AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

Message par malikos »

Nice and up to date article with up to date pictures....the base appears in its first stage final. Next to the impressive hangars there appears to be in the background a white radar station. A second runway is being build. Revealing that the autor estimates in the future some 2000-3000 personal, which corresponds to shift all operations to AGADEZ and make out of it a major air base in Africa.



https://theintercept.com/2018/02/18/nig ... om-drones/

that “the Parties waive any and all claims (other than contractual 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 arising out of the performance of their official duties in connection with activities under this Agreement” — he responded, “I wasn’t aware of all this.” He added, “Today I learned a little more” about the terms of American engagement.
pièce de resistance of American military engagement in Niger is a $110 million drone base the U.S. is building about 450 miles northeast of Niamey in Agadez,
So far, there is one large hangar, ostensibly where the drones could be housed, a runway under construction, and dozens of smaller structures where soldiers live and work.
The U.S. currently flies drones out of an airport in Niamey, but those operations will be shifted to Agadez once the new base is completed.
he Green Berets are on the ground “training” Niger’s special forces and carrying out capture missions with them from the outposts of Ouallam near the Malian border, Aguelal near the Algerian border, Dirkou along the main transport routes between Niger and Libya, and Diffa, along the southeastern border with Nigeria and Chad, according to the same Nigerien commander. I’ve actually seen them at the Diffa base, a prominent local journalist has seen them at Dirkou, and I spoke to a person who worked at the Aguelal base.
The base in Agadez is about 6 square kilometers, though most of the land is yet to be developed. American troops patrol its perimeter, according to a neighboring village chief I talked with. The base is tucked away and hidden from Agadez first by the 8-to-10-foot wall that separates the city of 125,000 from the airport, and it is surrounded by a barbed wire fence with sandbags, so despite there being a few hundred Americans in Agadez, you would hardly know they were there unless you went looking. Both the Nigerien and the American governments prefer to keep it this way.
IN THE MEANTIME, sightings of white soldiers in the desert animate residents’ imaginations and WhatsApp conversations. U.S. Special Forces seem to be involved in far-flung operations that go beyond the mandate of training Nigerien soldiers
Aguelal, west of Arlit, is near the Algerian border, and the secret American base there is a recent one. Its existence was partially confirmed in February, inadvertently, when it was discovered that Strava, a fitness app used mostly by westerners, had released location data that showed the global movements of the users of workout trackers like Fitbit — and the data showed unusual activity in far-off Aguelal.
The American base isn’t likely to bring reprieve to the region either. Despite the total cost of $110 million for construction and roughly $15 million in operating costs per year, very little of that money will go to the local economy. A young man who worked in the cafeteria of the base showed me the agreement he signed with the contractor that runs the cafeteria, Sakom. He was paid roughly $1.20 per hour, a low salary in Niger, and said he only got one day off every two weeks, working 12-hour days (the contract showed the hourly rate, but not the overtime or the number of days off). Most food, other than some fruits and vegetables, is shipped in from abroad.
The Americans have done very little to help people in Agadez, other than holding a handful of workshops that appeared to be ineffective. Zara Ibrahim, head of the Association of Women Against War in Agadez, facilitated a workshop in which U.S. soldiers demonstrated to a group of mothers how to brush their teeth. Despite the fact that no one in the room needed to be taught how to brush their teeth, over 60 women came, according to Ibrahim, who told me about the workshop while sitting on a plastic mat on the floor of her association’s office. A strong gust of wind kicked up sand outside the building we were sitting in, and passing residents leaned forward and shielded their faces with their elbows. “Some women thought they would get something out of it. … They told us they would prefer 50 kilo bags of rice instead of toothbrushes,” she admitted
By staying behind their barbed-wire fences and providing little economic support to Agadez, the Americans run the risk of destabilizing the region. As Ibrahim remarked, “anyone can understand that.”
Dernière modification par malikos le 20 février 2018, 16:13, modifié 2 fois.

malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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https://theintercept.com/2018/02/18/nig ... om-drones/

The Tongo Tongo ambush is instructive because, according to Nigerien soldiers interviewed for this article, the American soldiers were in charge of the mission and didn’t listen to Nigerien advice. The soldiers had spent the previous day looking for Doundoun Cheffou, who is connected to militant group leader Abu Walid, in a village called Akaba across the border in Mali. Instead of Cheffou, they found food and other goods indicating he and his men were in the area.

Rather than going directly back to their Nigerien base in Ouallam, they continued looking for him and when night fell, they set up camp 5 kilometers from Tongo Tongo, where the village chief had been known to give false alerts, according to a top Nigerien military officer with direct knowledge of the operation. By spending the night along the border area, they heightened the risks that they faced. There is talk of a sort of competition between the French and U.S. militaries, with each willing to undertake risky missions to prove there is a reason for them to be on the ground. However, Andrew Lebovich, Sahel specialist and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, “It’s not really a competition, so much as they both have priorities and a desire to work with the government. Sometimes those priorities overlap, sometimes they don’t.”

It is precisely this logic that is so dangerous: American troops are deployed in an advisory and training role. But once on the ground, there is a tendency to push for more activity and engagement, and the Nigeriens have to consistently push back against that. A Nigerien officer with direct knowledge of the Agadez base said on condition of anonymity that what the Americans can and can’t do is a point of discussion on a daily basis. “I say no to the Americans every day,” he said.

The risks the Americans take result in mistakes, and the mistakes, rather than leading to a reconsideration of the risks, can lead to more escalation. After Tongo Tongo, for example, Niger authorized the U.S. to arm its drones in the country, though there are reports that ground missions by the U.S. may face greater scrutiny.

Indeed, if a handful of Green Berets can conduct a botched mission that leads to a major escalation of the conflict, what happens when there are 2,000 to 3,000 U.S. troops operating on a base with armed drones and little to no accountability to the public?

malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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An Endless War’: Why 4 U.S. Soldiers Died in a Remote African Desert
They had set out on Oct. 3, prepared for a routine, low-risk patrol with little chance of encountering the enemy. But while they were out in the desert, American intelligence officials caught a break — the possible location of a local terrorist leader who, by some accounts, is linked to the kidnapping of an American citizen. A separate assault team was quickly assembled, ready to swoop in on the terrorist camp by helicopter. But the raid was scrapped at the last minute, and the Americans on patrol were sent in its place.

They didn’t find any militants. Instead, the militants found them.
Short on water, the patrol stopped outside a village before heading back to base the next morning. Barely 200 yards from the village, the convoy came under deadly fire.
How did a group of American soldiers — who Defense Department officials insisted were in the country simply to train, advise and assist Niger’s military — suddenly get sent to search a terrorist camp, a much riskier mission than they had planned to carry out? Who ordered the mission, and why were the Americans so lightly equipped, with few heavy weapons and no bulletproof vehicles?
The Americans in the group — an Army Special Forces team called Operational Detachment-Alpha Team 3212 — had been operating in Niger for a little over a month. Most of the team carried M4 carbines, with sights and suppressors for their rifles, according to the video footage. At least one soldier had a single-shot grenade launcher.

For visiting local villages in an area that was supposed to have little militant presence, the team’s weapons and vehicles made sense. But if attacked by a larger, more aggressive force, Team 3212’s members would barely have enough rifles and machine guns to defend themselves.

And their trucks, lightly protected with open beds, would leave any passengers inside exposed to enemy fire. Soldiers traveling in the lone S.U.V. could also wind up dangerously confined — with little ability to shoot back — inside the vehicle.
Starting around 6 a.m. on Oct. 3, the Americans and their Nigerien counterparts headed out from their base in Ouallam, 60 miles north of Niamey, to villages to meet with community leaders, according to two of the Nigerien soldiers on the mission. In the afternoon, their assignment completed, they began to head back to base.

Before they got there, a new order came in: provide backup to the assault mission gearing up in Arlit. The plan was not for Team 3212 to join the raid, officials say, but to get close enough to pursue escaping militants or help out as needed.

So, without warning, the Army soldiers out on a daylong patrol with their Nigerien trainees were turned around, pushing deeper into potentially hostile territory, lightly equipped for a new mission that exposed them to risks their commanders did not anticipate.

It is not clear who gave the order for Team 3212’s new mission. Officers who have served in the region say such a change would require approval and tasking from at least several higher levels — most likely starting with a major in Niamey and a lieutenant colonel in Chad; a task force commander stationed in Germany; and possibly a two-star general overseeing all special forces operations in Africa, also from Germany, where the United States Africa Command is based.

But soon, the plans changed yet again. Back in Arlit, the preparations for the raid were falling apart. Bad weather or mechanical problems scotched the assault team’s helicopter mission, and American spy agencies determined that Mr. Cheffou and a handful of fighters had left the location, officials say. They believed the trail had gone cold.

Still, Team 3212 and the 30 Nigeriens with it were moving into position to back up a raid that was no longer happening, officials said. The same chain of command ordered the team to press on — now on its third assignment in 24 hours. Could the team salvage some of the mission by searching the site where Mr. Cheffou had been, collecting any scraps of information left behind that might offer clues about his hide-outs and network?

By this point, current and former military officers and counterterrorism specialists say the team and its chain of command had made some crucial mistakes that would come back to haunt the soldiers.

First, the superiors who redirected Team 3212 failed to take note of the increasingly hazardous environment in the border area between Mali and Niger — an area where the United Nations had counted at least 46 attacks in the 20 months before the ambush.

But the American Special Forces had faced virtually no enemy contact during months of patrols in the region, Pentagon officials said. The Nigerien troops who set out alongside the Americans had been to the area where the ambush occurred a total of 19 times without incident, said Brig. Gen. Mahamadou Abou Tarka, a senior Nigerien officer.

This led to a general complacency, and a false sense of safety, which took root both in the rank-and-file members of the unit and in their commanders, American and Nigerien officials said. Although the Americans in Team 3212 were well trained, they were new to Niger, and some of the soldiers were on their first tour. They were accompanied by Nigerien troops, who are classified as special forces but are, in fact, their trainees.

The sense of urgency and risk that infused the planning around the raid from Arlit seemed to recede once that mission was scrubbed and Mr. Cheffou vanished — even though he and his fighters may have remained in the area Team 3212 was entering.

As the team pushed on toward the location, running on a set of plans hastily put together, the air support assigned to the raid dropped off. French forces that had been alerted to stand by to support the impending operation also stood down. The team, assigned to support a priority mission, was on its own, current and former American military officials say.

Raids are typically carried out between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., when darkness allows troops to take advantage of one of the tools Americans have at their disposal: Night-vision devices.


Even though the mission was scrubbed, Team 3212 apparently stuck to the same schedule. The Americans and Nigeriens bedded down in sleeping bags next to their vehicles, according to one of the Nigerien soldiers. They rose while it was still dark and pushed through to the militant campsite, hidden under a canopy of trees and set back in the rocks just shy of the Mali border.

It was empty, the two Nigerien soldiers said. But someone had been there recently: They found tea, sugar and flour, and an abandoned motorcycle. The tracks in the sand indicated that other motorcycles had sped away. They also found signs of weapons, including 14.5-mm rounds that are fired by antiaircraft weapons capable of heavily damaging most lightly armored vehicles. A case of 12.7-mm heavy machine gun bullets was also found, one Nigerien soldier said.

The team gathered material from the campsite and began the long drive back to base as the sun was rising. They had traveled no more than 20 miles of the approximately 110-mile journey back when they approached the first village on their route, a speck on the map known as Tongo Tongo.

They were tired and out of water, said one of the Nigerien soldiers who survived. They decided to take a break just outside the village, near a well. A group of villagers approached them, and one offered to run to the village to get them the bucket. He returned sometime later, and they filled their bottles with water.

It is unclear who approved the pit stop. But whatever the reason, the delay — in a location close to Mr. Cheffou’s campsite — made the team more vulnerable with each passing moment in unfamiliar territory. The team had been out for more than a day, pushing through the desert in easy-to-spot vehicles, giving the militants and their web of spotters time to plan an ambush.

The village chief walked out to meet the convoy, explaining that several children were sick. The unit began distributing medicine, the Nigerien soldiers said. Some of the soldiers saw men speeding out of the village on motorbikes, they said, possibly to alert the militants.

“How did the terrorists know that the white people were in our village giving out medicine?” said Boubacar Hassane, 45, a villager who was hoeing his millet field outside of the village that day.

Some soldiers had the impression that the chief was trying to delay them. He was later arrested, and his phone contained the numbers for known terrorists, including one connected to Mr. Cheffou, Nigerien officials said.


Boubacar Hassane, 45, a villager from Tongo Tongo, was farming last October when militants opened fire on a convoy of Nigerien and U.S. troops barely 200 yards outside the village. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
Around 11:30 a.m., the patrol left for home. But right outside the village, the convoy came under attack from militants with small arms, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Early in the firefight, Team 3212’s leader, Capt. Michael Perozeni, and a radio operator, Sgt. First Class Brent Bartels, were both shot and wounded, probably reducing the team’s ability to communicate to higher command, a military official said.

In the first radio transmis
Roughly two hours after the ambush began, the first sign of air support arrived. French Mirage jets flew in low and fast. Behind them came French helicopters with American Special Forces stationed in Mali. The helicopters evacuated the American wounded and the other members of the team who made it to the landing zone.
That night, the American Special Forces unit from Arlit arrived in helicopters run by a civilian contracting company and recovered the bodies of Sergeant Wright, Sergeant Black and Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... google.com

malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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VICENZA, Italy – U.S. Army Africa Acting Commanding General Brig. Gen. Eugene LeBoeuf hosted a senior leader strategy session at the Golden Lion conference center on Caserma Ederle Jan. 30-Feb. 2.

The strategy session is an annual event, held to ensure USARAF's leaders have the comprehensive information necessary to achieve long-term objectives in Africa.

This year’s session focused on utilizing the reserve component for security cooperation events and exercises in Africa as a means to increase reserve operational readiness, as well as on USARAF’s mission of setting the theater.

Representatives from U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Army Forces Command, the National Guard, state partners, the reserve and directors from the USARAF staff attended the conference to share ideas and identify an operational approach that maximizes the employment of the reserve force
http://www.usaraf.army.mil/media-room/a ... gy-session

malikos
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Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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AFRICOM seeks danger pay for troops deployed to Niger

Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, testifies before the House Committee on Armed Services during a hearing Tuesday, March 6, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. Africa Command is seeking danger pay for troops deployed to Niger, a move that comes after an ambush that killed four soldiers and that will likely result in greater oversight of military operations in the region.

AFRICOM chief Gen. Thomas Waldhauser said during testimony before Congress on Tuesday that his command’s investigation into the ambush has been completed and is in the hands of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for review. Waldhauser declined to elaborate on the report until Mattis has finalized it and family members of the fallen have been briefed on its findings.

However, when asked why some 800 troops deployed in Niger don’t get danger pay even as others in less volatile places such as Kenya do, Waldhauser said an effort is underway to remedy the situation.

“We had already submitted a packet for Niger to qualify for imminent danger pay and understand it’s at the national level now for final approval,” he said.


Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, listens to testimony from Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, during a hearing Tuesday, March 6, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Thornberry asked Waldhauser if there is anything in Africa that “justifies sending United States men and women in there ... at risk of their lives?"
CARLOS BONGIOANNI/STARS AND STRIPES
The Oct. 4 ambush in a remote stretch of terrain in western Niger has brought increased scrutiny to military efforts in Africa.

The Associated Press on Monday reported that AFRICOM’s investigative report would conclude that the special operations team on the ground in Niger didn’t get required senior command approval for its mission to capture a high-level Islamic State militant. The investigation is expected to call for a more senior level approval within AFRICOM for conducting missions deemed of higher risk.

Still, while there are scores of extremists groups in Africa, with a range of alliances and agendas, military officials acknowledge that none of them currently pose a direct threat to the United States.

“Why should we care?” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Waldhauser during the hearing. Is there anything in Africa that “justifies sending United States men and women in there ... at risk of their lives?” he asked.

Waldhauser said the goal is to contain extremists in places such as Niger, Mali and Somalia and develop local forces to lead the fight against them.

“At the present time they do not have the capability to conduct operations in the United States, but they certainly aspire to do that,” he said. “We are trying to prevent something from happening before it does.”

During the past year, the military has stepped up missions in Africa. Troop numbers have steadily climbed in Niger and Somalia, where more than 30 air strikes were conducted in 2017.

In Libya, a small number of U.S. troops also operate a counterterrorism mission, Waldhauser said. While the U.S. seeks to bolster the standing of Libya’s fragile government, there is concern that Russia is seeking a foothold there with weapons sales and a presence on NATO’s southern doorstep. The Russians could try to “squeeze out” the U.S., Waldhauser said
https://www.stripes.com/news/africom-se ... r-1.515238

malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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Re: AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]

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Drug Wars, Missing Money, and a Phantom $500 Million
Pentagon Watchdog Calls Out Two Commands for Financial Malfeasance
By Nick Turse

2017 was a year of investigations for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). There was the investigation of the two-star commander of U.S. Army Africa who allegedly sent racy texts to an enlisted man’s wife. There was the investigation into the alleged killing of a Special Forces soldier by Navy SEALs in Mali. There was the inquiry into reports of torture and killings on a remote base in Cameroon that was also used by American forces. There was the investigation of an alleged massacre of civilians by American special operators in Somalia. And don’t forget the inquiry into the killing of four Special Forces soldiers by Islamic State militants in Niger.

And then there was the investigation that hardly anyone heard about, that didn’t spark a single headline. And still, the question remains: Whatever became of that $500 million?

