Actualité militaire au Niger

Discussions diverses.
Salons de l’Armement , Shows Aériens, Stratégie de défense .
Répondre

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

I guess a larger level of escalation is imminent...with communities arming each other, it is a matter of time when those commence defending their interests against the government or foreign troops as well. Nothing can be stopped now. Actually sad.
Niger: 17 morts lors d’une attaque à Aghay, près de la frontière malienne
RFI Publié le 19-05-2018 à 14:45

Au Niger, une attaque dans le hameau de Aghay, dans la région de Tillabéry, à la frontière malienne, a eu lieu dans la nuit de vendredi à ce samedi 19 mai. 17 civils ont été tués. Il s’agirait de représailles de jeunes de la communauté Touareg sur leurs voisins Peuls.



Dans la région de Tillabery, au Niger (Photo d’illustration)
© RFI/Sayouba Traoré
L’attaque s’est produite hier soir, vendredi, au crépuscule. Les habitants du petit hameau de Aghay, dans la commune rurale de Inates et non loin de la frontière malienne, s’apprêtaient pour la prière de Maghrib.

Les premiers crépitements d’armes sèment la panique et la désolation au sein de la population composée essentiellement des Zarmas, Peuls et Touaregs.

Des hommes non identifiés, en moto, ont fait irruption et tiré sur tout ce qui bougeait dans le campement. Officiellement, on parle de 17 civils de l’ethnie peul tués et d’un blessé grave.

Cette tuerie, la première du genre dans cette zone d’insécurité, ressemble beaucoup plus à un conflit intercommunautaire entre les deux ethnies majoritaires nigériennes, sur la frontière malienne, les Peuls et les Touaregs.

Selon plusieurs sources sécuritaires, il s’agit de représailles de jeunes Touaregs nigériens installés au Mali, après une précédente attaque de Peuls sur leur campement le 18 avril dernier. Ce jour-là, 16 nomades touaregs, dont leur chef de village, avaient été massacrés par de jeunes Peuls.

En un mois de tensions intercommunautaires dans cette zone, 33 personnes, toutes civiles, ont été tuées. En conflit intercommunautaire dans une zone à risque, ces deux communautés disposent chacune de sa propre milice armée, lesquelles milices armées sont également aux ordres des jihadistes du nord du Mali.

http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20180519-nige ... rts-inates

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

Introduction and thesis:

The airbase 201 in Agadez is receiving from the US air force major upgrades, as part of Africoms mission of “war on terror”. Indeed, due to its geostrategic position to dominate the whole Sahel and being at the same height as Djibouti, one would lead to think that the US-air force will establish a permanent multipurpose base there and use is as hub for all kind of operations on an african level but also global level.

Facts:

Recently Kyle Rempfer, a former Airforce officer and now journalist delivered the article:
https://www.airforcetimes.com/flashpoin ... in-africa/
The article above contains a statement that:
“Three hangars and the first layers of a runway have been completed at Niger Air Base 201, which is expected to be fully functional early next year. The base will eventually also house fighter jets »
That statement is contradictory to previous reassuring statements from US-military officials and there are no permanent US basis on African soil (concept of temporary basis of Africom).
I contacted Mr. Kempfer and received the information that this section was based on APS-information, as indicated in the articles as source. The APS journal who provided the information according to Mr. Kempfer is Carley Petesch.
Carley Petesch is an APS journalist based in Dakar Senegal and covering the whole of Africa.
She recently wrote and article on the airbase 201 in Agadez.
https://www.businessinsider.de/us-build ... ?r=US&IR=T
I tried to find her contact details, but could only retrieve her twitter account: https://twitter.com/carleypetesch
Thus, could not ask any more questions to her.
However, she was in person in Agadez on the 16.04, as indicated in the article and the original photos she took in person.
During her visit she interviewed the commanding officer of that base Brad Harbaugh.

Discussion:

While the source and truthfulness of the information could not be further verified, there are chances it came, if correctly transcribed, from the commanding officer of that base.


malikos

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

to understand with my aforementioned comments. too little. too late.
Niger : le ministre de l’Intérieur lie le massacre des 17 civils à Inatess à "des règlements de compte"
Share Tweet Share Share
Publié le lundi 21 mai 2018 | Xinhua
Mohamed
© Autre presse par DR
Mohamed Bazoum, le ministre de l’intérieur du Niger
Comment



Le ministre d’Etat nigérien de l’Intérieur et de la Sécurité publique Mohamed Bazoum a lié le massacre des 17 personnes vendredi dans un campement de nomades peuls de la commune d’Inatess (Ouest du pays, proche de la frontière malienne) à "des règlements de compte", dans une intervention dimanche sur la radio nationale.

Vendredi dernier, des jeunes venus à moto du Mali voisin et lourdement armés, ont attaqué et tué une dizaine de personnes devant la mosquée du campement d’Aghey, avant de se mettre à abattre froidement tous les villageois qui tentaient de se sauver, faisant au total 17 morts et un blessé grave.

Le ministre Bazoum s’est rendu samedi dans la localité, pour présenter les condoléances et témoigner la compassion du peuple nigérien aux familles des victimes, avant d’assister à leur enterrement.

Il a rassuré qu’"une réponse appropriée" sera trouvée à toutes les formes d’expression de banditisme armé qui s’attaquent à tous les citoyens, "pour amener la quiétude chez les populations qui sont apeurées".

Ces derniers temps, la tension est très vive dans cette zone frontalière au Mali et Niger, avec des dizaines de civils tués, appartenant essentiellement aux communautés touarègues et peules, dans des violences dont les milices armées créées par les deux communautés se rejettent la responsabilité.
http://news.aniamey.com/h/85791.html

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

A la Une: l’insécurité chronique au Sahel
RFI- Frédéric Couteau-mardi 22 mai 2018

Avec plusieurs incidents armés ces derniers jours. Tout d’abord, au Mali, au moins 12 personnes ont été tuées samedi à Boulikessi, localité située à la frontière avec le Burkina Faso. La presse malienne évoque une bavure de l’armée après la mort d’un soldat malien. Ses frères d’armes auraient répliqué en tirant sur des civils.
A la Une: l’insécurité chronique au Sahel
Des soldats maliens patrouillent à Menaka pendant la visite du Premier ministre le 9 mai 2018. AFP/Sebastien Rieussec
Non, affirment pour leur part les autorités maliennes, citées notamment par le site d’information Maliweb : « lors d’une patrouille de sécurisation de la foire hebdomadaire de Boulikessi, des soldats ont été accrochés par des terroristes. » Bilan : un soldat malien a été tué, douze terroristes neutralisés, et des motos et des vélos appartenant aux terroristes ont été détruits.

Qui dit vrai ? Bavure de l’armée ou véritable attaque terroriste ? Impossible à vérifier. C’est ce qui est sûr dans le Sahel, c’est que les populations ont parfois autant peur des terroristes ou des bandits que des soldats censés les protéger…

Peur des jihadistes et de… l’armée !

Exemple, au Burkina, avec ce rapport de Human Rights Watch intitulé Le jour, nous avons peur de l’armée, et la nuit des jihadistes.

