<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div dir="ltr">
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container"> </div>
<div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header
gmail-reader-show-element"> <a class="gmail-domain
gmail-reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2022/01/26/burkina-faso-coup-us-military/"
moz-do-not-send="true">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Another U.S.-Trained Soldier
Stages a Coup in West Africa</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Nick Turse -
January 26, 2022<br>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content
gmail-reader-show-element">
<div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page">
<div>
<div>
<p><u>Earlier this week,</u> the military seized power
in Burkina Faso, ousting the country’s
democratically elected president, Roch Marc
Christian Kaboré.</p>
<p>The coup was announced on state television Monday
by a young officer who said the military had
suspended the constitution and dissolved the
government. Beside him sat a camouflage-clad man
whom he introduced as Burkina Faso’s new leader: Lt.
Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the commander of
one of the country’s three military regions.</p>
<p>Damiba is a highly trained soldier, thanks in no
small part to the U.S. military, which has a long
record of training soldiers in Africa who go on to
stage coups. Damiba, it turns out, participated in
at least a half-dozen U.S. training exercises,
according to U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>In 2010 and 2020, he participated in an annual
special operations training program known as the
Flintlock exercise. In 2013, Damiba was accepted
into an Africa Contingency Operations Training and
Assistance course, which is a State
Department-funded peacekeeping training program. In
2013 and 2014, Damiba attended the U.S.-sponsored
Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course-Africa.
And in 2018 and 2019, he participated in engagements
with a U.S. Defense Department Civil Military
Support Element in Burkina Faso.</p>
<p>Damiba is just the latest in a carousel of coup
leaders in West Africa trained by the U.S. military
as the U.S. has pumped in more than $1 billion in
security assistance to promote “<a
href="https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/security-cooperation"
moz-do-not-send="true">stability</a>” in the
region. Since 2008, U.S.-trained officers have
attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at
least eight) across five West African countries,
including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali
(three times), Mauritania, and the Gambia.</p>
<p>Since the 2000s, the United States has regularly
deployed small teams of commandos to advise, assist,
and accompany local forces, even into battle;
provided weapons, equipment, and aircraft; offered
many forms of training, including Flintlock, which
is conducted by Special Operations Command Africa
and focused on enhancing the counterterrorism
capabilities of nations in West Africa, including
Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger,
Nigeria, and Senegal.</p>
<p>“When the U.S. prioritizes tactical training, we
overlook longer-term goals that could create more
stable governments,” said Lauren Woods, director of
the Security Assistance Monitor, which is a program
of the nonprofit Center for International Policy.
“We need more transparency and public debate on the
foreign military training that we provide. And we
need to do a much better job thinking about the
long-term risks — including coups and abuses by
forces we train.”</p>
<p>AFRICOM emphasizes that its security cooperation
and “<a
href="https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/security-cooperation"
moz-do-not-send="true">capacity-building
activities</a>” foster the “development of
professional militaries,” which are disciplined and
committed to the well-being of their citizens. “U.S.
military training regularly includes modules on the
law of armed conflict, subjugation to civilian
control, and respect for human rights,” AFRICOM
spokesperson Kelly Cahalan told The Intercept.
“Military seizures of power are inconsistent with
U.S. military training and education.”</p>
<p>But coups d’état by U.S.-trained officers have
become an increasingly common occurrence in Burkina
Faso and elsewhere in the region.</p>
</div>
<blockquote><span></span>
<p>Since 2008, U.S.-trained officers have attempted at
least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight)
across five West African countries.</p>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>Last summer, for example, American Green Berets
arrived in Guinea to train a special forces unit led
by <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/africa/guinea-coup-americans.html?smid=tw-share"
moz-do-not-send="true">Col. Mamady Doumbouya</a>,
a charismatic young officer who had also served in
the French Foreign Legion. In September, members of
Doumbouya’s unit took time out from their ongoing
instruction — in <a
href="https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-special-forces-military-assistance-guinea-coup/"
moz-do-not-send="true">small unit tactics</a>,
tactical combat casualty care, and the law of armed
conflict — to storm the presidential palace and
depose the country’s 83-year-old president, Alpha
Condé. Doumbouya soon <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/05/world/africa/guinea-coup.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">declared himself</a> Guinea’s
new leader and the U.S. ended the training.</p>
<p>In 2020, <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/mali-coup-leader-was-trained-by-us-special-operations-forces/2020/08/21/33153fbe-e31c-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Col. Assimi Goïta</a>, who
worked with U.S. Special Operations forces for
years, participating in Flintlock training exercises
and attending a Joint Special Operations University
seminar at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, headed
the junta that overthrew Mali’s government.</p>
<p>“The act of mutiny in Mali is strongly condemned
and inconsistent with U.S. military training and
education,” Marine Corps <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/mali-coup-leader-was-trained-by-us-special-operations-forces/2020/08/21/33153fbe-e31c-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lt. Col. Anton T. Semelroth</a>,
a Pentagon spokesperson, said at the time.</p>
<p>After staging the coup, Goïta stepped down and took
the job of vice president in a transitional
government tasked with returning Mali to civilian
rule. But nine months later, he seized power again
in his second <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/mali-coup-leader-assimi-goita-sworn-transitional-president-2021-06-07/"
moz-do-not-send="true">coup.</a></p>
<p>Goïta wasn’t even the first U.S.-trained Malian
officer to overthrow the country’s government. In
2011, when a U.S.-backed uprising in Libya toppled
autocrat Muammar Gaddafi, Tuareg fighters in his
service looted the regime’s weapons caches, traveled
to their native Mali and began to take over the
northern part of that country. Angered by the
ineffective response of his government, Amadou
Sanogo — an officer who learned English in Texas,
received intelligence training in Arizona, and
underwent Army infantry-officer basic training in
Georgia — took matters into his own hands and
overthrew his country’s democratically elected
government.</p>
<p>“America is a great country with a fantastic army,”
he said after the 2012 coup. “I tried to put all the
things I learned there into practice here.”</p>
<p>In 2014, another U.S.-trained officer, <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/coup-leader-in-burkina-faso-received-us-military-training/2014/11/03/3e9acaf8-6392-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lt. Col. Isaac Zida</a>,
seized power in Burkina Faso amid popular protests.
