Larger US Troop Presence in Africa

By Charles Cobb Jr., Washington, DC, 2 May 2003

In a new indication that Washington’s anti-terrorism efforts may continue to involve U.S. troops in Africa, President George W.Bush declared that from Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down Al-Qaeda killers.

Events in Iraq are just one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001—and still goes on, said Bush.

And discussing Nato reconfiguration earlier this week, Nato Supreme Commander General James Jones, an American four-star general, suggested in barely noticed remarks that the United States plans to boost its troop presence in Africa, where there are large ungoverned areas. . .that are clearly the new routes of narco-trafficking, terrorists’ training and hotbeds of instability.

Jones was speaking at a Defense Writers Group breakfast, an organization which groups journalists covering the Pentagon.

A debate about Nato’s relevance and future among Nato allies began heating up in the run-up to the Iraq war and continues to be a hot topic now that the war is concluding. Nato has not yet reached any conclusions as to what its future shape might be, said Jones. It has not found its form yet and maybe it won’t.

But if the organization does have a future, said General Jones, expect Africa to be of greater importance to both Nato and the United States. The carrier battle groups of the future and the expeditionary strike groups of the future may not spend six months in the Med[iterranean Sea] but I’ll bet they’ll spend half the time going down the West Coast of Africa.

One of the changes Jones says he wants Nato to consider is the establishment of temporary forward operating locations that could be used for brief training periods and for deployments in times of crisis. Nato will debut a prototype quick-reaction force of about 2,000 to 3,000 fighters—encompassing ground, sea and air forces—in October, said Jones. Troops in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa may be a model for this. The largest U.S. troop presence in Africa is located there—close to 2,000—as part of an anti-terrorism effort in the Red Sea region and the Horn of Africa.

From waters just off the Djibouti coast, the command and control ship USS Mount Whitney, launches helicopters and uses electronics to fulfill its mission of defeating transnational terrorist groups threatening the mission area, which covers Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Kenya and Yemen.

Speaking to U.S. soldiers in Baghdad this week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that the U.S. now is systematically working with our friends and allies around the world to examine our footprint, to see where we are, how we want to be arranged for the future.