« Un titre qui en dit long, s’exclame L’Observateur Paalga, sur la peur qui habite les populations de la partie septentrionale du pays. Une région prise depuis maintenant trois bonnes années entre les tentacules de la pieuvre djihadiste, coupable des pires abominations. En face, l’armée burkinabè ne serait pas non plus toute blanche. « Exécutions extrajudiciaires », « mauvais traitements », « arrestations arbitraires » de présumés terroristes sont en effet des griefs que retient Human Rights Watch contre nos Forces de défense et de sécurité, soupire le quotidien burkinabè, dans un document qui jette un pavé dans une mare déjà très ensanglantée : depuis 2016, le Burkina a subi 80 attaques qui ont fait plus de 130 morts. »

Et L’Observateur de prévenir : « le risque est qu’en voulant faire feu de tout bois, on fasse tomber des innocents sous les balles de leur propre armée et que cela entrave davantage la difficile collaboration entre les forces de l’ordre et les populations. Sans oublier que les victimes de ces bavures peuvent rejoindre les groupes terroristes par soif de vengeance. »

17 morts au Niger

Autre exaction, rapporté cette fois par Le Pays, toujours au Burkina : « la commune nigérienne d’Inatès a été endeuillée vendredi dernier, avec l’attaque massive et sans précédent d’un campement peul par des assaillants venus du Mali voisin. 17 personnes ont été tuées par des hommes lourdement armés et en mission commandée, puisque les victimes étaient, à ce qu’il paraît, exclusivement des Peuls. Selon les premiers témoignages recueillis sur place, cette attaque aurait été perpétrée par des Touaregs maliens, en guise de réponse du berger à la bergère, après l’exécution sommaire et de sang-froid, de dix-sept personnes issues de la communauté touarègue de la commune de Ménaka, par des combattants peuls qui se seraient par la suite évaporés dans la nature. »

Et Le Pays de déplorer qu’ « en plus des actions pernicieuses des groupes radicaux, on assiste de plus en plus à un cycle infernal de violence du fait du banditisme et surtout des vendettas, sur fond de conflits communautaires en latence depuis des décennies. Le pessimisme est d’autant plus grand, affirme le journal, que ces violences inter-ethniques ne sont pas seulement circonscrites aux régions de Ménaka au Mali et de Tillabéry au Niger. »

Enfin, pour en revenir à la situation spécifique du Mali, le journal Mali-Horizon pointe ce que d’aucuns considèrent comme une évidence : « trois ans après la signature de l’accord d’Alger, le document peine à s’appliquer, constate Mali-Horizon. Les attaques se multiplient et l’insécurité devient grandissante au Nord comme au Centre du pays. » Et ce, « même si on note certaines avancées, notamment l’opérationnalisation du Mécanisme opérationnel de coordination, à Gao et Kidal », avec la mise en place de patrouilles mixtes.

http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20180522-une ... ique-sahel

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

the article shows europs aims in niger-......
Africa: How Far Can Europe Push Back Its Borders? the Case of France in Niger

By Virginie Guiraudon, Réseau Français Des Instituts D?études Avancées (Rfiea)
Migration control is now "high politics" in Europe and a priority for the EU. For example, on May 2, 2018, the European Commission proposed that the budget for the management of external borders, migration and asylum - set at 13 billion euros for the period 2014-2020 - be raised to 34.9 billion euros.

The main goal is to stem migration flows by displacing the border as far as possible from EU territory. In this context, it may be worthwhile to analyse the initiatives of the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, who has vowed to weigh on EU decisions. What solutions does he propose and how can we assess them?

Hotspots in Niger

On July 27 2017, recently having been elected president, Macron spoke during a naturalisation ceremony in Orléans. He announced that France would create "hotspots" in the Sahel-Sahara region to sort out potential refugees and "economic migrants" and select the happy few who would be allowed to come to France to apply for asylum. These would established first in Agadez (Niger), and Chad, later possibly in Mali and Libya.

Macron stated that "people should live happily in their country of birth" and denounced "gullible" migrants manipulated by criminal networks who risk their lives in Libya or when crossing the Mediterranean Sea to come to Europe, yet were unlikely to ever get refugee status.

In so doing, he failed to acknowledge that leaving one's country is a right enshrined in international law since 1948 - article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Moreover, African states are sovereign and not mandated to prevent emigration to Europe.

Macron's speech also misconstrues migration dynamics in Africa. As noted in 2017 by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and EUDESA, Africans primarily move within the continent, where they constitute 80% of the 18 million migrants.



There are 9 million Africans in Europe compared to 20 million European citizens who moved within Europe itself. The numbers contradict alarmist projections, including that by Steven Smith, recently analysed in The Conversation.

It thus seems relevant to explain why Macron wants to sort out bona fide and mala fide migrants in Agadez and assess the implications.

The Libyan turn

Since the 1999 EU Tampere summit, the EU has relied on certain countries bordering the Mediterranean to contain unwanted migrants. States like France and Italy wanted to reinstate Libya in this role if it could serve as a buffer state. In 2008, negotiations for the EU-Libya framework agreement on migration were launched.

But in 2011 France called for a military intervention by an international coalition to oust Libyan leader Muhammad Gaddafi. The ensuing chaos had dire consequences. In 2012, looking for a quick fix, a diplomatic mission called EUCAP was sent south of Libya, in Niger, with an annual budget of 26 million euros with the idea that it would become, in effect, the new EU border. By 2016, the EU funded an IOM information office in Agadez whose role was to persuade sub-Saharan nationals to return home if they could.

Remote control policy

Macron's idea of a hotspot in Agadez is thus a unilateral initiative but also a continuation of the EU policy. It is part of a "remote control" policy established in the 1990s to deter the arrival of migrants on European soil.

Policy instruments have included visas, carrier sanctions, outsourcing bordering to transit and source countries, and ultimately the establishment of migrant camps in Italy and Greece. It thus reduces migration to a "problem" whose solution is a question of logistics. Setting up a centre in Agadez is typical of this technical view.




In the meantime, Macron tried to showcase a different aspect of France's migration policies, stating that the country would welcome 3,000 refugees stranded in Niger and Chad by 2019.

In November 2017, the French asylum office known as OFPRA interviewed 72 persons pre-selected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Niamey (Niger) and 25 were allowed to come to France. The migrants were mainly from the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan. OFPRA officers came back in February 2018 to interview an additional 84 persons.

Agadez is no haven

Agadez, a market town of 125,000 inhabitants and once a tourist destination, has for decades been a transit city for many seasonal workers or refugees heading to Libya.

After the fall of Gaddafi, the town became an important smuggling hub. The area north of Agadez is controlled by the Toubou clan and the low-paid Nigerian policemen accept money from smugglers. Agadez is now also a return hub for migrants escaping Libyan detention camps or turned away at the Algerian border. In early May 2018, the IOM reported that 1,500 persons from Cameroon or Guinea expelled from Algeria had arrived in Agadez.

In this complex context, reactions to the French decision to set up a "hotspot" in Agadez are mixed at best. Local authorities fear that it will attract more migrants, and according to Issouf Maha, representing the Agadez regional executive, only a few of those hoping to go to France will be accepted. While migrants usually only stay a week or two and are welcome as consumers by local businesses, the longer presence of those who are turned down by French authorities could prove strenuous on resources such as water and electricity.

Civil-society actors, including human rights activist Rachid Kollo of the Cadre d'action pour la démocratie et les droits de l'homme, are also angry that local officials were not consulted. The decision to create the hotspot came directly from President Issoufou Mahamadou, whom Kollo considers to be Macron's vassal.



Local actors think the French hotspot will bring more problems than it will solve, and also raises broader issues such as democratic legitimacy. One major question regards French interference in African affairs.

A clash of values

The French hotspot is indeed a perfect illustration of the lack of acknowledgement of African states' sovereignty.

If Europeans can move within the EU, why shouldn't African citizens be able to move within their own region? In fact, in 1979, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted a protocol on the "free movement of persons, residence and establishment" and an additional protocol in 1986 that implies that the citizens of the fifteen ECOWAS member states who travel and stay in Agadez do so freely and legally. ECOWAS migrants who will not be selected to go to France by French authorities should thus not be detained or expelled from Niger.

Besides, the French attitude toward some populations fleeing to Agadez is ambiguous. For instance, Sudanese fleeing an internationally recognised criminal regime are stopped at the border by Janjaweed militiamen who participated in war crimes in Darfur. They are now part of the official border authority in Sudan under the name Rapid Support Forces and are even supported by the EU. In 2017, some of these Sudanese border guards even came to detention centres for irregular migrants in France to look for regime dissidents. So what will happen to the Sudanese who apply to go seek asylum in France at the Agadez "hotspot"?

While there is little debate about the fact that "something needs to be done" given the number of people on the road seeking a haven in the Sahel and Sahara region, the question is on which premises and how? In the end, a French "hotspot" centre in Agadez is not so much a logistical solution as the epitome of the attitude of EU member states in relation to Africa: diplomatic condescension, collaboration with dictatorial regimes and an ignorance of local stakeholders.

