\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n
The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security cooperation activities.<\/p>\n
For years, the U.S. military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs personnel and commanders have repeatedly\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0no more than a \u201clight footprint<\/a>\u201d on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence when it comes to military personnel.\u00a0 They have, however, balked at specifying just what that light footprint actually consists of.\u00a0 During an interview, for instance, a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesman once\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0worry that tabulating the command\u2019s deployments would offer a \u201cskewed image\u201d of U.S. efforts there.<\/p>\n It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite.<\/p>\n Last year, according AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez, the U.S. military carried out a total of 546 \u201cactivities\u201d on the continent — a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa.\u00a0 In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day.\u00a0 This represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was\u00a0established<\/a>\u00a0in 2008.<\/p>\n In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and 481 security cooperation activities made AFRICOM \u201can extremely active geographic command.\u201d\u00a0 But exactly what the command is \u201cactive\u201d in doing is often far from clear.<\/p>\n AFRICOM\u00a0releases<\/a>\u00a0information about only a fraction of its activities.\u00a0 It offers no breakdown on the nature of its operations.\u00a0 And it\u00a0allows<\/a>\u00a0only a\u00a0handful<\/a>\u00a0of cherry-picked\u00a0reporters<\/a>\u00a0the chance to observe a few select\u00a0missions<\/a>.\u00a0 The command refuses even to offer a\u00a0count<\/a>\u00a0of the countries in which it is \u201cactive,\u201d preferring to keep most information about what it\u2019s doing — and when and where — secret.<\/p>\n While Rodriguez\u2019s testimony offers but a glimpse of the scale of AFRICOM\u2019s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military briefing documents obtained by TomDispatch sheds additional light on the types of missions being carried out and their locations all across the continent.\u00a0 These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent years and reveal U.S. military operations to be more extensive than previously reported.\u00a0 They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa will remain robust in 2014, with U.S. forces expected again to average far more than a mission each day on the continent.<\/p>\n The Constant Gardener<\/strong><\/p>\n U.S. troops carry out a wide range of operations in Africa, including\u00a0airstrikes<\/a>targeting suspected militants,\u00a0night raids<\/a>\u00a0aimed at kidnapping terror suspects, airlifts of French and African troops onto the battlefields of\u00a0proxy wars<\/a>, andevacuation<\/a>\u00a0operations in destabilized countries.\u00a0 Above all, however, the U.S. military conducts training missions, mentors allies, and funds, equips, and advises its local surrogates.<\/p>\n U.S. Africa Command describes its activities as advancing \u201cU.S. national security interests through focused, sustained engagement with partners\u201d and insists that its \u201coperations<\/a>,\u00a0exercises<\/a>, and\u00a0security cooperation assistance programs<\/a>\u00a0support U.S. Government foreign policy and do so primarily through military-to-military activities and assistance programs.\u201d<\/p>\n Saharan Express<\/a>\u00a0is a typical exercise that biennially pairs U.S. 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\u00a0French and African interventions<\/a>\u00a0in Mali and the Central African Republic.\u00a0 Other \u201csecurity cooperation\u201d activities include the State Partnership Program, which teams African military forces with U.S. National Guard units and the State Department-funded Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program through which U.S. military mentors and advisors provide equipment and instruction to African units.<\/p>\n Many military-to-military activities and advisory missions are\u00a0carried out<\/a>\u00a0by soldiers from the Army\u2019s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, as part of a \u201cregionally aligned forces\u201d effort that farms out specially trained U.S. troops to geographic combatant commands, like AFRICOM.\u00a0 Other training engagements are carried out by units from across the service branches, including Africa Partnership Station 13 whose U.S. naval personnel and Marines\u00a0teach<\/a>\u00a0skills such as patrolling procedures and hand-to-hand combat techniques.\u00a0 Meanwhile, members of the Air Force recently\u00a0provided assistance<\/a>to Nigerian troops in areas ranging from logistics to airlift support to public affairs.