*/Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>/* wrote:
Not to mention the oil. Nor, I suppose, the jatropha plantations. :-(
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070430-124131-8532r.htm
- World - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
U.S. force aims to secure Africa
By Jason Motlagh
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 30, 2007
The United States hopes by year's end to establish an Africa Command
that will anchor military operations across a continent seen to be of
increasing strategic importance and threatened by transnational
terrorists.
The new force, known informally as AfriCom, will preside over all
countries on the continent except Egypt and is expected to be
operational by the fall, according to Pentagon officials. They say it
is needed to secure vast, lawless areas where terrorists have sought
safe haven to regroup and threaten U.S. interests.
"Part of the rationale behind the development of this command is
clearly the growing emergence of the strategic importance of Africa
from a global ... security and economic standpoint," Rear Adm. Robert
Moeller, head of the Africa Command Transition Team, said earlier
this month. "This allows us to work more closely with our African
partners to ... enhance the stability across the continent."
Plans for such a force were first disclosed in April 2004, but it
was not until February this year that Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates laid out the scope of the new command.
AfriCom will initially operate as part of the Stuttgart,
Germany-based European Command before becoming independent at the end
of 2008. It will be a "unified combatant command" that includes
branches of the military along with civilians from the departments of
Defense, State and Agriculture, among others, according to Adm.
Moeller.
The force will deal with peacekeeping, humanitarian aid missions,
military training and support of African partner countries. A
headquarters location has yet to be determined.
The United States now maintains five military commands worldwide,
with Africa divided among three of them: EuCom covers 43 countries
across North and sub-Saharan Africa; Central Command oversees East
Africa, including the restive Horn of Africa; and Pacific Command
looks after Madagascar.
In 2001, CentCom established a task force in the Horn to track
down al Qaeda terrorists and monitor instability in Somalia. It has
since expanded to conduct humanitarian missions in the region.
EuCom directs a seven-year, $500 million counterterrorism
initiative that provides military and developmental aid to nine
Saharan countries deemed vulnerable to groups looking to establish
Afghanistan-style training grounds and carry out other illicit
activities.
The main target of U.S. Special Forces training African troops
has been the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The
group withered after a crackdown by Algerian authorities and a
state-sponsored amnesty program, but a new al Qaeda-linked offshoot
claimed responsibility for the April 11 Algiers suicide bombings that
killed more than 30 people.
U.S. military officials say there is evidence that a quarter of
suicide bombers in Iraq are from North Africa. Other jihadists are
said to have traveled as far as Afghanistan to receive training
before returning home to Africa to sow trouble.
However, the initiative is not welcome in every African country.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, quoted in the Libyan daily Al-Fajr
Al-Jadid, said at a conference in Chad last week that such a force
was neither wanted nor needed.
"We told [the Americans] we do not need military aircraft flying
over, nor do we need military bases," he reportedly said. "We are in
need of economic elements and an economic support. If your support to
us is military intervention, then we do not need you, nor your help."
Some Western critics worry that a military-based policy on the
continent could breed radicalism where it scarcely exists by
sustaining despotic regimes that usurp funding and military hardware
to tighten their grip on power.
A 2005 report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based
think tank, said the Saharan region is "not a terrorist hotbed," and
warned that some governments try to elicit U.S. aid while using the
"war on terror" to justify human rights abuses.
U.S. officials insist the new AfriCom will not result in a
large-scale deployment of U.S. forces on the continent. Instead, they
want to place "a greater mix of diplomatic, developmental and
economic experts" on the ground. Current estimates are for about
1,000 personnel, on par with other regional commands.
"The goal is for AfriCom not to be a U.S. leadership role on the
continent," said Ryan Henry, deputy undersecretary of defense for
policy, who spoke with reporters in Washington last week after
returning from a "fact-finding" trip to Africa.
"We would be looking to complement rather than compete with any
leadership efforts currently going on."
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