Earlier this month, by coincidence, as President George W. Bush made the announcement in Washington that the United States Department of Defense would be establishing a unified combatant command for Africa (see my column last week on the new structure, to be known by the acronym AFRICOM), the deputy commander of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), Army General William E. "Kip" Ward, was sitting down in Dakar, Senegal, with the military chiefs of nine African countries who have been key partners in the effort to prevent the efforts of Islamist militants from turning the their subregion into the next front...
