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Old 02-22-2013, 10:36   #1
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Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s “New Spice Route” in Africa

Perception as reality - one such perception being peddled of "America's neo-collonial" venture into the African continent's political briar patch.

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An American scramble for Africa?Who knew?Now, Nick Turse puts the American military’s expansion onto that continent -- bases, drones, special operations forces, troops, trainers, private contractors, and proxy armies -- into a single blockbuster piece.This is everything Americans should (but don’t) know about the Pentagon’s on-the-sly attempt to establish U.S. military domination in Africa in recent years.
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Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s “New Spice Route” in Africa
MEOnline, 12 Jul 2012
Part 1 of 2

They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.

Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer have any idea that military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a previous imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”

In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant outposts.

On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story: Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.

According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent. “There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there,” he told TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM organization at Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa and they work with partner nations to assist them in strengthening their defense capabilities.”

Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities with “partner nations.” He characterized the forces involved as small teams carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several locations in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In all cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation personnel.”

Shadow Wars

In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was first set up there, it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways, the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa. And “strengthening” African armies turns out to be a truly elastic rubric for what’s going on.

Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.

To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations, and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics network. Most American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but growing ever larger and more permanent in appearance. For example, photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled with air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free weights, and other equipment.

Continental Drift

After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a growth opportunity for the Pentagon.

The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies. They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible al-Qaeda-linked militants in post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali’s Islamist Rebels of the Ansar Dine, al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.

A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that contractor-operated surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s behest, and that 100 to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while drones and F-15 fighter-bombers have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia. Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the newborn nation of South Sudan.

U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent, including one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. also has had troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with that country following a coup.

According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S. military documents indicate that there may be other even lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further information on these posts before this article went to press.

Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are engaged in missions against the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the Central African Republic, but little is said about that base either. “U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries in the hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising the regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me. “Specifically in Obo, the troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a Ugandan facility that operates at the invitation of the government of the Central African Republic.”

And that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants known as al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

(Cont'd)
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Old 02-22-2013, 10:37   #2
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Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s “New Spice Route” in Africa
MEOnline, 12 Jul 2012
Part 2 of 2

In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in Somalia. In April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, of the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.

In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.

In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.

The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an average basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the continent” at any one time. Next year, even more American troops are likely to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “Dagger Brigade,” are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly 3,000 soldiers in the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter about the deployment.

Air Africa

Last month, the Washington Post revealed that, since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies to spy on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed Tusker Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes that look innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.

America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.

While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian airport at Arba Minch, Ethiopia, to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct, but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to the New Spice Route.

“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner explained at a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground supply networks have less to do with history than with Africa’s airport infrastructure.

Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only 303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the weight of the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to transport troops and materiel. These limitations were driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent instead to send in Chinook helicopters.

In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S. military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last year, during another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.

“Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis. “This provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can’t support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.

Another is construction.

The Great Build-Up

Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180 million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways “to support medium-load aircraft” and the construction of a 185,000 square meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works to erect modular maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all needed for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.

Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base, Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa. Still other solicitation materials suggest future military construction in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a medical research facility, and still more work in Djibouti.

No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of “emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300 additional Containerized Living Units (CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry facilities.

Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.

The Scramble for Africa

In a recent speech in Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America, Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” As an example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. “Why do we care about that?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think they very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and Americans.”

Fighting them over there, so we don’t need to fight them here has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades, especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far, the result has been a military coup by an American-trained officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.

With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=53368
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“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” - Robert Heinlein
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Old 02-22-2013, 12:02   #3
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Thank you Richard for this informative post. What irks me is the obvious slant of the reporter i.e. well, here is yet another example of the American military's expansionist adventurism. Pandering journalism at its best IMO.

Of course if we weren't being proactive then the military would be accused of being asleep while on watch when all hell breaks loose.

When are these chuckle-heads going to wake up? Asymmetric warfare is the future and it is global! The only appropriate response is having an ever present, ever vigilant global counter. And by the way, do that with < 300 ship Navy and 50% of the current defense budget.

Aaaargh! The hypocrisy of it all drives me nuts

To quote you, "and so it goes"
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Old 02-22-2013, 12:31   #4
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HA! I was just reading a different article on this subject but it was not nearly as detailed.

Thanks for posting.
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Old 02-22-2013, 17:44   #5
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Soooo, if we have all these secret bases in Africa, why couldn't Obama or Hillary send 15 or 20 guys to Benghazi?
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Old 02-22-2013, 20:39   #6
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Soooo, if we have all these secret bases in Africa, why couldn't Obama or Hillary send 15 or 20 guys to Benghazi?
Could it be that the DoS/CIA forgot to include Hamm and AFRICOM in the loop when they were having their little 'wet dream'?

