America’s strategic interests in the continent are motivating an increase in Pentagon presence in Africa.
In 2008, the United States Africa Command was formed to provide the Pentagon with a consistent military focus on the continent. The Bush administration sought to place AFRICOM’s headquarters on African soil, but the proposal attracted such opposition that no African state would agree to host it.
Continue after the break.
The Obama administration has continued AFRICOM and increased its funding and operational capability.
In December of 2012, the White House announced that it was deploying 3,500 Special Forces and military trainers to at least 35 states in Africa. The US established a drone base in the uranium-rich nation of Niger and the Pentagon aided France in Mali by transporting troops and military equipment into the West African state.
Now US troops are, to varying extents, involved in projects and ops almost all across Africa.
“From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the US military is at work,” journalist and analyst Nick Turse writes in his article The Startling Size of the US Military Operations in Africa.
“Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions and a growing logistics network, all undeniable evidence of expansion,” he adds.
AFRICOM’s chief spokesman has consistently minimized the scope of its operations and the number of facilities it maintains or shares with host nations, claiming that only “a small presence of personnel who conduct short-duration engagements” are operating from “several locations,” while the US military maintains a “small footprint” on the continent.
However, in practice the US has quite a number of projects, operations, and engagements in the region. Evidence of an American pivot to Africa is almost everywhere on the continent, Nick Turse argues.
In his article, the reporter cites an investigation by the TomDispatch analytical website that revealed recent US military involvement with no fewer than 49 African nations.
According to the probe based on public sources and AFRICOM documents, many African nations are home to multiple US military projects: in some, the US maintains bases, while in others, it trains local partners, is building facilities for its allies or infrastructure for locals.
The 2012 US Army Africa briefing materials obtained by TomDispatch reveal plans to expand US presence and construct more facilities and infrastructure in the region.
US outpost in Africa is located in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. This airbase serves as the home of a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, as well as the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative. According to military documents, it supports “high-risk activities” carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for Special Operations Command Africa, said it provides “emergency casualty evacuation support to small team engagements with partner nations throughout the Sahel,” although official documents note that such actions have accounted for only 10% of its monthly flight hours.
Ouagadougou is just one site for expanding US air operations in Africa, the probe claims, saying that last year, the 435th Military Construction Flight (MCF)—a rapid-response mobile construction team—revitalized an airfield in South Sudan for Special Operations Command Africa, according to the unit’s commander, Air Force lieutenant Alexander Graboski. Before that, the team also “installed a runway lighting system to enable 24-hour operations” at the outpost. Graboski states that the Air Force's 435th MCF “has been called upon many times by Special Operations Command Africa to send small teams to perform work in austere locations.”
According to a briefing prepared earlier this year by Hugh Denny of the Army Corps of Engineers, plans have been drawn up for Special Operations Command Africa “operations support” facilities to be situated in “multiple locations.”
According to Captain Robert Smith, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, NSWU 10 has been engaged “with strategic countries such as Uganda, Somalia, and Nigeria.”
Captain J. Dane Thorleifson, NSWU 10’s outgoing commander, recently mentioned deployments in six “austere locations” in Africa.
Thorleifson, who led the unit from July 2011 to July 2013, also said NSWU 10 had been involved in training “proxy” forces, specifically “building critical host nation security capacity; enabling, advising, and assisting our African counterterror partner forces so they can swiftly counter and destroy al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and Boko Haram.”
US drone bases in Africa are also reported to be expanding. In February, the US announced the establishment of a new drone facility in Niger. Later in the spring, AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson confirmed to TomDispatch that US air operations conducted from Base Aerienne 101 at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital, were providing “support for intelligence collection with French forces conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region.”
Recently, the New York Times noted that what began as the deployment of one Predator drone to Niger had expanded to encompass daily flights by one of two larger, more advanced Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, supported by 120 Air Force personnel. Additionally, the US has flown drones out of the Seychelles Islands and Ethiopia's Arba Minch Airport.
The Navy has also been active. It maintains a forward operating location known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. Since 2004, US troops have been stationed at a Kenyan naval base known as Camp Simba at Manda Bay.
AFRICOM official is cited to have told TomDispatch that the US military also makes use of six buildings located on Kenyan military bases at the airport and seaport of Mombasa, as well as the International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops and “transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities” such as training missions. The US military now has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers.
In addition, US Africa Command has built a sophisticated logistics system, officially known as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network, colloquially dubbed as the “new spice route.” It connects posts in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya, Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda, Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, as well as crucial port facilities used by the Navy's CTF-53 (“Commander, Task Force, Five Three”) in Djibouti, which are collectively referred to as "the port of Djibouti" by the military.
The US maintains 10 marine gas and oil bunker locations in eight African nations, according to the Defense Logistics Agency.
The US also continues to maintain a long-time Naval Medical Research Unit, known as NAMRU-3, in Cairo, Egypt.
The expansion trend is very likely to continue.
In August the Pentagon announced that its think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, had contracted with the Booz Allen Hamilton firm to conduct a study on the future of the US in Africa from a military perspective.
The reason for the contract to study Africa, USA Today assumes, was related to fears of the rising Al-Qaeda and other terrorist-linked organizations in Africa.
This is the same rationale provided for the escalation of AFRICOM operations and the placing of thousands of troops in various nation-states across the continent, which shows Washington’s firm intentions to maintain its stake in the region.