Effort to Improve Child Health Is Having Teething Problems

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

I d love to get those answers as well:

What are you doing there?
How do you help people?
Are there any limits to your engagements? Ever?
and most important. When do you leave?
Democratic senator presses Pompeo on US forces in Niger
Zachary CohenElise Labott-Profile-Image
By Zachary Cohen and Elise Labott, CNN

Updated 1653 GMT (0053 HKT) May 22, 2018
Video reveals details of deadly Niger ambush




Video reveals details of deadly Niger ambush 01:59
Washington (CNN)Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants answers from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the presence of US troops in Niger after four American service members were killed during an ambush by ISIS fighters there in October.

CNN has obtained a copy of the letter Menendez sent Tuesday to Pompeo inquiring about US policy and objectives in Niger as President Donald Trump's top diplomat prepares to brief the entire committee on the issue this week.
Military investigation finds series of failures led to deadly Niger ambush
Military investigation finds series of failures led to deadly Niger ambush
"The State Department has responsibility for formulating and executing US foreign policy. Congress has a responsibility to ensure that military operations that put our men and women in uniform in harm's way support our diplomatic effort," the letter said.
"I hope you will be able to provide the Committee with a full understanding of our efforts in Niger, including the authorities under which US personnel are are operating," it said.
Specifically, Menendez wants Pompeo to answer the following questions:
"AFRICOM has stated that the soldiers who were killed in Niger in October were operating under Title 10 Authorities. Under which specific chapter and section of Title 10 were they operating? In what other countries do these legal authorities provide the basis for missions by the US military?"
"What military actions, if any, does the Executive Branch believe are, and are not, permitted under existing train, equip, and advise and accompany authorities? In what other countries do these legal authorities provide the basis for missions by the US military?"
"Was our Ambassador in Niger made aware that an inaccurate concept of operations for the mission was sent up the military chain of command? What procedures are in place to ensure Chiefs of Mission have adequate information about what has been approve by the military chain of command and at what level the approval was granted?"
"Is there a procedure in place through which our Chiefs of Mission can be sure that our country partners are in fact in the lead in missions; are fully briefed in advance of operations; and are being accompanied by US soldiers rather than led by US soldiers?"
"Is there a whole-of-government strategy for Niger that includes adequate emphasis on diplomacy and development? What are our main diplomatic and development goals in Niger and how do they dovetail with the deployment of US troops?"
"How long are US Armed Forces to remain deployed in Niger, and what diplomatic and development achievements are hoped to be achieved by the end of deployment?"
Menendez's letter comes on the heels of a Pentagon report was released earlier this month that determined a series of failures and deficiencies, including a lack of adequate training, contributed to the October ambush.

New details reveal slain US soldier's harrowing last stand
New details reveal slain US soldier's harrowing last stand
The Americans killed in the attack were Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright and Sgt. La David T. Johnson. Niger has not released the names of its soldiers who were killed in the attack.
"The investigation identifies individual, organizational, and institutional failures and deficiencies that contributed to the tragic events of 4 October 2017," a summary of a months-long military investigation into the incident said.
The United States has previously acknowledged it has troops there. But it's never gone into much detail.
In 2013, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had deployed 100 military personnel to Niger.
Since then, the number of US troops in the nation has risen to about 800.
Small groups of US special operations forces advise local troops as they battle Boko Haram and al Qaeda.
CNN's Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne contributed to this report
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/22/poli ... index.html

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

I start to lose oversight. the western toops and organisations active in the region are more diverse than the groups they fight.
What an approach, everybody cooking its own soup: MINUSMA, Barkane, G5, EUCAP, US-Africom....
EUCAP Sahel Niger : le nouveau chef de mission arrive aujourd’hui
23 MAI 2018 PUBLIÉ DANS POLITIQUE

Frank Van Der Mueren EUCAP Sahel Niger
M.Frank Van der Mueren, haut fonctionnaire de police belge, est nommé Chef de la mission de l’Union européenne, EUCAP Sahel Niger
Communiqué de presse - M.Frank Van der Mueren, haut fonctionnaire de police belge, est nommé Chef de la mission de l’Union européenne, EUCAP Sahel Niger. Il prendra fonction le 24 mai 2018, en remplacement de Mme Kirsi Henriksson, qui avait occupé ce poste depuis 2016.
EUCAP Sahel Niger a été lancée en 2012 pour soutenir le renforcement des capacités des intervenants nigériens en matière de sécurité. La mission fournit des conseils et des formations afin d'aider les autorités nigériennes. Elle contribue à mettre en place une approche intégrée, cohérente, durable et fondée sur les droits de l'homme en matière de lutte contre le terrorisme et la criminalité organisée entre les différents intervenants nigériens dans le domaine de la sécurité. Depuis 2015, EUCAP Sahel Niger a renforcé son assistance dans les régions du Niger avec un accent particulier sur la région d'Agadez, à travers l’implantation d’une antenne permanente inaugurée le 29 avril 2016.
Le 18 juillet 2016, le mandat de la mission a été adapté afin que celle-ci aide également les autorités centrales et locales ainsi que les forces de sécurité du Niger à élaborer des politiques, des techniques et des procédures pour mieux maîtriser et combattre la migration irrégulière et les activités criminelles associées.


De septembre 2016 à avril 2018 Frank Van der Mueren était détaché au sein de la mission EUCAP Sahel Mali, en tant que chef de mission adjoint et chef d'état-major. Auparavant, il avait déjà travaillé pour la mission EUCAP Sahel Niger entre 2012 et 2014 ; de 2006 à 2012 il travaillait à la Police judiciaire de Bruxelles; de 2001 à 2006 il travaillait aux Unités spéciales Police fédérale ; de 1988 à 2001 il travaillait à la Brigade nationale de lutte contre le crime grave et le crime organisé; et de 1985 à 1988 il travaillait à l’Ecole de Police et Unité de Police Judiciaire.
La décision de le nommer a officiellement été prise par le Comité politique et de sécurité de l'UE le 2 mai 2018.

23 mai 2018
Source : http://www.anp.ne/

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

more and more details come up and the more it resembles to elements we saw already elsewhere..
Foreign mercenaries in new scramble for Africa and the Sahel
#Mercenaries
Private military firms from the US, Russia, France and the UK, among others, are moving in to provide 'solutions' for national governments


American soldiers on exercise with Nigerian forces. The US military uses private contractors for a range of services in Africa (US army)
Akram Kharief's picture
Akram Kharief
Thursday 24 May 2018 14:00 UTC
Last update: Thursday 24 May 2018 14:53 UTC
reddit googleplus 594
Topics: Mercenaries
Tags: Sahel, Wagner Group, Africa, US, Sudan, Mali
Show comments
They guard mines, train the bodyguards of African presidents and provide security support to UN operations. And increasingly, behind every foreign soldier in the Sahel today, you will find a private military contractor.

Unable to set up permanent bases in Africa, the US army's African command, Africom, is headquartered in Germany and is now reliant on private companies for a range of services - intelligence, transport, logistics, medical evacuation, and sometimes more combat-focused missions.

The 4 October 2017 ambush of an American special forces group in Niger hints at how close those relationships are. Nine soldiers, including four American Green Berets, were killed in the attack by more than 100 fighters aligned to the Islamic State (IS) group.



A Pentagon investigation report into the attack says eight American special forces operators, two other American soldiers and a "intelligence contractor", whose identity and nationality were not revealed, were present.

Drone images showed wounded soldiers being rescued by a Bell 214 civilian helicopter, which belongs to the private company Erickson.

Another private military transport company, Berry Aviation, was put on alert according to researcher and author Joseph Trevithick.

On its website, Berry Aviation makes no secret of its commitment in Africa alongside the US army for freight and passenger transport, parachuting and combat medical evacuations.


In short, it was enough for one mission to go wrong to reveal the names of three private military companies.


A plane used by Berry Aviation in Africa (supplied)
For Africom alone, 21 American firms advertise themselves as military service providers in North Africa and the Sahel.

