EGN NEWS DESK
In the shadow of the Sept. 11 assaults, the United States rushed troops and army help to a swath of West Africa to assist French forces cease the unfold of Al Qaeda and different terrorist teams.
More than a decade later, and with lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in safety help spent, that regional counterterrorism effort has largely failed.
Groups which have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are on the march. Military coups have toppled civilian-led governments in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger. The new leaders have ordered American and French troops out, and in some circumstances invited Russian mercenaries in to take their place.
As the United States withdraws 1,000 army personnel from Niger and shutters a $110 million air base there by September, American officers are scrambling to work with a brand new set of nations in coastal West Africa to battle a violent extremist insurgency that they understand is steadily seeping south.
“Of course, it’s irritating,” Christopher P. Maier, the Pentagon’s prime official for particular operations coverage, mentioned in an interview. “Our basic want to advertise democratic governments and having wholesome governance there has not gone notably properly.”
The U.S. army has had extra success coaching native counterterrorism troops, Mr. Maier mentioned, though some participated within the latest army takeovers. But, he added, “it’s disappointing once we’ve invested in that relationship after which we’re requested to depart.”
U.S. officers say they’re retooling their method to fight an insurgency that’s rooted in native, not world, issues. Competition for land, exclusion from politics and different native grievances have swelled the ranks of the militants, greater than any explicit dedication to extremist ideology.
Instead of counting on massive bases and a everlasting army presence, officers say that the technique will focus extra on well-financed initiatives that embody safety, governance and growth — paying for soldier coaching in addition to for brand new electrification or water tasks.
This type of holistic method has been tried earlier than with restricted success, and U.S. officers and impartial West Africa specialists say it faces steep hurdles now.
An American diplomat within the area mentioned that West African governments ought to share the blame, as a result of a few of these companions have been extra fascinated by staying in energy than in preventing terrorism. “It didn’t work, it’s apparent,” mentioned the diplomat, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to supply a candid evaluation of allies. “But this notion that we deployed, it didn’t work, due to this fact it’s our fault — I don’t purchase that.”
Some say the foreigners by no means actually understood the battle. “To be capable of assist, you need to actually know the basis of the issue,” mentioned Demba Kanté, a company lawyer in Bamako, Mali’s capital. “They have been positioned nearly all over the place on Malian soil and gathering their salaries, and we have been nonetheless going through issues.”
As they assess the setbacks and retool their technique, U.S. officers are additionally retaining a cautious eye on two world rivals: China and Russia.
China overtook the United States as Africa’s largest bilateral commerce accomplice over a decade in the past, its investments largely centered on minerals key to the worldwide power transition. Russia has turn out to be the popular safety accomplice for quite a few African international locations that previously welcomed American help, creating what many specialists see as a Cold War-style competitors.
“We’ve finished plenty of issues properly on the tactical degree, together with the coaching of particular forces, however they weren’t related to a bigger technique,” mentioned J. Peter Pham, a former particular U.S. envoy to the Sahel, the huge, semiarid area south of the Sahara the place U.S. counterterrorism efforts have been centered.
Mr. Pham pointed to an bold $450 million U.S. electrification venture in Burkina Faso that was paused in 2022 after the nation’s army staged a coup. “We must have an built-in technique, in any other case it’s constructing sand castles on the fringe of the seashore,” he mentioned.
Developing that technique can be troublesome. Washington policymakers are consumed with crises, notably in Gaza and Ukraine. Meantime, Al Qaeda and Islamic State associates are metastasizing all through the area, in accordance with U.N. and U.S. intelligence assessments.
“What retains me up at night time is the variety of very succesful overseas terrorist organizations that see this,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and an Africa specialist, mentioned at a listening to final month.
Mali: A disaster spirals
Mali was the primary nation within the Sahel to be destabilized by jihadists and rebels.
It was within the wake of the 2011 civil battle in Libya, to the northeast. Well-armed Malian rebels who had defended the Libyan chief Muammar el-Qaddafi returned house when he was killed and began a rebel. Emboldened by the chaos, Islamist teams started seizing city facilities like the traditional desert metropolis of Timbuktu.
France intervened in 2013, pushing the jihadists out of northern cities. Many Malians considered the mission as a hit.
Then got here a a lot larger intervention led by the French that pulled in different European international locations and the United States, and that expanded to neighboring international locations in pursuit of jihadists.
The disaster spiraled, whilst France killed increasingly more fighters. The armed teams ran rampage within the countryside, inflicting hundreds of thousands to flee their houses. Thousands of overseas forces in air-conditioned autos trundled by way of the Sahelian steppe, making an attempt to take out terrorist leaders. But that steppe turned no safer.
France and the United States acknowledged that the governments they have been working with have been broadly considered regionally as corrupt and partly answerable for the insecurity, in accordance with Alexander Thurston, a scholar of Islam and African politics on the University of Cincinnati. But they labored intently with them anyway.
“That’s a bizarre type of contradiction to get into, in my opinion — to be reliant upon the individuals that you simply’re implying are the issue,” Mr. Thurston mentioned.
And because the insurgency mushroomed, individuals started in charge the overseas forces.
When, one after the other, the governments within the area fell over the previous 4 years, the brand new juntas discovered criticism of their army companions was simple to use for political acquire. Then, they threw out the overseas troops in addition to hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers.
The “flashy eventualities” that native troopers are educated to cope with throughout the annual Pentagon-sponsored Flintlock counterterrorism train illustrate the yawning hole between how American particular operations commanders see the battle and the fact that what they’re going through is “an insurgency pushed by poor herders in a number of the most distant elements of the world,” Mr. Thurston mentioned. Much of the coaching focuses on city terrorism, storming buildings, rescuing hostages.
