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<h2>American proxy wars in Africa</h2>
<h4>Nick Turse</h4>
<h4>2014-04-02, Issue <a href="http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/672">672</a></h4>
<h4><a href="http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91210">http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91210</a></h4>
Lion Forward Teams? Echo Casemate? Juniper Micron?<br>
<br>
You could be forgiven if this jumble of words looks like nonsense to
you. It isn’t. It’s the language of the U.S. military’s simmering
African interventions; the patois that goes with a set of missions
carried out in countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/">map</a>; the
argot of conflicts now primarily fought by proxies and a former
colonial power on a continent that the U.S. military views as a hotbed
of instability and that <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ohanlon-troops-to-africa-20140216,0,572595.story">hawkish
pundits</a> increasingly see as a <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/frances-counterterrorism-operations-in-africa-deserve-us-support/2014/01/24/ab55e8aa-851a-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html">growth
area</a> for future armed interventions.<br>
<br>
Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been making inroads in Africa,
building alliances, facilities, and a sophisticated logistics network.
Despite repeated assurances by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) that
military activities on the continent were minuscule, a 2013 <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175743">investigation by
TomDispatch</a> exposed surprisingly large and expanding U.S.
operations -- including recent military involvement with no fewer than
49 of 54 nations on the continent. Washington’s goal continues to be
building these nations into stable partners with robust, capable
militaries, as well as creating regional bulwarks favorable to its
strategic interests in Africa. Yet over the last years, the results
have often confounded the planning -- with American operations serving
as a catalyst for blowback (to use a term of CIA tradecraft).<br>
<br>
A U.S.-backed uprising in Libya, for instance, helped <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/#/?chapt=2">spawn</a>
hundreds of militias that have increasingly caused chaos in that
country, leading to repeated attacks on Western interests and the
killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
[url=]Tunisia[/url] has become ever more destabilized, <a
href="http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/120134-return-of-jihadist-fighters-from-syria-sparks-fear-in-tunisia?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+25+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=email">according</a>
to a top U.S. commander in the region. <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-kenya-security-idUSBREA1O0XP20140225">Kenya</a>
and <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/25/in-amenas-timeline-siege-algeria">Algeria</a>
were hit by spectacular, large-scale terrorist attacks that left
Americans <a
href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/21/algeria-hostages-militants-gas-plant/1850707/">dead</a>
or <a
href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/kenya-mall-attack-97157.html">wounded</a>.
South Sudan, a fledgling nation Washington recently midwifed into being
that has been slipping into civil war, now has more than 870,000 <a
href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/99704/fear-persists-among-south-sudan-s-displaced">displaced
persons</a>, is facing an imminent <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-cahalan-phd/south-sudan-the-clock-is-ticking_b_4849841.html?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+25+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=email">hunger
crisis</a>, and has recently been the site of <a
href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/99699/the-mass-graves-of-bor-south-sudan">mass
atrocities</a>, including rapes and killings. Meanwhile, the
U.S.-backed military of Mali was repeatedly <a
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Keep-Calm/2012/0322/Outgunned-against-rebels-Mali-soldiers-overthrow-government">defeated</a>
by <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/world/africa/mali-military-offensive/">insurgent
forces</a> after managing to overthrow the elected government, and the
U.S.-supported forces of the Central African Republic (CAR) failed to
stop a ragtag rebel group from <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/10/car-state-lawlessness-201310128612722300.html">ousting</a>
the president.<br>
<br>
In an effort to staunch the bleeding in those two countries, the U.S.
