Posted on 01/29/2013 6:44:52 AM PST by Pan_Yan
Military Pact With Niger Brings American Forces Closer to Conflict in Mali.
The U.S. signed an agreement Monday with the West African country of Niger that clears the way for a stepped-up American military presence on the edges of the conflict in neighboring Mali.
The U.S. and France are moving to create an intelligence hub in Niger that could include a base, near Mali's border, for American drones that could monitor al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali's vast desert north, U.S. officials said.
The moves show the extent to which the U.S. and France are girding for what could be an open-ended campaign against the militants in North and West Africa.
U.S. and French officials said they see Niger as a logical hub for intelligence-collection operations nearby in Mali, where France has deployed warplanes and ground troops to drive Islamist militants from cities and towns they have held for months. War planners say small air strips in Niger could be used as launching pads for spy missions and strikes.
...
The Pentagon has small numbers of personnel and equipment scattered across Africa. The largest concentration is at Camp Lemonnier, a French-U.S. base in Djibouti, used to launch drone strikes in Yemen. The base is the headquarters for a task force of 2,000 Americans.
In addition to the U.S. personnel now in Niger, about 100 were sent to the region last year to help in the hunt for the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel militia in central Africa. Africom is based in Germany, and has personnel on the continent at regional African organizations, such as the African Union.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I'm not sure how many other African countries we are actively militarily involved in. That's what I came up with off the top of my head.
We have a Kenyan I’d like to deploy back to Africa.
Your tax dollars at work. Meanwhile the financiers and motivators of the violent Islamic fundamentalist wave are the Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia. They operate freely and openly. They tolerate the decadent royals in return for oil money. Unless the West is prepared to deal with the source, it is wasting men and treasure in Africa.
talking heads will voice ant-colonialism, but it's enslavement, and negros in America haven't a clue
This is a GREAT idea!
Moving the seat of our central socialist government to an impoverished African nation would befit the economies of the Dark Continent.
After all the socialist government apparatus has been relocated, perhaps we could then start over here and rebuild our tattered nation.
Barack the II could truly be in his element.
Africa is a hot mess. I hope the Army docs have red up on e-bola.
Africa is the only place worse than the mideast.
There is no reason for the US troops to be in Africa.
This isn’t going to work out well, either, with 0scumbag in the White Hut/Crib.
Colonialism: It is only a bad word for liberals when anyone but Obama is doing it....
Mali has one of the largest mostly unexplored sedimentary basins in the world.
Which side is the administration going to support?
In the early 80s, I spent a lot of time traveling around Africa. I spent a couple of months in Djibouti. At the time, there was no permanent US military presence there. Once a US destroyer put in to take on water at the big port there and once an ASW plane put down there for an RON. There was not even a Military Attaché there. Djibouti was run by the French military; it’s the main Foreign Legion base for desert training. There were just a few waterfront bars for the French military, and a bar at the Sheraton for civilians. I can’t imagine that there is much for our troops now at Camp Lemmonier to do when off duty. Once you leave the city, it looks like the dark side of the moon.
Cloward-Piven, phase II: driving the last nails.
I don’t know anying about military operations but what are the ROE there? or is this a stupid question?
PS From the `You can’t make this stuff up’ dept.: Literally sending our troops to Timbuktu.
Yeah, leave the mid east and go get involved in Africa.
That’s the ticket.
What could go wrong there?
AFRICOM, Africa Command is based out of Florida. They were in the news a few weeks ago.
It’s ok to put US troops at risk in Africa since the US has absolutely no interests there.
That’s interesting, when I was with DIA, they were out of Stuttgart, Germany.
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