Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 23:41:10 +0200
AFRICOM Becomes a "War-Fighting Combatant Command"
Posted by <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse/> Nick Turse at
4:41pm, April 16, 2014.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/tomdispatch>
_at_TomDispatch.
Let me explain why writing the introduction to today’s post by TomDispatch
Managing Editor Nick Turse is such a problem. In these intros, I tend to
riff off the ripples of news that regularly surround whatever subject an
author might be focusing on. So when it comes to the U.S. military, if you
happen to be writing about the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,”
really, no problem. Background pieces on that pile up daily. How could you
resist, for instance, saying something about the U.S.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/world/asia/hagel-asia.html> refusal to
send an aircraft carrier to China for a parade of Pacific fleets (after the
Chinese refused to allow Japanese ships to participate)? It’s mean girls of
the Pacific, no? Have an interest in the Ukrainian crisis? Piece of cake,
top of the news any time -- like those curious pro-Russian protestors in
eastern Ukraine who tried to liberate an opera house in the city of Kharkiv,
<http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/protesters-storm-kharkiv-theater
-thinking-it-was-city-hall/497709.html> mistaking it for city hall, or the
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/nato-may-send-us-troops-eastern-european-all
ies> hints that U.S. troops might soon be stationed in former Soviet
satellite states. Or, say, you’re writing about threats in cyberspace --
couldn’t be simpler! Not when you have Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
offering an
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/world/us-tries-candor-to-assure-china-on-
cyberattacks.html> amusing assurance that the country that
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/has-the-u-s-declared-cyber-war
-on-iran/> launched the first cyberwar and is
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-cyberwarfare-force
-to-grow-significantly-defense-secretary-says/2014/03/28/0a1fa074-b680-11e3-
b84e-897d3d12b816_story.html> ramping up its new cybercommand at warp speed
“does not seek to militarize cyberspace.” And, of course, any day of the
week U.S.-Iranian relations are a walk in the park (in the dark). At the
moment, for instance, the Iranian nominee for U.N. ambassador --
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/08/iran-ambassador-nuclear-talks-
us-hostage-crisis> previously that country’s ambassador to Belgium, Italy,
Australia, and the European
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175830/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom_bec
omes_a_%22war-fighting_combatant_command%22/>
Unionhttp://cdncache1-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png, but once
a translator for the group that took U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran in 1979
-- has been declared “
<http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-us-iran-20140409,0,4799058.st
ory#axzz2yQuHY2LZ> not viable” by the Obama administration. In a remarkable
act of congressional heroism, the U.S. Senate, led by that odd couple Ted
Cruz and Chuck Schumer, has definitively
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/07/cruz-backed
-iran-bill-expected-to-pass-senate/> banned him from setting foot in the
country. Mean girls of Washington? Who could resist such material?
Unfortunately, there’s one place in that city’s global viewfinder that never
seems to provides much of anything to riff off of, and so no fun whatsoever:
Africa. Yes, today and Tuesday, Nick Turse continues his
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_africom%27s_g
igantic_%22small_footprint%22> remarkable coverage of the U.S. military
pivot to that continent, which promises a lifetime of
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175714/nick_turse_blowback_central> chaos
and blowback to come. Admittedly, what’s happening isn’t your typical,
patented, early twenty-first-century-style U.S. invasion, but it certainly
represents part of a new-style scramble for Africa -- with the U.S. taking
the military path and the Chinese the
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2014/0319/China-s-trad
e-with-Africa-at-record-high> economic one. By the time U.S. Africa Command
is finished, however, one thing is essentially guaranteed: a terrible mess
and a lifetime of hurt will be left behind. This particular pivot is
happening on a startling scale and yet remains just below the American radar
screen. Explain it as you will, with the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-pentagon-pivot-to-
asia-becomes-shift-to-africa/2013/02/14/649988e0-76d4-11e2-9357-7a107e548ef5
_story.html> rarest of exceptions the U.S. media, riveted by Obama’s so far
exceedingly modest pivot to Asia, finds the African one hardly worth a
moment’s notice, which is why, today, without the usual combustible mix of
what’s recently in the news and what’s newsmaking in Turse’s two pieces, I
have no choice but to skip the introduction. Tom
AFRICOM Goes to War on the Sly
U.S. Officials Talk Candidly (Just Not to Reporters) about Bases, Winning
Hearts and Minds, and the “War” in Africa
By <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse> Nick Turse
What the military will say to a reporter and what is said behind closed
doors are two very different things -- especially when it comes to the U.S.