has been developing a back-to-the-future military policy in Africa --
making common cause with one of the continent’s former European
colonial powers in a set of wars that seem to be spreading, not
staunching violence and instability in the region.<br>
<br>
THE FRENCH CONNECTION<br>
<br>
After establishing a trading post in present-day Senegal in 1659,
France gradually undertook a conquest of West Africa that, by the early
twentieth century, <a
href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/K-12/French_16178.html">left it with</a>
a vast colonial domain encompassing present-day Burkina Faso, Benin,
Chad, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, and Senegal, among other
places. In the process, the French used Foreign Legionnaires from <a
href="http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=qqeOMjr9kqYC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=french,+africa,+algerian+legionnaires,+tirailleurs,+Moroccan+Goumiers&source=bl&ots=5GGUinRL05&sig=hTHb_JHFwEoFphwXAkPVOvaAbOQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VSEdU6_YJKmM1AG11YCgBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Algeria</a>,
Goumiers from Morocco, and Tirailleurs from Senegal, among other
African troops, to bolster its ranks. Today, the U.S. is pioneering a
twenty-first-century brand of expeditionary warfare that involves
backing both France and the armies of its former colonial charges as
Washington tries to accomplish its policy aims in Africa with a <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-africa-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=1">limited
expenditure</a> of blood and treasure.<br>
<br>
In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President Barack Obama and
French President François Hollande <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-hollande-france-and-the-us-enjoy-a-renewed-alliance/2014/02/09/039ffd34-91af-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html">outlined</a>
their efforts in glowing terms:<br>
<br>
“In Mali, French and African Union forces -- with U.S. logistical and
information support -- have pushed back al-Qaeda-linked insurgents,
allowing the people of Mali to pursue a democratic future. Across the
Sahel, we are partnering with countries to prevent al-Qaeda from
gaining new footholds. In the Central African Republic, French and
African Union soldiers -- backed by American airlift and support -- are
working to stem violence and create space for dialogue, reconciliation,
and swift progress to transitional elections.”<br>
<br>
Missing from their joint piece, however, was any hint of the Western
failures that helped facilitate the debacles in Mali and the Central
African Republic, the continued crises plaguing those nations, or the
potential for mission creep, unintended consequences, and future
blowback from this new brand of coalition warfare. The U.S. military,
for its part, isn’t saying much about current efforts in these two
African nations, but official documents obtained by TomDispatch through
the Freedom of Information Act offer telling details, while <a
href="http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-future-role-of-u-s-counterterrorism-operations-in-africa">experts</a>
are sounding alarms about the ways in which these military
interventions have already fallen short or failed.<br>
<br>
OPERATION JUNIPER MICRON<br>
<br>
After 9/11, through <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175714/">programs</a>
like the Pan-Sahel Initiative and the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism
Partnership, the U.S. has <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/world/africa/west-fears-for-malis-fate-after-french-forces-leave.html?pagewanted=all">pumped</a>
hundreds of millions of dollars into training and arming the militaries
of Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria,
and Tunisia in order to promote “stability.” In 2013, Captain J. Dane
Thorleifson, the outgoing commander of an elite, quick-response force
known as Naval Special Warfare Unit 10, described such efforts as
training “proxy” forces in order to build “critical host nation
security capacity; enabling, advising, and assisting our African CT
[counterterror] partner forces so they can swiftly counter and destroy
al-Shabab, AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], and Boko Haram.” In
other words, the U.S. military is in the business of training African
armies as the primary tactical forces combatting local Islamic militant
groups.<br>
<br>
The first returns on Washington’s new and developing form of “light
footprint” warfare in Africa have hardly been stellar. After U.S. and
French forces <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/world/africa/27military.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/world/africa/27military.html">helped</a>
to topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, neighboring Mali
went from bulwark to basket case. Nomadic <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/africa/tuaregs-use-qaddafis-arms-for-rebellion-in-mali.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Tuareg
fighters</a> looted the weapons stores of the Gaddafi regime they had
previously served, crossed the border, and began taking over northern
Mali. This, in turn, prompted a <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/africa/in-mali-coup-leaders-seem-to-have-uncertain-grasp-on-power.html?_r=0">U.S.-trained
officer</a> -- a product of the Pan-Sahel Initiative -- to stage a
military coup in the Malian capital, Bamako, and oust the
democratically elected president of that country. Soon after, the
Tuareg rebels were muscled aside by heavily-armed Islamist rebels from
the homegrown Ansar al-Dine movement as well as al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb, Libya’s Ansar al-Shariah, and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, who
instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, creating a humanitarian crisis
that caused widespread suffering and sent refugees streaming from their
homes.<br>
<br>
In January 2013, former colonial power France launched a military
intervention, code-named <a
href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130723/post-mortem-french-operation-mali">Operation
Serval</a>, to push back and defeat the Islamists. At its peak, 4,500
French troops were fighting alongside West African forces, <a
href="http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minusma/background.shtml">known</a>
as the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA),
later <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/world/africa/un-security-council-establishes-peacekeeping-force-in-mali.html">subsumed</a>
into a U.N.-mandated Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission
in Mali (MINUSMA). The AFISMA force, as detailed in an official U.S.
Army Africa briefing on training missions obtained by TomDispatch,
reads like a who’s who of American proxy forces in West Africa: Niger,
Guinea, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Liberia,
Chad, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.<br>
<br>
Under the moniker Juniper Micron, the U.S. military <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/africa/us-weighing-how-much-help-to-give-frances-military-operation-in-mali.html">supported</a>
France’s effort, <a
href="http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2013/November%202013/1113mali.aspx">airlifting</a>
its soldiers and materiel into Mali, flying <a
href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/20/us-flies-more-200-air-refuel-missions-mali/">refueling
missions</a> in support of its airpower, and providing “intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance” (ISR) through <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175743">drone operations</a> out
of Base Aerienne 101 at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey,
the capital of neighboring Niger. The U.S. Army Africa AFISMA document
also makes reference to the deployment to Chad of an ISR liaison team
with communications support. Despite repeated pledges that it would put
no boots on the ground in troubled Mali, in the spring of 2013, the
Pentagon <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-deploys-small-number-of-troops-to-war-torn-mali/2013/04/30/2b02c928-b1a0-11e2-bc39-65b0a67147df_story.html">sent</a>
a small contingent to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako and others to support
French and MINUSMA troops.<br>
<br>
After issuing five media releases between January and March of 2013
about efforts to aid the military mission in Mali, AFRICOM simply <a
href="http://www.africom.mil/about-africa/west-africa/Mali">stopped</a>
talking about it. With rare <a
href="http://codebookafrica.wordpress.com/operations/recent-us-military-operations-relating-to-africa-2000-present/recent-us-counter-terrorism-operations/operation-juniper-micron/">exceptions</a>,
media coverage of the operation also dried up. In June, at a joint
press conference with President Obama, Senegal’s President Macky Sall
did <a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/27/remarks-president-obama-and-president-sall-republic-senegal-joint-press-">let
slip</a> that the U.S. was providing “almost all the food and fuel used
by MINUSMA” as well as “intervening to assist us with the logistics
after the French response.”<br>
<br>
A January 2014 Stars and Stripes article <a
href="http://www.stripes.com/news/no-end-in-sight-for-1-year-old-air-force-mission-over-mali-1.262401#.UzvrnV54x68">mentioned</a>
that the U.S. air refueling mission supporting the French, run from a
U.S. airbase in Spain, had already “distributed 15.6 million gallons of
fuel, logging more than 3,400 flying hours” and that the effort would
continue. In February, according to military reports, elements of the
Air Force’s 351st Expeditionary Refueling Squadron delivered their one
millionth pound of fuel to French fighter aircraft conducting
operations over Mali. A December 2013 briefing document obtained by
TomDispatch also mentions 181 U.S. troops, the majority of them Air
Force personnel, supporting Operation Juniper Micron.<br>
<br>
Eager to learn where things stood today, I asked AFRICOM spokesman
Benjamin Benson about the operation. “We’re continuing to support and
enable the French and international partners to confront AQIM and its
affiliates in Mali,” he told me. He then mentioned four key current
mission sets being carried out by U.S. forces: information-sharing,
intelligence and reconnaissance, planning and liaison teams, and aerial
refueling and the airlifting of allied African troops.<br>
<br>
U.S. Army Africa documents obtained by TomDispatch offer further detail
about Operation Juniper Micron, including the use of Lion Forward Teams
in support of that mission. I asked Benson for information about these
small detachments that aided the French effort from Chad and from
within Mali itself. “I don’t have anything on that,” was all he would
say. A separate briefing slide, produced for an Army official last
year, noted that the U.S. military provided support for the French
mission from Rota and Moron, Spain; Ramstein, Germany; Sigonella,
Italy; Kidal and Bamako, Mali; Niamey, Niger; Ouagadougou, Burkina
Faso; and N’Djamena, Chad. Benson refused to offer information about
specific activities conducted from these locations, preferring to speak
about air operations from unspecified locations and only in
generalities.<br>
<br>
Official military documents obtained by TomDispatch detail several U.S.
missions in support of proxy forces from the Multidimensional
Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, including a scheduled eight
weeks of pre-deployment training for troops from Niger in the summer of
2013, five weeks for Chadian forces in the autumn, and eight weeks in
the autumn as well for Guinean soldiers, who would be sent into the
Malian war zone. I asked Benson about plans for the training of African
forces designated for MINUSMA in 2014. “In terms of the future on
that... I don’t know,” was all he would say.<br>
<br>
Another official briefing slide produced by U.S. Army Africa notes,
however, that from January through March 2014, the U.S. planned to send
scores of trainers to prepare 1,400 Chadian troops for missions in
Mali. Over the same months, other U.S. personnel were to team up with
French military trainers to ready an 850-man Guinean infantry force for
similar service. Requests for further information from the French
military about this and other missions were unanswered before this
article went to press.<br>
<br>
OPERATION ECHO CASEMATE<br>
<br>
Last spring, despite years of U.S. assistance, including support from
Special Operations forces advisors, the Central African Republic’s
military was swiftly <a
href="http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/preventing-genocide-blog/genocide-prevention-blog/central-african-republic-the-path-to-mass-atrocities">defeated</a>
and the country’s president was ousted by Seleka, a mostly Muslim rebel
group. Months of violence followed, with Seleka forces <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/world/africa/central-african-republic-leader-resigns.html">involved</a>
in widespread looting, rape, and murder. The result was growing
sectarian clashes between the country’s Muslim and Christian
communities and the rise of Christian <a
href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/99634/briefing-who-are-the-anti-balaka-of-car">“anti-balaka”</a>
militias. (“Balaka” means machete in the local Sango language.) These
militias have, in turn, engaged in an orgy of <a
href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/report-details-atrocities-in-central-african-republic/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=centralafricanrepublic&_r=0">atrocities</a>
and <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/world/asia/rights-groups-warn-of-ethnic-cleansing-in-central-african-republic.html?ref=centralafricanrepublic">ethnic
cleansing</a> directed against <a
href="http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/70-Muslims-killed-in-CAR-town-20140224?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+25+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F25%2F2014&utm_medium=email">Muslims</a>.<br>
<br>
In December, backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution and
in a bid to restore order, France <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/africa/stopping-bloodshed-in-the-central-african-republic-amid-ghosts-of-genocide.html">sent</a>
troops into its former colony to bolster peacekeepers from the
African-led International Support Mission in the Central African
Republic (MISCA). As with the Mali mission, the U.S. joined the effort,
<a
href="http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11547/ussupports-peacekeeping-efforts-in-central-african-republic">pledging</a>
up to $60 million in military aid, pouring money into a <a
href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/political-wrangling-stymies-car-peacekeeping-force/?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+March+4+2014&utm_campaign=3%2F4%2F2014&utm_medium=email">trust
fund</a> for MISCA, and providing airlift services, as well as training
African forces for deployment in the country.<br>
<br>
Dubbed Echo Casemate, the operation -- staged out of Burundi and Uganda
-- saw the U.S. military airlift hundreds of Burundian troops, tons of
equipment, and more than a dozen military vehicles into that
strife-torn land in just the first five days of the operation, <a
href="http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11575/dod-continues-central-african-republic-peacekeeping-support">according</a>
to an AFRICOM media release. In January, at France’s request, the U.S.
began <a
href="http://www.africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/11659/us-airlifts-rwandans-to-central-african-republic">airlifting</a>
a Rwandan mechanized battalion and 1,000 tons of their gear in from
that country’s capital, Kigali, via a staging area in Entebbe, Uganda
(where the U.S. maintains a “cooperative security location” and from
which U.S. contractors had previously <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/contractors-run-us-spying-missions-in-africa/2012/06/14/gJQAvC4RdV_story.html">flown</a>
secret surveillance missions). The most recent airlift effort took
place on February 6th, according to Benson. While he said that no other
flights are currently scheduled, he confirmed that Echo Casemate
remains an ongoing operation.<br>
<br>
Asked about U.S. training efforts, Benson was guarded. “I don’t have
that off the top of my head,” he told me. “We do training with a lot of
different countries in Africa.” He offered little detail about the size
and scope of the U.S. effort, but a December 2013 briefing document
obtained by TomDispatch mentions 84 U.S. personnel, the majority of
them based in Burundi, supporting Operation Echo Casemate. The New York
Times recently <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-africa-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=0">reported</a>
that the U.S. “refrained from putting American boots on the ground” in
the Central African Republic, but the document clearly indicates that a
Lion Forward Team of Army personnel was indeed sent there.<br>
<br>
Another U.S. Army Africa document produced late last year noted that
the U.S. provided military support for the French mission in that
country from facilities in Germany, Italy, Uganda, Burundi, and the
Central African Republic itself. It mentions plans to detail liaison
officers to the MISCA mission and the Centre de planification et de
conduite des opérations (the Joint Operations, Planning, and Command
and Control Center) in Paris.<br>
<br>
As U.S. personnel deploy to Europe as part of Washington’s African
wars, additional European troops are heading for Africa. Last month,
another of the continent’s former <a
href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314399/Hitlers-Holocaust-blueprint-Africa-concentration-camps-used-advance-racial-theories.html">colonial
powers</a>, Germany, <a
href="http://www.dw.de/france-germany-to-send-joint-troops-to-mali/a-17442869?utm_source=Africa+Center+for+Strategic+Studies+-+Media+Review+for+February+20+2014&utm_campaign=2%2F20%2F2014&utm_medium=email">announced</a>
that some of its troops would be sent to Mali as part of a
Franco-German brigade under the aegis of the European Union (EU) and
would also aid in <a
href="http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20140215-germany-flags-stronger-military-ties-france-africa">supporting</a>
an EU <a
href="http://www.dw.de/berlin-dampens-prospects-for-wider-military-role/a-17452768">“peacekeeping
mission”</a> in the Central African Republic. Already, a host of other
former imperial powers on the continent -- including <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leopold-book-review.html">Belgium</a>,
Italy, <a
href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/30/dutch_double_down_in_mali">the
Netherlands</a>, Portugal, <a
href="http://www.armytimes.com/article/20140210/NEWS/302100001/3-star-AFRICOM-commander-details-future-missions-continent">Spain</a>,
and the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22391857">United
Kingdom</a> -- are part of a European Union <a
href="http://www.eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/eutm-mali/index_en.htm">training
mission</a> to school the Malian military. In January, France <a
href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/apnewsbreak-france-africa-military-presence">announced</a>
that it was reorganizing its roughly 3,000 troops in Africa’s Sahel
region to reinforce a logistical base in Abidjan, the capital of Côte
d’Ivoire, transform N'Djamena, Chad, into a hub for French fighter
jets, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/africa/us-takes-training-role-in-africa-as-threats-grow-and-budgets-shrink.html?_r=0">concentrate</a>
special operations forces in Burkina Faso, and run drone missions out
of Niamey, Niger (already a U.S. hub for such missions).<br>
<br>
SCRAMBLING AFRICA<br>
<br>
Operations by French and African forces, bolstered by the U.S.