Two years earlier, when he was a major, Zida
attended a counterterrorism training course at
MacDill Air Force Base that was sponsored by Joint
Special Operations University and attended a
military intelligence course in Botswana that was
financed by the U.S. government.</p>
<p>The next year, another coup in Burkina Faso
installed <a
href="https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2015/09/17/amid-gunfire-military-in-burkina/23518247007/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Gen. Gilbert Diendéré</a>.
Diendéré had not only taken part in a U.S.-led
Flintlock counterterrorism exercise, but he also
served as a literal advertisement for it, appearing
in an AFRICOM photo addressing Burkinabe soldiers
before their deployment to Mali in support of the <a
href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/africom/4573643855/in/photostream/"
moz-do-not-send="true">2010 Flintlock exercise.</a></p>
</div>
<div>
<p><img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2022/01/4573643855_562778d41e_3k.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"
alt="4573643855_562778d41e_3k"
style="margin-right: 0px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="420" height="315"></p>
<p class="gmail-caption">Then-Col. Maj. Gilbert
Diendéré addresses Burkinabe soldiers prior to their
deployment to Mali in support of AFRICOM’s Flintlock
10 exercise in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on May 1,
2010.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jeremiah Erickson,
Flintlock 10 Public Affairs</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>In 2014, two generations of U.S.-educated officers
faced off in the Gambia as a group of
American-trained <a
href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/01/05/375141211/u-s-charges-two-americans-over-attempted-coup-in-gambia?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews"
moz-do-not-send="true">would-be coup-makers</a> <a
href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/gambia/11322107/Sandhurst-trained-officer-led-Gambian-coup.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">attempted</a> (but failed)
to overthrow another <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/28/world/in-gambia-new-coup-follows-old-pattern.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">U.S.-trained</a> coup-maker,
Yahya Jammeh who had seized power back in 1994. The
unsuccessful rebellion claimed the life of Lamin
Sanneh, the purported ringleader, who had earned a
master’s degree at National Defense University in
Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>“I can’t shake the feeling that his education in
the United States somehow influenced his actions,” <a
href="https://warontherocks.com/2015/01/the-dilemma-of-an-african-soldier/"
moz-do-not-send="true">wrote</a> Sanneh’s former
NDU mentor Jeffrey Meiser. “I can’t help but wonder
if simply imprinting our foreign students with the
‘American program’ is counterproductive and
unethical.”</p>
<p>In 2008, <a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210126072334/https:/www.stripes.com/News/aziz-had-role-in-africa-training-1.81818"
moz-do-not-send="true">Stars and Stripes</a>
reported that Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the
leader of a coup against Mauritania’s elected
president, “has worked with U.S. forces that train
in the African country.” Arrested and charged with
corruption after a decadelong rule, Aziz was
recently <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/mauritania-grants-bail-ailing-ex-president-amid-graft-probe-2022-01-07/"
moz-do-not-send="true">released on bail</a> due to
ill health.</p>
<p>U.S.-trained coup-plotters aren’t strictly confined
to West Africa. Before Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi deposed
Egypt’s first democratically elected president,
Mohammed Morsi, he underwent <a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324425204578597981624524800"
moz-do-not-send="true">basic training</a> at Fort
Benning, Georgia, (in 1981) and advanced instruction
at the U.S. Army War College (in 2006).</p>
<p>A 2018 study by the military’s go-to think tank,
the Rand Corporation, cast doubt on the notion that
U.S. military training breeds coup-makers.</p>
<p>“[T]here is little evidence that overall [security
sector assistance] (measured in dollar terms)
associates with coup propensity in Africa,”
according to the study, which was written for the
Office of the Secretary of Defense and did note that
there was a “<a
href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2400/RR2447/RAND_RR2447z1.appendixes.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">marginally significant</a>”
association in the post-Cold War period.</p>
<p>A year before, however, a study by Jonathan
Caverley of the U.S. Naval War College and Jesse
Savage of Trinity College Dublin in the Journal of
Peace Research, analyzing data from 1970 to 2009, <a
href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343317713557"
moz-do-not-send="true">found</a> “a robust
relationship between U.S. training of foreign
militaries and military-backed coup attempts”
despite the authors limiting their analysis to the
International Military Education and Training
program — “which explicitly focuses on promoting
norms of civilian control.”</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>