The US Gets Ready For Wars In Africa ?

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists and give the U.S. a ready and trained force to dispatch to Africa if crises requiring the U.S. military emerge.

The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and will not be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approvals from the secretary of defense.

The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

The terror threat from al-Qaida linked groups in Africa has been growing steadily, particularly with the rise of the extremist Islamist sect Boko Haram in Nigeria. Officials also believe that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans, may have been carried out by those who had ties to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

This first-of-its-kind brigade assignment — involving teams from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division — will target countries such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger, where al-Qaida-linked groups have been active. It also will assist nations like Kenya and Uganda that have been battling al-Shabab militants on the front lines in Somalia.

The mission for the 2nd Brigade — known as the “Dagger Brigade” — will begin in the spring and will pave the way for Army brigades to be assigned next to U.S. Pacific Command and then to U.S. European Command over the next year. The brigade is receiving its regular combat training first, and then will move on to the more specific instruction needed for the deployments, such as language skills, cultural information and other data about the African nations.

Gen. Carter Ham, the top U.S. commander in Africa, noted that the brigade has a small drone capability that could be useful in Africa. But he also acknowledged that he would need special permission to tap it for that kind of mission.

“If they want them for (military) operations, the brigade is our first sourcing solution because they’re prepared,” said Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Army Forces Command. 

“But that has to go back to the secretary of defense to get an execute order. 

In the weeks leading up to Chuck Hagel's nomination, the Pentagon announced plans to put specialized Army troops in 35 countries in Africa. 

Though the announcement came on Christmas Eve and didn't receive much attention, it still serves as a hint of what's to come under a Hagel-run Pentagon — that is, conservative deployment of U.S. troops. 

The mission for these troops is loosely noncombat, and primarily to train organic security forces to quell Islamic insurgent activity, which somewhat parallels operations during the Banana Wars of about a century ago.

During those "small-wars" conflicts in the late 1800s and early 1900s, American Marines deployed to several South American countries in limited numbers. Their mission was first to interdict fractious groups of 'insurgents,' not unlike those which operate in Africa, and second to leave in place a trained body of security forces and a competent governance — both compliant with American interests and capable of pacifying the populace.
Analysts could look at burgeoning Africa the strategy as countering growing Chinese development influence — though it could also serve to protect Chinese development interest as the U.S. has done in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the deployments, under the newly formed AFRICOM, fit nicely inside the frame of Obama's two recent nominations — that of drone warfare king John Brennan, and foreign policy conservative Chuck Hagel.