• AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, which has been publicly opposed by every country on the continent except Liberia
• Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has spent over four decades working in and writing about this region. He traces AFRICOM and the US military concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in Africa back to the February 2003 kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists in Algeria’s Sahara desert. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Professor Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones to blame.
• what America was trying to do or the Bush administration was trying to do was to justify the militarization of Africa. In other words, the early seeds, the growth of AFRICOM. It wanted a reason, an excuse, to, if you like, secure Africa, primarily for its oil resources, the gradually increasing threat of China on the continent. But it hadn’t got a reason, or it hadn’t got an excuse or a justification to do so. And the war on terror provided just such a reason. It provided the justification for the Bush administration, if you like, to get a grip on Africa and to launch the war on terror in Africa.
• The present line of giving primacy to AFRICOM, given its history and given what it is doing, is not what Africa itself wants. And I think the question is quite self-evident: why is it that, so far, every single country in Africa has said, “We do not want AFRICOM?” What could be clearer than that? So no matter what Hillary is doing running around Africa, the message from Africa has been, even from rulers who are fairly despotic and certainly by no means very democratic. Authoritarian rulers who have done the bidding of the United States over these years are saying, “We do not want AFRICOM in our country,” as at least a base for it.

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• July 23, 2008
• Representative Stephen Lynch (D-MA) noted that leading with the military is a “projection we don’t want to make on the continent.”
• AFRICOM’s explicit aims are to increase security in Africa by sending soldiers to conduct diplomacy and humanitarian aid as well as administer expanded military programs. In fact, the new Africa Command is designed to increase access to Africa’s oil, counter terror, and offset China’s economic influence in the region. The new command is coming on line just as the United States is beginning to buy nearly one-quarter of its oil from African sources.
• General William Ward, commander of AFRICOM, has insisted that AFRICOM’s goal is to empower Africans to solve African problems. But as Representative Tierney suggested in the subcommittee hearing, if the goal is to help address Africa’s needs, we are wrong to send in the military.
• The people of Africa need education, health care, and good governance – diplomatic tasks, not military missions.
• The Pentagon may say it will help the African people, but as Tierney remarked, “who’s going to buy that?”
• He speculated further about the U.S. reaction if China or Russia were to set up a military “outpost” in Africa.
• Representative John Welch (D-VT) noted that it sounds like AFRICOM is “establishing a process that’s in search of a problem.” While the previous Congress complied with Bush’s request for military spending, certain members of this committee certainly seem to have learned their lesson.
• AFRICOM is estimated to cost $4 billion between 2010 and 2015 (including $2 billion for the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa base in Djibouti). Presumably, this excludes many of the other current military programs in Africa, all of which total several hundred million dollars a year. Congressman Welch asked the panel what the comparable State Department and USAID budgets are in Africa, but no one seemed to have a clue. According to a recent report, the United States spends approximately 30 times more on military operations globally than it does on diplomacy and development under the State Department and USAID. Additionally, the Pentagon now controls over 20% of U.S. Official Development Assistance while USAID controls only 40% of aid abroad. For Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN), the fact that USAID has to have an office of military affairs to communicate with the Pentagon “means that something has gone horribly awry.”

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• So now, when the US declares Africa to be a very important region and pays special attention to it, one has got to be suspicious. With little fanfare, on 1 October the US officially launched a new militarised initiative for Africa that has come to be known as AfriCOM, or the Africa Command. The announcement was held in a small press conference at the Pentagon where Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated: ‘AfriCOM represents yet another important step in modernizing our defense arrangements in light of 21st century realities.’
• According to William (Kip) Ward, the African-American General who will be heading the command, AfriCOM is about ensuring security and interventions to prevent war and conflicts
• With the prerogative of openly using military power against states that ‘threaten the US national security’ AfriCOM will operate with little supervision from Congress or international bodies like the United Nations. Prior to the announcement of AfriCOM, Africa was treated as a side region and US military command was divided between the European, Pacific & Central Commands. In fact, the headquarters of the newly launched AfriCOM is still based in Stuttgart, Germany, but will not be so for long. When fully operational, the new Africa Command will not only be based in the continent, but will ‘network’ and militarise all aspects of US policy with Africa.
  