Damn, I just had to read "Benghazi" before I go to bed...Now it's going to take me 2 hours to calm down enough to get some sleep. Thanks Bro
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Old 02-23-2013, 05:43   #7
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Mali conflict: US deploys 100 troops to neighbour Niger

Mali conflict: US deploys 100 troops to neighbour Niger

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21550867

"The US has deployed 100 troops to Niger to assist French forces in neighbouring Mali, the US president has said.

The armed troops will provide intelligence support, President Barack Obama informed Congress on Friday...................... '

A few more are on their way. Links at the bottom of the story to other news agency's stories on the subject.
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Old 02-23-2013, 09:16   #8
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Mali conflict: US deploys 100 troops to neighbour Niger

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21550867

"The US has deployed 100 troops to Niger to assist French forces in neighbouring Mali, the US president has said.

The armed troops will provide intelligence support, President Barack Obama informed Congress on Friday...................... '

A few more are on their way. Links at the bottom of the story to other news agency's stories on the subject.
Hmmm! Here we go again. Africa is going to be the battleground of the future IMO. Let's just hope that we can get on the correct side of these conflicts. By that I mean, too often we have ended up supporting fundamentally corrupt regimes (Vietnam and Iran come to mind as just two examples) for the sake of protecting regional stability only to foment the seeds of revolution from oppressed peoples. Following the French in support of their interests stemming from the colonial era has not worked out so well in the past. I am more than a little skeptical of doing that again.

Too illustrate my point, do the counter-factual mental experiment and ask yourself (1) what if the US had supported Ho Chi Minh in his effort to expel foreign interests from his country and unite North and South Vietnam? And (2) what if the United States had not installed the Shah (Rheza Pahlevi) in Iran?

In this same line of thinking I will argue that overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was exactly correct and aligned with our values. The counter-factual question is - rather than invade Iraq with conventional military force, what if we built alliances with the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni that overthrew Saddam in a populist revolution? Could that even be done with a UW strategy? Could it be done with a UW strategy to initiate the revolution followed by conventional military to protect the SF lead rebels?

I think that discussion like these can lead to some new insights and possibly some new directions for our foreign policy that is more in line with our core values. It is this latter point, the disconnect between what we espouse and what we do, that has and is continuing to get us into trouble.

Just some food for thought
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Old 02-23-2013, 09:16   #9
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China is all over Africa as well, stripping resources and filling any vaccuum.

TR
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Old 02-23-2013, 09:54   #10
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Thank you for posting the article, Richard.
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Old 02-23-2013, 16:49   #11
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I wonder when Al Qaeda is going to start going after the Chinese? It will be interesting to see the Chinese response. On the downside, it could justify Chinese military expansion in the area as well as a larger naval presence in the Indian Ocean...
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Old 02-23-2013, 20:22   #12
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I wonder when Al Qaeda is going to start going after the Chinese? It will be interesting to see the Chinese response. On the downside, it could justify Chinese military expansion in the area as well as a larger naval presence in the Indian Ocean...
My guess is the Chinese will be giving support to Al Qaeda. From the Chinese POV it would be in their best interest.
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Old 02-25-2013, 19:45   #13
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China is all over Africa as well, stripping resources and filling any vaccuum.

TR
Roger that TR. If anyone wants to claim that their is a 'nouveau colonialism' in Africa, they should cast their gaze East. China is covering the continent and the rationale for their presence is likely more one sided than any colonial rule we have seen in a century. China, I predict, will enter a new wave of hardship that will span a continent and last generations.
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Old 03-04-2013, 13:37   #14
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From this week's issue of Time.

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Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance
Time, 27 Feb 2013

Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa.

Although recent reports have tended to focus on the French intervention to kick Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) out in Mali — a effort that may now be devolving into a far more complex guerrilla war, that French operation is just one operation in what may be shaping up to be a 21st Century version of the 19th Century Scramble for the resources of Africa. It’s a policy that, from the U.S. point of view, is not unrelated to the pivot to China, given China‘s growing market and aid presence in Africa.

Last year, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post provided a mosaic of glimpses into the widespread U.S. involvement in Africa in a series of excellent reports. The map below is my rendering of the basing information in Whitlock’s report (and others), as well as the relationship between that basing information to distribution of Muslim populations in central Africa.

