[News] Obama’s Scramble for Africa
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jul 12 15:46:59 EDT 2012
*Obama’s Scramble for Africa*
*Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s “New Spice Route” in
Africa*
By Nick Turse <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse>
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175567/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_america%27s_shadow_wars_in_africa_/#more
They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade
network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s
“spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks.
Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships
shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing
maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of
supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a
fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.
Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of
training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in
nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer
have any idea that military officials are invoking the names of
Marco Polo and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military
footprint in Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a
previous imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”
In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with
the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then
loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases
and distant outposts.
On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see
the bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local
drivers take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true
in other African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of
the story: Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and
Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic;
Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s
showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of
the Gulf of Aden, among others.
According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM), Camp Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on
the continent. “There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed
there,” he told TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM
organization at Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn
of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa
and they work with partner nations to assist them in strengthening
their defense capabilities.”
Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned
to U.S. embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of
Security Cooperation responsible for facilitating
military-to-military activities with “partner nations.” He
characterized the forces involved as small teams carrying out
pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several locations in
Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In
all cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation
facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation
personnel.”
*Shadow Wars
*
In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was first set up
<http://www.hoa.africom.mil/pdfFiles/Fact%20Sheet.pdf> there, it was
indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp
Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed
ways, the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces
across the continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the
U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa. And
“strengthening” African armies turns out to be a truly elastic
rubric for what’s going on.
Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have
accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush
years: last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with
missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and
the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30
ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged
military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including
intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret
prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive
influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a
possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region
using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for
allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops
expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts)
dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader
Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to
scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and
activities in the region.
To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training
operations, and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all
sorts are sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow
logistics network. Most American bases in Africa are still small
and austere, but growing ever larger and more permanent in
appearance. For example, photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s
Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled with
air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon
drums and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation
facilities with TVs and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled
with stationary bikes, free weights, and other equipment.
*Continental Drift*
After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in
significant ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle
East (primarily Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is
drawing down in Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa,
however, remains a growth opportunity for the Pentagon.
The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and
surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional
enemies. They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North
Africa; the Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible
al-Qaeda-linked militants
<http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=8039&lang=0> in
post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan;
Mali’s Islamist Rebels of the Ansar Dine
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/07/radical-islamic-rebels-in-mali-destroying-timbuktu-treasures.html>,
al-Shabaab
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/world/asia/al-qaeda-power-shifting-away-from-pakistan.html>
in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.
A recent investigation
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html>
by the /Washington Post/ revealed that contractor-operated
surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the
territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s behest, and that 100
to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda
Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch
airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian
Ocean, while drones
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/29/where_the_drones_are?page=full>
and F-15 fighter-bombers
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/indian-ocean-shadow-war/#more-80589>
have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars
being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia.
Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania,
and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in
Burkina Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar
base in the newborn nation of South Sudan.
U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even
more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent, including
<http://bangordailynews.com/2012/04/30/news/wheres-joseph-kony-us-troops-have-yet-to-find-him/>
one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in
South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S.
also has had troops deployed
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-crash-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_print.html>
in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with
that country following a coup.
According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a
forward operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs
personnel, and force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S. military documents indicate that there
may be other even lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In
addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another
hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that
lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further
information on these posts before this article went to press.
Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are engaged in missions
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-africa-us-troops-moving-slowly-against-joseph-kony-and-his-militia/2012/04/16/gIQAtwMKMT_story.html>
against the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the
Central African Republic, but little is said about that base
either. “U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries
in the hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security
forces comprising the regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me.
“Specifically in Obo, the troops live in a small camp and work with
partner nation troops at a Ugandan facility that operates at the
invitation of the government of the Central African Republic.”
And that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also
working at bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force
Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force
12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense
Force, which not only runs missions in the Central African Republic,
but also acts as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle
against the Islamist militants known as al-Shabaab. They now supply
the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission protecting
the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from
the Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest
contingent in Somalia. In April and May
<http://www.army.mil/article/80723/Texas_National_Guardsmen_inspired_by_Burundi_soldiers/>,
members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment,
of the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the
BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.
In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an
elite local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to
focus on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as
part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to
rebuild that force.
In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and
equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania,
Niger, and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training
exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco,
Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.
