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Nick Turse
Last year, according to Africom commander General David Rodriguez, the United States military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent — a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa. In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day. This represents a 217 percent increase in operations, programmes, and exercises since the command was established in 2008, writes NICK TURSE.
The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security co-operation activities. For years, the United States military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale.
Its public affairs personnel and commanders have repeatedly claimed no more than a “light footprint” on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence when it comes to military personnel. They have, however, balked at specifying just what that light footprint actually consists of.
During an interview, for instance, a United States Africa Command (Africom) spokesman once expressed worry that tabulating the command’s deployments would offer a “skewed image” of United States efforts there.
It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite. Last year, according to Africom commander General David Rodriguez, the United States military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent — a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa. In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day.
This represents a 217 percent increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was established in 2008. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and 481 security co-operation activities made Africom “an extremely active geographic command”. But exactly what the command is “active” in doing is often far from clear.
Africom releases information about only a fraction of its activities. It offers no breakdown on the nature of its operations. And it allows only a handful of cherry-picked reporters the chance to observe a few select missions.
The command refuses even to offer a count of the countries in which it is “active,” preferring to keep most information about what it’s doing — and when and where — secret. While Rodriguez’ testimony offers but a glimpse of the scale of Africom’s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military briefing documents obtained by Tom Dispatch sheds additional light on the types of missions being carried out and their locations all across the continent.
These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent years and reveal United States military operations to be more extensive than previously reported. They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa will remain robust in 2014, with United States forces expected again to average far more than a mission each day on the continent.
United States troops carry out a wide range of operations in Africa, including air strikes targeting suspected militants, night raids aimed at kidnapping terror suspects, airlifts of French and African troops onto the battlefields of proxy wars, and evacuation operations in destabilised countries. Above all, however, the United States military conducts training missions, mentors allies, and funds, equips, and advises its local surrogates.
United States Africa Command describes its activities as advancing “United States national security interests through focused, sustained engagement with partners” and insists that its “operations, exercises, and security co-operation assistance programs support United States Government foreign policy and do so primarily through military-to-military activities and assistance programmes”.
Saharan Express is a typical exercise that biennially pairs United States forces with members of the navies and coast guards of around a dozen mostly African countries. Operations include Juniper Micron and Echo Casemate, missions focused on aiding French and African interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic.
Many military-to-military activities and advisory missions are carried out by soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, as part of a “regionally aligned forces” effort that farms out specially trained United States troops to geographic combatant commands, like Africom.
Other training engagements are carried out by units from across the service branches, including Africa Partnership Station 13 whose United States naval personnel and Marines teach skills such as patrolling procedures and hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Meanwhile, members of the air force recently provided assistance to Nigerian troops in areas ranging from logistics to airlift support to public affairs. — TomDispatch.com.
Turse is a fellow at New York University’s Centre for the United States and the Cold War.
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