adminRelations Committee, stated that direct US military support of the Malian government is likely to resume after the country’s July elections.
“After there is a full restoration of democracy,” Coons said, “I would think it is likely that we will renew our direct support for the Malian military.”
(The US suspended direct military aid to Mali following a coup last year by a US-trained Malian officer.)
Coons went on to deem al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb a “‘very real threat’ to Africa, the United States and the wider world.”
According to US intelligence officials, however, AQIM “remains mainly a regional menace,” with “no capacity” to launch attacks within the US Even so, the Pentagon continues to move closer to directly targeting AQIM targets. As was first reported by the New York Times, the US is in the midst of establishing a drone base in Niger. The base will reportedly host up to “300 United States military and contractor personnel.”
“US officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base,” the Times reported, “though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.”
But according to the Wall Street Journal, “at some point” is a moment which fast approaches, as senior US officials are pressing to expand the US “kill list” to include targets from northern Mali.
Meanwhile, in a prepared statement given to the US Senate Armed Services Committee last week, US Army General David Rodriquez, who is poised to become the next commander of the US military’s Africa Command (Africom), argued that greater US intervention into northwestern Africa is necessary for “stability.”
“With the increasing threat of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Gen Rodriquez wrote, “I see a greater risk of regional instability if we do not engage aggressively. Our long-term fight against al-Qaeda necessitates persistent engagement with our critical partners.”
Likewise, Sebastian Elischer in a recent Foreign Policy piece, titled “After Mali Comes Niger,” argues that “If the West wants to prevent the Sahel from falling hostage to Tuareg and Islamist militants, longer-term military and financial engagement is urgently required.” Of course, Pentagon plans for Africa do indeed stretch well beyond northern Mali. A military doctrine of global “power projection” and “full spectrum dominance” dictates nothing less.
As part of his prepared remarks given to the Armed Services Committee, Gen. Rodriquez called for a 15-fold increase in US intelligence-gathering missions in Africa.
This comes despite the fact that the US has already established “about a dozen airbases” across Africa dedicated to “intelligence-gathering” just since 2007. Even more foreboding, though, Gen Rodriquez went on to call for the US to enhance its Special Operations presence in a total of ten African states (Libya, Niger, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, South Sudan, and Kenya).
As an October report in the New York Times noted, the US has already allocated US$8 million to train a Libyan force of up to 500 special commandos. Yet as Christopher Chivvis of the Pentagon-friendly RAND Corp. writes, the US needs to “take the lead” and do more in Libya, lest one wishes to imperil Nato’s hard won “stability.”
In addition to Libya, late last year Africom announced plans to send 4 000 US troops to nearly three dozen African states over the course of 2013 for the purpose of training African militias. The training is reportedly aimed at helping “African troops beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida.”
The targeting of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda, though, is but a pretext for the US to contain Chinese interests in Africa.
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin. This article is reproduced from www.workingleft.blogspot.com
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