• General Kip Ward has said it is not about ‘bases’ and ‘garrisons’ but rather a network of sophisticated military operations strategically placed throughout the continent which can be moved around and utilised for any purpose.
• General Gates called AfriCOM ‘a different kind of command with different orientation, one that we hope and expect will institutionalize a lasting security relationship with Africa.’
• It is ‘a civilian-military partnership’ where diplomatic and humanitarian relief by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will get directives from the Department of Defense
• Imagine US military personnel delivering emergency aid and conducting diplomatic missions and the appropriate term is ‘colonisation.’
• AfriCOM is being sold to the public as a good thing for Africa, one that will bring lasting peace and stability to a continent rife with conflicts and disasters. Many African heads of states are not buying this and have rejected the move including the most powerful 14 state-member Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), which publicly denounced AfriCOM
• Typical of past US historic missions in Africa, there was no prior consultation with African leaders and many heard about it when it was officially announced on 6 February 2007
• The Department of Defense sent medium-level delegates to ‘sell AfriCOM’ to heads of state after it had been finalised, but African leaders rejected it as a threat to their sovereignty and a move to further militarise Africa; the last thing Africa needs is more militarisation!
• The only exception is, ironically, the first and only democratically-elected female president in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. When heavily criticised about her support from AfriCOM, Johnson-Sirleaf admitted it is an unpopular move but one she has had to take to secure high infusion of US capital for her country’s beleaguered economy.
• Why is the US suddenly interested in ‘prioritising’ Africa? The answer is the same one that has motivated countless interventions into the continent in the past centuries: control of resources
• The need for the US to secure oil from the Niger Delta where it is estimated by 2020, a quarter of the imports will originate. Equally important are ‘strategic minerals’ which the US has substantial dependency on. Without cobalt, manganese, chromium and platinum, among others, most US technological and military industries would come to a halt.
• Another perceived threat and rationale for AfriCOM is China's increasing presence in Africa. It is not ‘new’ as it may seem to be, China has been building industries and accessing oil and extracting minerals for at least decades. Despite the growing criticism on China for its military and industry activities in Africa, many say it at least provides African countries with an alternative to the dominant Western capital push which had remained challenged until recently.
• The Department of Defense will oversee ‘civilian’ activities that were previously the mandate of diplomatic and humanitarian agencies
• We can also count the increase in private military activities which, as seen in Iraq, remain unregulated and with no congressional monitoring.
• AfriCOM is nothing new, it is simply a new initiative to ensure ‘command’ of land and resources that in the past was called just plain ‘colonialism.’ As the competition for global resources tightens, not only for oil and minerals, but for basic rights to land and water, we can expect increased focus on Africa as the new frontier. Joining this increasing Africa resistance movement and speaking out against Africa Command is should be everyone's responsibility.

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• U.S. and Somali officials say Somalia's al-Shabab jihadist, or holy war, movement is growing, and uses foreign trainers with battlefield experience from other conflicts.
• The threat posed by the training camps was underscored in federal court documents unsealed Nov. 23 in Minneapolis, home to a large Somali-American community. An indictment against several Somali-Americans who allegedly fought in Somalia said trainees at one camp included dozens of ethnic Somalis from Somalia and other African countries, Europe and the United States.
• "The trainees were trained by, among others, Somali, Arab, and Western instructors in ... small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and military-style tactics," said an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Michael N. Cannizzaro Jr. that was unsealed with the indictment.
• Former al-Shabab fighter Hassan Yare, who works in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, said life in the camps is austere. Recruits sleep on plastic sheets and sometimes eat only one meal a day — often maize cooked with water. Phones are confiscated. Recruits are only allowed to speak to their parents once every other Friday — Islam's holy day.
• "The message is simple," Dahir Muhiyadiin, 18, said three months after finishing his training at a camp run by Somalia's main insurgent group. "We are taught how the Western infidels want to eradicate pure Muslims, about how the U.S. government does nothing as Israel harasses our Muslim Palestinians."
• Al-Shabab — "the youth" in Arabic — controls much of the desert nation's southern region and holds large parts of Mogadishu. It wants to overthrow the government and install a strict form of Islam. Analysts say the group has between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters.
• Among al-Shabab's ranks are an estimated 200 to 400 foreigners from Pakistan, Chechnya, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and other countries — many of them veterans of fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Mark Schroeder, an Africa analyst at the global intelligence firm Stratfor.
• The proliferation of jihadist training camps raises concerns that Somalia will become the next Afghanistan — a sanctuary for al-Qaida-linked groups to train and plan attacks. The Somali government seems powerless to do anything about it.
• "The threat posed by al-Shabab is something that we pay very, very close attention to," Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, the deputy commander for the U.S. military's Africa Command, told AP at the command's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
• The government is backed by 5,000 African Union peacekeepers but controls only a few blocks in Mogadishu. The insurgents are so confident that they stage executions of suspected spies there.
• Jihadists linked to al-Shabab can also roam through neighboring countries without attracting much attention and already cross boldly into northern Kenya.
• U.S. officials are concerned Somali-Americans who fought with al-Shabab will return to the United States and carry out attacks. As many as 20 from Minnesota have been lured to their ancestral homeland to join the jihad. At least one blew himself up in a suicide attack in Somalia.
• One of the documents unsealed in Minneapolis gave details on that attack. It said Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident, took part in a truck-bombing in Bossaso, Somalia, on Oct. 29, 2008, against offices of a regional intelligence service. Ahmed, who was alone in the truck, was identified through a fingerprint obtained from a finger found at the bomb site.
• A Somali-American from Seattle is suspected of also having taken part in a suicide attack against an AU peacekeeper base on Sept. 17. U.S. authorities said they are awaiting DNA test results to confirm it.
• Michael Leiter, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, told Congress in September there is "significant concern" that al-Qaida operatives in Somalia may commission Americans to return to the U.S. and launch attacks. In recent weeks, al-Shabab has threatened to attack Uganda, Kenya, Israel and other countries, although it has not made a direct public threat against the United States.
• About a dozen al-Qaida operatives are in Somalia with ties to al-Shabab, Schroeder said. One of them, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, is wanted for al-Qaida's 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
• Somalia is among a handful of places where terrorists can train openly. The U.S. State Department says terrorist training also takes place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of North Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Yemen and Colombia.
• On Sept. 14, U.S. commandos on helicopters strafed a convoy carrying top al-Qaida fugitive Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in rural southern Somalia, rappelled to the ground, collected his body and another corpse and took off. Nabhan was wanted for the 2002 car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.
• In October, the U.S. began using sophisticated Reaper surveillance drones in the region, initially to hunt for pirates. Analysts expect they will also be used to search for militants in Somalia.
• Somali Police Chief Abdi Hassan Awale said the camps are mostly near the Kenyan border and are drawing more recruits. He said one camp is near Raaskambooni, a town along the Indian Ocean less than two miles (3 kilometers) from the Kenyan border.
• "Most of the trainers are foreigners, including people from Western countries," he said. "We do not know exactly how many there are, but we estimate hundreds."
• Awale said al-Shabab tries to recruit the poorest, the mentally ill and teenagers who have lost their parents in Somalia's violence. He accused the group of brainwashing recruits "with false, un-Islamic ideas imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan."
• Somalia has many orphans that al-Shabab can try to recruit. As many as 22,000 civilians have been killed and 1.1 million displaced in the past two years, according to Ted Dagne, an African affairs specialist with the Congressional Research Service.

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• Ward Underscores America's Commitment to Advance Security, Stability and Peace in Africa
• By Sergeant Wayne Woolley
• WASHINGTON, D.C., 

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  May 17, 2010 — General William E. "Kip" Ward, commander of U.S. Africa Command, told a gathering of senior military leaders from 32 nations across the African continent that America is committed to forming and maintaining partnerships that advance security, stability and peace in Africa, May 12, 2010.
• 
• "We want to listen, we want to learn from your perspectives and we want to be a partner in collaborating to address the challenges you face," Ward said. "You are our partners and I respect all of you."
• The senior African military leaders gathered for the inaugural African Land Forces Summit for five days of discussions about ways they can form stronger relationships among themselves and with the United States to protect borders, fight extremist groups and collaborate on humanitarian assistance and peace keeping missions.
• "We intend for this first African Land Forces Summit to be just the beginning of many more to come where we can gather on a regular basis to share ideas," Ward said. "We want to ensure the programs and activities we conduct on the continent of Africa are helpful in building your military capacity in ways that support your regional and national interest."
  
  The best way for the United States military to do that, Ward said, is to listen and respond to the concerns of African military leaders.
  
  "You have seen over the past few years how we do business. Not dictating to you. Not directing you," Ward said. "But listening to you and then doing our best to do those things you have asked us to do. What you say matters. I hope this summit is proving that to you."
  

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• #AFRICOM African Lion 2010: Utah Air National Guard Conducts Chemical Training with Moroccan Counterparts
  http://bit.ly/9Tboze

• New York National Guard Hosts South African Defense Force Chief
• LATHAM, N.Y., 

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  May 18, 2010 — South Africa's top general visited New York National Guard headquarters in Latham, May 17, 2010, the second day of a week-long tour of U.S. military headquarters.
  
  General Godfrey Ngwenya, chief of the South African National Defense Force, was briefed on New York National Guard disaster relief and civil support capabilities. He also heard about the role of the New York State Emergency Office from SEMO Director John Gibb, as well as getting a rundown on New York State Police and the functions of the New York State Intelligence Center.
• Ngwenya, who has led the South African military since 2005, visited New York because the New York National Guard is teamed with South Africa as part of the National Guard's State Partnership Program. Other stops on his trip to meet with American military leaders will include visits to United States Southern Command, United States Joint Forces Command, and United States Special Operations Command.
• The State Partnership Program pairs developing nations with state National Guards to develop strong bilateral military and civilian relationships. Since 2003 New York National Guard members have visited South Africa to take part in training events and conferences, while South Africans regularly visit New York.
• Later this year the New York Army and Air National Guard will participate in air show being sponsored by South Africa.
• "South Africa learns a lot from this partnership," Ngwenya said. We learn from the United States, particularly when it comes to counter terrorism."
  
• South African law forbids using the reserves in the kind of local civil support role that the National Guard fills regularly in the United States, he explained.
  
  But, he said, maybe that should change.
  
  "We have learned from your people that you can mobilize those people any time you want," he said.
• Hosting Ngwenya and his party was just one more way to develop the relationships that are so important in the modern, globalized world, said Brigadier General Renwick Payne, director of Joint Staff for the New York National Guard.
  
  "One of the things we have discovered, as we in the United States put together a package that supports internationally, is it is important to make relationships and develop relationships," Payne explained.
  
  "The significance of General Ngwenya coming to the United States, and us hosting him, is it shows the strength of commitment between the United States and the State of New York to support those issues that are relevant to South Africa," Payne added.

