They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade
network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice
road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a
superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel,
food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground
transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps,
and airfields meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in
Africa.
Few
in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of
training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in
nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer have
any idea that military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo
and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in
Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a previous
imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”
In
East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the
everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded
onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and
distant outposts.
On
the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the
bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers
take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other
African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story:
Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda;
Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan;
Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp
Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.
According
to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp
Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent.
“There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there,” he told
TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM organization at
Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa
(CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa and they work
with partner nations to assist them in strengthening their defense
capabilities.”
Barnes
also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S.
embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security
Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities
with “partner nations.” He characterized the forces involved as small
teams carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several
locations in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of
personnel. In all cases, these military personnel are guests within
host-nation facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with
host-nation personnel.”
Shadow Wars
In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was
first set up there,
it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp
Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways,
the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the
continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a
surprising number of bases in Africa. And “strengthening” African
armies turns out to be a truly elastic rubric for what’s going on.
Under
President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far
beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year’s war
in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports
and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation
of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional
operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants
in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali
agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a
massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East
Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the
region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for
allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary
force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture
or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior
commanders. And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s
fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.
To
support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations,
and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are
sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics
network. Most American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but
growing ever larger and more permanent in appearance. For example,
photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s Camp Gilbert, examined by
TomDispatch, show a base filled with air-conditioned tents, metal
shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums and other gear strapped to
pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs and videogames, and a
well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free weights, and other
equipment.
Continental Drift
After
9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant
ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily
Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in
Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a
growth opportunity for the Pentagon.
The
U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and
surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies.
They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the
Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible
al-Qaeda-linked militants in
post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali’s
Islamist
Rebels of the Ansar Dine,
al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.
A recent
investigation by the
Washington Post revealed
that contractor-operated surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe,
Uganda, are scouring the territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s
behest, and that 100 to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan
military at Manda Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of
Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the
Indian Ocean, while
drones and
F-15 fighter-bombers have
been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars being
waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia.
Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania, and
the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina
Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the
newborn nation of South Sudan.
U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent,
including one
in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in South
Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. also has
had
troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with that country following a coup.
According
to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward operating
location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and
force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.
U.S. military documents indicate that there may be other even
lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In addition to Camp
Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another hole-and-corner
outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that lacks even a name.
AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further information on these
posts before this article went to press.
Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are
engaged in missions against
the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the Central
African Republic, but little is said about that base either. “U.S.
military personnel working with regional militaries in the hunt for
Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising the
regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me. “Specifically in Obo, the
troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a
Ugandan facility that operates at the invitation of the government of
the Central African Republic.”
And
that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at
bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from
the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained
soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs
missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force
for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants
known as al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the
African Union Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the
Somali capital, Mogadishu.
In
the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the
Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in
Somalia.
In April and May,
members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, of
the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the BNDF
in Mudubugu, Burundi.
In
February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite
local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on
teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of what
is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.
In
addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and
equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger,
and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned
for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana,
South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.
The
size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training
missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an average basis,
there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working
across the continent” at any one time. Next year, even more American
troops are likely to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat
Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “
Dagger Brigade,” are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly
3,000 soldiers in
the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training
missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a
particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the
demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using
conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter about the
deployment.
Air Africa
Last month, the
Washington Post revealed that,
since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies to spy
on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone of the
U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed Tusker
Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in
Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes
that look innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.
America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.
While
the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed
Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian
airport at
Arba Minch, Ethiopia,
to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to
support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct,
but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to
the New Spice Route.
“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner
explained at
a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician
developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do something
similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone luminaries
aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground supply
networks have less to do with history than with Africa’s airport
infrastructure.
Of
the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only
303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those
airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the weight of
the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to
transport troops and materiel. These limitations were driven home
during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint training exercises
hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to use an airfield in Gulu,
Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent instead to send in Chinook
helicopters.
In
addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S.
military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising
local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade
publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis
touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last
year, during another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.
“Instead
of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the exercise,
planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis. “This
provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and
eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through
freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt
diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can’t
support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is
pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.
Another is construction.
The Great Build-Up
Military
contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180
million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among
the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways “to
support medium-load aircraft” and the construction of a 185,000 square
meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works
to erect modular maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition
storage facilities, all needed for an expanding set of secret wars in
Africa.
Other
contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon
will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base,
Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa.
Still other solicitation materials suggest future military construction
in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a
medical research facility, and still more work in Djibouti.
No
less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of
“emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300
additional
Containerized Living Units (CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry facilities.
Military
documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility was
installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this
indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.
The Scramble for Africa
In a
recent speech in
Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the
reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute
imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America,
Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect
us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” As an
example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. “Why
do we care about that?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a
global enterprise... we think they very clearly do present, as an
al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and Americans.”
Fighting
them over there, so we don’t need to fight
them here
has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades,
especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to
complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen
consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported war in Libya
resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been
fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading back to Mali where
they helped destabilize that country. So far, the result has been a
military coup by an
American-trained officer;
a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement
for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms
depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of
Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar. One
military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of
blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.
With
the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century
scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping
blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and
there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your
eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to make news there for years
to come.
Click here to read Tom’s response
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: