"The New York Times" on United States Special Operations troops forming elite counterterrorism units
QUOTE
WASHINGTON — United States Special Operations troops are forming elite counterterrorism units in four countries in North and West Africa that American officials say are pivotal in the widening war against Al Qaeda’s affiliates and associates on the continent, even as they acknowledge the difficulties of working with weak allies.
Libya, Niger, Mauretania, Mali - where is Nigeria?
QUOTE
WASHINGTON — United States Special Operations troops are forming elite counterterrorism units in four countries in North and West Africa that American officials say are pivotal in the widening war against Al Qaeda’s affiliates and associates on the continent, even as they acknowledge the difficulties of working with weak allies.
Libya, Niger, Mauretania, Mali - where is Nigeria?
The
secretive program, financed in part with millions of dollars in
classified Pentagon spending and carried out by trainers, including
members of the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, was begun last year
to instruct and equip hundreds of handpicked commandos in Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Mali.
Boko Haram was NOT on the list of TERROR at the will of Hillary Clinton, then State Department
The goal over the next few years is to build homegrown African counterterrorism teams capable of combating fighters like those in Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that abducted nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls last month. American military specialists are helping Nigerian officers in their efforts to rescue the girls.
“Training indigenous forces to go after threats in their own country is what we need to be doing,” said Michael A. Sheehan, who advocated the counterterrorism program last year when he was the senior Pentagon official in charge of Special Operations policy. Mr. Sheehan now holds the distinguished chair at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
As
the United States military seeks to extend its counterterrorism reach
in Africa, President Obama is expected to appear at West Point on
Wednesday to emphasize a foreign policy that would avoid large land
wars, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, and instead stress the
training of allied and partner nations to battle militants on their own
soil.
9/11Sept. 11, 2001 kicked off counterterrorism
Djibouti, Somalia, Mali, Mauretania, Libya
9/11Sept. 11, 2001 kicked off counterterrorism
Djibouti, Somalia, Mali, Mauretania, Libya
Since
the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has slowly built a
multipronged counterterrorism strategy in Africa: It has carried out armed drone strikes in Somalia
from its only permanent base on the continent, in Djibouti; backed
African proxies and French commandos fighting Islamist extremists in
Somalia and Mali; and increasingly trained African troops to combat
insurgents.
Under
the new Africa plan, the Pentagon is spending nearly $70 million on
training, intelligence-gathering equipment and other support to build a
counterterrorism battalion in Niger and a similar unit in nearby
Mauritania that are in their “formative stages,” a senior Defense
Department official said.
In
a cautionary note about operating in that part of Africa, troubled by a
chronic shortage of resources and weak regional partners, the effort in
Mali has yet to get off the ground as a new civilian government
recovers from a military coup last year. In Libya, the most ambitious
initial training ended ignominiously last August after a group of armed
militia fighters overpowered a small Libyan guard force at a training
base outside Tripoli and stole hundreds of American-supplied automatic
weapons, night-vision goggles, vehicles and other equipment.
As
a result, the training was halted and the American instructors were
sent home. Libyan and American officials have been searching for a more
secure training site in Libya to restart the program. But last summer’s
debacle and the political upheaval in Libya since then have caused
American officials to rethink how they select local personnel.
“You
have to make sure of who you’re training,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick J.
Donahue II, the commander of United States Army soldiers operating in
Africa. “It can’t be the standard, ‘Has this guy been a terrorist or
some sort of criminal?’ but also, ‘What are his allegiances? Is he true
to the country, or is he still bound to his militia?’ ”
The
American military uses conventional troops and elite Special Operations
forces to train foreign armies all over the world. The tasks range from
teaching basic marksmanship to more advanced counterterrorism tactics
and techniques.
In
the past decade, the Bush and Obama administrations put a premium on
training and equipping foreign troops to combat terrorists and other
Islamist extremists and persuaded Congress to approve funding for those
programs.
The
new program to train small counterterrorism forces in Africa resembles
larger efforts by American Special Operations troops carried out in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Pentagon officials declined to comment publicly on the
new program, but budget documents reveal some details.
In
Libya, the Pentagon has allotted just over $16 million from a
train-and-equip fund to develop two companies of elite troops and their
support elements “to counter terrorist and extremist threats in Libya,”
according to budget documents. For the aborted training outside Tripoli,
the Defense Department also tapped into a classified spending account
called Section 1208, devised to aid foreign troops assisting American
forces conducting counterterrorism missions.
For
Mauritania, about $29 million has been set aside for logistics and
surveillance equipment in support of the specialized unit.
For
Niger, where the United States launches unarmed surveillance drones to
fly over Mali in support of French and United Nations troops, the
Pentagon is spending nearly $15 million on the country’s new
counterterrorism unit. The funds are part of $39.5 million this year to
train and equip the West Africa nation’s army as it struggles to stem a
flow of insurgents across Niger’s lightly guarded borders with Mali,
Nigeria and Libya.
Maman
S. Sidikou, Niger’s ambassador to the United States, said he could not
comment on the counterterrorism unit, but he added in an email,
“Training remains a critical part of our needs to further increase our
men’s readiness to face the many challenges of our regional
environment.”