military in Africa. For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has maintained
a
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175818/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_american_pr
oxy_wars_in_africa> veil of secrecy about much of the command’s
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175823/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_america%27s
_non-stop_ops_in_africa> activities and mission
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s
_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22> locations, consistently downplaying the
size, scale, and scope of its efforts. At a recent Pentagon press
conference, AFRICOM Commander General David Rodriguez adhered to the typical
mantra, assuring the assembled reporters that the United States “has little
forward presence” on that continent. Just days earlier, however, the men
building the Pentagon’s presence there were telling a very different story
-- but they weren’t speaking with the media. They were speaking to
representatives of some of the biggest military engineering firms on the
planet. They were planning for the future and the talk was of war.
I recently experienced this phenomenon myself during a media roundtable with
Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. When I asked the general to tell me just what his people were
building for U.S. forces in Africa, he paused and said in a low voice to the
man next to him, “Can you help me out with that?” Lloyd Caldwell, the
Corps’s director of military programs, whispered back, “Some of that would
be close hold” -- in other words, information too sensitive to reveal.
The only thing Bostick seemed eager to tell me about were vague plans to
someday test a prototype “structural insulated panel-hut,” a new
energy-efficient type of barracks being
<http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsStories/tabid/9219/Article/9420/us
ma-wp-cadets-sip-hut-work-completes-first-term.aspx> developed by cadets at
the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He also assured me that his people
would get back to me with answers. What I got instead was an “interview”
with a spokesman for the Corps who offered little of substance when it came
to construction on the African continent. Not much information was
available, he said, the projects were tiny, only small amounts of money had
been spent so far this year, much of it funneled into humanitarian projects.
In short, it seemed as if Africa was a construction backwater, a sleepy
place, a vast landmass on which little of interest was happening.
Fast forward a few weeks and Captain Rick Cook, the chief of U.S. Africa
Command’s Engineer Division, was addressing an audience of more than 50
representatives of some of the largest military engineering firms on the
planet -- and this reporter. The contractors were interested in jobs and he
wasn’t pulling any punches. “The eighteen months or so that I’ve been here,
we’ve been at war the whole time,” Cook told them. “We are trying to
provide opportunities for the African people to fix their own African
challenges. Now, unfortunately, operations in Libya, South Sudan, and Mali,
over the last two years, have proven there’s always something going on in
Africa.”
Cook was one of three U.S. military construction officials who, earlier this
month, spoke candidly about the Pentagon’s efforts in Africa to men and
women from URS Corporation, AECOM, CH2M Hill, and other top firms. During a
paid-access web seminar, the three of them insisted that they were seeking
industry “partners” because the military has “big plans” for the continent.
They foretold a future marked by expansion, including the building up of a
“permanent footprint” in Djibouti for the next decade or more, a possible
new compound in Niger, and a string of bases devoted to surveillance
activities spreading across the northern tier of Africa. They even let slip
mention of a small, previously unacknowledged U.S. compound in Mali.
The Master Plan
After my brush off by General Bostick, I interviewed an Army Corps of
Engineers Africa expert, Chris Gatz, about construction projects for Special
Operations Command Africa in 2013. “I’ll be totally frank with you,” he
said, “as far as the scopes of these projects go, I don’t have good
insights.”
What about two projects in Senegal I had stumbled across? Well, yes, he
did, in fact, have information about a firing range and a “shoot house” that
happened to be under construction there. When pressed, he also knew about
plans I had noted in previously classified documents obtained by TomDispatch
for the Corps to build a multipurpose facility in Cameroon. And on we went.
“You’ve got better information than I do,” he said at one point, but it
seemed like he had plenty of information, too. He just wasn’t volunteering
much of it to me.
Later, I asked if there were 2013 projects that had been funded with
counter-narco-terrorism (CNT) money. “No, actually there was not,” he told
me. So I specifically asked about Niger.
Last year, AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson confirmed to TomDispatch that
the U.S. was conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or
ISR, drone operations from Base Aérienne 101 at Diori Hamani International
Airport in Niamey, the capital of Niger. In the months since, air
operations there have only
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/africa/drones-in-niger-reflect-new-
us-approach-in-terror-fight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> increased. In
addition, documents recently obtained by TomDispatch indicated that the Army
Corps of Engineers has been working on two counter-narco-terrorism projects
in Arlit and Tahoua, Niger. So I told Gatz what I had uncovered. Only then
did he locate the right paperwork. “Oh, okay, I’m sorry,” he replied.