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• November 08, 2007
• Actor and Activist Danny Glover & TransAfrica Forum’s Nicole Lee on the U.S. Militarization of Africa and Africom
• "With little scrutiny from Democrats in Congress and nary a whimper of protest from the liberal establishment, the United States will soon establish permanent military bases in sub-Saharan Africa," write Glover and Lee in The Nation. "An alarming step forward in the militarization of the African continent, the US Africa Command (Africom) will oversee all US military and security interests throughout the region, excluding Egypt."
• West African military chiefs added their voices Tuesday to a growing number of critics of a new US military command called Africom. Africom was established by the Department of Defense in October and covers every country in Africa except for Egypt. It is expected to be fully operational within a year. But it’s already generating controversy and skepticism.
• Several African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Libya, are opposed to Africom, and late Tuesday, West African military chiefs denounced the US approach to the project.
• Africom officials claim the project will strengthen humanitarian and peacekeeping operations and is not about building more US bases. But critics allege that it’s a move to secure US access to natural resources and counter the growing Chinese presence across the continent. African nations supply the United States with more than 24 percent of its oil, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
• DANNY GLOVER:
• we oppose the strategic military presence of the US government in Africa. We see what is happening in Somalia right now, where a US surrogate, Ethiopia, has played a large role in disrupting and certainly destabilizing that country, and further, rather, you know.
• It’s very telling that a number of countries have voiced on the continent—at least more than eleven countries on the content have voiced their concern and their opposition to this military presence and US presence in the region.

• NICOLE LEE: Well, it’s difficult to give the exact definition of Africom, mostly because the State Department and the Defense Department have made Africom a moving target. When the Bush administration first announced Africom, they suggested that there would be a military presence, military bases, and that it would cover all countries, except Egypt, and it would be in addition to our presence in Djibouti. As criticism mounted, the Pentagon then said, no, actually this will be floating bases.

  But what is very clear about Africom is there is certainly a move to find a home for the base and that there will be both technical advisers and the ability to bring US troops on the ground to Africa. This is something that concerns many, many African nations, and overwhelmingly they have spoken up and said even the creation of such a mechanism is extremely dangerous, given the historical realities Africa still deals with, in terms of US militarism in the past on the continent of Africa.
• NICOLE LEE: Well, the countries that have been interested in hosting—and there’s been very, very few—certainly aid is involved. The State Department is very much involved in the creation of Africom. Interestingly, this is one of the first times that the State and the Defense Department have worked so closely together, and it’s sort of a hybrid departmental initiative, where you have General Kip Ward, who is the head of Africom, but the associate head of Africom, if you will, is a State Department official. And so, you have a situation where aid to Africa is being uniquely tied to militarization, and this is extremely dangerous.
• NICOLE LEE: Well, the first thing we must do, Amy, and that we are working very hard with our allies to do is to educate both other grassroots organizations and the American people about the reality of Africom. Many, many people are working hard to stop the war in Iraq, and those same constituents must also be concerned with Africom. Africom is just another manifestation of the US imperialistic moves in that region. Clearly, a base and a military presence in Africa, either in the Horn or in West Africa, threatens the sovereignty, threatens war in that entire region, in that entire hemisphere. And so, antiwar activists and Africa advocates must be very, very concerned with this new initiative.
• DANNY GLOVER: One of the things that I think that has to be very clear, that this initiative has received broad support from both parties.
• So I think sometimes we draw these distinctions between what the Republicans do and what the Democrats do, but there’s a clear pattern, in terms of policy and foreign policy and military policy, that goes across both party lines.
• DANNY GLOVER: Well, obviously, oil plays a major—if we say that 24% of the oil from the US comes from Africa, then it plays a major role in this. But other raw materials, other extracted materials play a role, as well. We see, on the other hand, China, which is the largest producer of commodities in the world and in need of oil and resources for their own expansionism, there is a [inaudible] conflict.
• NICOLE LEE: And the military contractors, of course, that we’re seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan are also already playing a role in this. Certainly, the same corporations we’re dealing with, such as DynCorp that is working in working in Iraq, is also working on the continent of Africa. So the corporate interests, corporate interest in oil, corporate interest in generally just military contracts on the continent of Africa, it’s there. It is already there. And so, it’s another way in which the Bush administration is pushing forth its corporatist agenda to ensure that it’s not just the Middle East, but it is also the continent of Africa and the world.
• NICOLE LEE: People are speaking out. What is amazing is it’s the grassroots, it’s the civil society, it’s the scholars on the continent of Africa that are speaking out. And it is also the governments. And it is not just governments that can afford to speak out, but it is governments that cannot afford to speak out, because they rely on debt relief, they rely on aid. Yet this is so egregious, and there are so many concerns that the people of Africa have that have voiced to their governments, that the governments have had to speak out.
• We have SADC, the Southern African Development Community, came together, and the defense minister said that no country in SADC will allow an Africa Command to be built on its soil.

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• Say No to Africom

     

