Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Text taken from an article which appeared in afrinz.ru
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics
[ColonelCassad] The US established an extensive network of outposts in more than a dozen African countries under the pretext of fighting terrorism after the events of September 11, 2001. 29 military bases in 15 countries stretch from one end of Africa to the other. The US Africa Command (US AFRICOM), created in 2008, is responsible for their coordination in accordance with US strategic goals, which remains a key instrument for promoting Washington’s “global leadership” policy on the continent. In the material of military analyst Darko Todarovski for the “Africa Initiative” about how the US military presence in Africa works.
AFRICOM is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense. The operating budget of AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany alone was $375 million in fiscal year 2023. Officially, AFRICOM, in addition to counterterrorism operations, is responsible for “fighting regional conflicts” and supporting military relations with 53 African countries. His area of responsibility covers all of Africa, with the exception of Egypt, which is in the sphere of interests of the US Central Command.
AFRICOM has a force of more than 7,200 troops. The largest concentration of US military facilities is in the Sahel states in the west of the continent and in the Horn of Africa in the east.
The largest US military base in Africa is Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. The strategic importance of this site is due to its proximity to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which a significant part of world trade passes. There are about 300 military personnel permanently stationed at the base itself. Their main attack weapons are drones and patrol aircraft.
US military facilities in West Africa are officially used for anti-terrorist operations. Burkina Faso and Chad provide infrastructure for US drone reconnaissance flights. Bases in Cameroon and Niger also house permanent US Army contingents involved in African military training programs.
In eastern Africa, the United States is actively cooperating with Kenya, Somalia and the Seychelles. The last two states provide the United States with airports for reconnaissance UAVs.
The United States also has agreements with 19 African countries on the right to host American fuel reserves on their territory and provide refueling services for US Air Force aircraft.
In addition to conducting African drone surveillance, cross-border raids, reconnaissance and interrogation programs, AFRICOM has assumed responsibility for security training for African countries.
In addition to AFRICOM, there is also the Special Operations Command Africa, or SOCAFRICA, which oversees elite units and plays a huge role in the US military effort on the continent. Under the leadership of SOCAFRICA, Washington constantly sends Green Berets and Navy SEALs to hot spots on the continent. According to a list provided by SOCAFRICA to Rolling Stone reporters, in 2021, US commandos were deployed to 17 African countries - Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Tunisia. And in 2022, they were added to at least five more African countries - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal and Somalia.
Roughly 14% of U.S. commandos deployed overseas in 2021 were sent to Africa, ranking the continent second in the number of deployments behind the Greater Middle East.
In 2019, Yahoo News, using documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, public records and leaks from the US Department of Defense, compiled a list of 36 special operations that the US has conducted or is conducting in Africa. Many of these operations are conducted in countries that the US government does not recognize as combat zones, but in which US troops are nonetheless fighting and, in some cases, even suffering casualties.
SOF operations in Africa are so-called “127e programs,” named for budgetary authorities that allow them to use host nation military units as executors in counterterrorism missions.
At least 15 US-trained officers took part in 13 coups d'état in West Africa and the Greater Sahel from 2014 to 2023, Responsible Statecraft found. These include soldiers from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015 and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); Niger (2023) and Gabon (2023).
AFRICOM's vision is to coordinate not only military command and control, but also diplomatic efforts and other functions of US government agencies in Africa. The US military calls it a "whole of government" approach. AFRICOM engages senior officials from the State Department, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Justice, and other departments.
But for every civilian employee working on U.S. policy in Africa, there are seven in the military, and in many embassies across the continent the number of military attaches outnumbers the number of diplomats.
The current version of the official US strategy in sub-Saharan Africa was published in August 2022, several months after China adopted a concept of relations with the African continent. The frankness of the provisions of this document, which can well be called aggressive, is noteworthy, wrote Nikita Panin, an expert at the HSE Center for African Studies, in his article “African Strategies: Comparing the Approaches of Key Players on the Continent” for the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).
The document openly outlines the US’s readiness to intervene in the internal processes of African countries where and when it suits Washington’s interests in order to “renew Africa’s faith in US global leadership.” The point about encouraging open societies begins with the thesis that such societies “are usually more willing to work in common with the United States, attract more American goods and investments, improve the living conditions of their citizens and fight the harmful activities of the PRC, the Russian Federation and other external forces.”
In the document, the United States openly declares a list of African countries in which, according to Washington, there is a setback in development and democracy: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia and the Sahel states.
According to the strategy adopted by Washington, it is the United States that “can give Africans a choice about how they determine their future, limiting the opportunities for negative state and non-state actors through a calibrated combination of positive incentives and punitive measures such as sanctions.”
At the same time, the United States works not only with the official authorities with which its embassies and representative offices are accredited, but also supports “investigative journalism to combat authoritarianism” and interacts with the judicial system “to protect democracy and human rights, fight corruption, and hold fair elections " The United States intends to support “civil society, including activists, workers, reform-minded leaders, marginalized groups, incl. LGBT+." However, democracy promotion can also come from the United States training “professional, capable, accountable government security forces.”
In turn, AFRICOM’s official priority areas for the period from 2020 to 2025 are:
- countering narratives from America’s strategic competitors - China and Russia;
— weakening and reducing the potential of extremist organizations in the countries of the Sahara-Sahel zone and the Maghreb, countering the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as “containing instability in Libya”;
— containing and weakening the terrorist group Boko Haram;
— suppression of illegal activities and reduction of threats in the Gulf of Guinea and Central Africa in cooperation with identified partners;
— neutralizing the terrorist organization Al-Shabab al-Mujahideen in Somalia and facilitating the process of transferring security responsibilities from the African Union Mission in Somalia to the local government.
The current commander of AFRICOM, 60-year-old General Michael Langley, was appointed to his post by executive order of US President Joe Biden in June 2022. Langley is the first black Marine to become a four-star general in the U.S. Army. He served in Afghanistan, Somalia and Okinawa, and served in several senior positions at the Pentagon and Military Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. In his public statements, Langley is clear about his priorities:
“The most long-term strategic threat to the United States in Africa is not terrorism. The biggest threat to the United States in Africa is China. Not only for security reasons, but also because of economic competition,” Langley stated publicly.
It is also important, he said, to pay attention to the Kremlin, which is using Wagner PMCs to “fuel instability” and “turn chaos into money.”
PS. It is worth noting that over the past month, the Mali army, with the support of the Wagner PMC, has liberated more than 15 cities, towns and military bases from French-backed militants in northern Mali. After the failure of plans to organize an intervention in Niger, France is increasingly relying on supporting various militants in order to destabilize countries that have fallen out of its sphere of influence.
PS2. By the way, the site itself https://afrinz.ru/category/news/ , which took off on hype after the recent African Forum, is really not bad, there is a lot of different information on African affairs. Previously, it was necessary mainly to monitor what was happening through the profile collection on Twitter and selected channels in Telega.
PS3. By the way, Pushkin reached the Congo.
In the capital of the country, with the help of specialists from Voronezh, they have now established the process of education in Russian. The local population is taught the Russian language, history, culture and geography of Russia.
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