But US firms are not the only one present - dozens of other companies, including from France, the UK, Russia and Ukraine, operate in the area. Their missions range from cooking to armed intervention.

Russia moves into Africa

The Russian private military company, Wagner Group, is gaining a foothold in Africa.

On 24 March, the company took possession of former president Jean-Bedel Bokassa's house in the Central African Republic and transformed it into a centre to train thousands of soldiers for the reconstituted national army.

The appearance of Russian instructors had been preceded in 2017 by arms deliveries from Moscow, which caused upheavals at the UN. France and the US said Russia was violating an international arms embargo applied after the 2013 violence responsible for hundreds of deaths in Central Africa. The UN however signed off on the shipments.

Behind the scenes, it is also reported that Wagner mercenaries were assigned to the close protection of the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, while another group was in charge of the security of the country's main diamond mine.


The Russian contractor Wagner Group protects gold, diamond and uranium mines on behalf of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir (AFP)
Wagner's men are reported to already be operating in Sudan, protecting gold, diamond and uranium mines on behalf of President Omar al-Bashir.

According to Igor Strelkov, a Russian army veteran currently sanctioned by the EU for his leading role in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, Wagner was "preparing a mission to South Sudan, and now a search for Soviet-era specialists and translators has begun".

From Libya to Ivory Coast
Other Russian military companies operate in Libya. According to the Russian blog BMPD, the Russian military company RSB sent a demining team to the Benghazi area. Russian private agents also trained soldiers of the Libyan general Khalifa Haftar at the Egyptian base of Sidi Barrani near the Libyan border, according to the Russian blog.

Ukrainian companies also operate in the Sahel. In Mali, Ukrainian helicopters provided airborne medical evacuation support to the UN mission to Mali, UNMISMA, for two years. They are also active in Sudan, Congo and Ivory Coast.

The private military company Omega Consulting Group opened a subsidiary in Burkina Faso and sent several men to the country. Recently, the company recruited French-speaking "operators" with solid combat experience.

Andrei Kekbalo, the head of the company, said in an interview with BBC Ukraine that the salaries offered by his company ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 a month, depending on the danger of the missions.

For positions in Burkina Faso, Omega Consulting Group requires experienced profiles. Experience in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Africa is rewarded with $14,000 a month.

Today, guerrilla warfare in the Sahel region has become a real business for many actors who sometimes act in total obscurity and on the margins of international legality.

North African countries worry increasingly about this trend while they watching the security situation completely escape their control

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

Peace and security challenges in Africa’s Sahel region require ‘holistic approach’, says UN official
Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations (left), briefs the Security Council on the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel.UN Photo/Cia Pak
Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations (left), briefs the Security Council on the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel.

23 May 2018
Peace and Security
A “holistic approach” is needed to the address peace and security challenges in Africa’s vast Sahel region, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council on Wednesday, calling for more investment in better government, social services and youth opportunities.



Briefing Council members on when the new multinational security force established by five Sahel countries - known as the G5-Sahel Joint Force - might become operational, Bintou Keita, the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said that combatting terrorism and transnational organized crime, remained the major challenge.

“Let us not forget those who suffer the most, the local population - civilians - who continue to be intimidated and harassed and live in fear for their lives on a daily basis; who cannot send their children to school or have their most basic needs met, including access to food and nutrition,” he said.

Ms. Keita added that since the authorization of the Joint Force by the African Union last April, and the renewal of its mandate last month, “notable progress” has been made, including the deployment of troops on the ground, and setting up of command posts and sector headquarters.

“Nonetheless, a lot of work remains ahead of us. The operationalization of the Joint Force has incurred delays and has yet to attain full operational capability,” she said, calling on G5 Sahel member States to deploy remaining troops as soon as possible.

She also underlined the importance of addressing recent reports of human rights violations by security forces in the region and called on the countries to establish a human rights and international humanitarian law compliance framework that could be rapidly put into operation.

In her remarks, while Ms. Keita applauded the international community for their support to the Joint Force, she said that keeping it running would require “perpetual resource generation efforts” and that in the medium to long term, it will be challenging to sustain the funding momentum.

“What is more, the United Nations will continue to depend on others, to be able to implement the support measures it has been mandated to provide to the G5-Sahel Joint Force by Security Council Resolution 2391 (2017),” she said.

In that resolution, the Council requested the Secretary‑General to conclude a technical agreement among the UN, the European Union and G5 Sahel States – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – with a view to providing operational and logistical support through the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) to the joint force conducting cross‑border counter‑terrorist operations across the region.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/05/1010532

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

some good insights into the US strategy and future of drone employment within the "war on people/terror" .
We say terror, but there are people who die. That abstraction of people to terror, already hides the truth that unlawfully people are killed.
At leat call it alleged terrorists. Without trial, you can not even call them terrorists.
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Recognizing the Camel's Nose
Posted by Rebecca Gordon at 8:02am, May 24, 2018.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.




Email Print
Six years ago, in late May 2012, I read a New York Times piece by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” They reported that President Obama was then overseeing a “regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room” at which potential al-Qaeda suspects -- their biographies on sardonically named “baseball cards” -- were “nominated” for a global “kill list.” Their killings were then to be carried out by the CIA’s force of Hellfire missile-armed Predator (and later Reaper) drones, which had essentially become the president’s private air force.

Those “targeted killings” were, of course, assassinations, which should have but didn’t shock the nation. In response, I wrote this at the time: “Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” And I pointed out that, though American presidents had long been associated with assassinations (ranging from plots against Cuba’s Fidel Castro to the deaths of Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem and Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba, not to speak of the CIA’s vast Vietnam War-era Phoenix Program), presidents had generally tried to stay above the fray and maintain at least plausible deniability when it came to such acts. No longer. In 2012, the president of the United States took on the mantle of assassin-in-chief and, as long as that drone program continues, will be so, whether we’re talking about Donald Trump or any future president.

As I wrote then, assassination had been “thoroughly institutionalized, normalized, and bureaucratized around the figure of the president. Without the help of or any oversight from the American people or their elected representatives, he alone is now responsible for regular killings thousands of miles away, including those of civilians and even children. He is, in other words, if not a king, at least the king of American assassinations. On that score, his power is total and completely unchecked.”

In May 2018, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon reports, nothing has changed on this score, except for the worse -- and worse yet, the subject of presidential assassination isn’t even up for discussion or debate in the Trump era. It is indeed the norm. It is who our president is, whomever the American people elect -- and so, who we are. Think about that as you read Gordon’s grim report on the most recent chapters in America’s now seemingly never-ending drone wars. Tom

Trump Drones On
How Unpiloted Aircraft Expand the War on Terror
By Rebecca Gordon

They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world -- in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa, even the Philippines -- the appearance of U.S. drones in the sky (and on the ground) is often Washington’s equivalent of the camel’s nose entering a new theater of operations in this country’s forever war against “terror.” Sometimes, however, the drones are more like the camel's tail, arriving after less visible U.S. military forces have been in an area for a while.

Scrambling for Africa

AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s Africa Command, is building Air Base 201 in Agadez, a town in the nation of Niger. The $110 million installation, which officially opens later this year, will be able to house both C-17 transport planes and MQ-9 Reaper armed drones. It will soon become the new centerpiece in an undeclared U.S. war in West Africa. Even before the base opens, armed U.S. drones are already flying from Niger’s capital, Niamey, having received permission from the Nigerien government to do so last November.

Despite crucial reporting by Nick Turse and others, most people in this country only learned of U.S. military activities in Niger in 2017 (and had no idea that about 800 U.S. military personnel were already stationed in the country) when news broke that four U.S. soldiers had died in an October ambush there. It turns out, however, that they weren't the only U.S soldiers involved in firefights in Niger. This March, the Pentagon acknowledged that another clash took place last December between Green Berets and a previously unknown group identified as ISIS-West Africa. For those keeping score at home on the ever-expanding enemies list in Washington’s war on terror, this is a different group from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), responsible for the October ambush. Across Africa, there have been at least eight other incidents, most of them in Somalia.

