A different approach - the US's mission in East Africa

[N.O.R.F]

A different approach

By James Brandon, Christian Science Monitor

 

To fight Al Qaida, US troops in East Africa build schools instead.

 

Pointing to his computer screen, Major General Timothy Ghormley sounds more like a Peace Corps volunteer showing off holiday photos than the shaven-headed US Marine entrusted with defeating Al Qaida in East Africa.

 

"That's what it's about right there," he says, stabbing his eyeglasses at the pictures of African children celebrating as water gushes from a new well. "Look at those kids. They're gonna remember this. In 25 years they'll say, ?I remember the West - they were good'".

 

In 2002, more than 1,500 US troops were sent to the former French colony of Djibouti in East Africa to hunt followers of Al Qaida throughout the region. Now, under Ghormley, their mission has evolved to pre-empt the broader growth of militancy among the area's largely Muslim population.

 

"We are trying to dry up the recruiting pool for Al Qaida by showing people the way ahead. We are doing this one village, one person at a time," says Ghormley, commander of the joint task force based in Djibouti.

 

"There aren't actually that many groups or individuals involved," says Matt Bryden, director of the Horn of Africa project for International Crisis Watch. "But there's a danger that if these groups are not contained it is just a matter of time before they strike at Western targets in Somalia or start reaching out to the region again."

 

"Some of them did have links with Al Qaida but for the most part there doesn't seem to be an active Al Qaida or even an Al Qaida franchise," says Bryden. "But the US has discovered that there are actually much fewer targets than they expected."

 

Unable to find or strike at any visible Al Qaida members, US forces based here in Camp Lemonier - Djibouti's former French Foreign Legion base - have instead begun to work to tackle the factors that might contribute to the growth of extremism in the future.

 

Ghormley's men have so far built more than 30 schools and 25 clinics, as well as new wells and bridges. They are focusing particularly on the mainly Muslim areas close to the porous Somali border where poverty and dissatisfaction with pro-Western central governments might make many receptive to extremist teachings.

 

The military is taking time to adapt to its new humanitarian mission too - and this means that there have been some mistakes made along the way.

 

For example, the task force's military budget only covers the cost of constructing and renovating school buildings. Before the schools can open, soldiers have to pester nongovernmental organisations, charities, and friends back home for donated textbooks.

 

In other cases there has been poor communication between the US and local people. Some villages, thinking that the Americans could only build schools, requested a new school when they needed wells and bridges instead. The mistake was realised too late.

 

Meanwhile, the US increasingly depends on local governments to use their cultural and linguistic knowledge to track and tackle Islamic extremists.

 

"The information sharing is not ideal; not up to the point that we would like," admits Nabeel Khoury, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen.

 

And although there are handfuls of up- armoured Humvees parked alongside rusting French artillery pieces throughout Camp Lemonier, the US increasingly seeks to delegate its military operations.

 

Blind spot

 

"We're doing military-to-military training with five countries in the region," says Colonel Doug Carroll, director of operations for the Horn of Africa task force. The US has trained Yemeni special forces in counter-terrorism while officers from Mauritius and the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean have been taught how to train their own soldiers once they return home.

 

"In Ethiopia we've taught border security, we've taught basic counter-terrorism, what they call advanced map reading and also defensive operations," says Carroll, who denies that the training will upset the region's delicate balance of power.

 

But although the lack of recent Al Qaida attacks in the region points to the mission's success so far, there remains a clear blind spot at the heart of the US deployment.

 

"It's a bit of a paradox," says Bryden. "The threat that the US perceives in the region comes from Somalia, but that is the only place where they can't operate."

 

Senior officers in Djibouti refuse to even discuss Somalia, although one officer privately admitted having contact with high-level members of the government of Somaliland - a breakaway republic in the north of the war-torn country that recently arrested one Al Qaida team linked to extremist groups in Mogadishu.

 

"The US has had to develop a much more nuanced approach and it shows that they are dealing with the problem," says Bryden. "They've had to discover the difference between terrorism and a domestic insurgency."

 

As the US gradually increases its understanding of the region there is no sign of the mission winding down. Instead, as more British troops also prepare to deploy to the region, the operation seems to have become entirely open-ended.

 

Standing in his office, Ghormley, surrounded by maps where arrow-straight borders drawn by European colonialists cut across mountains, deserts and complex ethnic groups, provides more than an echo of a Victorian soldier-missionary.

 

But with Camp Lemonier boasting less than 1 per cent of the troops currently deployed in Iraq and responsible for an area five times larger, Ghormley is aware that there is a limit to what the US can achieve in the region.

 

"I could use more money, more people, but I've got the resources I need to carry on," he says, taking a last look at the pictures on his computer screen. "They're good people and it breaks your heart that you can't do more for them."

 

Gulf News

[codetalker]

Pentagon propaganda at its best! I wonder how much Defense Dept. PR money the CS Monitor got to publish this "touching" story. I also wonder, if this is what's being reported, how much of the entire story is not making it to the printing press?

 

Time has passed by but the West has yet to change its tactics. When they first came to Africa, they came with Bibles to "civilize" the savages. Now, they're winning the "hearts and minds" by building schools and clinics. Just their predecessors who had the Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, these NATO military forces are no different.

[Cabdiciise]

Imperialism is something from the past and America should and must realize. It can’t revive it. And Us somalis will make sure it doesn’t revive.