    Danny Glover and Nicole C. Lee

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    November 1, 2007
• With little scrutiny from Democrats in Congress and nary a whimper of protest from the liberal establishment, the United States will soon establish permanent military bases in sub-Saharan Africa. An alarming step forward in the militarization of the African continent, the US Africa Command (Africom) will oversee all US military and security interests throughout the region, excluding Egypt. Africom is set to launch by September 2008 and the Senate recently confirmed Gen. William "Kip" Ward as its first commander.
• General Ward told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Africom would first seek "African solutions to African problems." His testimony made Africom sound like a magnanimous effort for the good of the African people. In truth Africom is a dangerous continuation of US military expansion around the globe.
• Africom will only inflame threats against the United States, make Africa even more dependent on external powers and delay responsible African solutions to continental security issues.
• The US militarization of Africa is further rationalized by George W. Bush's claims that Africom "will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa" and promote the "goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth."
• Yet the Bush Administration fails to mention that securing and controlling African wealth and natural resources is key to US trade interests, which face growing competition from China.
• West Africa currently provides 15 percent of crude oil imports to the United States, and that figure is expected to rise to 25 percent by 2015.
• Policy-makers seem to have forgotten the legacy of US intervention in Africa. During the cold war, African nations were used as pawns in postcolonial proxy wars, an experience that had a devastating impact on African democracy, peace and development.
• In the past Washington has aided reactionary African factions that have carried out atrocities against civilians. An increased US military presence in Africa will likely follow this pattern of extracting resources while aiding factions in some of their bloodiest conflicts, thus further destabilizing the region.
• The US bombing of Somalia in January--an attempt to eradicate alleged Islamic extremists in the Horn of Africa--resulted in the mass killing of civilians and the forced exodus of refugees into neighboring nations. What evidence suggests Africom will be an exception?
• In contrast, Africa has demonstrated the capacity to stabilize volatile situations on its own. For example, in 1990 the Economic Community of West African States set up an armed Monitoring Group (Ecomog) in response to the civil war in Liberia. At their height, Ecomog forces in Liberia numbered 12,000, and it was these forces--not US or UN troops--that kept Liberia from disintegrating. In another mission, Ecomog forces were instrumental in repelling rebels from Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.
• American policy-makers should be mindful that South Africa, whose citizens overthrew the US-supported apartheid regime, opposes Africom. In addition, Nigeria and the fourteen-nation Southern African Development Community resist Africom. These forces should be joined by other African governments and citizens around the world, to develop Africa's own strong, effective and timely security capacities.

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• Socio-Cultural Research And Advisory Team (SCRAT) Member: Djibouti, Africa
• Position Description 
  
  Location: Djibouti 
  
  Duration: One-year contract
• The Socio-Cultural Research and Advisory Team (SCRAT) is a social science research team that brings socio-culturally relevant insights and advice into decision-making processes, plans and engagement strategies in support of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) in Djibouti and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany.
• SCRAT members offer regional/functional, field-based expertise and advise command staff on socio-cultural issues. They are responsible for producing information papers, briefings, planning inputs, databases, ethnographic guides and other products based on the needs and requirements of CJTF-HOA and AFRICOM.
• BAE Systems seeks personnel with:  
  
   
   
  • Minimum of 5-10 years experience working in the Horn and East Africa
    
   
  • Advanced degree (PhD preferred) in Anthropology, History, African Studies, Sociology, Political Science or a related field
    
   
  • Experience conducting socio-cultural research in the Horn and/or East Africa within the last 10 years
    
   
  • Willingness to travel frequently and on short notice in the Horn and East Africa regions  US citizenship
    
   
  • Ability to obtain a Secret level clearance
• Attractive candidates will:
   
   
   
  • Communicate effectively - written and orally - at the executive level
    
   
  • Possess linguistic capabilities particular to the focus region
    
   
  • Be prepared to produce products on a short timeline
    
   
  • Be able to adjust quickly to changing requirements
    
   
  • Work well individually and on teams
   
   
  Interested applicants should send resume/CV and cover letter to: 
  
  Mark Wegesin 
  
    <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to';  var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '=';  var addy14042 = 'mark.wegesin' + '@';  addy14042 = addy14042 + 'baesystems' + '.' + 'com';  document.write( '<a ' + path + '\'' + prefix + ':' + addy14042 + '\'>' );  document.write( addy14042 );  document.write( '<\/a>' );  //-->  </script>mark.wegesin@baesystems.com <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  document.write( '<span style=\'display: none;\'>' );  //-->  </script>This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  document.write( '</' );  document.write( 'span>' );  //-->  </script> 
  
  Br.,  Mark Wegesin Sr. Lead Recruiter BAE Systems PH# 757-865-5666 FAX#757-766-1019   <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to';  var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '=';  var addy81260 = 'Mark.Wegesin' + '@';  addy81260 = addy81260 + 'baesystems' + '.' + 'com';  document.write( '<a ' + path + '\'' + prefix + ':' + addy81260 + '\'>' );  document.write( addy81260 );  document.write( '<\/a>' );  //-->  </script>Mark.Wegesin@baesystems.com <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  document.write( '<span style=\'display: none;\'>' );  //-->  </script>This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">  <!--  document.write( '</' );  document.write( 'span>' );  //-->  </script>
    
  

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• With its capacity for political as well as military engagement and for conflict prevention as well as traditional war-fighting, AFRICOM has the potential to serve as a model for future interagency security cooperation efforts abroad. But what AFRICOM does is more important than how the command is structured. What is the strategic rationale for increased U.S. security engagement with African countries? What are the emerging threats and challenges in Africa, and how should they be addressed?

• Somalia, Libya, Uganda: US increases Africa focus

  By JASON STRAZIUSO - Associated Press | AP

• NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — While putting few U.S. troops at risk, the United States is playing a growing role in Africa's military battles, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat.

  Once again, the focus is Somalia, the lawless nation that was the site of America's last large-scale military intervention in Africa in the early 1990s. By the time U.S. forces departed, 44 Army soldiers, Marines and airmen had been killed and dozens more wounded.

  This time the United States is playing a less visible role, providing intelligence and training to fight militants across the continent, from Mauritania in the west along the Atlantic coast, to Somalia in the east along the Indian Ocean.

• The renewed focus on Africa follows a series of recent and dramatic attacks.

