Nov. 20 2015, 4:15 p.m.
THE GENERAL LEADING the U.S. military’s hidden war in Africa says
the continent is now home to nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit
groups” that threaten U.S. interests. And today, gunmen reportedly yelling
“Allahu Akbar” stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital and seized
several dozen hostages. U.S. special operations forces are “currently assisting
hostage recovery efforts,” a Pentagon spokesperson said, and U.S. personnel
have “helped move civilians to secured locations, as Malian forces clear the
hotel of hostile gunmen.”
In Mali, groups like Ansar Dine and the Movement for
Unity and Jihad in West Africa have long posed a threat. Major terrorist groups
in Africa include al Shabaab, Boko Haram and al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb
(AQIM). In the wake of the Paris attacks by ISIS, attention has been drawn to
ISIS affiliates in Egypt and Libya, too. But what are the dozens of other groups in
Africa that the Pentagon is fighting with more special operations forces, more
outposts, and more missions than ever?
For the most part, the Pentagon won’t say.
Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, chief of U.S. Special
Operations Command Africa, made a little-noticed comment earlier this month
about these terror groups. After describing ISIS as a transnational and
transregional threat, he went on to tell the audience of the Defense One
Summit, “Although ISIS is a concern, so is al Shabaab, so is the Lord’s
Resistance Army in Central Africa and the 43 other illicit groups that operate
in the area … Boko Haram, AQIM, and other small groups in that area.”
Bolduc mentioned only a handful of terror groups by
name, so I asked for clarification from the Department of Defense, Africa
Command (AFRICOM), and Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA). None
offered any names, let alone a complete accounting. SOCAFRICA did not respond
to multiple queries by The Intercept. AFRICOM spokesman Lt. Cmdr.
Anthony Falvo would only state, “I have nothing further for you.”
While the State Department maintains a list of foreign
terrorist organizations (FTOs), including 10 operating in Africa (ISIS, Boko
Haram, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, al Shabaab, AQIM, Ansaru, Ansar al-Din, Ansar
al-Shari’a in Tunisia, as well as Libya’s Ansar al-Shari’a in Benghazi and
Ansar al-Shari’a in Darnah), it “does not provide the DoD any legal or policy
approval,” according to Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Defense Department
spokesperson.
“The DoD does not maintain a separate or similar list
of Foreign Terrorist Organizations for the government,” she said in an email to The
Intercept. “In general, not all groups of armed individuals on the African
continent that potentially present a threat to U.S. interests would be subject
to FTO. DoD works closely with the Intel Community, Inter-Agency, and the
[National Security Council] to continuously monitor threats to U.S. interests;
and when required, identifies, tracks, and presents options to mitigate threats
to U.S. persons overseas.”
This isn’t the first time the Defense Department has
been unable or unwilling to name the groups it’s fighting. In 2013, The
Intercept’s Cora Currier, then writing for ProPublica, asked for a full
list of America’s war-on-terror enemies and was told by a Pentagon spokesman that public disclosure
of the names could increase the prestige and recruitment prowess of the groups
and do “serious damage to national security.” Jack Goldsmith, a professor at
Harvard Law School who served as a legal counsel during the George W. Bush
administration, told Currier that the Pentagon’s rationale was weak and there
was a “very important interest in the public knowing who the government is
fighting against in its name.”
The secret of whom the U.S. military is fighting
extends to Africa. Since 9/11, U.S. military efforts on the continent have
grown in every conceivable way, from funding and manpower to missions and
outposts, while at the same time the number of transnational terror groups has
increased in linear fashion, according to the military. The reasons for this
are murky. Is it a spillover from events in the Middle East and Central Asia?
Are U.S. operations helping to spawn and spread terror groups? Is the Pentagon
inflating the terror threat for its own gain? Is the rise of these terrorist
organizations due to myriad local factors? Or more likely, is it a combination
of these and other reasons? The task of answering these questions is made more
difficult when no one in the military is willing to name more than a handful of
the transnational terror groups that are classified as America’s enemies.
