+Ma
rch+4+2014&utm_campaign=3%2F4%2F2014&utm_medium=email> trust fund for MISCA,
and providing airlift services, as well as training African forces for
deployment in the country.
Dubbed Echo Casemate, the operation -- staged out of Burundi and Uganda --
saw the U.S. military airlift hundreds of Burundian troops, tons of
equipment, and more than a dozen military vehicles into that strife-torn
land in just the first five days of the operation,
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11575/dod-continues-central-african
-republic-peacekeeping-support> according to an AFRICOM media release. In
January, at France’s request, the U.S. began
<http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11659/us-airlifts-rwandans-to-centr
al-african-republic> airlifting a Rwandan mechanized battalion and 1,000
tons of their gear in from that country’s capital, Kigali, via a staging
area in Entebbe, Uganda (where the U.S. maintains a “cooperative security
location” and from which U.S. contractors had previously
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/contractors-run-us-sp
ying-missions-in-africa/2012/06/14/gJQAvC4RdV_story.html> flown secret
surveillance missions). The most recent airlift effort took place on
February 6th, according to Benson. While he said that no other flights are
currently scheduled, he confirmed that Echo Casemate remains an ongoing
operation.
Asked about U.S. training efforts, Benson was guarded. “I don’t have that
off the top of my head,” he told me. “We do training with a lot of different
countries in Africa.” He offered little detail about the size and scope of
the U.S. effort, but a December 2013 briefing document obtained by
TomDispatch mentions 84 U.S. personnel, the majority of them based in
Burundi, supporting Operation Echo Casemate. The New York Times recently
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-af
rica-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=0> reported that the U.S.
“refrained from putting American boots on the ground” in the Central African
Republic, but the document clearly indicates that a Lion Forward Team of
Army personnel was indeed sent there.
Another U.S. Army Africa document produced late last year noted that the
U.S. provided military support for the French mission in that country from
facilities in Germany, Italy, Uganda, Burundi, and the Central African
Republic itself. It mentions plans to detail liaison officers to the MISCA
mission and the Centre de planification et de conduite des opérations (the
Joint Operations, Planning, and Command and Control Center) in Paris.
As U.S. personnel deploy to Europe as part of Washington’s African wars,
additional European troops are heading for Africa. Last month, another of
the continent’s former
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314399/Hitlers-Holocaust-blueprint
-Africa-concentration-camps-used-advance-racial-theories.html> colonial
powers, Germany,
<http://www.dw.de/france-germany-to-send-joint-troops-to-mali/a-17442869?utm
_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+20+2
014&utm_campaign=2%2F20%2F2014&utm_medium=email> announced that some of its
troops would be sent to Mali as part of a Franco-German brigade under the
aegis of the European Union (EU) and would also aid in
<http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20140215-germany-flags-stronger-military-t
ies-france-africa> supporting an EU
<http://www.dw.de/berlin-dampens-prospects-for-wider-military-role/a-1745276
8> “peacekeeping mission” in the Central African Republic. Already, a host
of other former imperial powers on the continent -- including
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leopold-book-review.html>
Belgium, Italy,
<http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/30/dutch_double_down_in_mal
i> the Netherlands, Portugal,
<http://www.armytimes.com/article/20140210/NEWS/302100001/3-star-AFRICOM-com
mander-details-future-missions-continent> Spain, and the
<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22391857> United Kingdom -- are part
of a European Union
<http://www.eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/eutm-mali/index_en.h
tm> training mission to school the Malian military. In January, France
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/apnewsbreak-france-africa-military-presence>
announced that it was reorganizing its roughly 3,000 troops in Africa’s
Sahel region to reinforce a logistical base in Abidjan, the capital of Côte
d’Ivoire, transform N'Djamena, Chad, into a hub for French fighter jets,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-af
rica-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=0> concentrate special
operations forces in Burkina Faso, and run drone missions out of Niamey,
Niger (already a U.S. hub for such missions).
SCRAMBLING AFRICA
Operations by French and African forces, bolstered by the U.S. military,
beat back the Islamic militants in Mali and allowed presidential elections
to be held. At the same time, the intervention caused a veritable terror
diaspora that helped lead to attacks in Algeria, Niger, and Libya, without
resolving Mali’s underlying instability.