While the correlation between Muslim populations and our intervention activities will suggest different messages to different audiences, given our recent history, it is certain to further inflame our relationship with militant Islam.

Another sense of the metastasizing nature of our involvement in Africa can be teased out of the leaden, terrorist-centric, albeit carefully-constructed verbiage in the prepared answers submitted by Army General David M. Rodriguez to Senate Armed Services Committee in support of his 13 February 2013 confirmation to be the new commander of the U. S. Africa Command or Africom. I urge readers to at least skim this very revealing document.

The terrorist “threats” in sub-Saharan Africa that are evidently so tempting to the neo-imperialists at Africom do not exist in isolation. They are intimately connected to the ethnic/tribal discontent in Africa, a subject alluded to but not really analyzed by Rodriquez or his senatorial questioners in their carefully choreographed Q&A.

Many of these tensions, for example, are in part a legacy of artificial borders created by the European interventionists of the 19th century. These interventionists deliberately designed borders to mix up tribal, ethnic, and religious groups to facilitate “divide and rule” colonial policies. The 19th Century colonialists often deliberately exacerbated local animosities by placing minorities in politically and economically advantageous positions, thereby creating incentives for payback in the future. Stalin, incidentally, used the same strategy in the 1920s and 1930s to control the Muslim soviet republics in what was formerly know as the Turkestan region of Central Asia. In the USSR, the positioning of the artificial borders among these new “Stans” were widely known as Stalin’s “poison pills.”

The hostage crisis at the gas plant in eastern Algeria last January is a case in point to illustrate these deeply-rooted cultural complexities at the heart of many of these conflicts. Akbar Ahmed recently argued this point in one of his fascinating series of essays published by Aljazeera. This series, which I believe is very important, is based on his forthcoming book, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a War on Tribal Islam, to be published in March by Brookings Institution Press.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, and he now holds the the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. The central thrust of his work is that discontent is widespread throughout the former colonial world, and is rooted in a complex history of oppressions of ethnic groups and in tribal rivalries throughout the region. This has created a welter of tensions between the weak central governments of the ex-colonial countries and their peripheral minority groups and tribes. He argues that these tensions have been exacerbated by our militaristic response to 9/11. He explains why military interventions by the U.S. and former European colonial powers will worsen the growing tension between central governments and these oppressed groups.

Among other things, Ahmed has laid out a devastating critique of U.S. grand strategy in its reaction to 9/11. By declaring a global war on terror and then conducting that war according to a grand strategy that assumed “You are either with us or against us,” the U.S. has not only created enemies faster than it can kill them, but in so doing, it has mindlessly exacerbated highly-volatile, incredibly-complex, deeply-rooted local conflicts. It has thereby destabilized huge swathes of Asia and Africa.

To wit, most readers of this essay will have heard of AQIM and probably the the Tuaregs as well. But how many of you have heard of the Kabyle Berbers and their history in Algeria? (I had not.) Yet according to Professor Ahmed, a Kabyle Berber founded AQIM, and that founding is deeply-rooted in their historical grievances. There is more to AQIM that that of simply being an al Qaeda copycat. You will not learn about any of this from Rodriquez’s answers, notwithstanding his repeated references to AQIM and Algeria; nor will you learn anything about this issue from the senators’ questions.

You can prove this to yourself.

Do a word search of General Rodriquez’s Q&A package for any hint of an appreciation of the kind of complex history described by Ahmed in his Aljazeera essay, The Kabyle Berbers, AQIM, and the search for peace in Algeria. (You could try using search words like these, for example: AQIM, Berber, history, Tuareg, tribe, tribal conflict, culture, etc — or use your imagination). In addition to noting what is not discussed, note also how Rodriquez’s threat-centric context surrounding the words always pops up. Compare the sterility his construction to the richness of Ahmed’s analysis, and draw your own conclusions. Bear in mind AQIM is just one entry in Africom’s threat portfolio. What do we not know about the other entries?

As Robert Asprey showed in his classic 2000 year history of guerrilla wars, War in the Shadows, the most common error made by outside interveners in a guerrilla war is the temptation to allow their “arrogance of ignorance” to shape their military and political efforts.

Notwithstanding being reaffirmed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it is beginning to look like Asprey’s timeless conclusion will be reaffirmed once again Africa.

http://nation.time.com/2013/02/27/ne...sletter-weekly
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Old 03-05-2013, 19:12   #15
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I am waiting with baited breath to find the veracity in the claims that Bokhtar Blemokhtar and Abu Zeid were killed. It seems unlikely that these guys would both have bit the bullet so close together, but if it is indeed so, I will not shed a tear.
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