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11 January 2011 By Rick Rozoff The New Year began with three North Atlantic Treaty
Organization soldiers killed in Afghanistan and 20
people, all portrayed as militants, killed in four
American missile strikes in northwest Pakistan. The
third drone missile attack killed four people
attempting to rescue and remove the bodies of the
victims of the first, a technique used by the U.S. and
NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999. The West's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is
currently the longest, largest and deadliest in the
world. Fatalities among U.S. troops, non-U.S. NATO and
allied forces, Afghan National Army soldiers and
anti-government fighters reached a record high last
year: 498, 213, 800 and an unknown number (by U.S. and
NATO accounts well into the thousands), respectively.
The United Nations estimated 2,400 Afghan civilians
were killed in the first ten months of last year, a 20
percent increase over the same period in the preceding
year. Approximately a thousand people were killed by
U.S. drone missile strikes in Pakistan. It says something discouraging about a world of
almost 200 nations that perhaps no more than half a
dozen countries – so-called rogue states
(alternatively Condoleezza Rice's "outposts of
tyranny") – have voiced opposition to the war. Washington's self-designated global war on terror
(sometimes capitalized), in recent years more politely
and antiseptically called overseas contingency
operations, has not diminished in intensity but rather
escalated in breadth and aggressiveness from West
Africa to East Asia and against targets not remotely
related to al-Qaeda, which has proven as nebulous and
evasive as the West portrays it being ubiquitous. From 2001 to the present the U.S. has engaged in
and supported military operations against Marxist
guerrillas in Colombia and the Philippines, ethnic
Tuaregs in Mali, nominally Christian insurgents in
Uganda and Shiite Houthi militia in northern Yemen in
the name of combating…al-Qaeda. The Wahhabist school
of extremism that characterizes al-Qaeda and analogous
groups derives its doctrinal inspiration and material
support from Saudi Arabia, yet last October Washington
announced a $63 billion arms package with the kingdom,
the largest foreign weapons deal in American history.
Washington and its NATO military allies have opened
a war front across the Arabian Sea from Pakistan in
the east to Somalia and Yemen in the west as the
central focus of operations that began almost ten
years ago. [1] On October 1, 2008 the Pentagon formally launched
its first overseas military command in the post-Cold
War era, U.S. Africa Command, which takes in 53
nations and an entire continent except for Egypt,
which remains in Central Command. The second command's area of responsibility reaches
from the eastern border of Libya to the western border
of China and southern border of Russia. From Egypt to
Kazakhstan. The Horn of Africa region, including
Somalia, was ceded by Central Command to Africa
Command (AFRICOM), but the Arabian Peninsula,
including Yemen, remains in Central Command. Though the Pentagon's Combined Joint Task Force –
Horn of Africa, now subsumed under AFRICOM and based
in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, includes
thirteen nations in East Africa, the Indian Ocean and
the Arabian Peninsula in its area of operations:
Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan,
Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Operation Enduring
Freedom, under which the U.S. conducts its greater
Afghan war, encompasses sixteen countries:
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo
Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya,
Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan,
Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. The U.S. maintains at least 2,500 troops in Camp
Lemonnier in Djibouti and in late 2009 deployed over
100 troops, Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)
equipped for guided bombs and missiles and three P-3
Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance
aircraft to Seychelles. Washington was accused by Houthi rebels in the
north of Yemen of participating with Saudi Arabia in
deadly bombing raids against them in the northwestern
province of Sa'ada in December of 2009. They stated
American jet fighters launched 28 attacks in the
province which included bombing the governor's house
and killing 120 people in one attack. [2] Later in the same month the U.S. conducted cruise
missile and air strikes with the use of cluster bombs
in southern Yemen which killed over 60 civilians,
mostly women and children. Another air strike was
launched in March of 2010. Leading American officials have demanded drone
missile strikes in Yemen and several hundred U.S.
