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Africa / US - Africom
Africom discusses the business of war
by Aidan O'Donnell
Article published on the 2010-01-07 Latest update 2010-01-14 13:01 TU
General William E. Ward, Commander of US Africa Command
(Photo: www.africom.mil)
RFI met with the head of the US Africa Command (Africom), General William E. Ward, in Paris recently to see what he thinks about targeted US killings on African soil, the business of military contractors and to ask if better African armies might not mean “(bigger and) better” wars on the continent.
Ward is in charge of a command that became fully independent in late 2008 and whose budget last year was 310 million dollars. It is “responsible to the Secretary of Defense for U.S. military relations with 53 African countries.” Ward told RFI this month that there are still no plans to establish an Africom headquarters on the continent.
He rejects the suggestion that Africom might be seeking to set itself up in Tamenrasset (Algeria) or in Gao (Mali). “We have conducted training activities in those locations as we have in other parts of the continent as well”, he says, “but in no way does it reflect any permanent presence.”
Africom says its job is simply “building African security, capability, and capacity.” It claims this is the best path to “assisting the people of Africa to achieve long-term stability and security.” It says that achieving this goal means providing education and training to foreign military and civilian personnel and giving critical US military equipment and services to partner countries.
But Jeremy Keenan, a Sahara specialist who is Professorial Research Associate in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, is not convinced by Africom's stated mission to bring about a safer Africa by training its soldiers.
He believes that “to legitimise this militarisation of Africa, Africom is using the development-security discourse.”
Africom rejects the suggestion that it is militarising the continent, insisting that “development, diplomacy and defence programs are integrally linked” and says its work is as much about Aids prevention and fisheries as it is training African soldiers. And Ward added that the amount of arms involved in supplying equipment is so small it is negligible.
“The link between development and security opens up a whole new discourse which has a lot of pitfalls in it and doesn't really hang together all that well,” Keenan says, “but it sounds good.”
When Ward was presenting Africom’s argument to the Senate Armed Services Committee last year, a US government report found that staffing Africom was not in line with the stated desire to marry defense and development. It discovered Africom was filling the command with more military personnel (in relation to civilian experts) than originally planned.
Ward told the Committee on that occasion that Africom was working with partner nations in Africa on building African security so that partners can prevent future conflicts.
And he told RFI that this plan is not in danger of backfiring; he does not see better-trained, better-equipped African armies in danger of actually causing future conflicts.
“It's not just a better army, it's an army that functions in accordance with those things that we see as good principles,” he says, “that responds to the legitimate government in ways that are not extrajudicial but are professional”.
Ward believes Africom helps a partner nation create a more professional military, “not one that's solely skilled in the military tactics, but how it conducts itself, its behaviour, its discipline as a stabilizing factor.”
But the US is not only training on the African continent.
On 14 September 2009, a US team of Navy Seals assassinated alleged-terrorist Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia and Ward says this kind of targeted intervention by US military remains “on the table”.
“There are terrorists that are operating around the world and our president has said that we will pursue these terrorists where they may be.”
Navy Seals were also observed on intelligence-gathering in 2007, by RFI, in Bardaï, in north-western Chad. But Ward says that while Africom does “conduct security assistance and training missions with a range of our forces”, he is “not sure what you're talking about there”.
“I don't know if they were Navy Seals on some intelligence-gathering mission at all,” Ward says.
Keenan however believes that Africom “is now the vehicle to provision Africa with the means that, if America needed to send in military force in a fairly strong way, it would have the facilities already in place on the ground to do this”. He says the so-called 'war on terror' to being used by the US as a means to justify its presence on the continent.
And at a time when private security have been back in the news courtesy of Blackwater, Ward says that Africom does not use them in Africa and that, despite the pressure on US military resources outside of Africa, Africom is “not envisioning” using them.
This month two former employees of the Blackwater subsidiary Paravant LLC were arrested and charged for the murder of two Afghans in Kabul last year, while five other Blackwater guards had criminal charges against them dismissed, over a 2007 incident in Baghdad that left 14 dead.
Blackwater is now operating under a new name, “Xe services”.
Ward says he is “not aware of American security companies or contractors operating in Africa conducting activities.”
Ward's position on the matter is odd, given that the security contractor Dyncorp has recruited and vetted Liberia's armed forces under a US State Department contract. Dyncorp is currently training Liberia's police and also supplies American police officers to the UN in Sudan.
Regardless of third-party involvement, what is clear is that Africom is leaving its mark on African soldiering. As Ward told the Senate last year, no less than 68,000 African soldiers have been trained as part of its military-to-military programs.
