Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in
177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred
military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L.
Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to “hit
the ground running.”
The US is not waging any wars in Africa but it has a
significant presence on the continent. Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other
special ops are currently conducting nearly 100 missions across 20
African countries at any given time, waging secret, limited-scale operations. According to the
magazine Vice, US troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises and military
engagements throughout Africa per year, an average of 10 per
day — an astounding 1,900% increase since the command rolled out 10 years ago.
Many activities described as “advise and assist” are actually indistinguishable from combat by
any basic definition.
There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel,
including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a
year ago. The troops are strung throughout the continent spread
across 53 countries. There are 54 countries on the
“Dark Continent.” More than 4,000 service members have converged on East
Africa. The US troop count in Somalia doubled
last year.
When AFRICOM
was created there were no plans to establish bases or put boots on the ground.
Today, a network of small staging bases or stations have cropped up. According to investigative
journalist Nick Turse, “US military bases (including
forward operating sites, cooperative security locations, and contingency
locations) in Africa number around fifty, at least.” US troops in harm’s way in
Algeria, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan Tunisia, and Uganda qualify for extra pay.
The US African
Command (AFRICOM) runs drone surveillance programs, cross-border raids, and
intelligence. AFRICOM has claimed responsibility for
development, public health, professional and security training, and other humanitarian
tasks. Officials from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Agriculture,
Energy, Commerce, and Justice, among other agencies, are involved in
AFRICOM activities. Military attachés outnumber diplomats
at many embassies across Africa.
Last October,
four US soldiers lost their lives in
Niger. The vast majority of Americans probably had no idea that the US even had
troops participating in combat missions in Africa before the incident took
place. One serviceman was reported dead in Somalia in June. The Defense
Department is mulling plans to
“right-size” special operations missions in
Africa and reassign troops to other regions, aligning the efforts with the
security priorities defined by the 2018 National Defense Strategy. That
document prioritizes great power competition over
defeating terrorist groups in remote corners of the globe. Roughly 1,200
special ops troops on missions in Africa are looking at a drawdown. But
it has nothing to do with
leaving or significantly cutting back. And the right to unilaterally return
will be reserved. The infrastructure is being expanded enough to make it
capable of accommodating substantial reinforcements. The construction work is
in progress. The bases will remain operational and their numbers keep on rising.
A large drone base in
Agadez, the largest city in central Niger, is reported to be under construction. The
facility will host armed MQ-9 Reaper drones which will finally take flight in
2019. The MQ-9 Reaper has a range of 1,150 miles, allowing it to provide
strike support and intelligence-gathering capabilities across West and
North Africa from this new base outside of Agadez. It can carry
GBU-12 Paveway II bombs. The aircraft features synthetic aperture radar
for integrating GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The armament suite
can include four Hellfire air-to-ground anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles.
There are an estimated 800 US troops on
the ground in Niger, along with one drone base and the
base in Agadez that is being built. The Hill called it “the largest US Air
Force-led construction project of all time.”
According to Business
Insider, “The US military presence here is the second largest in Africa behind
the sole permanent US base on the continent, in the tiny Horn of Africa nation
of Djibouti.” Four thousand American servicemen are stationed at Camp Lemonnier
(the US base located near Djibouti City) — a critical strategic base for the
American military because of its port and its proximity to the Middle East.
Officially, the
camp is the only US base on the continent or, as AFRICOM calls it, “a forward
operating site,” — the others are “cooperative security locations” or
“non-enduring contingency locations.” Camp Lemonnier is the hub of a network of
American drone bases in Africa that are used for aerial attacks against
insurgents in Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, as well as for exercising control
over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. In 2014, the US signed a new 20-year lease on
the base with the Djiboutian government, and committed over $1.4 billion to
modernize and expand the facility in the years to come.
In March, the
US and Ghana signed a military agreement outlining
the conditions of the US military presence in that nation, including its construction activities.
The news was met with protests inside the
country.
It should be noted that the drone attacks that are
regularly launched in Africa are in violation of US law. The Authorization for Use
of Military Force (AUMF), adopted after Sept. 11, 2001, states that the
president is authorized to use force against the planners of those attacks and
those who harbor them. But that act does not apply to the rebel groups
operating in Africa.
It’s hard to believe that the US presence will be really
diminished, and there is no way to know, as too many aspects of it are shrouded
in secrecy with nothing but “leaks” emerging from time to time. It should be
noted that the documents obtained
by TomDispatch under the United States Freedom of Information Act contradict
AFRICOM's official statements about the scale of US military bases around the
world, including 36 AFRICOM bases in 24 African countries that have not been
previously disclosed in official reports.
The US foothold in Africa is strong. It’s almost
ubiquitous. Some large sites under construction will provide the US with the
ability to host large aircraft and accommodate substantial forces and their
hardware. This all prompts the still-unanswered question — “Where does the US have troops in
Africa, and why?” One thing is certain — while waging an
intensive drone war, the US is building a vast military infrastructure for a
large-scale ground war on the continent.