The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and
training missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an
average basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD
personnel working across the continent” at any one time. Next year,
even more American troops are likely to be on hand as units from the
2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “Dagger
Brigade
<http://www.army.mil/article/82376/Dagger_Brigade_to__align__with_AFRICOM_in_2013/>,”
are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly 3,000 soldiers
<http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/06/army-3000-soldiers-serve-in-africa-next-year-060812/>
in the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training
missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a
particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill
the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by
using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter
about the deployment.
*Air Africa*
Last month, the /Washington Post/ revealed
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/contractors-run-us-spying-missions-in-africa/2012/06/14/gJQAvC4RdV_story.html>
that, since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies
to spy on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone
of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed
Tusker Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe
airport in Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot
turbo-prop planes that look innocuous but are packed with
sophisticated surveillance gear.
America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the
story.
While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program
dubbed Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the
civilian airport at Arba Minch, Ethiopia
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethiopia-is-operational/2011/10/27/gIQAznKwMM_story.html>,
to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to
support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to
construct, but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately
connected to the New Spice Route.
“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner
explained
<http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/MarApril12/New_Spice_Africa.html>
at a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician
developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do
something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to
bygone luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea
and ground supply networks have less to do with history than with
Africa’s airport infrastructure.
Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed
only 303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of
those airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the
weight of the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans
heavily on to transport troops and materiel. These limitations were
driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint
training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to
use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent
instead to send in Chinook helicopters.
In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S.
military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often
raising local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the
military trade publication /Army Sustainment/, Air Force Major
Joseph Gaddis touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept
was tested last year, during another AFRICOM training operation,
Atlas Drop 2011.
“Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the
exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis.
“This provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery
service and eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the
equipment through freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo
carriers to skirt diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to
airports that can’t support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue
the Pentagon is pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.
Another is construction.
*The Great Build-Up*
Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up
to $180 million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone.
Chief among the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters
of taxiways “to support medium-load aircraft” and the construction
of a 185,000 square meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In
addition, plans are in the works to erect modular maintenance
structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all needed
for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.
Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the
Pentagon will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that
base, Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in
Africa. Still other solicitation materials suggest future military
construction in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a
medical research facility
<http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmrc/Pages/namru3.htm>, and still
more work in Djibouti.
No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx
of “emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300
additional Containerized Living Units
<http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/od/africa/ig/Scenes-from-Djibouti.--1q/Container-Living-Units--CLUs--.htm>
(CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as
latrines and laundry facilities.
Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise
facility was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last
year. All of this indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African
build-up has only begun.
*The Scramble for Africa*
In a recent speech
<http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=8039&lang=0> in
Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained
the reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute
imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America,
Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to]
protect us from threats that may emerge from the African
continent.” As an example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as
a prime threat. “Why do we care about that?” he asked
rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think
they very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat
to America and Americans.”
Fighting /them/ over there, so we don’t need to fight /them /here
has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades,
especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to
complex political and social problems has regularly led to
unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported
war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries,
who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading
back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far,
the result has been a military coup by an American-trained
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=156419045>
officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National
Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided
Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by
the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the
American radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to
three major instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a
year.
With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first
century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of
overlapping blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the
beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the
meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to
make news there for years to come.
/Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An
award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the /Los Angeles
Times
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and-vietnam-20120424>,
the Nation <http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club>,
/and /regularly
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175426/nick_turse_a_secret_war_in_120_countries>/
at /TomDispatch. <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse/>/ He
is the author/editor of several books, including the recently
published /Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare,
2001-2050 <https://www.createspace.com/3859968>/ (with Tom
Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his //series/
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175501/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_prisons%2C_drones%2C_and_black_ops_in_afghanistan>/
on “the changing face of American empire,” which is being
underwritten by /Lannan Foundation <http://www.lannan.org/>/. You
can follow him on /Tumblr <http://nickturse.tumblr.com/>/. To catch
Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which he
discusses the Pentagon’s shadowy, but fast-expanding mission in
Africa, click here
<http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/07/and-beat-drones-on.html> or
download it to your iPod here
<http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817>./
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch>./ /
Copyright 2012 Nick Turse
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20120712/8a30070b/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list