Tag: American military in Africa

Military

In Africa, U.S.-Trained Militaries Are Ousting Civilian Governments in Coups

By Michael M. Phillips | Wall Street Journal

A flurry of military coups across Africa has disrupted the U.S. strategy of enlisting local armies to counter Islamist extremists and other security threats. The U.S. has trained thousands of African soldiers, from infantrymen rehearsing counterterrorism raids on the edge of the Sahara to senior commanders attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The programs are a linchpin of U.S. policy on the continent, intended to help African allies professionalize their armed forces to fight armed opponents both foreign and domestic.

But U.S. commanders have watched with dismay over the past year as military leaders in several African allies—including officers with extensive American schooling—have overthrown civilian governments and seized power for themselves, triggering laws that forbid the U.S. government from providing them with weapons or training.

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Military

Why 40 African armies met at a Fort Benning summit — and why some didn’t

By Davis Winkie | Army Times

COLUMBUS, Ga. — It was a rare sight, especially on American soil. Seated around nested U-shaped tables in the heart of the city’s renovated ironworks were senior military officials representing nearly three-quarters of Africa’s 54 UN-recognized countries.

They were there last week for the African Land Forces Summit, a week-long, U.S.-brokered annual conference that brings together army officials from across the continent and other countries that maintain a presence in Africa.

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Military

Airbase 201: America completes drone base in Niger Republic

By StrategyPage

After five years of negotiations, followed by years of construction delays, the new American airbase in Niger has been completed. Called Airbase 201, it cost $110 million and is one of the most expensive U.S. Air Force foreign airbase construction projects even undertaken. The main purpose of the base is to improve surveillance and intel collection about Islamic terrorists in the region. That will be accomplished by basing UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) there along with some manned aircraft.

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Military

Marine Raider who earned Silver Star for heroism during Mali hotel attack now on Capitol Hill

By: Shawn Snow

Then-Gunnery Sgt. Jarad Stout was sleeping in the early morning hours of Nov. 20, 2015, when the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, was attacked by gunmen affiliated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. The armed militants were holding about 170 people hostage, including a dozen Americans.

But when the Marine Raider, who was serving as a liaison to the U.S. embassy at the time, received word of an “active shooter,” he and his team were “out the door in five minutes.” Stout had very little initial information regarding the attack, but he devised a plan and led his team, braving grenades and small arms fire, to help rescue hostages.

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Military

Revealed: The U.S. has 36 code-named military operations in Africa

By Nick Turse and Sean D. Naylor

Many Americans first became aware of U.S. military operations in Africa in October 2017, after the Islamic State ambushed American troops near Tongo Tongo, Niger, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding two others.

Just after the attack, U.S. Africa Command said U.S. troops were providing “advice and assistance” to local counterparts. Later, it would become clear that those troops — the 11-man Operational Detachment-Alpha Team 3212 — were working out of the town of Oullam with a larger Nigerian force under the umbrella of Operation Juniper Shield, a wide-ranging counterterrorism effort in northwest Africa.

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Africa

America pumps aid into Mozambique following massive cyclone

By: Kyle Rempfer

U.S. Africa Command has been allotted millions of dollars to help move aid supplies into Mozambique, which was hit by the strongest-ever cyclone in the Southern Hemisphere March 14-15.

The Pentagon has authorized AFRICOM to conduct operations in Mozambique up to April 15 at a cost of $15 million, said Brig. Gen. Robert Huston, the command’s deputy director of operations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is the lead organ for the operation, also has provided $6.2 million so far.

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Uncategorized

Trump says ISIS is defeated — but in West Africa, there are fears extremism will get worse
By Siobhán O’Grady and Danielle Paquette

Days after President Trump declared the Islamic State’s caliphate had been eliminated in Syria, the prime minister of one of West Africa’s most turbulent nations urged the United States to shift attention to a rising extremist threat in the Sahel.

Malian Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga visited Washington this week to ask U.S. officials to bolster support for his country’s fight against terrorism, warning that the weakened Islamic State in Iraq and Syria could jump-start the flow of extremists across the Sahel, Africa’s arid northwest, worsen the region’s security and jeopardize American interests there.