What are U.S. forces doing in Niger? Ostensibly, they are training Nigerien soldiers to fight the insurgent groups rapidly multiplying in and around their country. Apart from the uranium that accounts for over 70% of Niger’s exports, there’s little of economic interest to the United States there. The real appeal is location, location, location. Landlocked Niger sits in the middle of Africa’s Sahel region, bordered by Mali and Burkina Faso on the west, Chad on the east, Algeria and Libya to the north, and Benin and Nigeria to the south. In other words, Niger has the misfortune to straddle a part of Africa of increasing strategic interest to the United States.

In addition to ISIS-West Africa and ISGS, actual or potential U.S. targets there include Boko Haram (born in Nigeria and now spread to Mali and Chad), ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Libya, and Al Mourabitoun, based primarily in Mali.

At the moment, for instance, U.S. drone strikes on Libya, which have increased under the Trump administration, are generally launched from a base in Sicily. However, drones at the new air base in Agadez will be able to strike targets in all these countries.

Suppose a missile happens to kill some Nigerien civilians by mistake (not exactly uncommon for U.S. drone strikes elsewhere)? Not to worry: AFRICOM is covered. A U.S.-Niger Status of Forces Agreement guarantees that there won’t be any repercussions. In fact, according to the agreement, “The Parties waive any and all claims... against each other for damage to, loss, or destruction of the other’s property or injury or death to personnel of either Party’s armed forces or their civilian personnel.” In other words, the United States will not be held responsible for any “collateral damage” from Niger drone strikes. Another clause in the agreement shields U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors from any charges under Nigerien law.

The introduction of armed drones to target insurgent groups is part of AFRICOM’s expansion of the U.S. footprint on a continent of increasing strategic interest to Washington. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European nations engaged in the “scramble for Africa," a period of intense and destructive competition for colonial possessions on the continent. In the post-colonial 1960s and 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence in African countries as diverse as Egypt and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Today, despite AFRICOM’s focus on the war on terror, the real jockeying for influence and power on the continent is undoubtedly between this country and the People’s Republic of China. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trade partner in 2009” and has never looked back. “Beijing has steadily diversified its business interests in Africa,” the Council’s 2017 backgrounder continues, noting that from Angola to Kenya,

“China has participated in energy, mining, and telecommunications industries and financed the construction of roads, railways, ports, airports, hospitals, schools, and stadiums. Investment from a mixture of state and private funds has also set up tobacco, rubber, sugar, and sisal plantations... Chinese investment in Africa also fits into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s development framework, ‘One Belt, One Road.’”

For example, in a bid to corner the DRC’s cobalt and copper reserves (part of an estimated $24 trillion in mineral wealth there), two Chinese companies have formed Sicomines, a partnership with the Congolese government’s national mining company. The Pulitzer Center reports that Sicomines is expected “to extract 6.8 million tons of copper and 427,000 tons of cobalt over the next 25 years.” Cobalt is essential in the manufacture of today’s electronic devices -- from cell phones to drones -- and more than half of the world’s supply lies underground in the DRC.

Even before breaking ground on Air Base 201 in Niger, the United States already had a major drone base in Africa, in the tiny country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. From there, the Pentagon has been directing strikes against targets in Yemen and Somalia. As AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser told Congress in March, "Djibouti is a very strategic location for us." Camp Lemonnier, as the base is known, occupies almost 500 acres near the Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. U.S. Central Command, Special Operations Command, European Command, and Transportation Command all use the base. At present, however, it appears that U.S. drones stationed in Djibouti and bound for Yemen and Somalia take off from nearby Chabelley Airfield, as Bard College's Center for the Study of the Drone reports.

To the discomfort of the U.S. military, the Chinese have recently established their first base in Africa, also in Djibouti, quite close to Camp Lemonnier. That country is also horning in on potential U.S. sales of drones to other countries. Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab emirates are among U.S. allies known to have purchased advanced Chinese drones.

The Means Justify the End?

From the beginning, the CIA’s armed drones have been used primarily to kill specific individuals. The Bush administration launched its global drone assassination program in October 2001 in Afghanistan, expanded it in 2002 to Yemen, and later to other countries. Under President Barack Obama, White House oversight of such assassinations only gained momentum (with an official “kill list” and regular “terror Tuesday” meetings to pick targets). The use of drones expanded 10-fold, with growing numbers of attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, as well as in the Afghan, Iraqi, and Syrian war zones. Early on, targets were generally people identified as al-Qaeda leaders or “lieutenants.” In later years, the kill lists grew to include supposed leaders or members of a variety of other terror organizations, and eventually even unidentified people engaged in activities that were to bear the “signature” of terrorist activity.

But those CIA drones, destructive as they were (leaving civilian dead, including children, in their wake) were just the camel’s nose -- a way to smuggle in a major change in U.S. policy. We’ve grown so used to murder by drone in the last 17 years that we’ve lost sight of an important fact: such assassinations represented a fundamental (and unlawful) change in U.S. military strategy. Because unpiloted airplanes eliminate the physical risk to American personnel, the United States has embraced a strategy of global extrajudicial executions: presidential assassinations on foreign soil.

It’s a case of the means justifying the end. The drones work so well at so little cost (to us) that it must be all right to kill people with them.

Successive administrations have implemented this strategic change with little public discussion. Critiques of the drone program tend to focus -- not unreasonably -- on the many additional people (like family members) who are injured or die along with the intended targets, and on civilians who should never have been targets in the first place. But few critics point out that executing foreign nationals without trial in other countries is itself wrong and illegal under U.S. law, as well as that of other countries where some of the attacks have taken place, and of course, international law.


How have the Bush, Obama, and now Trump administrations justified such killings? The same way they justified the expansion of the war on terror itself to new battle zones around the world -- through Congress’s September 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). That law permitted the president

“to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Given that many of the organizations the United States is targeting with drones today didn’t even exist when that AUMF was enacted and so could hardly have "authorized" or "aided" in the 9/11 attacks, it offers, at best, the thinnest of coverage indeed for such a worldwide program.

Droning On and On

George W. Bush launched the CIA’s drone assassination program and that was just the beginning. Even as Barack Obama attempted to reduce the number of U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, he ramped up the use of drones, famously taking personal responsibility for targeting decisions. By some estimates, he approved 10 times as many drone attacks as Bush.

In 2013, the Obama administration introduced new guidelines for drone strikes, supposedly designed to guarantee with “near certainty” the safety of civilians. Administration officials also attempted to transfer most of the operational responsibility for drone attacks from the CIA to the military’s only-slightly-less-secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Although the number of CIA strikes did drop, the Agency remained in a position to rev up its program at any time, as the Washington Post reported in 2016:

“U.S. officials emphasized that the CIA has not been ordered to disarm its fleet of drones, and that its aircraft remain deeply involved in counterterrorism surveillance missions in Yemen and Syria even when they are not unleashing munitions.”

It’s indicative of how easily drone killings have become standard operating procedure that, in all the coverage of the confirmation hearings for the CIA’s new director, Gina Haspel, there was copious discussion of the Agency’s torture program, but not a public mention of, let alone a serious question about, its drone assassination campaign. It’s possible the Senate Intelligence Committee discussed it in their classified hearing, but the general public has no way of knowing Haspel’s views on the subject.

However, it shouldn’t be too hard to guess. It’s clear, for instance, that President Trump has no qualms about the CIA’s involvement in drone killings. When he visited the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the day after his inauguration, says the Post, “Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. ‘If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,’ he said.” At that same meeting, CIA officials played a tape of a drone strike for him, showing how they’d held off until the target had stepped far enough away from the house that the missile would miss it (and so its occupants). His only question: “Why did you wait?”

You may recall that, while campaigning, the president told Fox News that the U.S. should actually be targeting certain civilians. “The other thing with the terrorists,” he said, “is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families.” In other words, he seemed eager to make himself a future murderer-in-chief.