“You’re right, we have two of them... Both were actually awarded to
construction.”
Those two CNT construction projects have been undertaken on behalf of
Niger’s security forces, but in his talk to construction industry
representatives, AFRICOM’s Rick Cook spoke about another project there: a
possible U.S. facility still to be built. “Lately, one of our biggest focus
areas is in the country of Niger. We have gotten indications from the
country of Niger that they are willing to be a partner of ours,” he said.
The country, he added, “is in a nice strategic location that allows us to
get to many other places reasonably quickly, so we are working very hard
with the Nigeriens to come up with, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a base,
but a place we can operate out of on a frequent basis.”
Cook offered no information on the possible location of that facility, but
recent contracting documents examined by TomDispatch indicate that the U.S.
Air Force is seeking to purchase large quantities of jet fuel to be
delivered to Niger's Mano Dayak International Airport.
Multiple requests for further information sent to AFRICOM’s media chief
Benjamin Benson went unanswered, as had prior queries about activities at
Base Aérienne 101. But Colonel Aaron Benson, Chief of the Readiness
Division at Air Forces Africa, did offer further details about the Nigerien
mini-base. “There is the potential to construct MILCON aircraft parking
aprons at the proposed future site in Niger,” he wrote, mentioning a
specific type of military construction funding dedicated to use for
“enduring” bases rather than transitory facilities. In response to further
questions, Cook referred to the possible site as a “base-like facility” that
would be “semi-permanent” and “capable of air operations.”
Pay to Play
It turns out that, if you want to know what the U.S. military is doing in
Africa, it’s advantageous to be connected to a large engineering or
construction firm looking for business. Then you’re privy to quite a
different type of insider assessment of the future of the U.S. presence
there, one far more detailed than the modest official pronouncements that
U.S. Africa Command offers to journalists. Asked at a recent Pentagon press
briefing if there were plans for a West African analog to Djibouti’s Camp
Lemonnier, the only "official" U.S. base on the continent, AFRICOM Commander
General David Rodriguez was typically guarded. Such a “forward-operating
site” was just “one of the options” the command was mulling over, he said,
before launching into the sort of fuzzy language typical of official
answers. “What we're really looking at doing is putting contingency
locating sites, which really have some just expeditionary infrastructure
that can be expanded with tents,” was the
<http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5412&utm_so
urce=April+9+2014+EN&utm_campaign=4%2F09%2F2014&utm_medium=email> way he put
it. He never once mentioned Niger, or airfield improvements, or the
possibility of a semi-permanent "presence.”
Here, however, is the reality as we know it today. Over the last several
years, the U.S. has been building a
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-base-in-niger-g
ives-us-a-strategic-foothold-in-west-africa/2013/03/21/700ee8d0-9170-11e2-9c
4d-798c073d7ec8_story.html> constellation of drone bases across Africa,
<http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20140402/NEWS04/304020047> flying
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions out of not only
Niger, but also Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the island nation of the Seychelles.
Meanwhile, an airbase in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso,
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s
_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22> serves as the home of a Joint Special
Operations Air Detachment, as well as of the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and
Landing Airlift Support initiative. According to military documents, that
“initiative” supports “high-risk activities” carried out by elite forces
from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. U.S. Army Africa
documents obtained by TomDispatch also
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175818/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_american_pr
oxy_wars_in_africa> mention the deployment to Chad of an ISR liaison team.
And according to Sam Cooks, a liaison officer with the Defense Logistics
Agency, the U.S. military has 29 agreements to use international airports in
Africa as refueling centers.
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/gaomali_large.jpg> Click here to
see a larger version
http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/gaomali_small.jpg
U.S. Facility near Gao, Mali. This austere compound is thought to have been
overrun by Islamist forces in 2012. Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As part of the webinar for industry representatives, Wayne Uhl, chief of the
International Engineering Center for the Europe District of the Army Corps
of Engineers, shed light on
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-cras
h-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_story.
html> shadowy U.S. operations in Mali before (and possibly
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-cras
h-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_story.
html> after) the elected government there was overthrown in a 2012 coup led
by a U.S.-trained officer. Documents prepared by Uhl reveal that an
American compound was constructed near Gao, a major city in the north of
Mali. Gao is the
<http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-31/news/sns-rt-mali-rebelsbases-
urgentl6e8ev0ei-20120331_1_reporting-by-cheick-dioura-rebel-assault-bases>
site of multiple Malian military bases and a “strategic” airport
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/world/africa/france-mali-intervention.htm
l> captured by Islamist militants in 2012 and retaken by French and Malian
troops early last year.
AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson failed to respond to multiple requests for comment
about the Gao compound, but Uhl offered additional details. The project was
completed before the 2012 uprising and “included a vehicle maintenance
facility, a small admin building, toilet facilities with water tank, a
diesel generator with a fuel storage tank, and a perimeter fence,” he told
me in a written response to my questions. “I imagine the site was overrun
during the coup and is no longer used by U.S. forces.”
America’s lone official base on the African continent,
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/> Camp Lemonnier, a former French
Foreign Legion post in Djibouti, has been on a decade-plus growth spurt and
serves a key role for the U.S. mission. “Camp Lemonnier is the only
permanent footprint that we have on the continent and until such time as
AFRICOM may establish a headquarters location in Africa, Camp Lemonnier will
be the center of their activities here,” Greg Wilderman, the Military
Construction Program Manager for Naval Facilities Engineering Command,
explained.
“In 2013, we had a big jump in the amount of program projects,” he noted,
specifically mentioning a large “task force” construction effort, an oblique
reference to a $220 million Special Operations compound at the base that
TomDispatch first
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s
_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22> reported on in 2013.
According to documents provided by Wilderman, five contracts worth more than
$322 million (to be paid via MILCON funds) were awarded for Camp Lemonnier
in late 2013. These included deals for a $25.5 million fitness center and a
$41 million Joint Headquarters Facility in addition to the Special
Operations Compound. This year, Wilderman noted, there are two contracts --
valued at $35 million -- already slated to be awarded, and Captain Rick Cook
specifically mentioned deals for an armory and new barracks in 2014.
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/killanythingpbk.jpg
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> Cook’s
presentation also indicated that a number of long-running construction
projects at Camp Lemonnier were set to be completed this year, including
roads, a “fuel farm,” an aircraft logistics apron, and “taxiway
enhancements,” while construction of a new aircraft maintenance hangar, a
telecommunications facility, and a “combat aircraft loading area” are slated
to be finished in 2015. “There’s a tremendous amount of work going on,”
Cook said, noting that there were 22 current projects underway there, more
than at any other Navy base anywhere in the world.
And this, it turns out, is only the beginning.
“In the master plan,” Cook said, “there is close to three quarters of a
billion dollars worth of construction projects that we still would like to
do at Camp Lemonnier over the next 10 to 15 years.” That base, in turn,
would be just one of a constellation of camps and compounds used by the U.S.
in Africa. “Many of the places that we are trying to stand up or trying to
get into are air missions. A lot of ISR... is going on in different parts
of the continent. Generally speaking, the Air Force is probably going to be
assigned to do much of that,” he told the contractors. “The Air Force is
going to be doing a great deal of work on these bases… that are going to be
built across the northern tier of Africa.”
Hearts and Minds
When I spoke with Chris Gatz of the Army Corps of Engineers, the first
projects he mentioned and the only ones he seemed eager to talk about were
those for African nations. This year, $6.5 million in projects had been
funded when we spoke and of that, the majority were for “humanitarian
assistance” or HA construction projects, mostly in Togo and Tunisia, and
“peacekeeping” operations in Ghana and Djibouti.
Uhl talked about humanitarian projects, too. “HA projects are small,
difficult, challenging for the Corps of Engineers to accomplish at a low,
in-house cost… but despite all this, HA projects are extremely rewarding,”
he said. “The appreciation expressed by the locals is fantastic.” He then
drew attention to another added benefit: “Each successful project is a photo
opportunity.”
Uhl wasn’t the only official to touch on the importance of public perception
in Africa or the need to curry favor with military “partners” on the
continent. Cook spoke to the contractors, for instance, about the
challenges of work in austere locations, about how bureaucratic shakedowns
by members of African governments could cause consternation and construction
delays, about learning to work with the locals, and about how important such
efforts were for “winning hearts and minds of folks in the area.”
The Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Wilderman talked up the
challenges of working in an environment in which the availability of
resources was limited, the dangers of terrorism were real, and there was
“competition for cooperation with [African] countries from some other world
powers.” This was no doubt a reference to increasing Chinese
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2014/0319/China-s-trad
e-with-Africa-at-record-high> trade,
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/apr/29/china-critics-aid
-package-africa> aid,
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/chinese-investment-in-africa-boos
ts-economies-but-worries-many-a-934826.html> investment, and
<http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21574012-chinese-trade
-africa-keeps-growing-fears-neocolonialism-are-overdone-more> economic ties
across the continent.
He also left no doubt about U.S. plans. “We will be in Africa for some time
to come,” he told the contractors. “There’s lots more to do there.”
Cook expanded on this theme. “It’s a big, big place,” he said. “We know we
can’t do it alone. So we’re going to need partners in industry, we’re going
to need… local nationals and even third country nationals.”
AFRICOM at War
For years, senior AFRICOM officers and spokesmen have downplayed the scope
of U.S. operations on the continent, stressing that the command has only a
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175830/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom_bec
omes_a_%22war-fighting_combatant_command%22/>
singlehttp://cdncache1-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png base and
a very light footprint there. At the same time, they have limited access to
journalists and refused to disclose the number and tempo of the command’s
operations, as well as the locations of its deployments and of bases that go
by other names. AFRICOM’S public persona remains one of humanitarian
missions and benign-sounding support for local partners.
“Our core mission of assisting African states and regional organizations to
strengthen their defense capabilities better enables Africans to address
their security threats and reduces threats to U.S. interests,” says the
command. “We concentrate our efforts on contributing to the development of
capable and professional militaries that respect human rights, adhere to the
rule of law, and more effectively contribute to stability in Africa.”
Efforts like sniper training for proxy forces and black ops missions hardly
come up. Bases are mostly ignored. The word “war” is rarely mentioned.
TomDispatch’s recent investigations have, however, revealed that the U.S.
military is indeed pivoting to Africa. It now averages far more than a
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175823/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_america%27s_n
on-stop_ops_in_africa/> mission a day on the continent, conducting
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s
_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22> operations with almost every African
military force, in almost every
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175823/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_america%27s_n
on-stop_ops_in_africa/> African country, while building or building up
camps, compounds, and “
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s
_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22> contingency security locations.” The U.S.
has taken an active role in wars from
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/30/america-s-secret-libya-war
-u-s-spent-1-billion-on-covert-ops-helping-nato.html> Libya to the
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175818/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_american_pr
oxy_wars_in_africa> Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into
countries from
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/us-special-forces-libya-somali
a> Somalia to
<http://www.navytimes.com/article/20131227/NEWS/312270010/3-SEALs-wounded-So
uth-Sudan-back-U-S-> South Sudan, conducted
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/26/world/africa/somalia-us-airstrike/>
airstrikes and
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/video-shows-us-abduct
ion-of-accused-al-qaeda-terrorist-on-trial-for-embassy-bombings/2014/02/10/7
f84927a-8f6b-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html> abduction missions, even put
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175830/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom_bec
omes_a_%22war-fighting_combatant_command%22/>
bootshttp://cdncache1-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png on the
ground in countries where it
<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> pledged it would not.
“We have shifted from our original intent of being a more congenial
combatant command to an actual war-fighting combatant command,” AFRICOM’s
Rick Cook explained to the audience of big-money defense contractors. He
was unequivocal: the U.S. has been “at war” on the continent for the last
two and half years. It remains to be seen when AFRICOM will pass this news
on to the American public.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of <http://www.tomdispatch.com/>
TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. A 2014
<http://www.ithaca.edu/news/releases/journalists-glenn-greenwald-and-jeremy-
scahill-named-to-i.f.-stone-hall-of-fame:-john-carlos-frey-and-nick-turse-sh
are-annual-izzy-award-36968/#.UxyUHYVl7Kf> Izzy Award winner, his pieces
have appeared in the
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/opinion/for-america-life-was-cheap-in-vie
tnam.html?_r=0> New York Times, the
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and
-vietnam-20120424> Los Angeles Times,
<http://www.thenation.com/afghanistan> the Nation, at the
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23427726> BBC, 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/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> Kill
Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (just out in
paperback).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on
<http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> Facebook and
<http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/> Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book,
Ann Jones’s
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> They
Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold
Story.
Copyright 2014 Nick Turse
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