Writing in the most recent issue of the CTC Sentinel, the official
publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, analyst Bruce
Whitehouse points out that the Malian government has yet to reassert its
authority in the north of the country, reform its armed forces, tackle
graft, or strengthen the rule of law: “Until major progress is made in each
of these areas, little can be done to reduce the threat of terrorism… the
underlying causes of Mali’s 2012 instability -- disaffection in the north, a
fractured military, and systemic corruption -- have yet to be fully
addressed by the Malian government and its international partners.”
The situation may be even worse in the Central African Republic. “When
France sent troops to halt violence between Christians and Muslims in
Central African Republic,” John Irish and Daniel Flynn of Reuters recently
reported, “commanders named the mission Sangaris after a local butterfly to
reflect its short life. Three months later, it is clear they badly
miscalculated.” Instead, violence has escalated, more than one million
people have been displaced, tens of thousands have been killed, looting has
occurred on a massive scale, and last month U.S. Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper informed Congress that “much of the country has
devolved into lawlessness.”
It is also quickly becoming a regional arms-smuggling hot spot. With
millions of weapons reportedly unaccounted for as a result of the pillaging
of government armories, it’s feared that weaponry will find its way into
other continental crisis zones, including Nigeria, Libya, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
In addition, the coalition operation there has failed to prevent what, after
a visit to the largely lawless capital city of Bangui last month, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres called
“ethnic-religious cleansing.” Amnesty International found much the same.
“Once vibrant Muslim communities in towns and cities throughout the country
have been completely destroyed as all Muslim members have either been killed
or driven away. Those few left behind live in fear that they will be
attacked by anti-balaka groups in their towns or on the roads,” the human
rights group reported. “While an African Union peacekeeping force, the
African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic
(MISCA), supported by French troops, has been deployed in the country since
early December 2013, they have failed to adequately protect civilians and
prevent the current ethnic cleansing from taking place.”
FRENCH WINE IN NEW BOTTLES?
“We’re not involved with the fighting in Mali,” AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin
Benson told me, emphasizing that the U.S. military was not engaged in combat
there. But Washington is increasingly involved in the growing wars for West
and Central Africa. And just about every move it has made in the region thus
far has helped spread conflict and chaos, while contributing to African
destabilization. Worse yet, no end to this process appears to be in sight.
Despite building up the manpower of its African proxies and being backed by
the U.S. military’s logistical might, France had not completed its mission
in Mali and will be keeping troops there to conduct counterrorism operations
for the foreseeable future.
Similarly, the French have also been forced to send reinforcements into the
Central African Republic (and the U.N. has called for still more troops),
while Chadian MISCA forces have been repeatedly accused of attacking
civilians. In a sign that the U.S.-backed French military mission to Africa
could spread, the Nigerian government is now requesting French troops to
help it halt increasingly deadly attacks by Boko Haram militants who have
gained strength and weaponry in the wake of the unrest in Libya, Mali, and
the Central African Republic (and have reportedly also spread into Niger,
Chad, and Cameroon). On top of this, Clapper recently reported that Chad,
Niger, Mali, and Mauritania were endangered by their support of the
French-led effort in Mali and at risk of increased terror attacks “as
retribution.”
Still, this seems to have changed little for the director of national
intelligence. “Leveraging and partnering with the French is a way to go,” he
told Congress last month. “They have insight and understanding and,
importantly, a willingness to use the forces they have there now.”
France has indeed exhibited a longstanding willingness to use military force
in Africa, but what “insight and understanding” its officials gleaned from
this experience is an open question. One hundred and sixteen years after it
completed its conquest of what was then French Sudan, France’s forces are
again fighting and dying on the same fields of battle, though today the
country is called Mali. Again and again during the early 20th century,
France launched military expeditions, including during the 1928-1931
Kongo-Wara rebellion, against indigenous peoples in French Equatorial
Africa. Today, France’s soldiers are being killed on the same ground in
what’s now known as the Central African Republic. And it looks as if they
may be slogging on in these nations, in partnership with the U.S. military,
for years to come, with no evident ability to achieve lasting results.
A new type of expeditionary warfare is underway in Africa, but there’s
little to suggest that America’s backing of a former colonial power will
ultimately yield the long-term successes that years of support for local
proxies could not. So far, the U.S. has been willing to let European and
African forces do the fighting, but if these interventions drag on and the
violence continues to leap from country to country as yet more militant
groups morph and multiply, the risk only rises of Washington wading ever
deeper into post-colonial wars with an eerily colonial look. “Leveraging and
partnering with the French” is the current way to go, according to
Washington. Just where it’s going is the real question.
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