  In August, a hard-line Islamist group in Nigeria known as Boko Haram bombed the U.N. headquarters in the capital, Abuja, killing 23 people. A year earlier, militants from the Somali group al-Shabab unleashed twin bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76. And a Nigerian man tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 during a flight that originated from Lagos, Nigeria.

  Most worrisome to the United States is al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group in Somalia that has recruited dozens of Americans, most of Somali descent.

  "If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it is the thought of an American passport-holding person who transits through a training camp in Somalia and gets some skill and then finds their way back into the United States to attack Americans," Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of the U.S. Africa Command, said in Washington this month. "That's mission failure for us."

• U.S. and European officials also worry that AQIM — an al-Qaida group that operates in the west and north of Africa — is working to establish links with Boko Haram and al-Shabab, the Somali insurgent group.

  "I think the security threats emanating from Africa are being taken more seriously than they have been before, and they're more real," said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

  The U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia to "preclude terrorists from establishing sanctuaries," according to the U.S. Africa Command.

  In Somalia, the U.S. helps support 9,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi to fight militants in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. In June, the Pentagon moved to send nearly $45 million in military equipment, including four drones, body armor and night-vision and communications gear, for use in the fight against al-Shabab.

• The U.S. also announced this month it is sending 100 advisers, most of them special forces, to help direct the fight against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa and efforts to kill or capture its leader, Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court. In Libya, U.S. fighter planes helped rebels defeat former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

  In the latest attack against Africa's militants, Kenya deployed troops this month into southern Somalia to fight al-Shabab insurgents. The U.S. says it is not aiding Kenya's incursion, but America has given Kenya $24 million in aid this year "to counter terrorists and participate in peacekeeping operations," the U.S. Embassy said.

  The U.S. government "has had a burr under its saddle about Somalia" for years, dating to the 1993 downing of two U.S. helicopters over Mogadishu in a battle that became known as Black Hawk Down, said John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank near Washington. Eighteen U.S. troops were killed.

  At that time, Washington had deployed thousands of troops to combat a famine, but the mission escalated into a hunt for warlords.

• These days, only a handful of U.S. troops are involved directly in Somalia — special forces troops who enter on kill missions. In 2009, Navy SEALs targeted and killed al-Qaida operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter raid. The Americans jumped out of the helicopters, grabbed Nabhan's body from his bullet-riddled convoy and flew off. The corpse — like Osama bin Laden's two years later — was buried at sea.

  Pike, who monitors defense issues, said the Pentagon has ramped up operations in Africa tremendously since the time of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who didn't see Africa as being in America's strategic interest.

  "The U.S. has really developed an interest in Africa that we just have never seen before," Pike said.

  "Between all the goings and comings in the Horn of Africa and all this snake-eater (special forces) Sahara stuff ... it's all over the place," Pike said. "Since I think an awful lot of it is being run out of Special Operations Command and out of (the CIA), I think it probably far larger than anyone imagines."

  U.S. drones launched from the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean also provide intelligence, and the pilotless planes are capable of being armed.

• Al-Shabab counts 31 American citizens among its ranks, a U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press. They're mostly American-Somalis who left the U.S. to join the group. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, said foreign fighters among al-Shabab's ranks want to attack Western targets.

  Intelligence has revealed sophisticated plans by al-Shabab to attack targets in Europe, the official said, but the operations have been disrupted by the recent stepped-up fighting in Somalia.

  Ugandan and Burundian troops fighting al-Shabab militants in Mogadishu as part of an African Union force have pushed back the insurgents in recent months and now control most of the capital. The Kenyan incursion has forced al-Shabab to fight on its southern flank as well.

  Though the Kenyan invasion appears to further the U.S. goal of pressuring al-Shabab, U.S. officials say the American military is not providing assistance.

  "The United States has supported Kenyan efforts to improve its ability to monitor and control often porous land and maritime borders and territory exploited by terrorists and illicit traffickers, particularly along its border with Somalia," said Katya Thomas, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

• But, she added: "The United States did not encourage the Kenyan government to act, nor did Kenya seek our views. We note that Kenya has a right to defend itself against threats to its security and its citizens."

  Some aspects of Kenya's military adventure appear poorly thought out. Troops moved in just as seasonal rains began and are now bogged down in the mud — a literal reminder of the potential quagmire for countries that intervene in Somalia, whose last nationwide leader was overthrown in 1991.

  A paper published by the U.S. Army examining the ill-fated U.S. mission in Somalia in the 1990s concluded that "the chaotic political situation of that unhappy land bogged down U.S. and allied forces in what became, in effect, a poorly organized United Nations nation-building operation."

  It was a 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia that gave rise to the militants now known as al-Shabab.

  "That's the problem with Somalia, there is just no easy answer," said Cooke, the analyst. "The problem is so huge and multi-faceted that tackling one aspect of it, i.e., beating back al-Shabab, just can't fix it. Part of the problem is that the government we have invested in as our key partner in Somalia is a fiction of a government, and so Kenya can try to create some space, but there is nothing to fill that."

• The chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the House Armed Services Committee this month that the U.S. must remain active in Africa because terrorists are networked globally.

  "One of the places they sit is Pakistan. One of the places they sit is Afghanistan. One of the places they sit is the African continent," Dempsey said.

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•  

  Why Obama is sending troops to Africa – a closer look

   The 100 US Special Operations troops sent to central Africa will act as 'military advisers' in the hunt for Joseph Kony, the murderous rebel leader of the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group.
• By Scott Baldauf | Christian Science Monitor 

• Earlier this month, President Obama sent a letter to Congress explaining why he had approved sending 100 US military advisers to fight a shadowy rebel group in central Africa.

  The reason, President Obama wrote, is that the Lord’s Resistance Army – a brutal rebel group with a mixture of Christian fundamentalist and African traditional beliefs – is a threat to regional security in central Africa, and thus a threat to the interests of the US government and its strategic partners.

  Noting that Congress had passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in 2009, Mr. Obama wrote, “I have authorized a small number of combat-equipped US forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.”

• While tracking down unhinged African warlords may be the stuff of bad Hollywood movies, it generally has not been a plank in US foreign policy. But with the advent of the US military’s relatively new Africa Command (AFRICOM), headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, America’s military is working closer with its African partners to ensure regional security.

  Viewed with suspicion by some African leaders as part of a larger “neo-colonial” foothold on the African continent, it is seen as a boon by other US partner nations such as Uganda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, who work closely with the US military on common issues such as counterterrorism and insurgencies.

• In the current US AFRICOM operation, 100 Special Operations troops will travel with Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) soldiers trailing LRA leader Joseph Kony.

  US to 'share lessons learned'

  A US diplomat with knowledge of the operation told the Monitor that US Special Forces soldiers will “… share lessons learned from 10 years of fighting in a similarly rugged environment against small groups of people moving on foot,” such as the US military has faced in the Afghan war.

  The US soldiers will not be “hunting” Mr. Kony, the diplomat adds, and “they will not take part in combat.”

• “They will be helping the [Ugandan military] refine [its] operations by sharing tactics and procedures we have learned in 10 years of low intensity conflict while helping them look at the 'problem set' through fresh eyes. The [Ugandan military] is a professional force with a lot of combat experience, [and] embedded advisors will help them leverage their strengths.”

  The Obama administration’s deployment has won some praise from activist groups like the Enough Project.

  “President Obama should be lauded for deploying qualified military advisers to the region,” said Enough’s co-founder John Prendergast, adding that if the Obama administration “helps generate multilaterally the necessary logistical and intelligence support for those troops, the LRA’s days will be numbered.”

  But other humanitarian aid groups have been more cautious.

  Concerns for civilians

  Noah Gottschalk, a senior humanitarian policy advisor for Oxfam America, says that a military operation is just one of many potential tools for combating the LRA, and one that could put countless thousands of civilians in harm’s way.

  “The truth is that the LRA are really good at evading military action,” says Mr. Gottschalk, noting that the area in which the LRA operate – including northern Uganda, South Sudan, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic – is about the size of California.

• The Ugandan military has tried a military solution in dealing with the LRA in the past, Gottschalk said, most recently with their Operation Lightning Thunder at the end of 2008. “That operation was designed to go after the LRA with the stated intent of making the LRA go away, but it left civilians a lot worse off.”

  In the long run, the solution may be the boring work of development, Gottschalk says.

  “The LRA goes to places where there is little development, they don’t go to places where there are big roads," he says. "So if you start to squeeze that area, building roads, bringing in infrastructure, you’re not only bringing development to the most neglected corners of Africa, you’re also reducing the territory that the LRA can operate in.”

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• Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive

   

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  Wed, 11/30/2011

• by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

   

    As the U.S. and its NATO allies move southward to further consolidate their grip on Africa, following the seizure of Libya and its vast oil fields, most of the continent’s leadership seems to welcome re-absorption into empire. “Africa is the most vulnerable region in America’s warpath, a continent ripe for the plucking due to the multitudinous entanglements of Africa’s political and military classes with imperialism.” AFRICOM is already in the cat-bird seat, placed there by Africans, themselves.

• Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive

   

    by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

• “The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to ‘take’ much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments.”

   

    The United States and its allies are engaged in an Asian and African offensive, a multi-pronged assault thinly camouflaged as humanitarian intervention that, in some regions, looks like a blitzkrieg. This frenzied aggression, still in its first year, saw NATO transformed into an expeditionary force to crush the unoffending Gaddafi regime in Libya and is now poised to topple the secular order in Syria. Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital’s historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.

   

    The prospect of an Arab Spring at the dawn of 2011 sparked a general hysteria in imperial capitals. Suddenly, they stared in the face of geopolitical death at the hands of the Arab “street.” Washington understands full well that the emergence of Arab governments that reflect the will of the people would soon result, as Noam Chomsky is fond of saying, in the U.S. being “thrown out” of the region – the final toll of the bell, not just for the oil-hungry West, but for international capital’s annexes in the autocratic cesspools of the Persian Gulf.

   

    “The prospect of an Arab Spring at the dawn of 2011 sparked a general hysteria in imperial capitals.”

• With centuries of Euro-American domination flashing before their eyes, Washington, London and Paris quickly configured NATO to unleash Shock and Awe on the victim of choice in North Africa: Muammar Gaddafi. The momentum of that show of force has led an expanding cast of imperial actors to the gates of Damascus. But Africa is the most vulnerable region in America’s warpath, a continent ripe for the plucking due to the multitudinous entanglements of Africa’s political and military classes with imperialism. The awful truth is, the United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to “take” much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments and, especially, its soldiers.