How, then, has U.S. drone policy fared under Trump? The New York Times has reported major changes to Obama-era policies. Both the CIA’s and the military’s “kill lists” will no longer be limited to key insurgent leaders, but expanded to include “foot-soldier jihadists with no special skills or leadership roles.” The Times points out that this “new approach would appear to remove some obstacles for possible strikes in countries where Qaeda- or Islamic State-linked militants are operating, from Nigeria to the Philippines.” And no longer will attack decisions only be made at the highest levels of government. The requirement for having a “near certainty” of avoiding civilian casualties -- always something of a fiction -- officially remains in place for now, but we know how seriously Trump takes such constraints.

He’s already overseen the expansion of the drone wars in other ways. In general, that “near certainty” constraint doesn’t apply to officially designated war zones (“areas of active hostility”), where the lower standard of merely avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties prevails. In March 2017, Trump approved a Pentagon request to identify large parts of Yemen and Somalia as areas of “active hostility,” allowing leeway for far less carefully targeted strikes in both places. At the time, however, AFRICOM head General Thomas D. Waldhauser said he would maintain the “near certainty” standard in Somalia for now (which, as it happens, hasn’t stopped Somali civilians from dying by drone strike).

Another change affects the use of drones in Pakistan and potentially elsewhere. Past drone strikes in Pakistan officially targeted people believed to be “high value” al-Qaeda figures, on the grounds that they (like all al-Qaeda leaders) represented an “imminent threat” to the United States. However, as a 2011 Justice Department paper explained, imminence is in the eye of the beholder: “With respect to al-Qaeda leaders who are continually planning attacks, the United States is likely to have only a limited window of opportunity within which to defend Americans.” In other words, once identified as an al-Qaeda leader or the leader of an allied group, you are by definition “continually planning attacks” and always represent an imminent danger, making you a permanent legitimate target.

Under Trump, however, U.S. drones are not only going after those al-Qaeda targets permitted under the 2001 AUMF, but also targeting Afghan Taliban across the border in Pakistan. In other words, these drone strikes are not a continuation of counterterrorism as envisioned under the AUMF, but rather an extension of a revitalized U.S. war in Afghanistan. In general, the law of war allows attacks on a neutral country’s territory only if soldiers chase an enemy across the border in “hot pursuit.” So the use of drones to attack insurgent groups inside Pakistan represents an unacknowledged escalation of the U.S. Afghan War. Another corner of the tent lifted by the camel’s nose?

Transparency about U.S. wars in general, and airstrikes in particular, has also suffered under Trump. The administration, for instance, announced in March that it had used a drone to kill “Musa Abu Dawud, a high-ranking official in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” as the New York Times reported. However, the Times continued, “questions about whether the American military, under the Trump administration, is blurring the scope of operations in Africa were raised... when it was revealed that the U.S. had carried out four airstrikes in Libya from September to January that the Africa Command did not disclose at the time.”

Similarly, the administration has been less than forthcoming about its activities in Yemen. As the Business Insider reports (in a story updated from the Long War Journal), the U.S. has attacked al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) there repeatedly, but “of the more than 114 strikes against AQAP in Yemen, CENTCOM has only provided details on four, all of which involved high value targets.” Because Trump has loosened the targeting restrictions for Yemen, it’s likely that the other strikes involved low-level targets, whose identity we won’t know.

Just Security, an online roundtable based at New York University, reports the total number of airstrikes there in 2017 as 120. They investigated eight of these and “found that U.S. operations were responsible for the deaths of at least 32 civilians -- including 16 children and six women -- and injured 10 others, including five children.” Yemeni civilians had a suggestion for how the United States could help them avoid becoming collateral damage: give them “a list of wanted individuals. A list that is clear and available to the public so that they can avoid targeted individuals, protect their children, and not allow U.S. targets to have a presence in their areas.”

A 2016 executive order requires that the federal director of national intelligence issue an annual report by May 1st on the previous year’s civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes outside designated “active hostility” zones. As yet, the Trump administration has not filed the 2017 report.

Bigger and Better Camels Coming Soon to a Tent Near You

This March, a jubilant Fox News reported that the Marine Corps is planning to build a fancy new drone, called the MUX, for Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System-Expeditionary. This baby will sport quite a set of bells and whistles, as Fox marveled:

“The MUX will terrify enemies of the United States, and with good reason. The aircraft won't be just big and powerful: it will also be ultra-smart. This could be a heavily armed drone that takes off, flies, avoids obstacles, adapts and lands by itself -- all without a human piloting it.”

In other words, “the MUX will be a drone that can truly run vital missions all by itself.”

Between pulling out of the Iran agreement and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Trump has made it clear that -- despite his base’s chants of “Nobel! Nobel!” -- he has no interest whatsoever in peace. It looks like the future of the still spreading war on terror under Trump is as clear as MUX.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, and Nick Turse's Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead.

Copyright 2018 Rebecca Gordon
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176427

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

and since we are talking about drones, just another US-drone base facing south.
Probably to cover every inch in Libya.
THREATS “FROM THE SOUTH” PROMPT U.S. TO BASE DRONES IN GREECE FOR THE FIRST TIME
Nick Turse
May 24 2018, 11:51 p.m.
Photo: U.S. Air Force
AS PART OF its ongoing expansion of operations in and around Africa, the U.S. military has recently begun operating drones from a Greek airfield.

MQ-9 Reapers, the more advanced replacement for the venerable Predator drone, deployed last month to Larissa air base in eastern Greece near the Aegean Sea “on a temporary basis as they transition to a different location,” according to Auburn Davis, the chief of media operations for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, who noted that the remotely piloted aircraft, or RPA, are unarmed and engaged in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions known as ISR.

“This is the first time that ISR capabilities have been temporarily deployed to Greece,” Davis told The Intercept. Due to “operational security considerations,” the Air Force declined to release details about the missions for which they’ll be used beyond referencing “foreign policy security objectives in the region, specifically to address threats emanating from the south.” The Reaper drones are ordinarily based in Africa, according to Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon.

“The U.S. has previously deployed drones or drone operations support personnel to Italy and Tunisia to support operations over Libya. This deployment to Larissa, Greece, is also most probably in support of U.S. objectives in Libya, where the U.S. has for several years used drones to mitigate the threats posed by Islamic militant groups and to support local partners,” Dan Gettinger, co-founder and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, told The Intercept. The U.S. has conducted at least nine airstrikes in Libya since President Donald Trump took office.

Join Our Newsletter
Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
I’m in
The U.S. has also built an extensive network of airfields and bases across the northern tier of Africa, flying drones out of Djibouti, Cameroon, Tunisia, and Niger in recent years. The U.S. is currently expanding an air base in Agadez, Niger for more extensive operations by MQ-9 Reapers. As The Intercept first reported in 2016, Niger was the “only country in NW Africa willing to allow basing of MQ-9s,” according to formerly secret U.S. military documents. The documents went on to note: “President expressed willingness to support armed RPAs.” The temporary nature of the deployment “could be related to the fact that the opening of the U.S. drone base at Agadez, Niger, has faced delays,” Gettinger told The Intercept.

In its hunter-killer capacity, the Reaper can be armed with Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, laser-guided bombs, and joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs: conventional “dumb” bombs that have been converted into guided “smart” bombs. In ISR operations, such as those to be launched from Greece, the MQ-9 can fly for up to 14 hours at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet, according to Air Force and Pentagon documents.

The deployment of U.S. drones to Greece was first reported by the To Vima, a local newspaper. According to their sources, Greece and the United States are relying on either a 1992 military cooperation agreement, “or one of 100 other bilateral agreements, as the legal basis for the stationing of the drones, without requiring approval from the Greek parliament.” The MQ-9 Reapers, according to Davis, “only transit through Greece on routes that have been approved by the Greece government.”

The tilt toward the Hellenic Republic comes at a time of strained relations between the U.S. and Greece’s neighbor and rival Turkey following the 2016 coup attempt by members of the Turkish military.

Earlier this year, top Greek military officials met with Gen. Tod Wolters, the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, to discuss “further strengthening of our air force-to-air force relationship,” according to Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Greece. Just last week, while praising Greece’s military and emphasizing its partnership with U.S. armed forces, Pyatt said, “It’s been a path-breaking year in our military relationship.”

Larissa air base now joins other European localesm including Miroslawiec air base in Poland, Sigonella air base in Italy, and Incirlik air base in Turkey, among others, that host MQ-9 Reapers.

