“Taking the War on Terror to Africa”

Apparently the US government seeks to establish a strategic command for Africa (AFRICOM) that would be the aid, policy, military and counterterrorism nerve-center for Africa. The idea is that this will help raise the profile of Africa and improve efforts through coordination and increased attention. Ultimately, more US government drivel:

The Pentagon says AFRICOM will bring its hearts-and-minds campaign closer to the people; critics say it represents the militarization of U.S. Africa policy. Already, the United States has identified the Sahel, a region stretching west from Eritrea across the broadest part of Africa, as the next critical zone in the War on Terror and started working with repressive governments in Chad and Algeria, among others, to further American interests there. Worried U.S. allies argue that AFRICOM will only strengthen America’s ties with unsavory regimes—including the Ethiopians, who have become U.S. proxies in an expanding civil war in Somalia—by prioritizing counterterror over development and diplomacy.

The command would serve to consolidate the efforts to date:

AFRICOM would take these piecemeal efforts and expand them substantially. The outlines are already visible. In Dire Dawa, a dozen American reservists and Army National Guardsmen on a yearlong tour live together in a four-story house that serves as both base and home. Each morning they raise two flags: Ethiopian and American. With a $1 million budget they hope to build enough schools and wells and bridges to wrestle key local leaders, clan elders and unemployed youth over to their vision of Ethiopia’s future. AFRICOM, with its cadre of officer corps and civilian expertise, could then integrate those smaller efforts with larger strategic objectives across the continent, sharing intelligence and speeding up communications. Amazingly, China now has more embassies and consulates—and thus more listening posts—in Africa than the United States.

Not really all that amazing. The comparative shrewdness of China’s Africa policy has been the subject of much discussion.

Perhaps the biggest source of concern is the recent U.S. track record in the Horn of Africa, where Washington has been pursuing an increasingly militarized policy for more than a year with disastrous results. Twice in the past year, the United States has intervened in Somalia—first by supporting local warlords, then by backing an Ethiopian invasion—to undermine the regime of the fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which Washington accuses of maintaining links with Al Qaeda. Fighting has raged across Mogadishu ever since, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and forcing some 400,000 from their homes, without decisively toppling the Islamists. U.S. and European attempts to create a government of national unity have failed spectacularly.

South Africa is leading a group of countries in opposition to US meddling.

Interestingly, Egypt would be the only non-island country excluded from AFRICOM. (See the map on the DoD site).

There‘s more from the EUCOM website to which AFRICOM will be initially subordinate.