Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Shadow Wars in Africa
Posted by <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse/> Nick Turse at
9:27am, July 13, 2012.
Here's an odd question: Is it possible that the U.S. military is present in
more countries and more places now than at the height of the Cold War? It's
true that the U.S. is reducing its forces and giant bases in Europe and that
its troops are out of Iraq (except for that huge, militarized
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175401/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_how_not_
to_withdraw_from_iraq/> embassy in Baghdad). On the other hand, there's
that massive
<
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/12/world/la-fg-us-persian-gulf-2012011
3> ground, air, and naval
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/world/middleeast/us-adds-forces-in-persia
n-gulf-a-signal-to-iran.html> build-up in the Persian Gulf, the Obama
administration's widely publicized
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175476/michael_klare_a_new_cold_war_in_a
sia> "pivot" to Asia (including
<
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-20/first-us-marines-for-darwin-arrive-in
-april/3901250> troops and ships), those new
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-building-secret-dr
one-bases-in-africa-arabian-peninsula-officials-say/2011/09/20/gIQAJ8rOjK_st
ory.html> drone bases in the
<
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583012923076634.h
tml> eastern Indian Ocean region, some movement back into Latin America
(including a
<
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2012/04/30/Chile-US-base
-a-boon-for-defense-firms/UPI-13281335818612/> new base in Chile), and don't
forget Africa, where less than a decade ago, the U.S. had almost no military
presence at all. Now, as TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse writes in
the latest in his "
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175557/Nick_turse_the_changing_face_of_e
mpire> changing face of empire" series, U.S. special operations forces,
regular troops, private contractors, and drones are spreading across the
continent with remarkable (if little noticed) rapidity.
Putting together the pieces on Africa isn't easy. For instance, only the
other day it was
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-cras
h-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_story.
html?hpid=z1> revealed that three U.S. Army commandos in a Toyota Land
Cruiser had skidded off a bridge in Mali in April. They died, all three,
along with three women identified as "Moroccan prostitutes." This is how we
know that U.S. special operations forces were operating in chaotic,
previously democratic Mali after a coup by a
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-1-man-derailed-2-decades-of-
democracy-in-mali-and-helped-create-haven-for-terrorism/2012/07/07/gJQA0tMpT
W_story.html> U.S.-trained captain accelerated the unraveling of the
country, leading more recently to its virtual dismemberment by Tuareg rebels
and Islamist insurgents. Consider this a sample of what Nick Turse calls
the U.S. military's "scramble for Africa" in a seamy, secretive nutshell.
So here's another question: Who decided in 2007 that a
<
http://www.africom.mil/> U.S. Africa Command should be set up to begin a
process of turning that continent into a web of U.S. bases and other
operations? Who decided that every Islamist rebel group in Africa, no
matter how local or locally focused, was a threat to the U.S., calling for a
military response? Certainly not the American people, who know nothing
about this, who were never asked if expanding the U.S. global military
mission to Africa was something they favored, who never heard the slightest
debate, or even a single peep from Washington on the subject. (To catch
Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Turse discusses
the Pentagon's shadowy, but fast-expanding mission in Africa, click
<
http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/07/and-beat-drones-on.html> here or
download it to your iPod
<
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&subid=&off
erid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.ap
ple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817> here.)
Tom
Obama's Scramble for Africa
Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon's "New Spice Route" in Africa
By <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse> Nick Turse
They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network
that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today's "spice road" has
nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it's a superpower's
superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military
equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation
infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields
meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.
Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of
training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in nations
that most Americans couldn't locate on a map. Even fewer have any idea that
military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo and the Queen of
Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in Africa. It's all
happening in the shadows of what in a previous imperial age was known as
"the Dark Continent."
In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the
everyday necessities for a military on the make. They're then loaded onto
trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant
outposts.
On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the bare
outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers take a
break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other African
countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story: Manda Bay,
Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and
Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in
Ethiopia; and the Pentagon's showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in
Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.