Top photo: An MQ-9 Reaper on a ramp in Afghanistan on Sept. 31, 2015.https://theintercept.com/2018/05/24/us- ... es-greece/

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

How Drones Expand the War on Terror

They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world — in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa, even the Philippines — the appearance of U.S. drones in the sky (and on the ground) is often Washington’s equivalent of the camel’s nose entering a new theater of operations in this country’s forever war against “terror.” Sometimes, however, the drones are more like the camel’s tail, arriving after less visible U.S. military forces have been in an area for a while.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-u ... on-terror/
similar article posted
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Recognizing the Camel's Nose
Posted by Rebecca Gordon at 8:02am, May 24, 2018.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

The article is Ok, but the headline! Oh my God.
Compared to what brought he coaltion to the region, gaddafi brought peace and prosperity. Blaming a dead man, for the shortsightness of your (US) actions....chuzpe! That is a flat statement from a leading member of the flat earth society.... :lol:
Gadhafi regime's legacy fuels violence in west Africa

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari speaks during a news conference with President Donald Trump, who is not pictured, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on April 30, 2018.

AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG

Email Print Reddit Tweet Share Pinterest More
By DULUE MBACHU AND YINKA IBUKUN | Bloomberg | Published: May 23, 2018

Centuries-old communal tensions across West Africa are taking an increasingly bloody turn, fueled by competition for land and water and an influx of weapons and fighters from Libya.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed that cocktail of guns and gunmen for the intensifying clashes between crop farmers and herders as well as robberies and kidnapping by bandit gangs. The violence is stoking Nigeria's ethnic and religious divisions and is rivaling Boko Haram's nine-year-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast as the nation's biggest security crisis.

The fallout from the downfall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya almost seven years ago is worsening conflict in Nigeria and other countries in the region such as Mali and Niger where al-Qaida- and Islamic State-inspired groups operate, according to analysts including Nnamdi Obasi of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

"Some arms looted after Gadhafi's fall have been acquired by various groups, including Islamist insurgents, cattle rustlers and other bandits, herders and farming communities, aggravating conflicts and insecurity in northern Nigeria," he said in an interview. "Secondly, some of the fighters that fled Libya have reportedly offered mercenary services to groups in conflict elsewhere or probably formed deadly bandit groups themselves."

While Buhari's administration has made some progress in weakening Boko Haram's insurgency, the office of Senate President Bukola Saraki last week said 937 people were killed in attacks by gunmen and in the farmer-herder violence from Jan. 1 to April 30. Civic groups say about 170,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Benue state alone. https://www.stripes.com/news/africa/gad ... a-1.528716

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

...here a nice summary which is more credible than all statements from many "war or terror" fanatics (a la neocon/evangelical)
The good man simply went out and did some solid research on the ground.
Conclusion: With exceptions of new hardcore terrorist, the big bulk is an insurgency for justified causes. Social and economic problems. How will drones, do any good to that? They just stabilize bad governments and people’s oppression and suffering are silenced by force.
Yah, make America great again!

Reading that best thing AFRICOM can do is to close down immediatly.
That will meet 80% of its "stated" aims.
En Afrique, la lutte contre le terrorisme est la nouvelle rente des régimes autoritaires»
Liberation- Maria Malagardis — 30 mai 2018 à 17:06

Pour Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, auteur de «l’Afrique, nouvelle frontière du djihad ?» les coalitions antiterroristes ont jusqu’à présent échoué à gagner la confiance des populations locales.

De quoi le jihad est-il réellement le nom en Afrique ? Les discours officiels le présentent avant tout comme une «menace globale» contre l’Occident. Mais est-ce vraiment le cas ? C’est la question que se pose Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos dans l’Afrique, nouvelle frontière du djihad ? un livre aussi percutant que dérangeant. L’analyse de ce chercheur de l’Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) porte pour l’essentiel sur les trois principaux foyers jihadistes de l’Afrique subsaharienne : les shebab en Somalie, Boko Haram dans le nord-est du Nigeria, et la nébuleuse Aqmi (Al-Qaeda au Maghreb islamique) au Mali. Elle le conduit à déconstruire les discours dominants et à critiquer les opérations militaires menées par la France au Sahel.

Juillet 2013, à Tombouctou (Mali), les décombres d'un mausolée détruit par des islamistes.
Juillet 2013, à Tombouctou (Mali), les décombres d’un mausolée détruit par des islamistes. Photo Joe Penney. Reuters
Comment différencier les trois mouvements jihadistes qui dominent aujourd’hui en Afrique ?
Par leur enracinement tout d’abord. En Somalie, les shebab, même s’ils sont aujourd’hui en recul, sont les seuls qui ont tenu réellement un territoire dans un pays où l’Etat s’est effondré. Au Mali, «la nébuleuse Aqmi», qui recouvre plusieurs groupes se revendiquant d’Al-Qaeda, n’a finalement gouverné que six mois en 2012, dans le nord du pays. QuanT au Nigeria, Boko Haram a contrôlé quelques zones rurales du Borno mais n’a jamais réussi à gouverner quoi que ce soit. Des trois nébuleuses jihadistes, c’est la plus locale. Dans le cas du Mali, Aqmi a une origine algérienne et est davantage connecté au monde arabe. Mais le prétendu «Sahelistan» est un fantasme car ces groupes ne se coordonnent pas, n’ont pas d’ancrage outre-mer et n’ont pas commis d’attentats en Europe ou en Amérique du Nord. Seuls les shebab ont quelques attaches avec une diaspora somalienne «globale». En revanche, il n’y a pas de migrantskanouri (1) qui soutiennent Boko Haram depuis Londres, ni de Français des banlieues partis en masse au Mali pour combattre à Tombouctou. C’est une erreur d’appliquer à l’Afrique subsaharienne les paradigmes d’analyse que l’on utilise pour décrypter la situation en Syrie ou en Irak.

Vous rejetez le qualificatif de «terroriste», alors même que ces groupes revendiquent des attentats sanglants.
Je qualifierais plutôt ces mouvements d’«insurrections». Il s’agit de guérillas qui ont une base sociale et qui s’opposent à des Etats jugés «impies» parce que corrompus sur le plan politique et «moral». Mais la matrice idéologique n’est pas forcément la cause principale de ces insurrections. J’ai moi-même interviewé une soixantaine de membres supposés de Boko Haram : un seul a évoqué des motifs religieux pour justifier son ralliement. Les insurgés se saisissent de l’islam et des modèles révolutionnaires du monde musulman pour justifier leur rébellion, d’où des références à Al-Qaeda et à Daech qui relèvent plutôt de l’opération de com. Et si on désigne par «terroristes» ceux qui massacrent par surprise des civils innocents, alors il faudrait également qualifier de «terroristes» certaines actions menées par les armées africaines censées sauver des vies en combattant ces groupes.

Vous dénoncez longuement dans votre livre les effets pervers des coalitions antiterroristes…
Au Nigeria, je l’affirme, les forces de sécurité tuent plus que Boko Haram. Et dans les prisons du pays, on assiste à des horreurs. Certes, les armées locales ne sont pas la cause de l’émergence de ces groupes. Mais elles sont devenues la cause de la prolongation des conflits. Elles sont parfois perçues comme des troupes d’occupation, commettent souvent des exactions, emprisonnent beaucoup d’innocents, sont corrompues, se payent sur la bête, etc. Ce qui pose une vraie question : on présente la lutte antiterroriste comme un moyen de sauver des vies et de stabiliser une région, mais, en réalité, on se rend compte que sur le terrain, ces forces arméesperpétuent le cycle de la déstabilisation.

