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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Jan 02 2011 - 15:59:34 EST
Pentagon And NATO Apply Afghanistan-Pakistan War Model To Africa
Rick Rozoff
January 2, 2011 at 12:59:17
The New Year began with three North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers
killed in Afghanistan and 20 people, all portrayed as militants, killed in
four American missile strikes in northwest Pakistan. The third drone missile
attack killed four people attempting to rescue and remove the bodies of the
victims of the first, a technique used by the U.S. and NATO in their war
against Yugoslavia in 1999.
The West's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is currently the longest, largest
and deadliest in the world. Fatalities among U.S. troops, non-U.S. NATO and
allied forces, Afghan National Army soldiers and anti-government fighters
reached a record high last year: 498, 213, 800 and an unknown number (by
U.S. and NATO accounts well into the thousands), respectively. The United
Nations estimated 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed in the first ten months
of last year, a 20 percent increase over the same period in the preceding
year. Approximately a thousand people were killed by U.S. drone missile
strikes in Pakistan.
It says something discouraging about a world of almost 200 nations that
perhaps no more than half a dozen countries - so-called rogue states
(alternatively Condoleezza Rice's "outposts of tyranny") - have voiced
opposition to the war.
Washington's self-designated global war on terror (sometimes capitalized),
in recent years more politely and antiseptically called overseas contingency
operations, has not diminished in intensity but rather escalated in breadth
and aggressiveness from West Africa to East Asia and against targets not
remotely related to al-Qaeda, which has proven as nebulous and evasive as
the West portrays it being ubiquitous.
>From 2001 to the present the U.S. has engaged in and supported military
operations against Marxist guerrillas in Colombia and the Philippines,
ethnic Tuaregs in Mali, nominally Christian insurgents in Uganda and Shiite
Houthi militia in northern Yemen in the name of combating...al-Qaeda. The
Wahhabist school of extremism that characterizes al-Qaeda and analogous
groups derives its doctrinal inspiration and material support from Saudi
Arabia, yet last October Washington announced a $63 billion arms package
with the kingdom, the largest foreign weapons deal in American history.
Washington and its NATO military allies have opened a war front across the
Arabian Sea from Pakistan in the east to Somalia and Yemen in the west as
the central focus of operations that began almost ten years ago. [1]
On October 1, 2008 the Pentagon formally launched its first overseas
military command in the post-Cold War era, U.S. Africa Command, which takes
in 53 nations and an entire continent except for Egypt, which remains in
Central Command.
The second command's area of responsibility reaches from the eastern border
of Libya to the western border of China and southern border of Russia. From
Egypt to Kazakhstan. The Horn of Africa region, including Somalia, was ceded
by Central Command to Africa Command (AFRICOM), but the Arabian Peninsula,
including Yemen, remains in Central Command.
Though the Pentagon's Combined Joint Task Force -" Horn of Africa, now
subsumed under AFRICOM and based in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti,
includes thirteen nations in East Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian
Peninsula in its area of operations: Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea,
Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda
and Yemen. Operation Enduring Freedom, under which the U.S. conducts its
greater Afghan war, encompasses sixteen countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan,
Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey
and Yemen.
The U.S. maintains at least 2,500 troops in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and
in late 2009 deployed over 100 troops, Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles
(drones) equipped for guided bombs and missiles and three P-3 Orion
anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft to Seychelles.
Washington was accused by Houthi rebels in the north of Yemen of
participating with Saudi Arabia in deadly bombing raids against them in the
northwestern province of Sa'ada in December of 2009. They stated American
jet fighters launched 28 attacks in the province which included bombing the
governor's house and killing 120 people in one attack. [2]
Later in the same month the U.S. conducted cruise missile and air strikes
with the use of cluster bombs in southern Yemen which killed over 60
civilians, mostly women and children. Another air strike was launched in
March of 2010.
Leading American officials have demanded drone missile strikes in Yemen and
several hundred U.S. special forces are deployed to the country.
The U.S. and its allies in NATO and the European Union are actively involved
in the civil war in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.