To be fair, this particular scandal isn’t AFRICOM’s alone, nor did that sizeable sum belong only to that one command. And unlike the possibly tens of thousands of dollars in cash that reportedly went missing in connection with the strangulation of the Green Beret in Mali, that $500 million didn’t simply vanish. Still, a report by the Defense Department’s Inspector General (IG), released into the news wasteland of the day after Christmas 2017, does raise questions about a combatant command with a history of scandals, including significant failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting projects across the African continent, as well as the effectiveness of U.S. assistance efforts there.

From fiscal years 2014 through 2016, AFRICOM and Central Command (CENTCOM), the umbrella organization for U.S. military activities in the Greater Middle East, received a combined $496 million to conduct counternarcotics (CN) activities. That substantial sum was used by the respective commands to fund myriad projects from the construction of border outposts in allied nations to training personnel in policing skills like evidence collection. Or at least, that’s how it was supposed to be used. According to the IG, neither AFRICOM nor CENTCOM “maintained reliable data for the completion status and funding of training, equipping, and construction activities.” That means no one -- not the IG investigators, not AFRICOM, not CENTCOM personnel -- seems to have any idea how much of that money was spent, what it was spent on, whether the funded projects were ever completed, or whether any of it made a difference in the fight against illegal drugs in Africa and the Middle East.

“U.S. Central and U.S. Africa Commands did not provide effective oversight of [fiscal years] 2014 through 2016 counternarcotics activities,” wrote Michael Roark, an assistant inspector general, in a memorandum sent to the chiefs of both commands as well as to Pentagon officials in December 2017. “Specifically, neither U.S. Central nor U.S. Africa Command maintained reliable data for the completion status and funding of counternarcotics training, equipping, and construction activities.” What is clear is that large sums of taxpayer dollars allotted to such training activities were inconsistently tracked or accounted for, including -- according to Bruce Anderson, a spokesman for the Office of Inspector General -- $73 million in AFRICOM counternarcotics funding.

TomDispatch repeatedly contacted Africa Command for comment about the IG’s report. According to digital receipts, AFRICOM read the emailed questions but failed to respond prior to the publication of this piece.

The War on Drugs

Since 9/11, U.S. military activity on the African continent has grown at an exponential rate. U.S. troops are now conducting about 3,500 exercises, programs, and activities per year, an average of nearly 10 missions a day. Meanwhile, America’s most elite troops -- including Navy SEALs and Green Berets -- deployed to no fewer than 33 of the 54 African countries last year.

Many of the command’s missions focus on training local allies and proxies. “AFRICOM’s Theater Security Cooperation programs remain the cornerstone of our sustained security engagement with African partners,” reads its “What We Do” credo. “Conditions for success of our security cooperation programs and activities on the continent are established through hundreds of engagements supporting a wide range of activities.” These include not only foreign military aid and training, but also counternarcotics assistance.

By 2012, U.S. Africa Command's Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Assistance branch was already providing about $20 million in aid per year to various partner nations. In doing so, it relied on special legislation that allows the military to work not only with other armed forces but with interagency partners like the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI, as well as local law enforcement agencies and the justice, customs, and interior ministries of various African countries.

The command’s African partners often suffer, however, from their own drug problems. “On the governance front, the proceeds of drug trafficking and other forms of illicit trafficking are fueling a dramatic increase in corruption among the very institutions responsible for fighting crime,” observed David Luna of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs last year in a speech on combating organized crime in Africa. “The collusion and complicity of some government officials with criminal networks have helped carve out an illicit trafficking corridor that stretches from the West African coast to the Horn of Africa, from North Africa south to the Gulf of Guinea.”

But corrupt allies, as the Pentagon’s Inspector General points out, are only one of the problems facing U.S. counternarcotics efforts there. AFRICOM itself is another.

The Wisdom of the Crowd vs. a Simple Spreadsheet

In 2014, Coast Guard captain Ted St. Pierre, the division chief of AFRICOM’s Counter Narcotics and Law Enforcement Assistance branch, turned to the consulting firm Wikistrat to design and conduct a “scenario-driven simulation” to aid the command in developing strategies to combat drug trafficking in northwest Africa. That simulation was sold as a crowd-sourced, futuristic approach to a twenty-first-century problem. “The idea is that this technology leverages the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ just as averaging the guesses of the crowd at the county fair will come very close to the amount of jelly beans in a jar,” said Tim Haffner, a program analyst for AFRICOM’s Counter Narcotics and Law Enforcement Assistance branch and its point man for the simulation project. As it turned out, AFRICOM’s counternarcotics officials could have benefited from far lower-tech assistance -- like help in maintaining accurate spreadsheets.

Take the radio equipment that the command procured to help Senegal battle narcotics trafficking. According to a spreadsheet provided to the Inspector General by AFRICOM, $1.1 million was budgeted for that in 2014. Leaving aside whether such equipment is helpful in curtailing drug trafficking, it was at least clear how much money was spent on those radios. Until, that is, IG investigators consulted another spreadsheet also provided by AFRICOM. Its data indicated that nearly triple that sum -- $3.1 million -- had been budgeted for and spent on those radios. The question was: Did Senegalese forces receive $1 million worth of radios or three times that figure? No one at AFRICOM knew.

In fact, those two spreadsheets told radically different stories about the larger U.S. counternarcotics campaign on the continent in 2014. One indicated that taxpayers had funded 55 different projects budgeted at $15 million; the other, 134 activities to the tune of $24 million. Investigators were especially troubled by the second spreadsheet in which the “budgeted, obligated, and expended amounts… were identical for each activity causing the team to question the reliability of the data.” So which spreadsheet was right? How many projects were really carried out? How many millions of dollars were actually spent? The IG’s office concluded that AFRICOM counternarcotics officials didn’t know and so “could not verify which set of data was complete and accurate.”