La France, qui est très engagée au Sahel, tente pourtant de promouvoir depuis un an la prise en charge par les Africains eux-mêmes de la lutte antiterroriste, avec la mise en place du G5 Sahel qui regroupe les armées de cinq pays de la région. C’est une erreur ?
Regardez la stratégie qui a été privilégiée jusqu’à présent : les opérations militaires conjointes se concentrent sur les zones frontalières, où il y a notamment de la contrebande. On cherche à l’éradiquer, sous prétexte qu’elle financerait les groupes jihadistes. Mais, en réalité, dans ces zones la contrebande fait vivre tout le monde ! Donc on voudrait faire accepter aux populations le principe d’une intervention militaire qui va les priver de ressources ? Pour cette seule raison, j’ai de gros doutes sur la capacité du G5 Sahel à avoir le soutien de la population locale. Et s’il ne l’a pas, alors, ça ne marchera pas.

Pensez-vous aussi que l’intervention française au Sahel et au Mali soit vouée à l’échec ?
Oui, et je l’ai écrit dès janvier 2013 : le «terrorisme» n’est jamais que le symptôme de la faiblesse de l’Etat malien. La réponse militaire ne suffit pas, c’est une œuvre de longue haleine. Je ne suis pas opposé aux interventions militaires par principe. Elles sont parfois légitimes. Mais en intervenant au Mali, on a dramatisé le risque que feraient peser ces groupes jihadistes. On nous a présenté Aqmi comme une menace transnationale qui risquait de déstabiliser l’ensemble de la zone en 2012. On nous a affirmé que l’intérêt national français était en jeu. Pourtant, est-ce que la France a connu des attentats terroristes menés par des groupes jihadistes d’Afrique subsaharienne ? Non !

Mais il y avait tout de même, à l’époque, un contexte : les images de destructions de mausolées, la charia imposée au Nord-Mali, les jihadistes qui descendaient vers Bamako…
J’ai de sérieux doutes sur la capacité qu’auraient eu ces jihadistes à poursuivre leur route au-delà de Mopti et à tenir Bamako, une capitale d’un million d’habitants qui leur était hostile. Il y avait, de toute façon, d’autres options sur le plan militaire… Dans ce cas précis, on a assisté à la mise en place d’un discours narratif parfois hallucinant. Peu après le lancement de l’opération Serval, [le 19 septembre 2013 sur BFM TV, ndlr] Hollande justifiait son intervention au Mali en prétendant que les jihadistes massacraient des femmes et des enfants. C’était totalement faux. Le seul massacre durant cette période a été celui des soldats maliens d’Aguelhok, et encore, on ne sait pas avec certitude qui l’a commis. Reste que personne, aucun média, n’a contredit Hollande. Lequel, dans un discours tenu le 8 mars 2013 à l’occasion de la Journée des droits des femmes, nous sort un deuxième argument pour justifier la plus grosse intervention militaire française depuis la guerre d’Algérie : si la France est intervenue, c’est pour libérer les femmes voilées maliennes, nous explique-t-il. Quand Sarkozy avait sorti le même argument, en 2008, pour justifier le prolongement de l’intervention française en Afghanistan, le PS avait dénoncé une «une guerre de civilisation». Et voilà que Hollande, quatre ans plus tard, reprend le même discours. Au fond, est-ce qu’il ne faudrait pas commencer par «déradicaliser» nos propres dirigeants ? Car ces déclarations sont le symptôme d’un aveuglement idéologique. Lequel justifie tout : pour combattre le spectre d’une prétendue menace globale, on n’hésite pas à s’adosser à des dictatures, des régimes corrompus et impopulaires. Du coup, on demande l’impossible aux militaires français : tenir des territoires sans avoir l’assentiment de la population.

C’est la pauvreté qui serait alors le cœur du problème ?
C’est un peu réducteur. La pauvreté est la toile de fond de tous les conflits africains qu’ils soient jihadistes ou pas. Mais les foyers jihadistes n’émergent pas forcément dans des zones les plus misérables. Et les fondateurs de ces groupes ne sont pas non plus issus des segments les plus pauvres de la population. Bien plus que la pauvreté, ce sont les inégalités sociales et le sentiment d’injustice qui jouent un rôle important. Une société où tout le monde est pauvre génère moins de conflit qu’une société où les inégalités sont criantes et où le ressentiment contre les nantis génère de la colère.

On parie pourtant souvent sur l’aide au développement pour apaiser ces tensions…
Une aide au développement qui n’est pas accompagnée de garde-fous sérieux pour éviter son détournement, et d’un discours politique ferme, n’aura jamais aucun effet. Prenons l’exemple du Tchad : aujourd’hui, l’aide de la France consiste à payer les fins de mois des fonctionnaires tchadiens. Pourquoi ? Parce que l’argent de la manne pétrolière a été détourné. Donc au lieu de critiquer le président tchadien Idriss Déby, fidèle allié sur le terrain militaire, on va continuer à injecter des fonds à perte. La France ne critique pas ses alliés, elle refuse de conditionner l’aide à des changements de gouvernance. Les dirigeants concernés l’ont bien compris : aujourd’hui, la lutte contre le terrorisme, c’est la nouvelle rente des régimes autoritaires africains. De la même façon qu’on fermait les yeux autrefois sur les dictatures africaines à cause de la guerre froide, les régimes corrompus alliés à la France jouent sur la peur du jihadisme pour obtenir un soutien, et se racheter une conduite.

Les jihadistes peuvent-ils pour autant prétendre proposer une vraie alternative ?
Ça n’a pas marché. A l’exception peut-être des shebab qui ont tenu le sud de la Somalie pendant quelques années, ces groupes n’ont jamais démontré leur capacité à gérer durablement des territoires. Au contraire, c’est bien la présence de Boko Haram dans le nord-est du Nigeria qui a suscité un sursaut démocratique et a permis l’élection de Muhammadu Buhari, en 2015. Quand on regarde la construction de nos Etats, on constate qu’elle s’est souvent réalisée par la guerre. Ces crises fragilisent l’Etat mais obligent aussi la société à réagir, à créer de nouvelles solidarités. Rétrospectivement, les historiens nous diront peut-être qu’il y a eu des secousses dans les années 2010-2020 avec une résurgence de groupes jihadistes, mais que tout ça faisait partie de la longue histoire perturbée de la construction de l’Etat dans cette zone du monde.

(1) Les Kanouri vivent à proximité du lac Tchad, au nord-est du Nigeria dans l’Etat de Borno, au Niger, et au Cameroun.

Maria Malagardis, http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/05 ... es_1655422

Topic author
malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Messages : 1488
Inscription : 01 avril 2012, 13:54

Re: Actualité militaire au Niger

Message par malikos »

and here as I said, more trouble comming....
Guess the last days of ramadan there will be even more increase.
Niger: Attentat contre une mosquée par trois femmes, dix morts
Reuters le 05.06.2018 à 14h04

Trois femmes kamikazes ont tué dix personnes qui s’étaient rassemblées lundi soir dans une mosquée de Diffa, dans le sud-est du Niger, après avoir rompu le jeûne du ramadan, a annoncé mardi un porte-parole de l’armée nigérienne.

« C’était la nuit dernière. Trois personnes ont fait exploser leurs charges au cours d’un service religieux », a déclaré le porte-parole. Il a par la suite précisé que les trois kamikazes étaient des femmes.

Le secteur de Diffa, à proximité du lac Tchad et des frontières avec le Nigeria, le Tchad et le Cameroun est le théâtre d’attentats sporadiques menés par des islamistes de la mouvance de Boko Haram. La secte s’est progressivement scindée en deux groupes, dont l’un a prêté allégeance à l’État islamique.

Des militaires nigériens et Américains ont tué 11 combattants islamistes de cette branche de l’EI lors d’un échange de tirs en décembre dernier.

Boko Haram utilise parfois des femmes kamikazes pour attaquer les forces de sécurité et les civils, notamment parce qu’elles attirent moins l’attention.

Plus de 15.000 personnes ont été tuées et des millions ont été déplacées par le conflit dans la région du lac Tchad.

Après une attaque meurtrière contre la ville nigérienne de Bosso en juin 2016, lors de laquelle 32 soldats avaient été tués, le Tchad a envoyé 2.000 soldats pour aider le Niger, mais ils ont été retirés en octobre de l’année dernière.

(Boureima Belima; Danielle Rouquié pour le service français), https://www.challenges.fr/monde/niger-a ... rts_591929
Répondre

Revenir à « Actualité militaire »