According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp
Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent. "There
are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there," he told TomDispatch
recently by email. "The primary AFRICOM organization at Camp Lemonnier is
Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts
are focused in East Africa and they work with partner nations to assist them
in strengthening their defense capabilities."
Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S.
embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security
Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities
with "partner nations." He characterized the forces involved as small teams
carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in "several locations
in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In all
cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation facilities,
and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation personnel."
Shadow Wars
In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was
<
http://www.hoa.africom.mil/pdfFiles/Fact%20Sheet.pdf> first set up there,
it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp
Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways, the
Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the continent.
Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a surprising
number of bases in Africa. And "strengthening" African armies turns out to
be a truly elastic rubric for what's going on.
Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far
beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year's war in
Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases
in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of
Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional
operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in
Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a
secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx
of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible
old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned
aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and
African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State
Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord's Resistance
Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to
scratch the surface of Washington's fast-expanding plans and activities in
the region.
To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations,
and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are sprouting
continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics network. Most
American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but growing ever
larger and more permanent in appearance. For example, photographs from last
year of Ethiopia's Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled
with air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums
and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs
and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free
weights, and other equipment.
Continental Drift
After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant
ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily Iraq),
and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and
has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a growth opportunity for
the Pentagon.
The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and
surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies. They
include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the Islamist
movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible
<
http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=8039&lang=0> al-Qaeda-linked
militants in post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony's murderous Lord's Resistance
Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali's
Islamist
<
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/07/radical-islamic-rebels-in
-mali-destroying-timbuktu-treasures.html> Rebels of the Ansar Dine,
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/world/asia/al-qaeda-power-shifting-away-f
rom-pakistan.html> al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.
A recent
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-int
elligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html>
investigation by the Washington Post revealed that contractor-operated
surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the
territory used by Kony's LRA at the Pentagon's behest, and that 100 to 200
U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda Bay.
Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch airport in
Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while
<
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/29/where_the_drones_are?page=
full> drones and
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/indian-ocean-shadow-war/#more-80589
> F-15 fighter-bombers have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of
the shadow wars being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and
Somalia. Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania,
and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina
Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the
newborn nation of South Sudan.
U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more
shadowy forward operating posts on the continent,
<
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/04/30/news/wheres-joseph-kony-us-troops-hav
e-yet-to-find-him/> including one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic
and others in Nzara in South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of
Congo. The U.S. also has had
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-cras
h-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_print.
html> troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military
relations with that country following a coup.
According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward
operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and
force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S.
military documents indicate that there may be other even lower-profile U.S.
facilities in the country. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military
also maintains another hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port
facility that lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for
further information on these posts before this article went to press.
<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tom
dispatch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0086EF89K>
Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-africa-us-troops-moving-slowl
y-against-joseph-kony-and-his-militia/2012/04/16/gIQAtwMKMT_story.html>
engaged in missions against the Lord's Resistance Army from a rugged camp in
Obo in the Central African Republic, but little is said about that base
either. "U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries in the
hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising
the regional counter-LRA effort," Barnes told me. "Specifically in Obo, the
troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a Ugandan
facility that operates at the invitation of the government of the Central
African Republic."
And that's still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at
bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from the
Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained
soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs
missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force for
the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants known as
al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the African Union
Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital,
Mogadishu.
In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the
Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in
Somalia.
<
http://www.army.mil/article/80723/Texas_National_Guardsmen_inspired_by_Buru
ndi_soldiers/> In April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron,
124th Cavalry Regiment, of the Texas National Guard took part in a training
mission with the BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.
In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite
local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on
teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia's military as part of what is
otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.
In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping
militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia.
AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012,
including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa,
Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.
The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training
missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, "on an average basis, there
are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the
continent" at any one time. Next year, even more American troops are likely
to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry
Division, known as the "
<
http://www.army.mil/article/82376/Dagger_Brigade_to__align__with_AFRICOM_in
_2013/> Dagger Brigade," are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly
<
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/06/army-3000-soldiers-serve-in-africa-ne
xt-year-060812/> 3,000 soldiers in the brigade will be involved in, among
other activities, training missions while acquiring regional expertise.
"Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the
capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the
demand by using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter
about the deployment.
Air Africa
Last month, the Washington Post
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/contractors-run-us-sp
ying-missions-in-africa/2012/06/14/gJQAvC4RdV_story.html> revealed that,
since at least 2009, the "practice of hiring private companies to spy on
huge expanses of African territory. has been a cornerstone of the U.S.
military's secret activities on the continent." Dubbed Tusker Sand, the
project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in Uganda and a
handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes that look
innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.
America's mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.
While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed
Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian
airport at
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethi
opia-is-operational/2011/10/27/gIQAznKwMM_story.html> Arba Minch, Ethiopia,
to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to support
such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct, but a much
more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to the New Spice
Route.
"Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer," Army planner Chris Zahner
<
http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/MarApril12/New_Spice_Africa.html>
explained at a conference in Djibouti last year. "[H]e was also a
logistician developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do
something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone
luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground
supply networks have less to do with history than with Africa's airport
infrastructure.
Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only 303
of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those airfields that
have been checked out, half won't support the weight of the C-130 cargo
planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to transport troops and
materiel. These limitations were driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one
of that year's joint training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were
unable to use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent
instead to send in Chinook helicopters.
In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S.
military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising
local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade
publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis touts an
emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last year, during
another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.
"Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the
exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors," writes Gadddis. "This
provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and
eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through
freight and customs areas." Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt
diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can't support
U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is pursuing to support
its expanding operations in Africa.
Another is construction.
The Great Build-Up
Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180
million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among the
projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways "to support
medium-load aircraft" and the construction of a 185,000 square meter Combat
Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works to erect modular
maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all
needed for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.
Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon
will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base, Kenya's
Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa. Still other
solicitation materials suggest future military construction in Egypt, where
the Pentagon already maintains a
<
http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmrc/Pages/namru3.htm> medical research
facility, and still more work in Djibouti.
No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of
"emergency troop housing" at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300 additional
<
http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/od/africa/ig/Scenes-from-Djibouti.--1q/Con
tainer-Living-Units--CLUs--.htm> Containerized Living Units (CLUs),
stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry
facilities.
Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility
was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this
indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.
The Scramble for Africa
In a <
http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=8039&lang=0> recent speech
in Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the
reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: "The absolute imperative
for the United States military [is] to protect America, Americans, and
American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect us from threats
that may emerge from the African continent." As an example, Ham named the
Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. "Why do we care about that?" he
asked rhetorically. "Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think they
very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and
Americans."
Fighting them over there, so we don't need to fight them here has been a
core tenet of American foreign policy for decades, especially since 9/11.
But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social
problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last
year's U.S.-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg
mercenaries, who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi,
heading back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far,
the result has been a military coup by an
<
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=156419045>
American-trained officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the
National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided
Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the
irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda "affiliate" on the American
radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to three major
instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.
With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century
scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping
blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and there's no
telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa.
The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning
journalist, his work has appeared in the
<
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and
-vietnam-20120424> Los Angeles Times,
<
http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club> the Nation, and
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175426/nick_turse_a_secret_war_in_120_co
untries> regularly at <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse/>
TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the
recently published <
https://www.createspace.com/3859968> Terminator Planet:
The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This
piece is the latest article in his
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175501/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_prisons%2C_
drones%2C_and_black_ops_in_afghanistan> series on "the changing face of
American empire," which is being underwritten by <
http://www.lannan.org/>
Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on <
http://nickturse.tumblr.com/>
Tumblr. To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which
he discusses the Pentagon's shadowy, but fast-expanding mission in Africa,
click <
http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/07/and-beat-drones-on.html>
here or download it to your iPod
<
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&subid=&off
erid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.ap
ple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817> here.
Received on Thu Jul 12 2012 - 20:52:42 EDT
