The safety scenario within the African Sahel – the place U.S. commandos have skilled, fought and died in a “shadow battle” for the final 20 years – is a nightmare, based on a Pentagon report quietly launched late final month. It’s simply the newest proof of systemic American navy failures throughout the continent, together with twenty years of deployments, drone strikes and commando raids in Somalia which have resulted in a wheel-spinning stalemate and an ongoing spate of coups by U.S.-trained officers throughout West Africa that the chief of U.S. commandos on the continent mentioned was because of U.S. alliances with repressive regimes.
“The western Sahel has seen a quadrupling within the variety of militant Islamist group occasions since 2019,” reads the brand new evaluation by the Africa Heart for Strategic Research, the Pentagon’s foremost analysis establishment dedicated to the continent. “The two,800 violent occasions projected for 2022 symbolize a doubling prior to now yr. This violence has expanded in depth and geographic attain.”
The worsening safety scenario displays most poorly on Particular Operations Command Africa or SOCAFRICA – which oversees elite U.S. troops on the continent and has performed an outsized function in U.S. navy efforts to counter terrorist teams or, in navy parlance, violent extremist organizations (VEOs), from Jama’at Nurat al Islam wal Muslimin in Burkina Faso to Ahlu Sunnah wa Jama’a in Mozambique.
“SOCAFRICA, by, with, and thru African companions should degrade and disrupt VEOs with a view to advance U.S. safety pursuits,” based on previously secret plans, masking the years 2019 to 2023, obtained through the Freedom of Data Act by Rolling Stone. “To realize the best good points, SOCAFRICA focuses its efforts on 4 main areas: East Africa, the Lake Chad Basin, the Sahel, and the Maghreb.”
Because of this, the U.S. has constantly despatched its most elite troops – Army Inexperienced Berets, Navy SEALs, and Marines – to such African hotspots. In response to an inventory supplied by U.S. Particular Operations Command to Rolling Stone, America’s commandos deployed to 17 African nations – Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Tunisia – in 2021.
However that isn’t the entire story.
An investigation by Rolling Stone discovered U.S. particular operators have been despatched to at the least 5 further African nations – the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, and Somalia – final yr. And that is along with myriad engagements by standard U.S. troops throughout the continent – from Naval maneuvers alongside forces from Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles to Nationwide Guard deployments to Morocco, Kenya, and Somalia.
“The U.S. authorities constantly lacks transparency in disclosing the scope and areas of its navy operations throughout Africa. The Division of Protection doesn’t acknowledge the complete extent of its ‘coaching’ and ‘cooperation’ actions — oftentimes euphemisms for operations that look very very similar to fight,” Stephanie Savell, co-director of Brown College’s Prices of Battle Challenge, instructed Rolling Stone.
The deployments to those 22 African nations account for a major proportion of U.S. Particular Operations forces’ world exercise. Roughly 14 p.c of U.S. commandos dispatched abroad in 2021 have been despatched to Africa, the most important share of any area on the planet apart from the Higher Center East.
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Because the early 2000s, U.S. particular operators have deployed on missions that run the gamut from coaching efforts like SOCAFRICA’s annual Flintlock train – which is “designed to strengthen the power of key accomplice nations within the area to counter violent extremist organizations” – to “advise, help, and accompany” missions alongside native troops that may contain U.S. Particular Operations forces in fight. The latter are carried out in secret, removed from the prying eyes of the press. The previous, Flintlock, has change into an annual PR camo-wash that affords the U.S. a patina of transparency and a plethora of publicity as cherry-picked reporters present principally favorable, generally breathless cookie-cutter protection of tough-talking American commandos barking orders at “uncooked,” African troops or “muscle-bound twentysomethings nervously watching their African protégés” or “regional forces studying from grizzled Western commandos”; all of it “beneath the pewter solar” within the “suffocating warmth” of a “dusty coaching floor” of “advantageous Saharan sand” within the “harsh desert terrain” and “huge choking dustlands” of the Sahel.
Regardless of substantial engagement by American commandos, terrorism traits throughout the continent are dismal, based on the Pentagon’s Africa Heart. “Militant Islamist group violence in Africa has risen inexorably over the previous decade, increasing by 300 p.c throughout this time,” reads an August evaluation of the complete continent. “Violent occasions linked to militant Islamist teams have doubled since 2019.”
Earlier this yr, Rolling Stone’s Kevin Maurer accompanied Inexperienced Berets on a coaching mission within the Sahelian nation of Niger, the place 4 U.S. troops have been killed in an Islamic State ambush in 2017. “It’s exhausting to see how a dozen Special Forces troopers and roughly 120 Nigérien commandos masking 200,000 sq. miles make a distinction in opposition to an estimated 2,500 fighters aligned with both ISIS or Al Qaeda,” he wrote. The numbers bear out his skepticism.
Militant Islamist violence within the Sahel has quadrupled since 2019. The two,612 assaults by terrorist teams within the area over the previous yr outpaced even Somalia. And the 7,052 ensuing fatalities account for nearly half of all such deaths reported on the continent, based on the Africa Heart. 1 / 4 of these fatalities resulted from assaults on civilians — a 67 p.c bounce over 2021.
On the identical time, West African officers skilled and suggested by U.S. particular operators maintain overthrowing the governments the US is attempting to prop up – together with 4 coups by Flintlock attendees since 2020. SOCAFRICA’s chief, Rear Admiral Milton “Jamie” Sands, instructed Rolling Stone that the US was not chargeable for the rebellions, was powerless to stop them, and prompt a serious motive for the coups was widespread dissatisfaction with U.S. companions on the continent who suppress the desire of their very own peoples.