   

    AFRICOM, established in 2008 by the Bush administration and now fully the creature of President Obama’s “humanitarian” interventionist doctrine, claims military responsibility for the entire continent except Egypt. The U.S. military command has assembled a dizzying array of alliances with regional organizations and blocs of countries that, together, encompass all but a few nations on the continent – leaving those holdouts with crosshairs on their backs. As the U.S. bullies its way southward in the wake of the seizure of Libya, its path has been smoothed by the Africans, themselves.

   

    The long U.S. war against Somalia, dramatically intensified with American backing for the Ethiopian invasion in late 2006, is now sanctioned by IGAD, the International Authority on Development in East Africa, comprised of Ethiopia; the puppet government in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu; Kenya; Uganda; the de facto French and U.S. military protectorate, Djibouti; and, nominally, Sudan.

• “As the U.S. bullies its way southward in the wake of the seizure of Libya, its path has been smoothed by the Africans, themselves.”

   

    This year’s French-led, but nominally United Nations operation to oust the regime of Laurent Gbagbo, in Ivory Coast, was vouchsafed by ECOWAS, the 16-member Economic Community of West African States, including Benin Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

   

    AFRICOM stages a huge, annual military exercise called African Endeavor, which trains African militaries to use “standard communications practices.” African armies are taught U.S. command-and-control procedures, on American-made equipment, that is serviced by American advisors. In 2009, the militaries of 25 African nations took part in the exercise. This year, 40 nations joined Operation African Endeavor, accounting for the vast bulk of the continent’s men under arms.

• More insidiously, through AFRICOM’s “soldier-to-soldier” doctrine, U.S. and African military peers are encouraged to forge one-on-one relationship up and down the levels of command: general-to-general, colonel-to-colonel, major-to-major, and even captain-to-captain. AFRICOM hopes these peer partnerings will forge personal relationships with African armed forces over the long haul, regardless of whatever regime is in power.

   

    In the Sahel, AFRICOM maintains close relationships with virtually every nation along the vast band of land south of the Sahara desert that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, all under the heading of “anti-terrorism.” These include Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Niger, plus Nigeria and Senegal. To the north, AFRICOM has similar ties to the Maghreb countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and, until this year, Gaddafi’s Libya.

• “This year, 40 nations joined Operation African Endeavor, accounting for the vast bulk of the continent’s men under arms.”

   

    AFRICOM is often the real power behind nominally African missions. AMISOM, officially the African Union’s so-called peace keeping force in Somalia, is in fact comprised of troops from Uganda and Burundi, U.S. client states that act as mercenaries for Washington, and paid for mainly by the Americans. They are soon to be joined by 500 soldiers from Djibouti. For years, AMISOM was all that saved the puppet regime in Mogadishu from instant annihilation in its tiny enclaves at the hands of the Shabab resistance. Today, the reinforced “African Union” fighters are on the offensive, along with Kenyan and Ethiopian invaders, aimed at smashing the Shabab in a pincer movement. U.S. drones based in Ethiopia and Djibouti bring death from overhead. Thus, a force nominally fielded by the African Union is an active belligerent in a U.S. engineered war that has set the Horn of Africa ablaze – a conflict also sanctioned by IGAD, the regional cooperative body.

   

    It is only a matter of time before Eritrea, an adversary of Ethiopia and one of the few African nations outside the AFRICOM orbit, is attacked – doubtless by nominally African forces backed by the U.S. and French. Certainly, the thoroughly compromised African Union will be in no position to object.

• No sooner than the last loyalist stronghold fell in Libya, President Obama extended his “humanitarian” interventionist reach deep into central Africa, sending 100 Special Forces troops to Uganda for later assignment to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the new nation of South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, the French neocolonial outpost where the Americans sent Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide after kidnapping him in 2004. Supposedly, the American Green Berets will hunt for the 2,000 or so fighters of the Lord’s Liberation Army – a force the Ugandans themselves could snuff out if they were not busy acting as America’s mercenaries elsewhere on the continent. (Washington’s other loyal hit man in the region, Rwanda, was cited by a United Nations report as bearing responsibility for some the millions slaughtered in Congo.)

   

    “A force nominally fielded by the African Union is an active belligerent in a U.S. engineered war that has set the Horn of Africa ablaze.”

• NATO’s aggression in Libya was made inevitable when Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon dishonored themselves at the United Nations Security Council by voting in favor of the bogus “No Fly Zone.” The momentum of the Euro-American offensive flows southward, and will soon set much of the continent afire. The Horn of Africa is already a charnel house of flame and famine, engineered by the Americans but fully joined by Africans and their regional institutions. In the west, ECOWAS legitimizes imperial policies, while in the Sahel, Africans scramble to identify targets for the Americans. Each year, most of the continent’s militaries gather round the Americans to learn how to command and control their own troops, thus making their armies useless to resist the real enemy: the U.S. and NATO.

   

    Betrayed by a political/military class eager to integrate itself into the imperial system on any terms, Africa lies naked to the Euro-Americans.

   

    It will be up to the slums and the bush to reverse this catastrophe. If the Americans and Europeans are to be resisted, Africans will have to fight their own governments, first.

   

    BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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