The quiet war in Africa

A good article at The Jamestown Foundation by Andrew Black looks at the importance of the Western Sahara to Maghrebi security.

(Think of North Africa as the Maghreb, and the Sahel is the region between the Sahara and Central Africa.)

African security forces are pursuing terrorist groups, including virulent ones like the GSPC.

One detail caught my eye, and I put it in bold in the excerpt below.

On March 11, 2004, as the world focused on the Madrid commuter bombings, there were reports that armed forces from Chad, Niger, and Mali had engaged a large group of operatives from the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), and had inflicted significant casualties on this notorious organization (El Watan, March 11, 2004; Le Matin, March 9, 2004). Details of the operation were at first nebulous and most greeted this development with skepticism or disinterest. On March 15, however, U.S. European Command released a statement corroborating these reports (Press Release http://www.eucom.mil, March 15, 2004).

After being chased out of Mali, the GSPC was engaged by Nigerian security forces in the north of the country. Realizing they were soon to be overrun, the GSPC cadres crossed into Chad for refuge. Unbeknownst to them, Chadian and Nigerian forces were in collusion and enjoyed the ongoing logistical and intelligence support of U.S. personnel. As a result, Chad's defenses were prepared and were able to overpower the Salafis with only minimal casualties. Ultimately, Saifi Ammari (known as Abderrazak El Para), a regional kingpin and the reputed mastermind of the summer 2003 hostage saga, was apprehended at first by the Movement for Chadian Democracy and Justice and later by Libyan security forces (The Village Voice, Spring 2005).

This operation could not have been nearly as successful had it not been for the high level of cooperation and integration among the security services of Chad, Niger and Mali. This case study demonstrates how regional unity and integration can have a significant impact on the North African Salafi-Jihadist threat.

The US is engaged in anti-terrorism in activities in Africa. A lot of the work is done quietly, as alluded to here. In this case, logisitical support and intelligence was provided to the African forces. We don't hear a lot about this. It's easy for us here to get wrapped up in our daily activities and forget that our fellow Americans are in far-away places, working to protect us.

In our Monday Winds of War Briefings, we've been keeping an eye on the US Military involvement in Africa.

For instance, the SF is training Mali soldiers.

"It's difficult for the local military to get out there and patrol the borders just because it's a huge border and their budget's pretty small. So they need some assistance," said Capt. Eddie, the leader of a 12-man special forces A-Team that has spent two months in Gao working with Mali soldiers based here. To maintain anonymity, a special forces soldier can be identified publicly only by rank and first name.

Capt. Eddie's is the third special operations team the Pentagon has dispatched to Gao in the past three years. It's given many of these Mali soldiers the kind of training they've never had.

The Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa is the most visible US presence in northern Africa.
This force is engaged in humanitarian missions, in anti-terrorist activities, and in training local forces.

This story has some examples:

A small U.S. military task force in East Africa is installing water pumps, rebuilding schools and health clinics, making medical house calls and training national armies - all part of a mission to stabilize a region that’s seen as a potential breeding ground for terrorist groups.

"We are coming out of drought because of the pump," said Omar Ahmed, a Sankabar elder. "So we say thank you, America. And thank you, Mr. Reed. He is the first guy to give us help."

What’s going here provides a glimpse of the Bush administration’s global war on terrorism, which is being fought - mostly in the shadows - elsewhere in Africa and across the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia using different combinations of military, covert, economic and diplomatic weapons.

Separated from the Middle East by only a narrow waterway, the Horn of Africa is home to 90 million Muslims, many of whom live in crushing poverty and political isolation. Al-Qaida has had success in the area, bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, attacking the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and nearly shooting down an Israeli charter plane over Kenya in 2002.

The 1,500 troops of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa have been stationed since 2002 at Camp Lemonier, a former French base on the Red Sea in the tiny coastal nation of Djibouti. They were sent to hunt down al-Qaida operatives in East Africa, but there are few known terrorist cells working in the vast area - two-thirds the size of the United States - and the troops haven’t made many arrests.

Here is another one.

While news from Iraq and Afghanistan dominates headlines worldwide, counter-terrorism operations in the Horn of Africa by elements of the 2nd Marine Division go virtually unreported.

But according to a former Los Baños resident, quietly helping the millions of people who inhabit the seven countries in the Horn is no less an important mission of Operation Enduring Freedom than offering a chance for democracy to the people of the Middle East.

"We are waging peace with vigor in this part of the world," said Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer Jefferey Rhea. "We're winning hearts and minds, trying to prevent this area from turning into another hot zone."

Remote corners of Africa may not be as sexy as the hot spots in Iraq, but the presence of terrorists in northern Africa is a sign of how global this war really us. God bless those who are prosecuting the war there, who do so quietly and with the professionalism we've come to expect from the military.