The US is pouring more soldiers and millions more dollars into its anti-terrorism campaign in Africa, including in Algeria and chaotic Nigeria, both oil-rich nations where radical Islam has a following.
A new north and west African effort outlined Wednesday in a statement from the US Embassy in Senegal proposes spending US$100 million a year over five years to boost security in some of world's least policed areas, starting with a joint military exercise in the region next month.
An earlier anti-terror exercise with a budget of just US$6 million focused on troop training in four west African nations. The new campaign will target nine north and west African nations and seek to bolster regional cooperation.
Analysts were waiting to see if the program would be fully funded -- but said the intended budgetary increase shows the US is taking West Africa more seriously.
"If they're turning the corner to US$100 million, that's graduation into something much larger," said J. Stephen Morrison, Africa director at the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's still modest, but it's a dramatic step up."
Major Holly Silkman, a US military spokeswoman, said underpopulated border areas in the region could be sanctuaries for "terrorists or would-be terrorists."
"We want to increase security in those areas by training with each country's military and creating a regional focus, rather than just a country focus," Silkman said by telephone from European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
US officials have long viewed northwestern Africa's vast desert stretches as prime real estate for aspiring terrorists seeking to set up training camps or other bases. Some US commanders liken the area's ungoverned expanses to Afghanistan during Taliban rule, under which Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group thrived. The region is shot through with sandy tracks still traveled by camel caravans bringing salt slabs in from the desert -- ancient thoroughfares officials say militants can use to traverse poorly guarded borders. Much of the troop training will focus on units responsible for guarding frontiers, said Silkman.
Muslims in west and north Africa, like Muslims elsewhere, generally are moderate. But extremists do exist. Militants have roamed south from oil-rich Algeria into West Africa recent years, and in northern Nigeria, years of poverty and brutal military rule has radicalized some in the population.
"We're concerned with the radical movement," said Silkman. "Islam isn't the problem, it's only the radicals."
Troop exercises aside, the new program will also bring together for medical training and command-post exercises military staff from the nine participating countries -- Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and Nigeria. The earlier program encompassed just Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger.
Morrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the US now appears to have created a "counterterrorism bookend" to its strategy in east Africa, which has seen a spate of terror attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania blamed on al-Qaeda. Notable among the new entries is Nigeria -- Africa's most-populous nation of 130 million, the continent's biggest petroleum producer and source of one-fifth of all American oil imports.
About half of Nigeria's people are Muslim. Osama Bin Laden purportedly marked the country for liberation in release posted on the Internet earlier last year.
The country is led by a Christian president and has seen deadly spates of Christian-Muslim violence, although most Nigerians live peacefully in mixed-religion areas.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS