Seth
01-25-2006, 18:10
y Shashank Bengali
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SANKABAR, Ethiopia — This is the war on terrorism that most
Americans haven’t heard of.
A few days after Christmas, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Adam Reed rode
into the parched, hungry village of Sankabar with a present: a new
water pump. This month, Reed returned to the village, where elders
gleefully showed the soldier from Sidon, Miss., what the simple
irrigation system had brought: budding green fields of corn, bananas
and oranges, the most promising crops in years.
A small U.S. military task force in East Africa is installing water
pumps, rebuilding schools and health clinics, making medical house
calls and training national armies — all part of a mission to
stabilize a region that’s seen as a potential breeding ground for
terrorist groups.
“We are coming out of drought because of the pump,” said Omar
Ahmed, a Sankabar elder. “So we say thank you, America. And thank
you, Mr. Reed. He is the first guy to give us help.”
What’s going here provides a glimpse of the Bush administration’s
global war on terrorism, which is being fought — mostly in the shadows
— elsewhere in Africa and across the Middle East, South Asia and
Southeast Asia using different combinations of military, covert,
economic and diplomatic weapons.
Separated from the Middle East by only a narrow waterway, the Horn
of Africa is home to 90 million Muslims, many of whom live in crushing
poverty and political isolation. Al-Qaida has had success in the area,
bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, attacking the
USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and nearly shooting down an
Israeli charter plane over Kenya in 2002.
The 1,500 troops of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa
have been stationed since 2002 at Camp Lemonier, a former French base
on the Red Sea in the tiny coastal nation of Djibouti. They were sent
to hunt down al-Qaida operatives in East Africa, but there are few
known terrorist cells working in the vast area — two-thirds the size
of the United States — and the troops haven’t made many arrests.
Instead, theirs has become a humanitarian mission, with public
relations benefits. By bringing aid to remote villages, commanders
say, they help alleviate the poverty and alienation that foster
terrorism and score image points against terrorist recruiters who
would paint the United States as a villain.
“We are in a generational fight for hearts and minds,” said Maj.
Gen. Timothy Ghormley, the task force commander. “We do water
projects and build schools that help a poor child in a village, and in
20 years that child will remember us.”
Ghormley, who as a young Marine in Vietnam helped train militias to
fight Viet Cong, likes to boast that his troops haven’t fired a single
shot. Made up largely of engineering and construction units, the task
force has built 52 schools, 23 medical facilities and 25 water wells.
It’s also trained military forces in six countries, including Uganda
and Ethiopia, to shore up their border security.
Though far smaller, it’s the most significant U.S. military
engagement in Africa since 25,000 troops went to Somalia in 1992, an
operation that ended after 18 were killed in the infamous “Black Hawk
Down” episode.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SANKABAR, Ethiopia — This is the war on terrorism that most
Americans haven’t heard of.
A few days after Christmas, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Adam Reed rode
into the parched, hungry village of Sankabar with a present: a new
water pump. This month, Reed returned to the village, where elders
gleefully showed the soldier from Sidon, Miss., what the simple
irrigation system had brought: budding green fields of corn, bananas
and oranges, the most promising crops in years.
A small U.S. military task force in East Africa is installing water
pumps, rebuilding schools and health clinics, making medical house
calls and training national armies — all part of a mission to
stabilize a region that’s seen as a potential breeding ground for
terrorist groups.
“We are coming out of drought because of the pump,” said Omar
Ahmed, a Sankabar elder. “So we say thank you, America. And thank
you, Mr. Reed. He is the first guy to give us help.”
What’s going here provides a glimpse of the Bush administration’s
global war on terrorism, which is being fought — mostly in the shadows
— elsewhere in Africa and across the Middle East, South Asia and
Southeast Asia using different combinations of military, covert,
economic and diplomatic weapons.
Separated from the Middle East by only a narrow waterway, the Horn
of Africa is home to 90 million Muslims, many of whom live in crushing
poverty and political isolation. Al-Qaida has had success in the area,
bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, attacking the
USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and nearly shooting down an
Israeli charter plane over Kenya in 2002.
The 1,500 troops of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa
have been stationed since 2002 at Camp Lemonier, a former French base
on the Red Sea in the tiny coastal nation of Djibouti. They were sent
to hunt down al-Qaida operatives in East Africa, but there are few
known terrorist cells working in the vast area — two-thirds the size
of the United States — and the troops haven’t made many arrests.
Instead, theirs has become a humanitarian mission, with public
relations benefits. By bringing aid to remote villages, commanders
say, they help alleviate the poverty and alienation that foster
terrorism and score image points against terrorist recruiters who
would paint the United States as a villain.
“We are in a generational fight for hearts and minds,” said Maj.
Gen. Timothy Ghormley, the task force commander. “We do water
projects and build schools that help a poor child in a village, and in
20 years that child will remember us.”
Ghormley, who as a young Marine in Vietnam helped train militias to
fight Viet Cong, likes to boast that his troops haven’t fired a single
shot. Made up largely of engineering and construction units, the task
force has built 52 schools, 23 medical facilities and 25 water wells.
It’s also trained military forces in six countries, including Uganda
and Ethiopia, to shore up their border security.
Though far smaller, it’s the most significant U.S. military
engagement in Africa since 25,000 troops went to Somalia in 1992, an
operation that ended after 18 were killed in the infamous “Black Hawk
Down” episode.