Or take Cameroon in 2016. That year, according to AFRICOM officials, the United States budgeted $143,493 for training that country’s forces in “evidence collection.” (This was at a moment when AFRICOM officials seemed oblivious to copious evidence that civilian detainees were being tortured, sometimes even killed, on a Cameroonian base used by American forces.) Yet a 2016 spreadsheet examined by the Inspector General’s investigators indicated that only $94,620 had actually been budgeted for such training, while $165,078 had been “obligated” -- that is, an agreement was made to pay that sum for services rendered -- for the same activities. In the end, according to the IG’s December 2017 report, AFRICOM counternarcotics personnel couldn’t say how much money had actually been spent on training Cameroonians in evidence collection because of “a law enforcement agency error in tracking funding.”

Records of construction activities were in a similar state of disarray. While counternarcotics officials provided IG personnel with a spreadsheet specifically devoted to such projects, its information proved inconsistent with other AFRICOM documents. In reading the IG’s account of this, I was reminded of an interview I conducted several years ago with Chris Gatz of the Army Corps of Engineers Africa about construction projects for Special Operations Command Africa. “I’ll be totally frank with you,” he told me, “as far as the scopes of these projects go, I don’t have good insights.” I then asked if some projects had been funded with counter-narco-terrorism funds. “No, actually there was not,” he assured me, which led me to ask him about Niger. I knew that the U.S. was devoting significant resources to such projects there, specifically in the towns of Arlit and Tahoua. When I explained that I had already uncovered that information, he promptly located the right paperwork, adding, “Oh, okay, I’m sorry. You’re right, we have two of them... Both were actually awarded to construction.”

That construction began -- at least on paper -- in 2013. It seems that, in the time since, little has changed when it comes to record-keeping. When IG investigators looked into more recent construction efforts in Niger for their report, they found, for example, a phantom counternarcotics project -- a classroom somehow integral to the fight against drugs in that West African country. When they requested documentation for the 2015 construction of this classroom, the investigators were told by AFRICOM officials that the project had been terminated. The classroom was actually never built. Yet none of the data in any of the spreadsheets previously provided by the command indicated that the construction had been canceled.

Both AFRICOM and CENTCOM also left substantial funds on the table, monies that were apparently never spent and might have been used for other counternarcotics activities, had they not been lost, according to the IG report. For example, a “law enforcement agency” conducted 20 counternarcotics training classes over two years in an unspecified African nation (or nations), leaving an estimated excess of $805,000 in funding untouched, at least based on the officially budgeted costs for such instruction. As it turned out, however, AFRICOM officials had no idea that all of the funds hadn’t been spent. The report, in its typical bureaucratic prose, summed up the situation this way: “[T]he amount unused could be higher or lower because USAFRICOM does not know how much was actually expended for the trainings executed.”

In all, faulty accounting seems to have resulted in at least $128 million worth of CENTCOM and AFRICOM counternarcotics funding for 2014-2016 going unspent.

Prior Bad Acts

This is hardly the first time that Africa Command has run into trouble accounting for work performed and dollars spent. In 2014, TomDispatch revealed the results of an Inspector General’s report (“Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa Needed Better Guidance and Systems to Adequately Manage Civil-Military Operations”) that was never publicly released. It uncovered failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting humanitarian projects by AFRICOM’s subordinate Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA).

At the time, the IG found record-keeping so faulty that CJTF-HOA officials “did not have an effective system to manage or report community relations and low-cost activities.” A spreadsheet tracking such projects was so incomplete that 43% of those efforts went unmentioned. Nonetheless, the IG did manage to review 49 of CJTF-HOA’s 137 identified humanitarian assistance and civic assistance projects, which cost U.S. taxpayers about $9 million, and found that the military officials overseeing the projects “did not adequately plan or execute” them in accordance with AFRICOM’s objectives. Examining 66 community relations and low-cost activities (like the distribution of sports equipment and seminars on solar panel maintenance), investigators discovered that its officials had failed to accurately identify their strategic objectives for, or maintained limited documentation on, 62% of them.

In some cases, they failed to explain how their efforts supported AFRICOM’s objectives on the continent; in others, financial documentation was missing; in yet more, personnel failed to ensure that local populations were equipped to keep the projects running once U.S. forces moved on. The risk, the report suggested, was that projects like American-built wells, water fountains, and cisterns would quickly fall into disrepair and become what one official called “monuments to U.S. failure.”

Drug Problems

After years of failing to maintain reliable data about and effective oversight of its counternarcotics activities, Africa Command has, according to the Pentagon’s Inspector General, finally taken corrective measures. “USAFRICOM officials developed standard operating procedures that fully addressed the recommendation” of the December 2017 IG report, Bruce Anderson of the Office of the Inspector General told TomDispatch. “They also provided their [fiscal year] 2018 Spend Plan as evidence of some of the processes being implemented.” Whether these new measures will be effective and other types of assistance will also be comprehensively tracked remains to be seen.

While AFRICOM may be cleaning up its act, the same cannot be said of CENTCOM, which, according to Anderson, apparently wasted or didn’t adequately track almost $423 million in counternarcotics funds between 2014 and 2016. Like AFRICOM, Central Command failed to provide answers to TomDispatch’s questions prior to publication, although the command did respond to email messages. More than a month after the December 2017 report was issued, CENTCOM would not say if it had implemented the IG’s recommendations. “As you know, this is a complex issue, and it needs to be coordinated within the chain of command,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Earl Brown wrote in an email. Bruce Anderson of the IG’s office was, however, able to shed further light on the matter. “The two recommendations to USCENTCOM remain unresolved,” he told TomDispatch. “USCENTCOM implemented some corrective actions, but the actions only partially addressed the recommendations.”

More troubling than the findings in the IG’s report or CENTCOM’s apparent refusal to heed its recommendations may be the actual trajectory of the drug trade in the two commands’ areas of responsibility: Africa and the Greater Middle East. Last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted that while West Africa “has long been a transit zone for cocaine and heroin trafficking, it has now turned into a production zone for illicit substances such as amphetamines and precursors” and that drug use “is also a growing issue at the local level.” Meanwhile, heroin trafficking has been on the rise in East Africa, along with personal use of the drug.

Even the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies is sounding an alarm. “Drug trafficking is a major transnational threat in Africa that converges with other illicit activities ranging from money laundering to human trafficking and terrorism,” it warned last November. “According to the 2017 U.N. World Drug Report, two-thirds of the cocaine smuggled between South America and Europe passes through West Africa, specifically Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo. Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania are among the countries that have seen the highest traffic in opiates passing from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Western destinations.” As badly as this may reflect on AFRICOM’s efforts to bolster the counter-drug-trafficking prowess of key allies like Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria, it reflects even more dismally on CENTCOM, which oversees Washington’s long-running war in Afghanistan and its seemingly ceaseless counternarcotics mission there.

In the spring of 2001, American experts concluded that a ban on opium-poppy cultivation by Afghanistan’s Taliban government had wiped out the world’s largest heroin-producing crop. Later that year, the U.S. military invaded and, since 2002, America has pumped $8.7 billion in counternarcotics funding into that country. A report issued late last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the results of anti-drug efforts during CENTCOM’s 16-year-old war: “Afghanistan’s total area under opium cultivation and opium production reached an all-time high in 2017,” it reads in part. “Afghanistan remains the world’s largest opium producer and exporter, producing an estimated 80% of the world’s opium.”

In many ways, these outcomes mirror those of the larger counterterror efforts of which these anti-drug campaigns are just a part. In 2001, for example, U.S. forces were fighting just two enemy forces in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Now, according to a recent Pentagon report, they’re battling more than 10 times that number. In Africa, an official count of five prime terror groups in 2012 has expanded, depending on the Pentagon source, to more than 20 or even closer to 50.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but given the outcomes of significant counternarcotics assistance from Africa Command and Central Command -- including some $500 million over just three recent years -- there’s little evidence to suggest that better record-keeping can solve the problems plaguing the military’s anti-drug efforts in the greater Middle East or Africa. While AFRICOM and, to a lesser extent, CENTCOM have made changes in how they track counternarcotics aid, both seemingly remain hooked on pouring money into efforts that have produced few successes. More effective use of spreadsheets won’t solve the underlying problems of America’s wars or cure an addiction to policies that continue to fail.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His 2017 Harper’s magazine article, “Ghost Nation,” is a finalist for an American Society of Magazine Editors award. His website is NickTurse.com.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse's Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2018 Nick Turse
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176383/

I like that tomdispatch site...it is good that their activities are kept under scrutiny

malikos
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Marine Corps Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, commander of U.S. Africa Command, testifies at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on national security challenges and U.S. military activities in Africa, March 6, 2018

malikos
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Le Président de la République a reçu dimanche le Commandant Adjoint d’AFRICOM
DYomJV0WAAEOW6H.jpg
Le Président de la République, Chef de l’Etat, SEM Issoufou Mahamadou, a reçu dimanche soir, 18 mars 2018, l’ambassadeur Alexander M. Laskaris, Commandant Adjoint pour l’Engagement Civilo-Militaire du Commandement des Etats-Unis pour l’Afrique (AFRICOM).

La situation sécuritaire du Niger, au Sahel et dans le bassin du Lac Tchad ont été au centre de l’entretien entre les deux personnalités, a indiqué M. Laskaris.

« Nous sommes très contents, très satisfaits du partenariat entre le Niger et les Etats-Unis, et entre le G5 Sahel et les Etats-Unis », a-t-il affirmé ajoutant « qu’au Niger, il y a la volonté et la capacité de lutter contre le terrorisme dans la sous-région ».

« Notre partenariat va continuer dans tous les domaines
», a-t-il conclu.
https://www.presidence.ne/audiences-et- ... t-dafricom

....wait and see.
Niger is dynamic and many others have other views.

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By JOHN VANDIVER | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: March 21, 2018

STUTTGART, Germany — The U.S. wants to update its status of forces agreement with Ghana, but there are no plans to establish an American-run military base in that country, U.S. officials said.

On Tuesday, numerous local reports out of Ghana said the U.S. was in negotiations to set up a new U.S. Africa Command base, an issue that has long been a sensitive topic in many parts of Africa.

Instead, the U.S. is seeking an agreement that will allow more visiting troops as training programs and missions in the country expand, according to the U.S. embassy in Ghana.

“The current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States of America and the Republic of Ghana is approximately 20 years old,” said an embassy statement. “It does not cover the current range and volume of bilateral exercises and assistance.”


article continues below
related articles

On social media there was a flurry of talk and speculation about U.S. intentions in Ghana, underscoring the lingering suspicion that AFRICOM intends to establish permanent bases.

“The United States and Ghana are planning joint security exercises in 2018, which require access to Ghanaian bases by U.S. participants and those from other nations when included,” the U.S. embassy said, adding that the U.S. will invest more than $20 million in training and equipment for the Ghanaian armed forces in the coming year.

For years, AFRICOM and the location of its headquarters has been a major topic of interest in Africa, where American commanders are routinely questioned about why the headquarters is in Germany.

Ten years after being formed, questions persist about its headquarters and whether it would be better to move the command’s 1,500 personnel along with their spouses and children to Africa.

AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, during Senate testimony earlier this month, was asked by lawmakers whether it makes sense to revisit the idea. The costs of relocation and potential diplomatic fallout make such a relocation unlikely, he said.

Meanwhile, what has emerged in Africa is a range of small outposts.

In the wake of the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya, the military moved to set up barebones launch areas for quick-reaction troops and places for rotating forces to set up shop. Ghana, Senegal and Gabon and others have hosted the roughly 12 such sites in Africa, AFRICOM officials have said.

AFRICOM’s main anchor in Africa remains Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which is intended to be an enduring base. But as the military expands its mission in Africa—there are currently some 7,200 personnel in Africa on any given day-- Niger has emerged as a second hub of operations in the west. Work on a new drone site in Agadez, Niger, is expected to be completed later this year.

vandiver.john@stripes.com
Twitter: @john_vandiver
https://www.stripes.com/news/us-seeks-e ... e-1.517948

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US carries out first drone strike in southern Libya
By Eddie Haywood
28 March 2018
Over the weekend, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducted its first ever drone strike against Al-Qaeda militants in southern Libya, killing two in the southern village of Ubari. The attack marks a new stage in the expansion of the American military offensive in Libya and northern Africa since the Trump administration took office. Notably, the strike was not accompanied by a public acknowledgement from AFRICOM.