<\/p>\n Click here to see a larger version<\/a><\/em><\/strong> Previously undisclosed U.S. Army Africa records reveal a 94% increase in all activities by Army personnel from 2011 to 2013, including a 174% surge in State Partnership missions (from 34 to 93) and a 436% jump in Advise-and-Assist activities including ACOTA missions (from 11 to 59).\u00a0 Last year, according to a December 2013 document,<\/em>\u00a0these efforts involved everything from\u00a0teaching<\/a>\u00a0Kenyan troops how to use Raven surveillance drones and helping Algerian forces field new mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPS, to training Chadian and Guinean infantrymen and aiding France\u2019s ongoing interventions in West and Central Africa.<\/p>\n AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson refused to offer further details about these activities. \u201cWe do training with a lot of different countries in Africa,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 When I asked if he had a number on those \u201cdifferent countries,\u201d he replied, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 He ignored repeated written requests for further information.\u00a0 But a cache of records detailing deployments by members of just the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, from June through December 2013, highlights the sheer size, scope, and sweep of U.S. training missions.<\/p>\n June saw members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team deployed to Niger, Uganda, Ghana, and on two separate missions to Malawi; in July, troops from the team traveled to Burundi, Mauritania, Niger, Uganda, and South Africa; August deployments included the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Niger, two missions in Malawi, and three to Uganda; September saw activities in Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Uganda, and Malawi; in October, members of the unit headed for Guinea and South Africa; November\u2019s deployments consisted of Lesotho, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Guinea; while December\u2019s schedule consisted of activities in South Sudan, Cameroon, and Uganda, according to the documents.\u00a0 All told, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division carried out 128 separate \u201cactivities\u201d in 28 African countries during all of 2013.<\/p>\n The records obtained by TomDispatch also indicate that U.S. Army Africa took part in almost 80% of all AFRICOM activities on the continent in 2013, averaging more than one mission per day.\u00a0 Preliminary projections for 2014 suggest a similar pace this year — 418 activities were already planned out by mid-December 2013 — including anticipated increases in the number of operations and train-and-equip missions.<\/p>\n Full-scale exercises, each involving U.S. Army troops and members of the militaries of multiple African countries, are also slated to rise from 14 to 20 in 2014, according to the documents.\u00a0 So far, AFRICOM has released information on 11 named exercises scheduled for this year.\u00a0 These include African Lion in Morocco, Eastern Accord in Uganda, Western Accord in Senegal, Central Accord in Cameroon, and Southern Accord in Malawi, all of which include a field training component and serve as a capstone event for the prior year\u2019s military-to-military programs.\u00a0 AFRICOM will also conduct at least three maritime security exercises, including Cutlass Express off the coast of East Africa, Obangame Express in the Gulf of Guinea, and\u00a0Saharan Express<\/a>in the waters off Senegal and the Cape Verde islands, as well as its annual Africa Endeavor exercise, which is designed to\u00a0promote<\/a>\u00a0\u201cinformation sharing\u201d and facilitate standardized communications procedures within African militaries.<\/p>\n Additionally, U.S. and African Special Operations forces will carry out an exercise codenamed Silent Warrior 2014 in Germany and have already completed Flintlock 2014 (since 2005, an annual event).\u00a0 As part of Flintlock 2014, more than 1,000 troops from\u00a018 nations<\/a>, including Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad,\u00a0Denmark<\/a>, France, Germany, Italy, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, the United Kingdom, the U.S., and the host nation of Niger, carried out counterterror training on the outskirts of Niamey, the capital, as well as at small bases in Tahoua, Agadez, and Diffa.\u00a0 \u201cAlthough Flintlock is considered an exercise, it is really an extension of ongoing training, engagement, and operations that help prepare our close Africa partners in the fight against extremism and the enemies that threaten peace, stability, and regional security,\u201d said Colonel Kenneth Sipperly, the commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahel, during the Flintlock opening ceremony.