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.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
TESTING BAN: Satellite photos show a facility in the Chinese city of Mianyang that could aid nuclear weapons design and power generation, a US researcher said China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organizations said, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation. Satellite photos show four outlying “arms” that would house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that would hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers would fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organization CNA Corp. It is a similar layout to the US$3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in northern California, which in 2022 generated
RSS