The Washington Post
Saturday, February 16, 2013
In his first term, President Obama instructed
the Pentagon to pivot its forces and reorient its strategy toward
fast-growing Asia. Instead, the military finds itself drawn into a
string of messy wars in another, much poorer part of the world: Africa.
Over the past two years, the Pentagon has
become embroiled in conflicts in Libya, Somalia, Mali and central
Africa. Meanwhile, the Air Force is setting up a fourth African drone
base, while Navy warships are increasing their missions along the
coastlines of East and West Africa.
In scope and expense, the military
involvement in Africa still barely registers when compared with its
presence in Asia, let alone the Middle East or Afghanistan. On any given
day, there are only about 5,000 U.S. troops scattered across all of
Africa, while 28,000 are stationed in South Korea alone.
But it is becoming more common for the
Pentagon to deploy troops to parts of Africa that many Americans would
be hard-pressed to locate on a map, such as Djibouti, the Central
African Republic and now the West African country of Niger, where the
military is planning a base for Predator drones.
Pentagon officials said their expanded
involvement in Africa is necessary to combat the spread of al-Qaida
affiliates in North Africa and Somalia.
While U.S. military leaders have sought to
downplay their rudimentary network of bases on the continent, there are
signs that they are planning for a more robust presence.
In a written statement provided to the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. David Rodriguez, who is
poised to become the next leader of the Pentagon's Africa Command,
estimated that the military needs to increase its intelligence-gathering
and spying missions in Africa by nearly 15-fold.
“I believe additional intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities are necessary to protect
American interests and assist our close allies and partners,” he wrote
in the statement, which was released Thursday during his confirmation
hearing. “The recent crises in North Africa demonstrate the volatility
of the African security environment.”
Rodriguez said the Africa Command needs
additional drones, other surveillance aircraft and more satellite
imagery. It receives only half of its “stated need” for North Africa and
only 7 percent of its total “requirements” for the entire continent, he
said.
When military officials established the
Africa Command in 2007, they insisted they did not have plans to build
bases or move troops to the continent.
Since then, however, the Pentagon has
gradually assembled a network of small staging bases, including drone
installations in Ethiopia and the Seychelles, and a forward operating
base for special operations forces in Kenya.
The Pentagon has expanded operations and
construction at the only permanent base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier
in Djibouti, which serves as a hub for counterterrorism missions in
Somalia and Yemen.