The Pentagon supported the Ethiopian invasion of the country in 2006 and
launched two days of air strikes in January of the following year. In the
autumn of 2009 U.S. special forces conducted a deadly helicopter gunship
raid in southern Somalia.
The New Year in Somalia started with a fierce battle between foreign troops
backing the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and al-Shabaab rebels,
resulting in at 15 dead and 25 wounded. Inhabitants of the Somali capital
reported that "the Mogadishu sky turned red [and] kids were crying and had
been unable to sleep as the crackling of machine guns and barrages rocked
throughout the city." [3]
There are approximately 6,000 troops from U.S. military client states Uganda
and Burundi fighting on behalf of the formal government of the country under
the banner of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Although
approved by the African Union, AMISOM and its predecessor, the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Peace Support Mission in
Somalia (IGASOM), primarily have been initiatives by Washington and its
allies in NATO and the EU.
European warships are deployed for NATO's Operation Ocean Shield and the
EU's Operation Atalanta off Somalia's coast in the Gulf of Aden. (In
military matters the distinction between NATO and the EU is becoming an
increasingly formal one.)
At least fifteen EU member states, most of them also NATO members - Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal,
Luxembourg, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus - have sent no fewer
than 150 military personnel to Uganda to train 2,000 Somali troops for war
in their homeland in a program financed by the U.S.
In the middle of last month the local press reported that the first 1,000
Somali soldiers "trained by officers from the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces
(UPDF) and senior military officers from 27 European Union countries"
graduated from the Bihanga military training school in Western Uganda, a
"facility...set up early this year to train TFG Officers and foot soldiers
in a bid to boost the military capability of war-torn Somalia...."
"The soldiers are expected to provide the core of officers and men of a new
Somali army...to provide a much-needed boost to the fragile Transitional
Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu." [4]
Since June of 2007 NATO has provided airlift and sealift for AMISOM (Ugandan
and Burundian) troops deployed to Somalia. The next year NATO flew a
Burundian battalion into Somalia and in March of last year the Western
military bloc transported 1,700 Ugandan troops into and 850 out of the
Somali capital.
The month before the initial inauguration of AFRICOM in 2007, when it was
still under U.S. European Command (whose top commander is simultaneously
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe), a Pentagon official announced that
Africa Command "would involve one small headquarters plus five 'regional
integration teams' scattered around the continent" and that "AFRICOM would
work closely with the European Union and NATO," particularly France, a
leading member of both organizations, which was "interested in developing
the Africa standby force". [5]
In the same year the U.S. Defense Department acknowledged it had already
"agreed on access to air bases and ports in Africa and 'bare-bones'
facilities maintained by local security forces in Gabon, Kenya, Mali,
Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda and
Zambia." [6]
The five regions of Africa identified by the U.S. military - north, south,
east, west and central - are all represented by the locations named above
and are each home to a branch of the African Standby Force (Northern,
Southern, Eastern, Western and Central), like AMISOM nominally under the
control of the African Union but in fact overseen by the U.S. and NATO.
The North Atlantic Alliance inaugurated the NATO Response Force, in NATO's
own words "a highly ready and technologically advanced multinational force
made up of land, air, maritime and special forces components that the
Alliance can deploy quickly to wherever it is needed," in and off the coast
of the African island of Cape Verde in 2006 in a two-week, 7,000-troop
exercise codenamed Steadfast Jaguar. [7]
The African Standby Force is modeled after the NATO Response Force.
"NATO...supports staff capacity building through the provision of places on
NATO training courses to AU [African Union] staff supporting AMISOM, and
support to the operationalisation of the African Standby Force - the African
Union's vision for a continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the
NATO Response Force." [8] It is a joint project of NATO and the Pentagon,
formerly U.S. European Command and currently U.S. Africa Command.
To date the only fully successful implementation of the project is the
Eastern Africa Standby Force, whose Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (with
headquarters in Ethiopia and its Eastern African Standby Brigade
Coordination Mechanism in Kenya) consists of Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti,
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles,
Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania (as an observer) and Uganda.
It is largely coterminous with the Pentagon's Combined Joint Task Force -"
Horn of Africa without Yemen and with Burundi and Rwanda added. In October
of 2009 the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) held military exercises
in Djibouti, where Combined Joint Task Force -" Horn of Africa is based.
Last month the defense chiefs of the twelve members of EASBRIG (presumably
Eritrea was absent) met in the capital of Burundi to discuss "the Policy
Framework for the Establishment of the Eastern Africa Standby Force [EASF]
and the Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation between the Eastern
Africa Standby Force Coordination Mechanism [EASBRICOM] and the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD] that aims to harmonise the
relations of both institutions...." [9]
NATO, which has been training African Standby Force staff officers at its
training center in Oberammergau, Germany, has designated the NATO Joint
Command Lisbon to implement the bloc's military cooperation with Africa.
Joint Command Lisbon has what it identifies as a Senior Military Liaison
Officer at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (The
territory of every nation in Africa except for Liberia, founded by the
American Colonization Society in 1821-1822, was formerly ruled by nations
that joined NATO: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain
and Turkey.)
On September 5, 2007 "the North Atlantic Council -" NATO's top political
decision making body - agreed to provide assistance to the African Union
with a study on the assessment of the operational readiness of the African
Standby Force brigades," according to the NATO website.
In the west of Africa, the Economic Community of West African States Standby
Force brigade is being readied to intervene in Ivory Coast to depose
President Laurent Gbagbo as the Dutch Defense Ministry announced last week
that one of its ships was "heading for the coast of Cote d'Ivoire to provide
supplies for French warships stationed there." [10]
U.S. Naval Forces Europe - U.S. Naval Forces Africa, which is headquartered
in Naples, Italy and directs its operations through the U.S. Sixth Fleet,
also headquartered in Italy, launched the Africa Partnership Station in 2007
as a naval component of AFRICOM. Warships assigned to it have visited
several African nations on the east, west and south ends of the continent,
among them Angola, Cameroon, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana,
Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Reunion, Sao Tome and
Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Togo.
Last month the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Africa
Vicki Huddleston and the State Department's Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto (who was ambassador
to Ethiopia when it invaded Somalia in 2006) visited U.S. Africa Command
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. While there the Defense Department's
Huddleston asserted that "East Africa becomes extremely high for DOD [the
Department of Defense] in terms of priority. So the highest priority for
DOD, and therefore AFRICOM, becomes East Africa because of Somalia and then
West (Africa), North Africa...." [11]
The month before, Ugandan People's Defence Air Force Chief Major General Jim
Owoyesigire visited 17th Air Force (Air Forces Africa) at the Ramstein Air
Base in Germany, also headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO's
Allied Air Command.
Owoyesigire stated that his country's new air force was in part the product
of an African air chiefs conference he attended in Ramstein in 2007 where he
"began learning from the US Air Force."
In regards to Uganda's role as one of the two major belligerent forces in
the war in Somalia and its counterinsurgency war at home (and across its
borders) against the Lord's Resistance Army, the air force head confirmed
that "Help from U.S. Africa Command and 17th AF has been a key enabler for
the UPDAF's [Ugandan People's Defence Air Force's] contribution to these
missions."
"When we started in AMISOM, we had no airlift capability. General Ward
[William Ward, AFRICOM commander] came and visited and helped us to partner
with the U.S. Air Force to get this airlift capability. To get training,
17th AF came and trained us in loading cargo and airdrops, and this has
really helped us.
"This is a wide question, but right now, we are asking 17th AF to come and
help us establish a squadron officers' school and NCO academy in Uganda. If
we can develop these schools, then we can also involve our east African
partners." [12]
Early in December the commander of U.S. Army Africa, Major General David
Hogg, visited Algeria to meet with senior military and government officials
to discuss "bilateral relations and regional issues," including joint
reconnaissance and training activities and "a future visit by Algerian
soldiers to the United States to investigate how the Army integrates its
lessons learned center into its training regime."
U.S. Army Africa is the Army's newest service component command and is based
in Vicenza, Italy, assigned to AFRICOM and tasked with "developing
relationships with land forces in Africa and supporting U.S. Army efforts on
the African continent." [13]
The regional issues deliberated on by the American general and his Algerian
counterparts relate to Algeria's military campaign against Salafist
insurgents and similar counterinsurgency operations throughout the Sahel,
which consists of parts of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia and Sudan.