The West has lengthy been seen as projecting its personal issues onto the Sahel, mentioned Ornella Moderan, a Geneva-based researcher and coverage adviser centered on politics and safety in West Africa. Initially it was obsessive about migration.
Now, she famous, there’s a Western “insistence on studying every little thing by way of the Russian lens.”
The United States ought to cease specializing in making an attempt to give you a “higher supply” than the Russians, Ms. Moderan mentioned.
“What is a greater supply from the attitude of army juntas within the present scenario?” she requested. “It’s a suggestion that insists much less on human rights than Russia does — which suggests in no way. It’s a suggestion that insists much less on the rule of legislation, much less on democracy, and it’s a suggestion that gives extra by way of weapons techniques, by way of distant warfare techniques.”
The finest method for the West, Ms. Moderan mentioned, is to disregard whether or not Russia is there or not, preserve communication channels open and anticipate a chance to re-engage with international locations like Mali if and once they bitter on Moscow’s affect.
Niger: The highs and lows
It was in Niger, an impoverished nation of 25 million individuals that’s almost twice the scale of Texas, the place 4 American troopers, together with 4 Nigerien troops and an interpreter, have been killed in an ambush in 2017.
After that, American commandos stayed properly behind the entrance traces, working from command facilities to assist Nigerien officers grapple with intelligence, logistics, artillery and different elements of massive operations.
Those native counterterrorism forces educated by the United States and France put a dent in terrorist exercise, utilizing intelligence gleaned from MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones flying from the sprawling air base in Agadez, within the nation’s north.
Terrorist assaults in opposition to civilians decreased by almost 50 % in 2023 from the earlier 12 months, analysts mentioned.
After the army takeover in Niger final July, nevertheless, the United States suspended most safety help and knowledge sharing. Terrorist teams stepped up assaults on Nigerien troops. Last October, at the very least 29 Nigerien troopers have been killed in an assault carried out by jihadist militants within the nation’s west. Every week earlier, a dozen died within the southwest.
The junta leaders started to show towards Russia for safety and to Iran for a potential deal on its uranium reserves, U.S. officers mentioned. American diplomats and army officers protested this spring and criticized the army authorities for failing to map out a path to return to democracy. The junta accused the Americans of speaking all the way down to them.
The junta’s message has been: “‘We don’t need anybody from the West to return in right here and inform us who we will do enterprise with,’” Gen. Michael E. Langley, the top of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, mentioned in an interview. “I’m seeing this throughout the Sahel. Our narrative continues to be, Hey, we’re right here to assist.”
The army takeover in Niger upended years of Western counterterrorism efforts in West Africa.
For civilians within the Sahel, safety has gotten markedly worse for the reason that juntas took energy. In latest months, illegal killings and grave violations in opposition to kids have risen sharply, in accordance with the U.N.
“The challenges plaguing the Sahel are so overwhelming that it’s not precisely clear how a lot the U.S. may also help,” mentioned Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst on the Soufan Group, a safety consulting agency primarily based in New York.
“The Sahel sits on the nexus of a number of the world’s most urgent challenges, from local weather change to ‘youth bulges’ — important swaths of younger people who find themselves unemployed,” Mr. Clarke mentioned. “These points feed into the expansion of violent extremist organizations.”
Ghana: A brand new focus
American and Ghanaian officers worry that Ghana might be subsequent.
Terrorist teams have been pushing south and staging assaults in Ghana’s coastal neighbors, Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast. A majority of Ghana’s 34 million inhabitants are Christian. Muslims make up a big share within the nation’s poorer north.
That Africa Command performed three overlapping army workouts, together with Flintlock, in Ghana previously few weeks underscores how a lot Washington is pinning its safety hopes on coastal West Africa.
Some 1,300 particular operations forces from almost 30 international locations participated within the annual Flintlock counterterrorism train in May. In Daboya, Ghana, about 4 hours from the border with Burkina Faso, Spanish trainers helped Mauritanian troops hone their marksmanship expertise. Ghanaian police labored with Dutch trainers on securing terrorist suspects. In the Gulf of Guinea, Ghanaian, Libyan and Tunisian commandos roped down from assault helicopters to grab stand-in terrorist leaders aboard an Italian frigate in a mock maritime raid.
Brig. Gen. Kweku Dankwa Hagan, a senior Ghanaian Army officer, mentioned Ghana and its neighbors shared intelligence on militants’ actions and had agreed to conduct joint patrols in border areas.
“If they strike Ghana, it can shake our democracy,” General Hagan mentioned in an interview in Accra, Ghana’s capital. “We are poised to make sure that given the mandate given the armed forces, we shield our nation from exterior aggressors.”
The Biden administration is providing assist in different methods below the Global Fragility Act, a 10-year plan to blunt the unfold of terrorism and violent extremism within the coastal West African nations and different international locations.
The act funds a variety of initiatives, together with conflict-resolution packages to assist settle disputes amongst chiefs and local people service tasks like new police stations or solar-powered safety lighting.
Unless protection, diplomacy and growth packages are built-in and sufficiently financed, it’s like “sprinkling fairy mud round,” mentioned Virginia E. Palmer, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and a seasoned diplomat with earlier postings in Malawi, South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe, in addition to a stint within the State Department’s counterterrorism workplace in Washington.
As the United States reformulates its method, officers say one overriding goal comes by way of: Stay engaged. That might contain constructing relationships with new companions or — at a while sooner or later — rebuilding ties with former ones.
Capt. Scott P. Fentress, a member of the Navy SEALs who’s director of operations for U.S. Special Operations forces on the continent, summed it up this fashion: “Trust is earned, and we’ve discovered all through Africa, notably West Africa, that belief is tough to earn.”
Mamadou Tapily contributed reporting from Bamako, Mali.