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Music

US navy band performs at Nigerian University

The United States Navy brass band on Wednesday thrilled students of the Department of Arts in the University of Lagos. Nigeria.

The band, which is based in Italy, is involved in efforts to strengthen ties with partner nations throughout Europe and Africa.

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Military

U.S. military may join Mozambique cyclone rescue, aid agencies told

U.S. military teams could join the cyclone rescue effort in Mozambique, a representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said, according to the minutes of a humanitarian meeting published on Thursday.

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Diplomacy, Military

AFRICOM Commander engages with African leaders in Washington

The top U.S. commander in Africa met with African leaders in Washington D.C. recently to discuss U.S. Africa Command’s role in the new National Defense Strategy and the value of partner capacity.

Marine Corps Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser engaged with 21 defense attachés and the African Union Ambassador to the U.S. in a wide-ranging discussion at the Africa House, addressing various strategies and common challenges on the continent, Africa Command said.

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Military

Nigerian Navy and US Navy Start War Games

The US Navy and Nigerian Navy have commenced a multinational maritime excercise code named, Obangame Express 2019, in Lagos, Nigeria.

The maritime excercise was preceded with the commissioning of a maritime domain awareness training school that was equipped by the United States Navy.
The school was commissioned on Thursday, March 14 alongside the opening ceremony of the multinational maritime exercise, Obangame Express 2019

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Military

America’s Escalating Air War in Somalia: How Did We Get There?
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Where is the United States at war? It’s a hard question to answer. Inevitably though, at least in the last four years, this sentence has changed little: American troops are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. But with a steady stream of airstrikes, militant deaths, alleged civilian casualties and two American troops killed in Eastern Africa since 2017, another country has since crept onto the list: Somalia.

On Sunday, my colleagues Eric Schmitt and Charlie Savage published a story about the escalating war there against the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Shabab, and how the number of American airstrikes in the country have steadily increased under the Trump administration. In 2018 alone, there were 47 strikes that killed 326 people. And 2019 is already on pace to exceed last year’s tallies.

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Policy

Escalation in Somalia Is a Foreign Policy Failure in Progress

U.S. intervention quietly escalates in Somalia.

While the Trump administration has very visibly made and modified plans to reduce U.S. military intervention in Syria and Afghanistan, it has quietly escalated the fight in Somalia. U.S. airstrikes in the North African nation are on the rise, The New York Times reported Sunday, and that higher pace of bombardment has contributed to increased civilian displacement and all the turmoil that comes with it.

This is a foreign policy failure in progress. If the last two decades of missteps in the Middle East and North Africa have demonstrated anything, it is that secretive wars of choice are prone to mission creep and rife with unintended consequences. Rather than expand, U.S. military intervention in Somalia should be shut down before it spirals into another needless generational conflict.

The United States has had some military presence in Somalia for the better part of three decades, and the current campaign began in 2007. But U.S. strikes were few—zero to three per year—until 2015, when former President Barack Obama started an upward trend the Trump team has continued. Last year, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) reported 47 strikes. The first two months of this year put us on track to triple that by December.

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Uncategorized

US Army captain killed in Ethiopia plane crash   

By: Kathleen Curthoys

Army Capt. Antoine Lewis was one of eight Americans killed when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on Sunday, news reports say.

Lewis was on the flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, when Flight 302 crashed, killing all 157 people aboard, according to aCBS report from Chicago.

Lewis was stationed in Ottawa, Canada, and he was on a vacation to Africa, his family said.

“I will say that plane went down with him doing what he wanted to do most, and that was to stretch out and embrace our mother country,” his mother, Antoinette Lewis, said in the CBS report.

His family, from the Chicago suburb of Matteson, Illinios, knew he was on the plane, tried calling him and didn’t get an answer, the report said.

Lewis, 39, had served in Afghanistan and South Korea during his military career, ABC 7 in Chicago reported. He was in Africa to do missionary work, the report said.

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