“The dearth of safety and the numbers of internally displaced personnel, mixed with, in some areas, a notion of disadvantagement that takes place between the federal government and the inhabitants, actually type to create an setting the place the inhabitants loses religion within the authorities and both decides intentionally to overthrow the federal government by way of a coup or, as we noticed in… Burkina Faso…a mutiny that was a coup,” mentioned Sands, referring to Damiba’s January putsch.
After 9/11, the Pentagon ramped up navy engagement in Africa, constructing a sprawling community of outposts throughout the northern tier of the African continent – from Senegal to Kenya, Tunisia to Gabon – conducting a whole lot of drones strikes from Libya to Somalia, in addition to commando raids and coaching missions from one facet of Africa to the opposite.
In Somalia, for instance, there have been 37 declared airstrikes over eight years beneath the Obama administration, whereas the variety of U.S. assaults jumped to 205 throughout Trump’s single time period, based on knowledge compiled by Airwars, a U.Ok.-based airstrike monitoring group. Underneath the Biden administration, the U.S. has carried out at the least 11 assaults there. A lot of the strikes have been geared toward al Shabaab militants who now management about 70 p.c of south and central Somalia, a rustic nearly as giant as Texas.
“Over the subsequent a number of weeks and months, United States Armed Forces will reposition from areas inside Africa to return to Somalia,” President Joe Biden knowledgeable Congress in June, ultimately sending about 450 troops there and reversing a withdrawal from the nation ordered by Donald Trump within the final days of his presidency. “United States navy personnel conduct periodic engagements in Somalia to coach, advise, and help regional forces, together with Somali and African Union Mission in Somalia forces, throughout counterterrorism operations.”
Such” engagements” can, nevertheless, be indistinguishable from fight. In Might 2017, for instance, Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed by al Shabaab militants whereas conducting an “advise, help and accompany mission” with Somali forces. The subsequent yr, particular operations soldier Alex Conrad was killed in a firefight in Somalia. And earlier this yr, a soldier assigned to the twentieth Special Forces Group was injured in a mortar assault in Mali.
Over the past decade, U.S. Particular Operations forces have seen fight in at the least 13 African nations, based on retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who served at U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) from 2013 to 2015 after which headed Particular Operations Command Africa till 2017. America’s most elite troops continued to be lively in 9 of these nations – Burkina Faso, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, and Tunisia – in 2021.
This yr, the US lower assist to the primary of these nations, Burkina Faso, after Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba overthrew his nation’s democratically elected president in January. Damiba, it seems, was well-known to AFRICOM, having participated in at the least a half-dozen U.S. coaching occasions. In 2010 and 2020, for instance, he took half in SOCAFRICA’s Flintlock train.
Late final month, Damiba was overthrown by one other navy officer, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré. Was he additionally mentored by the US? AFRICOM doesn’t know.
“That is one thing we must analysis and get again to you,” Africa Command spokesperson Kelly Cahalan instructed Rolling Stone. “Army seizures of energy are inconsistent with U.S. navy coaching and schooling,” mentioned Cahalan. However that may be information to trainees, like Damiba.
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In 2014, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, who attended a counterterrorism coaching course at Florida’s MacDill Air Pressure Base that was sponsored by Joint Particular Operations College, seized energy in Burkina Faso. The subsequent yr, Gen. Gilbert Diendéré – who headed the Burkina Faso Flintlock 2010 Committee – led the junta that overthrew that nation’s authorities. In 2020, Col. Assimi Goïta, who additionally labored with U.S. Particular Operations forces, collaborating in Flintlock coaching workouts and attending a Joint Particular Operations College seminar at MacDill, overthrew Mali’s authorities. Goïta then stepped down and took the job of vice chairman in a transitional authorities charged with returning Mali to civilian rule, however quickly seized energy once more, conducting his second coup in 2021. That very same yr, members of a Guinean particular forces unit led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya took a break from coaching with U.S. Inexperienced Berets to storm the presidential palace and depose the nation’s 83-year-old president, Alpha Condé. Doumbouya was quickly put in as Guinea’s new chief.
SOCAFRICA’s Flintlock train might not be an incubator of riot, however current putschists have been a few of its highest profile members. Officers who attended simply two Flintlock workouts, alone, have carried out 5 coups since 2015. Burkina Faso’s Diendéré and Damiba have been each concerned in Flintlock 2010, whereas AFRICOM instructed Rolling Stone that Guinea’s Doumbouya and Mali’s Goita each attended Flintlock 2019. “Offering this type of tactical coaching in fragile democracies comes with prices, and thus far we haven’t been in a position to have trustworthy public conversations about these prices,” mentioned Savell, “nor do now we have sufficient public details about each form of coaching we’re partaking in and the way to keep away from abetting human rights violations.”
AFRICOM says it doesn’t maintain tabs of which or what number of American mentees overthrow their very own governments, however U.S.-trained officers have tried at the least 9 coups (and succeeded in at the least eight) throughout 5 West African nations – Burkina Faso (3 times), Guinea, Mali (3 times), Mauritania, and the Gambia – since 2008.
Rear Admiral Sands, the Particular Operations Command Africa chief, maintained that U.S. coaching was not linked to coups and as a substitute prompt {that a} key motive for them was that the U.S. was partnered with repressive regimes or, as he put it, “governance that’s not essentially aligned with the rights and can of their folks.” Regardless of the rebellions by U.S. trainees and the partnerships with oppressive governments, Sands insisted there “is not any different choice” however to proceed U.S. assist however no technique to halt the coups.
“I’d inform you that there’s no yet one more shocked or dissatisfied when companions that we’re working with or have been working with for some time in some instances resolve to overthrow their authorities,” Sands instructed Rolling Stone, throughout a convention name with members of the press. “We now have not discovered ourselves in a position to stop it.”