At the end of last month U.S. military personnel assigned to Combined Joint
Task Force - Horn of Africa and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti participated in a
combat casualty course in Burundi as part of a U.S. State
Department-sponsored program. According to James Cobb, State Department
program country manager in Burundi, "The course is part of a U.S. Department
of State initiative to provide African armies an opportunity to partner with
American defense forces to develop their peacekeeping skills for operations
throughout Africa." [14]
In December the defense chief of Djibouti, Major General Fathi Ahmed
Houssein, met with AFRICOM commander General William Ward at AFRICOM
headquarters in Stuttgart to discuss "joint security cooperation activities
and potential areas of further cooperation...in East Africa and throughout
the continent."
As the AFRICOM website put it:
"Djibouti hosts approximately 3,000 U.S. and allied personnel at Camp
Lemonnier, which is the only major U.S. military facility in Africa, though
small teams of U.S. personnel work across the continent on short-term
assignments. The main military organization at Camp Lemonnier is the
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). A component of U.S.
AFRICOM, CJTF-HOA sends teams throughout the East Africa region [to] protect
U.S. and coalition interests."
Among several joint programs, the generals elaborated plans for "Support to
Djiboutian armed forces in the Eastern African Standby Brigade
(EASBRIG) field training exercise, aimed to assess the readiness and
capability of EASBRIG, a component of the African Union's Africa Standby
Force...."
And expansion of the "International Military Education and Training, a
program that invites foreign military officers to attend military schools in
the United States, and provides funding for trainers to provide specific,
localized training in African countries."
As well as the continuation of the "Africa Contingency Operations Training
and Assistance program, designed to improve African militaries' capabilities
by providing selected training and equipment required to execute
multinational...operations."
Ward and Houssein also discussed "other ways to increase support in building
partner capacity in the Horn of Africa through the U.S. Defense Department's
1206 program [to train and equip foreign militaries for "counterterrorism or
stability operations"] and the U.S. State Department's Partnership Regional
East African Counter-Terrorism program," especially in regard to
Ugandan-Burundian AMISOM operations in Somalia. [15]
Air strikes, drone and cruise missile attacks, special forces operations,
helicopter gunship raids, counterinsurgency campaigns, multinational armed
interventions, cluster bomb and depleted uranium weapons use, and the entire
panoply of military actions associated with the Afghanistan-Pakistan war are
already being conducted in Africa and will only be increased.
1) Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War
Stop NATO, October 25, 2010
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/arabian-sea-center-of-wests-21st
-century-war>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/arabian-sea-center-of-wests-21st-
century-war
....
U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean
Stop NATO, January 8, 2010
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-to-ho
rn-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-to-hor
n-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2
2) Yemen rebels say 120 killed in US airstrikes
Russia Today, December 16, 2009
<http://rt.com/usa/news/us-airstrike-rebels-yemen>
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-airstrike-rebels-yemen
....
Yemen: Pentagon's War On The Arabian Peninsula
Stop NATO, December 15, 2009
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabi
an-peninsula>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabia
n-peninsula
3) All Headline News, January 1, 2011
4) Daily Monitor, December 15, 2010
5) Agence France-Presse, September 12, 2007
6) Xinhua News Agency, May 28, 2007
7) NATO: AFRICOM's Partner In Military Penetration Of Africa
Stop NATO, March 20, 2010
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/nato-africoms-partner-in-militar
y-penetration-of-africa>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/nato-africoms-partner-in-military
-penetration-of-africa
8) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
February 24, 2010
9) New Times, December 2, 2010
10) Xinhua News Agency, December 29, 2010
11) U.S. Africa Command, December 21, 2010
12) 17th Air Force, November 17, 2010
13) U.S. Army Africa, December 28, 2010
14) Combined Joint Task Force -" Horn of Africa, December 27, 2010
15) U.S. Africa Command, December 29, 2010
<http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=5784&lang=0>
http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=5784&lang=0
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