<\/p>\n Locations, Locations, Locations<\/strong><\/p>\n A 2013\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0by TomDispatch analyzing official documents and open source information revealed that the U.S. military was involved with at least 49 of the 54 nations on the African continent during 2012 and 2013 in activities that ranged from special ops raids to the training of proxy forces.\u00a0 A map produced late last year by U.S. Army Africa bolsters the findings, indicating its troops had conducted or planned to conduct \u201cactivities\u201d in all African \u201ccountries\u201d during the 2013 fiscal year except for Western Sahara (a disputed territory in the Maghreb region of North Africa), Guinea Bissau, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe.\u00a0 Egypt is considered outside of AFRICOM\u2019s area of operations, but did see U.S. military activity in 2013, as did\u00a0Somalia<\/a>, which now also hosts a small team of U.S.\u00a0advisors<\/a>.\u00a0 Other documents indicate Army troops actually deployed to S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe, a\u00a0country<\/a>\u00a0that regularly\u00a0conducts<\/a>\u00a0activities with the U.S. Navy.<\/p>\n AFRICOM is adamant that the U.S. military has only one base on the continent: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.\u00a0 Official documents examined by TomDispatch, however, make reference to bases by other names: forward operating sites, or FOSes (long-term locations); cooperative security locations, or CSLs (through which small numbers of U.S. troops periodically rotate); and contingency locations, or CLs (which are used only during ongoing missions).<\/p>\n AFRICOM has repeatedly denied requests by TomDispatch for further information\u00a0on the numbers or locations of FOSes, CSLs, and CLs, but official documents produced in 2012 make reference to seven cooperative security locations, including one in Entebbe, Uganda, a location from which U.S. contractors have flown secret surveillance missions, according to an investigation by the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>.\u00a0 Information released earlier this year by the military also makes references to at least nine \u201cforward operating locations,\u201d or FOLs in Africa.<\/p>\n We Know Not What They Do<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhat We Are Doing,\u201d the title of a December 2013 military document obtained by TomDispatch, offers answers to questions that AFRICOM has long sought to avoid and provides information the command has worked to keep under wraps.\u00a0 So much else, however, remains in the shadows.<\/p>\n From 2008 to 2013, the number of missions, exercises, operations, and other activities under AFRICOM\u2019s purview has skyrocketed from\u00a0172<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0546<\/a>, but little substantive information has been made public about what exactly most of these missions involved and just who U.S. forces have trained.\u00a0 Since 2011, U.S. Army Africa alone has taken part in close to 1,000 \u201cactivities\u201d across the continent, but independent reporters have only been on hand for a tiny fraction of them, so there are limits to what we can know about them beyond military talking points and official news releases for a relative few of these missions.\u00a0 Only later did it become clear that the United States extensively\u00a0mentored<\/a>\u00a0the military officer who overthrew Mali\u2019s elected government in 2012, and that the U.S.\u00a0trained<\/a>\u00a0a Congolese commando battalion\u00a0implicated<\/a>\u00a0by the United Nations in mass rapes and other\u00a0atrocities<\/a>\u00a0during that same year, to cite two examples.<\/p>\n Since its\u00a0inception<\/a>,\u00a0U.S. Africa Command<\/a>\u00a0has consistently\u00a0downplayed<\/a>\u00a0its\u00a0role<\/a>on the\u00a0continent<\/a>.\u00a0 Meanwhile, far from the press or the public, the officers running its secret operations have privately been\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0Africa \u201cthe battlefield of tomorrow, today.\u201d<\/p>\n After years in the dark, we now know just how \u201cextremely active\u201d — to use General David Rodriguez\u2019s phrase — AFRICOM has been and how rapidly the tempo of its missions has increased.\u00a0 It remains to be seen just what else we don’t know about U.S. Africa Command\u2019s exponentially expanding operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Documents Reveal Blinding Pace of Ops in 2013, More of the Same for 2014 by\u00a0Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch click here for original article The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security cooperation activities. For years, the U.S. military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2989,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/killanythingpbk.jpg?fit=180%2C318&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2990,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions\/2990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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