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Friday, June 10, 2005
The Dark Continent Coming Into Focus
Usually the US Government isn't quite so quick to respond to an issue that was brought up in a post here on Billiken. Sometimes however, they perform their due dilligence. The current administration is deciding to visit a bad neighborhood before that neighborhood decides to visit the US.
From the NYT:
WASHINGTON, June 9 - A growing number of Islamic militants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa are fighting American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, fueling the insurgency with foot soldiers and some financing, American military officials say.
About 25 percent of the nearly 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from Africa, according to the military's European Command, which oversees military operations in most of the African continent.
Some recruits have joined the network of the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has carried out many of the sophisticated attacks and suicide car-bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in the past several weeks, the officials said.
To combat the immediate threat and to prevent terrorists from gaining new safe havens in the region, the Bush administration is expanding a small military training program that has operated on a shoestring the past two years into a more ambitious program spending $100 million annually to provide airport security, money-handling controls, school construction and other assistance to nine African nations.
As part of this broader strategy, the United States on Monday began training exercises in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria. Four other countries, Senegal, Nigeria, Tunisia and Morocco, will also participate by the time the exercises finish in two weeks. About 1,000 American troops, including 700 Special Operations forces, will train 3,000 African soldiers in marksmanship, border patrol and airborne operations.
"For a change, we're trying to get ahead of the power curve in a region that we believe is susceptible to use by terrorists," Theresa M. Whelan, the Pentagon's top Africa policy official, said. "It's a deterrent."
United States military and intelligence officials say vast swaths of the Sahara, from Mauritania in the west to SUDAN in the east, which have been smuggling routes for centuries, are becoming areas of choice for terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, which has quietly stepped up its recruiting efforts in the region.
The countries there are some of the poorest in the world and have scant resources to monitor their borders or patrol the large remote areas of their interiors, where drug smugglers, weapons traffickers and terrorists had established land routes after routes in the Mediterranean began to be patrolled more intensively.
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From the NYT:
WASHINGTON, June 9 - A growing number of Islamic militants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa are fighting American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, fueling the insurgency with foot soldiers and some financing, American military officials say.
About 25 percent of the nearly 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from Africa, according to the military's European Command, which oversees military operations in most of the African continent.
Some recruits have joined the network of the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has carried out many of the sophisticated attacks and suicide car-bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in the past several weeks, the officials said.
To combat the immediate threat and to prevent terrorists from gaining new safe havens in the region, the Bush administration is expanding a small military training program that has operated on a shoestring the past two years into a more ambitious program spending $100 million annually to provide airport security, money-handling controls, school construction and other assistance to nine African nations.
As part of this broader strategy, the United States on Monday began training exercises in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria. Four other countries, Senegal, Nigeria, Tunisia and Morocco, will also participate by the time the exercises finish in two weeks. About 1,000 American troops, including 700 Special Operations forces, will train 3,000 African soldiers in marksmanship, border patrol and airborne operations.
"For a change, we're trying to get ahead of the power curve in a region that we believe is susceptible to use by terrorists," Theresa M. Whelan, the Pentagon's top Africa policy official, said. "It's a deterrent."
United States military and intelligence officials say vast swaths of the Sahara, from Mauritania in the west to SUDAN in the east, which have been smuggling routes for centuries, are becoming areas of choice for terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, which has quietly stepped up its recruiting efforts in the region.
The countries there are some of the poorest in the world and have scant resources to monitor their borders or patrol the large remote areas of their interiors, where drug smugglers, weapons traffickers and terrorists had established land routes after routes in the Mediterranean began to be patrolled more intensively.