While officials did not disclose the drone’s base of operations, AFRICOM has been preparing for a massive escalation of armed drone flights conducted across the African continent from its recently constructed base in neighboring Niger, at Agadez.

The strike occurred in an extremely remote region of Libya, located some 435 miles south of Tripoli and about 250 miles from the border with Algeria. The region is known as a haven for Islamist militants who have spilled into Libya and south into the Sahel since the 2011 US-NATO bombardment of the country.

Geographically, the area around Ubari is roughly equidistant to the borders of the neighboring countries of Algeria, Chad, and Niger, and has long functioned as a thoroughfare for the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and immigrants traversing the lawless, vast expanse of desert of the Sahara comprising the countries of Libya, Niger, Chad, Algeria, and flowing through to Mali.

Following the international outcry provoked by the killing of four Green Berets in an ambush last October in Niger, which exposed the advanced nature of American military operations in West Africa, AFRICOM has sought to keep secret subsequent operations, and did not provide a press release for the strike.

Only after Libyan media reported that the strike targeted a house frequented by foreigners, and published pictures taken in the aftermath of the strike which showed a mutilated corpse laying in the rubble of a house, with shrapnel-ridden vehicles nearby, did the deadly operation come to the attention of Western media.

When requested by the New York Times to provide a statement on the strike, AFRICOM gave a terse and brief reply, declaring that the strike targeted militants with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM), and had been conducted in coordination with the US-backed Unity government in Tripoli, and that two militants were killed. “At this time, we assess no civilians were killed in this strike,” Robyn Mack, a spokesperson for AFRICOM, told the Times.

Speaking to the stakes at play in the US drone strike, Deborah K. Jones, the US Ambassador to Libya for the 2013-2015 period under the Obama administration, told the New York Times that the attack essentially constitutes an escalation of the US military’s offensive, “This appears to be the continuation of expanding AFRICOM activity in Libya’s ungoverned areas.”

Luke Hartig, a former senior director for counter-terrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, told the Times, “Beginning a concerted strike campaign against AQIM or other AQ elements in the Sahel, akin to what we are doing in Yemen and Somalia, would mark a significant expansion of our counter-terrorism efforts.”

The strike marks the first time the US has openly targeted the Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in Libya, which were armed and backed by the Obama administration during the US-NATO bombardment in 2011 that culminated in the removal and assassination of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In 2016, the US conducted over 500 air strikes against ISIS militants in the coastal city of Sirte, an area which comprises Libya’s oil crescent along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where much of the country’s oil infrastructure is located.

Taking advantage of the chaos brought to the country after the US-backed NATO offensive that destroyed much of Libya, ISIS militants had taken control of the Gaddafi-era state-owned oil company, leaving the militia with full command of the terminals overseeing the transport of oil to Europe.

The escalation of the AFRICOM offensive in the country comes amid the complete destruction of Libyan society after the 2011 regime change operation left the country an apocalyptic wasteland split between competing armed factions. Much of the country’s critical infrastructure was destroyed by US and NATO airstrikes, with entire cities reduced to rubble. Vital services such as water, sewage treatment and electricity have not yet been fully restored in many areas.

Libya is home to the world’s largest oil deposits, from which the majority of Libyans see no economic benefit. According to World Bank figures, 40 per cent of the population of 6.4 million lives below the poverty line, but the figure is certainly vastly understated, as an accurate accounting cannot be conducted due to ongoing conflict in the country.

Last year it was revealed by Amnesty International that the European Union was behind the development and funding of a vast network of prison camps in Libya, seeking to halt the flow of refugees fleeing to Europe.

The report documented that nearly 500,000 refugees from various countries in Africa languish in these camps. The detainees’ conditions in these camps are utterly barbaric, and refugees have experienced torture, rape, beatings, and even being sold into slavery.

In overseeing the upending of Libyan society, Washington under the Trump administration is escalating the American military offensive in the region in a desperate attempt to reestablish its dominance over a region with vast oil wealth.

The latest drone strike comes amid a broader US military offensive in West Africa, for which the Trump administration issued new rules of engagement last year, which essentially constitute the granting of broad authority to US forces in conducting open-ended warfare on the continent.

The expansion of the conflict in Libya coincides with the escalated US offensives conducted in Somalia, with a vast increase in drone strikes in the country over previous years, as well as the offensive role US special forces have taken in Niger, where AFRICOM has dropped all pretense to its claimed role of merely providing training and logistics to Nigerien troops, and now lead their Nigerien counterparts in waging all-out war[/b].


https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... n-m28.html

malikos
Mulazim Awal (ملازم أول)
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the almighty niger army
great bunga bunga music...
....in the meantime the conflict escalates in the whole region with major counter attaques in Mali,
and Kidnapping in Niger itself, close the area where there where "incidents" in the past.
What is this flintlock good for?
Solving existing troubles or creating more issues due to their presence and spending taxpayers money with no foreseeable return in terms of stability or peace.
Does any of those powers in the flintlock exercise bring any good, similar mix like in afghanistan....with similar outcome.
West will withdraw...taliban will return. And the ordinary people get killed or suffer even more poverty. :fou:

malikos
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Niger Ambush Suspect May Be in Custody, Officials Say
New York Times-16 Apr 2018
In an interview on Friday at a Nigerien base outside the city of Agadez, where the United States is building a new drone base, Col. Maj. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the head of the Nigerien Special Forces, said the man suspected of being Mr. Cheffou was seized during an army patrol two weeks ago in the Tillaberi region near .
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/worl ... effou.html

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Opening Ceremony: Exercise African Lion 18 [Image 5 of 5]
Opening Ceremony: Exercise African Lion 18
TIFNIT, MOROCCO
04.16.2018
Photo by 1st Lt. Brett Lazaroff
U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Europe and Africa
Subscribe 69