Before 9/11, Africa seemed to be free of transnational
terror threats, according to the U.S. government.
In 2000, for example, a report prepared under the
auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute examined
the “African security environment.” While noting the existence of “internal
separatist or rebel movements” in “weak states,” as well as militias and
“warlord armies,” it made no mention of Islamic extremism or major
transnational terror threats.
In early 2002, a senior Pentagon official speaking on
background told reporters that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan might
drive “terrorists” out of that nation and into Africa. “Terrorists
associated with al Qaeda and indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue
to be present in this region,” he said. “These terrorists will, of course,
threaten U.S. personnel and facilities.”
Pressed about genuine transnational threats, the
official drew attention to Somali militants, specifically several hundred
members of al Itihaad al Islamiya—a forerunner of al Shabaab — but admitted that even the most
extreme members “really have not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia.”
Questioned about ties between Osama bin Laden’s core al Qaeda group and African
militants, the official offered tenuous links, like bin Laden’s “salute” to
Somali fighters who killed U.S. troops during the infamous 1993 Black Hawk Down
incident.
The U.S. nonetheless deployed military personnel to
Africa in 2002, while the State Department launched a big-budget
counterterrorism program, known as the Pan Sahel Initiative, to enhance the
capabilities of the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. In 2005,
that program expanded to include Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and
Tunisia and was renamed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.
In the years that followed, the U.S. increased its
efforts. In 2014, for example, the U.S. carried out 674 military missions
across the continent — an average of nearly two per day and an increase of
about 300 percent since U.S. Africa Command was launched in 2008. The U.S. also
took part in a number of multinational military interventions, including a coalition war in Libya, assistance to French and African
forces fighting militants in Central African Republic and Mali, and the training
and funding of African proxies to do battle against extremist groups like al
Shabaab and Boko Haram.
The U.S. has also carried out a shadow war of special ops raids, drone strikesand other attacks, as well as an expanding number of training missions by elite forces. U.S. special operations
teams are now deployed to 23 African countries “seven days a week, 24/7,”
according to Bolduc. “The most effective thing that we do is about 1,400 SOF
operators and supporters integrated with our partner nation, integrated with
our allies and other coalition partners in a way that allows us to take
advantage of each other’s capabilities,” he said.
The U.S. military has also set up a network of bases — although it is loath to refer to them in such
terms. A recent report by The Intercept, relying on classified
documents leaked by a whistleblower, detailed an archipelago of outposts integral to a secret drone assassination program
that was based at the premier U.S. facility on the African continent, Camp
Lemonnier in Djibouti. That base alone has expanded since 2002 from 88 acres to nearly 600 acres,
with more than $600 million allocated or awarded for projects and $1.2 billion
in construction and improvements planned for the future.
A continent relatively free of transnational terror
threats in 2001 is — after almost 14 years of U.S. military efforts — now rife
with them, in the Pentagon’s view. Bolduc said the African continent is “as
lethal and dangerous an environment as anywhere else in the world,” and
specifically invoked ISIS, which he called “a transnational threat, a
transregional threat, as are all threats that we deal with in Africa.” But the
Pentagon would not specify whether the threat levels are stable, increasing, or
decreasing. “I can’t get into any details regarding threats or future
operations,” Lt. Col. Baldanza stated. “I can say that we will continue to work
with our African partners to enable them in their counter-terrorism efforts as
they further grow security and stability in the region.”
In the end, Bolduc tempered expectations that his
troops might be able to transform the region in any significant way. “The
military can only get you so far,” he told the Defense One Summit audience. “So
if I’m asked to build a counter-violent extremist organization capability in a
particular country, I can do that … but if there’s not … a valid institution to
plug it into, then we are there for a long time.”
Top photo: Republic of Mali and United States
Special Operations Forces troops stand in formation next to each other during
the opening ceremony of the Flintlock 10 Exercise held May 3, 2010 in Bamako,
Mali.
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