special forces are deployed to the country. The U.S. and its allies in NATO and the European
Union are actively involved in the civil war in
Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. The Pentagon supported the Ethiopian invasion of
the country in 2006 and launched two days of air
strikes in January of the following year. In the
autumn of 2009 U.S. special forces conducted a deadly
helicopter gunship raid in southern Somalia. The New Year in Somalia started with a fierce
battle between foreign troops backing the Transitional
Federal Government (TFG) and al-Shabaab rebels,
resulting in at 15 dead and 25 wounded. Inhabitants of
the Somali capital reported that "the Mogadishu sky
turned red [and] kids were crying and had been unable
to sleep as the crackling of machine guns and barrages
rocked throughout the city." [3] There are approximately 6,000 troops from U.S.
military client states Uganda and Burundi fighting on
behalf of the formal government of the country under
the banner of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
Although approved by the African Union, AMISOM and its
predecessor, the Intergovernmental Authority on
Development (IGAD) Peace Support Mission in Somalia (IGASOM),
primarily have been initiatives by Washington and its
allies in NATO and the EU. European warships are deployed for NATO's Operation
Ocean Shield and the EU's Operation Atalanta off
Somalia's coast in the Gulf of Aden. (In military
matters the distinction between NATO and the EU is
becoming an increasingly formal one.) At least fifteen EU member states, most of them
also NATO members – Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal, Luxembourg,
Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus – have sent
no fewer than 150 military personnel to Uganda to
train 2,000 Somali troops for war in their homeland in
a program financed by the U.S. In the middle of last month the local press
reported that the first 1,000 Somali soldiers "trained
by officers from the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF)
and senior military officers from 27 European Union
countries" graduated from the Bihanga military
training school in Western Uganda, a "facility…set up
early this year to train TFG Officers and foot
soldiers in a bid to boost the military capability of
war-torn Somalia…." "The soldiers are expected to provide the core of
officers and men of a new Somali army…to provide a
much-needed boost to the fragile Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) in Mogadishu." [4] Since June of 2007 NATO has provided airlift and
sealift for AMISOM (Ugandan and Burundian) troops
deployed to Somalia. The next year NATO flew a
Burundian battalion into Somalia and in March of last
year the Western military bloc transported 1,700
Ugandan troops into and 850 out of the Somali capital. The month before the initial inauguration of
AFRICOM in 2007, when it was still under U.S. European
Command (whose top commander is simultaneously NATO
Supreme Allied Commander Europe), a Pentagon official
announced that Africa Command "would involve one small
headquarters plus five ‘regional integration teams'
scattered around the continent" and that "AFRICOM
would work closely with the European Union and NATO,"
particularly France, a leading member of both
organizations, which was "interested in developing the
Africa standby force". [5] In the same year the U.S. Defense Department
acknowledged it had already "agreed on access to air
bases and ports in Africa and ‘bare-bones' facilities
maintained by local security forces in Gabon, Kenya,
Mali, Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe,
Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia." [6] The five regions of Africa identified by the U.S.
military – north, south, east, west and central – are
all represented by the locations named above and are
each home to a branch of the African Standby Force
(Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central),
like AMISOM nominally under the control of the African
Union but in fact overseen by the U.S. and NATO. The North Atlantic Alliance inaugurated the NATO
Response Force, in NATO's own words "a highly ready
and technologically advanced multinational force made
up of land, air, maritime and special forces
components that the Alliance can deploy quickly to
wherever it is needed," in and off the coast of the
African island of Cape Verde in 2006 in a two-week,
7,000-troop exercise codenamed Steadfast Jaguar. [7] The African Standby Force is modeled after the NATO
Response Force. "NATO…supports staff capacity building
through the provision of places on NATO training
courses to AU [African Union] staff supporting AMISOM,
and support to the operationalisation of the African
Standby Force – the African Union's vision for a
continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the
NATO Response Force." [8] It is a joint project of
NATO and the Pentagon, formerly U.S. European Command
and currently U.S. Africa Command. To date the only fully successful implementation of
the project is the Eastern Africa Standby Force, whose
Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (with headquarters in
Ethiopia and its Eastern African Standby Brigade
Coordination Mechanism in Kenya) consists of Burundi,
Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia,
Sudan, Tanzania (as an observer) and Uganda. It is largely coterminous with the Pentagon's
Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa without
Yemen and with Burundi and Rwanda added. In October of
2009 the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) held
military exercises in Djibouti, where Combined Joint
Task Force – Horn of Africa is based. Last month the defense chiefs of the twelve members
of EASBRIG (presumably Eritrea was absent) met in the
capital of Burundi to discuss "the Policy Framework
for the Establishment of the Eastern Africa Standby
Force [EASF] and the Memorandum of Understanding for
Cooperation between the Eastern Africa Standby Force
Coordination Mechanism [EASBRICOM] and the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD] that
aims to harmonise the relations of both
institutions…." [9] NATO, which has been training African Standby Force
staff officers at its training center in Oberammergau,
Germany, has designated the NATO Joint Command Lisbon
to implement the bloc's military cooperation with
Africa. Joint Command Lisbon has what it identifies as
a Senior Military Liaison Officer at the African Union
headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (The territory
of every nation in Africa except for Liberia, founded
by the American Colonization Society in 1821-1822, was
formerly ruled by nations that joined NATO: Belgium,
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and
Turkey.) On September 5, 2007 "the North Atlantic Council –
NATO's top political decision making body – agreed to
provide assistance to the African Union with a study
on the assessment of the operational readiness of the
African Standby Force brigades," according to the NATO
website. In the west of Africa, the Economic Community of
West African States Standby Force brigade is being
readied to intervene in Ivory Coast to depose
President Laurent Gbagbo as the Dutch Defense Ministry
announced last week that one of its ships was "heading
for the coast of Cote d'Ivoire to provide supplies for
French warships stationed there." [10] U.S. Naval Forces Europe – U.S. Naval Forces
Africa, which is headquartered in Naples, Italy and
directs its operations through the U.S. Sixth Fleet,
also headquartered in Italy, launched the Africa
Partnership Station in 2007 as a naval component of
AFRICOM. Warships assigned to it have visited several
African nations on the east, west and south ends of
the continent, among them Angola, Cameroon, Djibouti,
Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia,
Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Reunion, Sao Tome and
Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa,
Tanzania and Togo. Last month the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Africa Vicki Huddleston and
the State Department's Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto
(who was ambassador to Ethiopia when it invaded
Somalia in 2006) visited U.S. Africa Command
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. While there the
Defense Department's Huddleston asserted that "East
Africa becomes extremely high for DOD [the Department
of Defense] in terms of priority. So the highest
priority for DOD, and therefore AFRICOM, becomes East
Africa because of Somalia and then West (Africa),
North Africa…." [11] The month before, Ugandan People's Defence Air
Force Chief Major General Jim Owoyesigire visited 17th
Air Force (Air Forces Africa) at the Ramstein Air Base
in Germany, also headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in
Europe and NATO's Allied Air Command. Owoyesigire stated that his country's new air force
was in part the product of an African air chiefs
conference he attended in Ramstein in 2007 where he
"began learning from the US Air Force." In regards to Uganda's role as one of the two major
belligerent forces in the war in Somalia and its
counterinsurgency war at home (and across its borders)
against the Lord's Resistance Army, the air force head
confirmed that "Help from U.S. Africa Command and 17th
AF has been a key enabler for the UPDAF's [Ugandan
People's Defence Air Force's] contribution to these
missions." "When we started in AMISOM, we had no airlift
capability. General Ward [William Ward, AFRICOM
commander] came and visited and helped us to partner
with the U.S. Air Force to get this airlift
capability. To get training, 17th AF came and trained
us in loading cargo and airdrops, and this has really
helped us. "This is a wide question, but right now, we are
asking 17th AF to come and help us establish a
squadron officers' school and NCO academy in Uganda.