Mr.
Sheehan, the former Pentagon official, said a 12-member Army Special
Forces team could train about 50 soldiers initially, and expand after
that. “It can be done,” said Mr. Sheehan, who conducted similar training
in Latin America in the 1980s as a Special Forces commander.
J.
Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center of the Atlantic Council, a
policy research group in Washington, said the United States must make
tough political judgments before investing in ambitious counterterrorism
training programs. Mr. Pham cited the lessons of Mali, where
American-trained commanders of elite army units defected to Islamic insurgents that seized the north last year.
“The
host country has to have the political will to fight terrorism, not
just the desire to build up an elite force that could be used for regime
protection,” Mr. Pham said. “And the military has to be viewed well or
at least neutrally by a country’s population.”
American
counterterrorism officials also warn that without a commitment to
support the specialized units, training can stall. “It’s very difficult,
very challenging dealing with African forces,” said Rudy Atallah, the
former director of African counterterrorism policy for the Pentagon.
“You train them to a certain level, and then they can run short on gear,
communications, even tires for their vehicles.”
American
officials say trainees must be carefully screened and monitored for
possible human rights violations or shifting allegiances. “Any unit we
train could be used to go after political opponents rather than Al
Qaeda,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace who has visited Libya frequently.
Libya - gotten out of hand
No
episode is a more sobering reminder of these risks than the collapse of
the American counterterrorism training mission last August at Base 27,
also called Camp Younis, a Libyan military installation about 15 miles
from Tripoli, the capital.
The
American trainers issued the Libyans M4 automatic rifles, night-vision
goggles, Glock pistols and armored vehicles. The Libyans took custody of
the weapons and equipment and were responsible for safeguarding them in
a warehouse at the camp, American military officials said.
In
a predawn raid on Aug. 4, gunmen believed to be from one of the local
militias overpowered the Libyan guards and seized the weapons and
equipment in the storage area, American officials said.
The
American trainers were not at the training camp when the raid occurred
because they regularly stayed at a nearby villa that served as a safe
house at night, American officials said.
American
military officials briefed on the raid suspect that the theft was an
inside job in which a Libyan officer or soldier tipped off some local
Tripoli militia members about the matériel stored at the base. Much of
the stolen equipment was later recovered, but not before news reports
indicated that some of the pilfered weapons had showed up online for
sale on the black market.
The
episode abruptly ended a weekslong training course that American and
Libyan officials had hoped would restart broader training efforts that
were suspended after the attack on the American Mission in Benghazi on
Sept. 11, 2012.
A
former American Special Operations officer said there was a broader
lesson for any future Libya training mission: “The take-away here is
they’re going to take a lot more adult supervision to make sure the
checks and balances are in place, so you don’t have outside militia
taking over.”
UNQUOTE
Green: parties involved
Red: money and equippment involved
Lilac: countries involved
A lot of different parties involved; even in the US it seems to be difficult to co-ordinate
USD 171.50 quoted, some more may be reckoned
Six countries in Africa, five thereof in SubSaharaAfrica, Nigeria was joined of recent; action not yet taken.
Remarks
The picture on top might not have been taken as of recent. Also it is somewhat strange that the majority of the instructees cover their faces. To cover one's face does not forcedly has a religious meaning. Covering faces in the first place is meant to protect from sand.
Somehow it is weird that State Department's Hillary Clinton then refused to declare Boko Haram a terroristic group.
About the US-Admininistration's building up the Taliban to fight the Russions in Afghanistan - another failure - the former does not even talk. Omerta!!! Trained by the US the Taliban actually picked up their fight against the USA. Wrong pick when picking Bin Laden, a member of the Saudi Arabian Family.
Calling all those Al Qaeda and its affiliates "Islamist" extremists causes bad feelings against Islam, Muslims, Moslems and the Qu'ran.
It is NOT a fight against the Islam; it is a fight of all the peoples around the globe against terrorism and crime.
copyright thomas ramseyer
UNQUOTE
Green: parties involved
Red: money and equippment involved
Lilac: countries involved
A lot of different parties involved; even in the US it seems to be difficult to co-ordinate
USD 171.50 quoted, some more may be reckoned
Six countries in Africa, five thereof in SubSaharaAfrica, Nigeria was joined of recent; action not yet taken.
Remarks
The picture on top might not have been taken as of recent. Also it is somewhat strange that the majority of the instructees cover their faces. To cover one's face does not forcedly has a religious meaning. Covering faces in the first place is meant to protect from sand.
Somehow it is weird that State Department's Hillary Clinton then refused to declare Boko Haram a terroristic group.
About the US-Admininistration's building up the Taliban to fight the Russions in Afghanistan - another failure - the former does not even talk. Omerta!!! Trained by the US the Taliban actually picked up their fight against the USA. Wrong pick when picking Bin Laden, a member of the Saudi Arabian Family.
Calling all those Al Qaeda and its affiliates "Islamist" extremists causes bad feelings against Islam, Muslims, Moslems and the Qu'ran.
It is NOT a fight against the Islam; it is a fight of all the peoples around the globe against terrorism and crime.
copyright thomas ramseyer
