Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 00:19:11 +0200
U.S. Training Elite Antiterror Troops in Four African Nations
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/eric_schmitt/i
ndex.html> ERIC SCHMITT
JUNE 03, 2014
WASHINGTON — United States Special Operations troops are forming elite
counterterrorism units in four countries in North and West Africa that
American officials say are pivotal in the widening war against
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaed
a/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Al Qaeda’s affiliates and associates on the
continent, even as they acknowledge the difficulties of working with weak
allies.
The secretive program, financed in part with millions of dollars in
classified Pentagon spending and carried out by trainers, including members
of the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, was begun last year to instruct
and equip hundreds of handpicked commandos in
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/li
bya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Libya,
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ni
ger/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Niger,
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ma
uritania/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Mauritania and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ma
li/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Mali.
The goal over the next few years is to build homegrown African
counterterrorism teams capable of combating fighters like those in
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/africa/boko-haram-seeks-new-battleg
rounds.html> Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/world/africa/tales-of-escapees-in-nigeria
-add-to-worries-about-other-kidnapped-girls.html> abducted nearly 300
Nigerian schoolgirls last month.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/africa/boko-haram-seeks-new-battleg
rounds.html> American military specialists are helping Nigerian officers in
their efforts to rescue the girls.
“Training indigenous forces to go after threats in their own country is what
we need to be doing,” said Michael A. Sheehan, who advocated the
counterterrorism program last year when he was the senior Pentagon official
in charge of Special Operations policy. Mr. Sheehan now holds the
distinguished chair at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
As the United States military seeks to extend its counterterrorism reach in
Africa, President Obama is expected to appear at West Point on Wednesday to
emphasize a foreign policy that would avoid large land wars, like those in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and instead stress the training of allied and partner
nations to battle militants on their own soil.
Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has slowly built a
multipronged counterterrorism strategy in Africa: It has carried out
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/africa/02somalia.html> armed drone
strikes in Somalia from its only permanent base on the continent, in
Djibouti; backed African proxies and French commandos fighting Islamist
extremists in Somalia and Mali; and increasingly trained African troops to
combat insurgents.
Under the new Africa plan, the Pentagon is spending nearly $70 million on
training, intelligence-gathering equipment and other support to build a
counterterrorism battalion in Niger and a similar unit in nearby Mauritania
that are in their “formative stages,” a senior Defense Department official
said.
In a cautionary note about operating in that part of Africa, troubled by a
chronic shortage of resources and weak regional partners, the effort in Mali
has yet to get off the ground as a new civilian government recovers from a
military coup last year. In Libya, the most ambitious initial training ended
ignominiously last August after a group of armed militia fighters
overpowered a small Libyan guard force at a training base outside Tripoli
and stole hundreds of American-supplied automatic weapons, night-vision
goggles, vehicles and other equipment.
As a result, the training was halted and the American instructors were sent
home. Libyan and American officials have been searching for a more secure
training site in Libya to restart the program. But last summer’s debacle and
the political upheaval in Libya since then have caused American officials to
rethink how they select local personnel.
“You have to make sure of who you’re training,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick J.
Donahue II, the commander of United States Army soldiers operating in
Africa. “It can’t be the standard, ‘Has this guy been a terrorist or some
sort of criminal?’ but also, ‘What are his allegiances? Is he true to the
country, or is he still bound to his militia?’ ”
The American military uses conventional troops and elite Special Operations
forces to train foreign armies all over the world. The tasks range from
teaching basic marksmanship to more advanced counterterrorism tactics and
techniques.
In the past decade, the Bush and Obama administrations put a premium on
training and equipping foreign troops to combat terrorists and other
Islamist extremists and persuaded Congress to approve funding for those
programs.
The new program to train small counterterrorism forces in Africa resembles
larger efforts by American Special Operations troops carried out in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Pentagon officials declined to comment publicly on the new
program, but budget documents reveal some details.
In Libya, the Pentagon has allotted just over $16 million from a
train-and-equip fund to develop two companies of elite troops and their
support elements “to counter terrorist and extremist threats in Libya,”
according to budget documents. For the aborted training outside Tripoli, the
Defense Department also tapped into a classified spending account called
Section 1208, devised to aid foreign troops assisting American forces
conducting counterterrorism missions.
For Mauritania, about $29 million has been set aside for logistics and
surveillance equipment in support of the specialized unit.
For Niger, where the United States launches unarmed surveillance drones to
fly over Mali in support of French and United Nations troops, the Pentagon
is spending nearly $15 million on the country’s new counterterrorism unit.
The funds are part of $39.5 million this year to train and equip the West
Africa nation’s army as it struggles to stem a flow of insurgents across
Niger’s lightly guarded borders with Mali, Nigeria and Libya.
Maman S. Sidikou, Niger’s ambassador to the United States, said he could not
comment on the counterterrorism unit, but he added in an email, “Training
remains a critical part of our needs to further increase our men’s readiness
to face the many challenges of our regional environment.”
Mr. Sheehan, the former Pentagon official, said a 12-member Army Special
Forces team could train about 50 soldiers initially, and expand after that.
“It can be done,” said Mr. Sheehan, who conducted similar training in Latin
America in the 1980s as a Special Forces commander.
J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center of the Atlantic Council, a
policy research group in Washington, said the United States must make tough
political judgments before investing in ambitious counterterrorism training
programs. Mr. Pham cited the lessons of Mali, where American-trained
commanders of elite army units
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/africa/mali-army-riding-us-hopes-is
-proving-no-match-for-militants.html> defected to Islamic insurgents that
seized the north last year.
“The host country has to have the political will to fight terrorism, not
just the desire to build up an elite force that could be used for regime
protection,” Mr. Pham said. “And the military has to be viewed well or at
least neutrally by a country’s population.”
American counterterrorism officials also warn that without a commitment to
support the specialized units, training can stall. “It’s very difficult,
very challenging dealing with African forces,” said Rudy Atallah, the former
director of African counterterrorism policy for the Pentagon. “You train
them to a certain level, and then they can run short on gear,
communications, even tires for their vehicles.”
American officials say trainees must be carefully screened and monitored for
possible human rights violations or shifting allegiances. “Any unit we train
could be used to go after political opponents rather than Al Qaeda,” said
Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace who has visited Libya frequently.
No episode is a more sobering reminder of these risks than the collapse of
the American counterterrorism training mission last August at Base 27, also
called Camp Younis, a Libyan military installation about 15 miles from
Tripoli, the capital.
The American trainers issued the Libyans M4 automatic rifles, night-vision
goggles, Glock pistols and armored vehicles. The Libyans took custody of the
weapons and equipment and were responsible for safeguarding them in a
warehouse at the camp, American military officials said.
In a predawn raid on Aug. 4, gunmen believed to be from one of the local
militias overpowered the Libyan guards and seized the weapons and equipment
in the storage area, American officials said.
The American trainers were not at the training camp when the raid occurred
because they regularly stayed at a nearby villa that served as a safe house
at night, American officials said.
American military officials briefed on the raid suspect that the theft was
an inside job in which a Libyan officer or soldier tipped off some local
Tripoli militia members about the matériel stored at the base. Much of the
stolen equipment was later recovered, but not before news reports indicated
that some of the pilfered weapons had showed up online for sale on the black
market.
The episode abruptly ended a weekslong training course that American and
Libyan officials had hoped would restart broader training efforts that were
suspended after the attack on the American Mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11,
2012.
A former American Special Operations officer said there was a broader lesson
for any future Libya training mission: “The take-away here is they’re going
to take a lot more adult supervision to make sure the checks and balances
are in place, so you don’t have outside militia taking over.”
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