If we can develop these schools, then we can also
involve our east African partners." [12] Early in December the commander of U.S. Army
Africa, Major General David Hogg, visited Algeria to
meet with senior military and government officials to
discuss "bilateral relations and regional issues,"
including joint reconnaissance and training activities
and "a future visit by Algerian soldiers to the United
States to investigate how the Army integrates its
lessons learned center into its training regime." U.S. Army Africa is the Army's newest service
component command and is based in Vicenza, Italy,
assigned to AFRICOM and tasked with "developing
relationships with land forces in Africa and
supporting U.S. Army efforts on the African
continent." [13] The regional issues deliberated on by the American
general and his Algerian counterparts relate to
Algeria's military campaign against Salafist
insurgents and similar counterinsurgency operations
throughout the Sahel, which consists of parts of
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali,
Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia and
Sudan. At the end of last month U.S. military personnel
assigned to Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa
and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti participated in a
combat casualty course in Burundi as part of a U.S.
State Department-sponsored program. According to James
Cobb, State Department program country manager in
Burundi, "The course is part of a U.S. Department of
State initiative to provide African armies an
opportunity to partner with American defense forces to
develop their peacekeeping skills for operations
throughout Africa." [14] In December the defense chief of Djibouti, Major
General Fathi Ahmed Houssein, met with AFRICOM
commander General William Ward at AFRICOM headquarters
in Stuttgart to discuss "joint security cooperation
activities and potential areas of further
cooperation…in East Africa and throughout the
continent." As the AFRICOM website put it: "Djibouti hosts approximately 3,000 U.S. and allied
personnel at Camp Lemonnier, which is the only major
U.S. military facility in Africa, though small teams
of U.S. personnel work across the continent on
short-term assignments. The main military organization
at Camp Lemonnier is the Combined Joint Task
Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). A component of U.S.
AFRICOM, CJTF-HOA sends teams throughout the East
Africa region [to] protect U.S. and coalition
interests." Among several joint programs, the generals
elaborated plans for "Support to Djiboutian armed
forces in the Eastern African Standby Brigade (EASBRIG)
field training exercise, aimed to assess the readiness
and capability of EASBRIG, a component of the African
Union's Africa Standby Force…." And expansion of the "International Military
Education and Training, a program that invites foreign
military officers to attend military schools in the
United States, and provides funding for trainers to
provide specific, localized training in African
countries." As well as the continuation of the "Africa
Contingency Operations Training and Assistance
program, designed to improve African militaries'
capabilities by providing selected training and
equipment required to execute
multinational…operations." Ward and Houssein also discussed "other ways to
increase support in building partner capacity in the
Horn of Africa through the U.S. Defense Department's
1206 program [to train and equip foreign militaries
for "counterterrorism or stability operations"] and
the U.S. State Department's Partnership Regional East
African Counter-Terrorism program," especially in
regard to Ugandan-Burundian AMISOM operations in
Somalia. [15] Air strikes, drone and cruise missile attacks,
special forces operations, helicopter gunship raids,
counterinsurgency campaigns, multinational armed
interventions, cluster bomb and depleted uranium
weapons use, and the entire panoply of military
actions associated with the Afghanistan-Pakistan war
are already being conducted in Africa and will only be
increased. 1) Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century
War http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
arabian-sea-center-of-wests-21st-century-war …. http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../ u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-
to-horn-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2 2) Yemen rebels say 120 killed in US airstrikes http://rt.com/usa/news/us-airstrike-rebels-yemen …. http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../
yemen-pentagons- war-on-the-arabian-peninsula 3) All Headline News, January 1, 2011 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
nato-africoms- partner-in-military-penetration-of-africa 8) North Atlantic Treaty Organization http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=5784&lang=0 |
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