The US appears to have a “sprawling network” of military outposts in Africa, including previously undisclosed or unconfirmed sites in Niger, Libya and Somalia, the Intercept reported.
The US military has insisted that it has a “light footprint” in Africa and there have also been reports of proposed drawdowns in special operations forces and closures of outposts. There is also an apparent increase in focus on China and Russia.
US African Command has provided little evidence to back up their claims. On December 1st, the Intercept published an article by Nick Turse, which discloses documents received via the Freedom of Information Act.
“The Pentagon has also told The Intercept that troop reductions in Africa will be modest and phased-in over several years and that no outposts are expected to close as a result of the personnel cuts.”
According to a 2018 briefing by AFRICOM science adviser Peter E. Teil, the military’s constellation of bases includes 34 sites scattered across the continent, with high concentrations in the north and west as well as the Horn of Africa. There are also numerous drone attacks and low-profile commando operations to go with the military bases. Libya appears to be home to three previously undisclosed bases.
“U.S. Africa Command’s posture plan is designed to secure strategic access to key locations on a continent characterized by vast distances and limited infrastructure,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, though he didn’t provide specifics on the number of bases. “Our posture network allows forward staging of forces to provide operational flexibility and timely response to crises involving U. S. personnel or interests without creating the optic that U. S. Africa Command is militarizing Africa.”
According to Adam Moore, an assistant professor of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and an expert on the U.S. military’s presence in Africa, “It is getting harder for the U.S. military to plausibly claim that it has a ‘light footprint’ in Africa. In just the past five years, it has established what is perhaps the largest drone complex in the world in Djibouti — Chabelley — which is involved in wars on two continents, Yemen and Somalia.”
Furthermore, Moor said that the US building an even larger drone base in Adagez, Niger.
“Certainly, for people living in Somalia, Niger and Djibouti, the notion that the U.S. is not militarizing their countries rings false,” he added.
Over the previous 10 years, AFRICOM has painted a completely different pictures – US military presence is limited in scope, the military outposts are small, temporary and simple local bases, which simply house Americans similarly to a roadhouse.
“For instance, this is how Gen. Waldhauser described a low-profile drone outpost in Tunisia last year: “And it’s not our base, it’s the Tunisians’ base.” On a visit to a U.S. facility in Senegal this summer, the AFRICOM chief took pains to emphasize that the U.S. had no intension of establishing a permanent base there.”
Air Forces Africa, AFRICOM’s air component, has recently completed or is currently working on almost 30 construction projects across four countries in Africa.
“The U.S. footprint on the African continent has grown markedly over the last decade to promote U.S. security interests on the continent,” Navy Commander Candice Tresch, a Pentagon spokesperson was cited by the outlet.
The standoff for Africa is apparent, with the US, the UK and France being on one side and Russia and China being on the other.
“While China, France, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates have increased their own military engagement in Africa in recent years and a number of countries now possess outposts on the continent, none approach the wide-ranging U.S. footprint. China, for example, has just one base in Africa – a facility in Djibouti.”
The documents show that AFRICOM has larger “enduring” outposts, which include forward operating sites (FOSes) and cooperative security locations (CSLs), as well as more numerous austere sites known as contingency locations (CLs). All of them are on the continent, with the exception of 1 FOS, on Britain’s Ascension Island.
Teil’s briefing confirms that the US military has more sites in Niger than in any other country in Africa: five, including two cooperative security locations.
All U.S. military facilities in Somalia, by virtue of being contingency locations, are unnamed on AFRICOM’s 2018 map. Kismayo had been identified as a key outpost, the declassified 2015 AFRICOM posture plan names proposed CLs in Baidoa, Bosaaso, and the capital, Mogadishu, as well as Berbera in Somaliland. If Teil’s map is accurate, one is actually within Somaliland.
Kenya, boasts four U.S. bases. These include cooperative security locations at Mombasa as well as Manda Bay, where a 2013 Pentagon study of secret drone operations in Somalia and Yemen noted that two manned fixed-wing aircraft were then based. The 2015 posture plan also mentioned contingency locations at Lakipia, a Kenyan Air Force base, and a Kenyan airfield in Wajir, that was upgraded and expanded by the US Navy a few years ago.
In Libya, Teil’s map shows three unnamed and previously undisclosed contingency locations near the coastline.
The map also shows a contingency location in Tunisia, possibly Sidi Ahmed Air Base, a key regional U.S. drone outpost that has played an important role in air strikes in Libya in recent years.
“You know, flying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones out of Tunisia has been taking place for quite some time,” said Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, last year.
“[W]e fly there, it’s not a secret, but we are very respectful to the Tunisians’ desires in terms of, you know, how we support them and the fact that we have [a] low profile…”
“Djibouti is home to the crown jewel of U.S. bases on the continent, Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion outpost and AFRICOM’s lone forward operating site on the continent. A longtime hub for counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia and the home of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF–HOA), Camp Lemonnier hosts around 4,000 U.S. and allied personnel, and, according to Teil, is the “main platform” for U.S. crisis response forces in Africa.”
There are two contingency locations in Cameroon. Two in Mali. And one cooperative security location in Gabon’s Libreville. There are bases in Accra, Ghana and Dakar, Senegal. Only one base lies in the far south of the continent, a CSL in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, that is run by the Army. To the north is CSL Entebbe in Uganda.