military, beat back the Islamic militants in Mali and allowed
presidential elections to be held. At the same time, the intervention
caused a veritable terror diaspora that helped lead to attacks in
Algeria, Niger, and Libya, without resolving Mali’s underlying
instability.<br>
<br>
Writing in the most recent issue of the CTC Sentinel, the official
publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, analyst
Bruce Whitehouse points out that the Malian government has yet to
reassert its authority in the north of the country, reform its armed
forces, tackle graft, or strengthen the rule of law: “Until major
progress is made in each of these areas, little can be done to reduce
the threat of terrorism… the underlying causes of Mali’s 2012
instability -- disaffection in the north, a fractured military, and
systemic corruption -- have yet to be fully addressed by the Malian
government and its international partners.”<br>
<br>
The situation may be even worse in the Central African Republic. “When
France sent troops to halt violence between Christians and Muslims in
Central African Republic,” John Irish and Daniel Flynn of Reuters
recently reported, “commanders named the mission Sangaris after a local
butterfly to reflect its short life. Three months later, it is clear
they badly miscalculated.” Instead, violence has escalated, more than
one million people have been displaced, tens of thousands have been
killed, looting has occurred on a massive scale, and last month U.S.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper informed Congress that
“much of the country has devolved into lawlessness.”<br>
<br>
It is also quickly becoming a regional arms-smuggling hot spot. With
millions of weapons reportedly unaccounted for as a result of the
pillaging of government armories, it’s feared that weaponry will find
its way into other continental crisis zones, including Nigeria, Libya,
and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<br>
<br>
In addition, the coalition operation there has failed to prevent what,
after a visit to the largely lawless capital city of Bangui last month,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres
called “ethnic-religious cleansing.” Amnesty International found much
the same. “Once vibrant Muslim communities in towns and cities
throughout the country have been completely destroyed as all Muslim
members have either been killed or driven away. Those few left behind
live in fear that they will be attacked by anti-balaka groups in their
towns or on the roads,” the human rights group reported. “While an
African Union peacekeeping force, the African-led International Support
Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA), supported by French
troops, has been deployed in the country since early December 2013,
they have failed to adequately protect civilians and prevent the
current ethnic cleansing from taking place.”<br>
<br>
FRENCH WINE IN NEW BOTTLES?<br>
<br>
“We’re not involved with the fighting in Mali,” AFRICOM spokesman
Benjamin Benson told me, emphasizing that the U.S. military was not
engaged in combat there. But Washington is increasingly involved in the
growing wars for West and Central Africa. And just about every move it
has made in the region thus far has helped spread conflict and chaos,
while contributing to African destabilization. Worse yet, no end to
this process appears to be in sight. Despite building up the manpower
of its African proxies and being backed by the U.S. military’s
logistical might, France had not completed its mission in Mali and will
be keeping troops there to conduct counterrorism operations for the
foreseeable future.<br>
<br>
Similarly, the French have also been forced to send reinforcements into
the Central African Republic (and the U.N. has called for still more
troops), while Chadian MISCA forces have been repeatedly accused of
attacking civilians. In a sign that the U.S.-backed French military
mission to Africa could spread, the Nigerian government is now
requesting French troops to help it halt increasingly deadly attacks by
Boko Haram militants who have gained strength and weaponry in the wake
of the unrest in Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic (and
have reportedly also spread into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon). On top of
this, Clapper recently reported that Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania
were endangered by their support of the French-led effort in Mali and
at risk of increased terror attacks “as retribution.”<br>
<br>
Still, this seems to have changed little for the director of national
intelligence. “Leveraging and partnering with the French is a way to
go,” he told Congress last month. “They have insight and understanding
and, importantly, a willingness to use the forces they have there now.”<br>
<br>
France has indeed exhibited a longstanding willingness to use military
force in Africa, but what “insight and understanding” its officials
gleaned from this experience is an open question. One hundred and
sixteen years after it completed its conquest of what was then French
Sudan, France’s forces are again fighting and dying on the same fields
of battle, though today the country is called Mali. Again and again
during the early 20th century, France launched military expeditions,
including during the 1928-1931 Kongo-Wara rebellion, against indigenous
peoples in French Equatorial Africa. Today, France’s soldiers are being
killed on the same ground in what’s now known as the Central African
Republic. And it looks as if they may be slogging on in these nations,
in partnership with the U.S. military, for years to come, with no
evident ability to achieve lasting results.<br>
<br>
A new type of expeditionary warfare is underway in Africa, but there’s
little to suggest that America’s backing of a former colonial power
will ultimately yield the long-term successes that years of support for
local proxies could not. So far, the U.S. has been willing to let
European and African forces do the fighting, but if these interventions
drag on and the violence continues to leap from country to country as
yet more militant groups morph and multiply, the risk only rises of
Washington wading ever deeper into post-colonial wars with an eerily
colonial look. “Leveraging and partnering with the French” is the
current way to go, according to Washington. Just where it’s going is
the real question.<br>
<br>
* This article was published in
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