A Tunisian Soldier speaks with a member of the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces while waiting for the start of the opening ceremony of Exercise African Lion 18, April 16, 2018, Tifnit, Morocco. Units from the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, Great Britain, and Tunisia will conduct a multi-lateral Field Training Exercise with units from the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces focusing on Counter-Violent Extremist Organization operations. Special focus of effort will be placed on offensive combat operations including Close Quarters Battle training, limited scale demolitions/breaching operations, and raid operations. (U.S. Marine Corps Photo by 1st Lt. Brett Lazaroff)
https://www.dvidshub.net/image/4300264/ ... an-lion-18

malikos
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from 2014, still useful to read...some passages are like a playbook what is happening now.
U.S. strategy in Africa
Under the supervision of:
Maya Kandel, head of the US programme at IRSEM and research associate at Université Paris III -
Sorbonne Nouvelle (CREW/CRAN)
This study presents an analysis of American strategy in Africa. Based on contributions from
academics, experts and military practicioners, it studies the actors, processes and modalities of
American military presence in Africa. It focusses in particular on the characteristics and costs of the
indirect approach the US tends to adopt. The African continent is the experimental site for a
determining aspect of the new strategic direction taken by President Barack Obama, by way of the
“light footprint” concept. More recently, this concept was even declared a model for the fight
against terrorism and a source of inspiration for other regions, namely the Middle East. Lastly, closer
and unprecedented Franco-American cooperation in certain regions of Africa also warrants the
study of American strategy in Africa, its recent developments, its implementation and the
assessment that we can draw from them.
The dogma of American strategy in Africa has remained unchanged since the beginning of the
century, and even the 1990s:
- Africa is not a strategic priority;
- American presence must bear a minimal footprint (this explains the role of the special forces);
- No direct engagement for American soldiers, or at least none that is publicly displayed;
- Behind-the-scenes leadership and intervention through partners;
- Even in the aforementioned situation, the United States must not appear as a cobelligerent;
- In the long term, the key phrase is “African solutions to African problems”.
America’s priorities are, quite logically, the protection of American personnel and interests on the
ground, and in decreasing order in regional terms, Eastern Africa followed by the North Africa and
the Sahel, and lastly the remainder of the continent and coastal areas.
The main conclusions of the study highlight the risks stemming from the light footprint concept,
particularly in terms of addressing symptoms rather than causes by prioritising short-term
effectiveness over long-term objectives, even though threat analysis by the American military has
made considerable progress, drawing from the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the
fundamental questions that this study addresses is the dilemma
– indeed, it is not a uniquely
American one – between the short-term advantages of counterterrorism operations and the longterm
objectives, i.e. resolving the causes of terrorism
.

LA STRATEGIE AMERICAINE EN AFRIQUE
10
Several articles take a look at African reactions to American policy: using case studies (Kenya,
Ethiopia, Uganda and Djibouti in particular), these analyses reveal the “hidden costs” of combat by
proxy, in particular the risk of exploitation by local powers with different agendas, and the possibility
of negative, even counter-productive, consequences in the long term. They also illustrate, in some
cases, the evolving attitude of certain African leaders in recent years, from their reluctance to
cooperate with the United States to their enthusiasm and even a positive desire for closer
cooperation. Lastly, the study also explores another aspect of the “light footprint” concept, through
partnerships, and attempts to open new options for cooperation.

https://www.defense.gouv.fr/content/dow ... --2014.pdf

malikos
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quelque reflexions..
Les forces spéciales américaines ont deux emplois majeurs : la « chasse à l’homme » (au terroriste -
« counterterrorism manhunting capability »), et la formation-coopération, c’est-à-dire le travail avec
et aux côtés des forces armées locales pour combattre les terroristes, insurgés et autres réseaux
criminels transnationaux à travers toute une série de programmes et d’actions de défense et de
formation42

, mais aussi de programmes civils dans les domaines les plus variés. On évoque pour
simplifier deux approches : une approche directe de court terme, et une approche indirecte de long
terme, la première étant nécessaire pour permettre la mise en place et surtout le bon
fonctionnement de la seconde, elle-même indispensable pour apporter des solutions durables aux
problèmes révélés par le terrorisme [
b](les travaux plus récents préfèrent les termes de « surgical
strike » et « special warfare »[/b]). Les exemples de réussite de l’approche indirecte le plus souvent cités
sont la Colombie et les Philippines43. En Afrique, des exercices comme Flintlock permettent aussi
d’assurer la nécessaire interopérabilité et la standardisation des doctrines des forces spéciales

page 21 of 104

L’opération Serval a fait beaucoup : elle a impressionné les Américains, qui à leur tour ont joué un
rôle essentiel de soutien à l’opération française.
Les intérêts américains au Sahel proprement dit sont
marginaux pour l’instant, mais la région requiert davantage d’attention car elle est au cœur de l’arc
d’instabilité qui va de Mauritanie au Nigeria et à la Corne de l’Afrique. Et des partenaires proches des
États-Unis, notamment la France et le Maroc (le Nigeria également), y ont des intérêts stratégiques
et réclament un soutien américain50. D’où cette idée que le scénario malien est une matrice utile
pour répondre à d’éventuels futurs défis djihadistes en Afrique de l’Ouest ou ailleurs – scénario qui
ne fait que reprendre l’idée de leadership en retrait d’abord présenté par Obama au moment de
l’intervention libyenne de 201151. Ainsi lors de l’audition au Congrès du 14 février 2013 sur l’aide à
apporter à la France, le premier représentant démocrate (ranking member) Brad Sherman déclarait
que « dans le cas du Mali, nous sommes derrière et nous devons être derrière la France et applaudir
ses efforts au Mali… Non seulement nous devons coopérer avec nos alliés, mais il y aura des
moments et des zones où ils prendront la direction des opérations (the lead) et nous jouerons un
rôle de soutien52
».

page 22
https://www.defense.gouv.fr/content/dow ... --2014.pdf
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