For months the US Department of Defense claimed that there would be a major drawdown of Special Operations forces in Africa as well as the closure of military outposts in Tunisia, Cameroon, Libya and Kenya. Now, it appears that the Pentagon plans to withdraw only 10% of forces over the next several years and no bases will close.
“The proliferation of bases in the Sahel, Libya, and Horn of Africa suggests that AFRICOM’s counterterrorism missions in those regions of the continent will continue indefinitely,” Adam Moore was cited by the Intercept.
On October 26th, the Pentagon named six companies under a potential five-year, $240 million contract for design and construction services for naval facilities in Africa. The first project would be the expansion of the tarmac at Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti.
Thus, the standoff between China and Russia on one side and the US, the UK and France on the other shows no promise of ending. China continues exercising its soft power on the continent, with Russia also increasing its military cooperation with countries in the region such as the Central African Republic.
Not much of a reveal, because as you should see from that first chart none of this is classified. Also, we are definitely not the only ones there, maybe I should put together a chart with the overlay of local forces and US, French, British, Chinese, and UN camps (keep in mind most of these are tiny FOBs).
of course small footprint.
There is no oil, and the place is where hunger, war and disease are at the top of the world.
Who cares about those dictators of countries with unpronunciable names who were engaging in cannibalism, or in genociding millions of entire ethnic groups.
Let’s not forget “black hawk down” and the ass-kicking the US and NATO got from Somali guerrillas in 1993.
Yes. Let’s not forget Black Hawk down, warlords, oil gushing out of the ground from one of the biggest oil fields in the world, all in Somalia/Horn of Africa, the perfect spot to control access to the Red Sea, Suez canal, Yemen and more….
Washington hasn’t forgotten it.
The more bases and the more wars, the weaker America becomes. Because they spend all their money oppressing people, the less money available for new weapons. They are digging their own graves, lets not interrupt them.
nice work boys! ISIS and all those disgusting terror groups killing Africans need to be stopped! godspeed!
The problem is that ISIS terrorists are everywhere on the planet, therefore we also have to be everywhere but be there classified. Thanks Vidura.
You really do not know, do you? Here is a reality check: The US runs ISIS… ISIS is composed of US bought and paid for operatives and mercenaries as well as CIA operatives…
The US is using ‘ISIS’ in Africa aimed at nations with great mineral/oil wealth and reserves, because the US wants them all… They use ISIS to stir up trouble and to get those nations that are being ruined by ISIS to go to the US for “help” in eliminating these fraud “terrorists”… The US then goes into said nations and either overthrows the government and replaces it with a US puppet government, or they supply further weapons and ammunition to their “ISIS” forces to spread their “terrorism” to other nations as well…
You do need to study more and see what it reality here..
Lol you idiot! Isis is fighting against us forces not for
Very good article, but it does not cover the whole picture well. Its forgotten, that most private companies for years has their own protection troops private financed.
By thats the states – where USA is in front – dont need as much cover as they once did.
But it is mentioned, that drones can take over much more and does. No risk for soldiers. They even can be armed well.
And USA has restructured. In stead og big bases and basefacilities for that, they experiment in Microbases, which are tuff liitle onces, which are heavy armed and You rapidly can support.
And I even see the hyprocrasive skizoofrenia here. Whn USA reorganize and kind of retreat, they ar weak. If they are not they are agressors.
My own oppinion about it also is, that USA will not support UN anymore and be blamed even they are the biggest contributors in the world for civilians and rebuilding (as well).
I am partly like that too. I am for we support the ones, which are for changes and will be helped by our expertice.
No more support for high ranked Leaders, which are against us and by paying their airtickets, meals, hotels and even clothe.
It also make no sense anymore , that we by giving those people/nations whatever a lot of food and medical care – and its used to be many more millions´, which we also have to feed after 9 months and they live longer too. It was meant to raise the level for the population in numbers or a little more.
We have our own problems too. Thank You.
Interesting, America’s biggest base is “Camp Lemonnier a former French Foreign Legion outpost”. Like Vietnam, Libya, Niger, Syria, America seems to have picked up the French colonial empire and made it its own.
They are just flailing about, trying to convince the world they are not on the verge of collapse.
I can’t help thinking that that strange ‘earthquake’ on November 11 on an Comoros island near French Mayotte off the coast of east Africa, was a nuclear blast. The tiny, independent Comoros archipelago is certainly remote and far from anyone with a geiger counter. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/12/03/strange-waves-rippled-across-earth-and-only-one-person-spotted-them/#148092866aaa
If so, it was probably French, although U.S. AFRICOM considers the whole area, not just its base in the Seychelles, one of its interests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command#/media/File:USAFRICOM_United_States_Africa_Command_Map_Draft.jpg
Our Enemies are: The United States of America, IsraHell, Great Britain, Wahhabistan & Last but not Least France…. but a Little Revolution going on there at the moment….The Scum is Rising…Burn the Elitist Powerstructure….Old School…
Soon the U.S. will have to leave their Colonial Outposts & Forts….the Imperial Rats tried to Conquer the Rest of the World like They Conquered America….they Failed and will pay the price…
I’m still amazed that the French are letting the US weasel in on what used to be their domain, francophone Africa. Mitterand basically supported the Rwandan Hutu government, the one that carried out the genocide, against the Tutsi’s because the Tutsi’s spoke English and he didn’t want French speaking Rwanda to become another English speaking country. The dude must be spinning in his grave like crazy if he learned how his successors have let the Americans establish bases all over francophone Africa.