Posts tagged ‘Senegal’
EXERCISES/TRAINING WITH PARTNERS.
AFRICAN LION 22: Morocco, Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia.
U.S. Africa Command’s premier annual exercise, African Lion 22, ended nearly a month of training operations across four nations in north and west Africa on June 30.
Sergeant Anthony Ruiz, an infantry squad leader assigned to Echo Company, Battalion Landing Team 2/6, 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, and Tunisian troops participate in an integrated training event during African Lion 2022, near Camp Ben Ghilouf, Tunisia on June 21, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sergeant Marcela Diazdeleon)
African Lion 22 is a multinational, combined arms joint exercise focused on increasing training and interoperability between U.S. forces and partners and allies on the African continent to increase security and stability within the region.
Led by the U.S. Army Southern European Task Force for Africa, the exercise saw operations ranging from maritime training exercises in the Mediterranean waters off Tunisia and Morocco’s Atlantic Coast to field training and combined arms exercises in Ghana and Senegal.
Military units from Brazil, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the African nation of Chad, joined U.S. and host nations’ troops in the exercises. A total of 7,500 troops, nearly 4,000 of them from the United States, participated in African Lion, which began on June 6.
African Lion also included a Special Operations cyber exercise, a medical readiness exercise, a humanitarian civil assistance program, a joint forcible entry with paratroopers, an air exercise with U.S. heavy heavy lift transport, aerial refueling and bomber aircraft.
Approximately 80 Idaho Army National Guard Soldiers with the 1st Battalion of the 148th Field Artillery Regiment, along other Guard units from from California, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin are training with the Royal Moroccan Army in the northern Sahara Desert as part of African Lion ’22.
(U.S. National Guard photo by Master Sergeant Becky Vanshur)
Historically, African Lion has taken place only in Morocco and Tunisia, but this year Ghana and Senegal were added. While Ghana has participated in the past as observers, “This is the first time that we’re actually doing the exercise in Ghana,” Major General Andrew M. Rohling, Commander of U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, told a June 28 U.S. State Department digital press briefing with African journalists. Speaking from Morocco, Rohling noted that Ghana “has chosen to partner with its African neighbors and the United States to help provide peace and security across the continent. Ghana has a growing leadership role in regional security.”
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U.S. Africa Command.
President Biden has nominated Marine Corps Lieutenant General Michael Langley to be the next commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the president’s decision June 9. Langley currently heads Marine Forces Command and Marine Forces Northern Command. He is also the commanding general of Fleet Marine Force Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia.
AFRICOM, based in Stutgart, Germany, oversees U.S. troops dispersed throughout Africa, including conflict zones such as Somalia, where Biden has decided to return up to 500 troops — withdrawn by the Trump administration — to expedite airstrikes for counter terrorism operations, according to Military Times.
If the Senate confirms Langley, he would succeed Army General Stephen Townsend, who has led AFRICOM since July 2019. As head of one of the geographical combatant commands, Langley would also be promoted to the rank of full general, making him the first four-star Marine Corps general.
Langley would be in charge of of all U.S. military operations in Africa. The continent is experiencing a rash of economic and security interests by Russia and China. Russia controls the private military company, Wagner Group, whose mercenaries operate in Libya and the Central African Republic, according to The Hill newspaper site.
Speaking from Morocco to a digital State Department press briefing June 28 about African Lion 22, Major General Andrew M. Rohling, Commander of U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, brought up Wagner Group when asked about the rising number of foreign military operations and bases in Africa. The United States and China each have a base in the East African nation of Djibouti and French and U.S. troops have been assisting several West African nations resist terrorist groups like al Queda and the Islamic State (ISIS).
“I think it’s clear that we’ve seen the impact and the destabilizing effect that Wagner brings to Africa and elsewhere. And I think countries that have experienced Wagner Group deployments within their borders found themselves to be a little bit poorer, a little bit weaker, and a little bit less secure,” Rohling said. “So an exercise such as African Lion aims to build capacity as well as the trusted, long-term relationships to address future challenges. And I think that’s the difference between United States and others that are operating here on the continent.”
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PEACEKEEPING/CONFLICTS
French Troops Leaving Mali.
Concerns have grown that the exit of 2,400 French troops from Mali – the epicenter of violence in the Sahel region and strongholds of both al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates – is worsening violence, destabilizing neighbors and spurring migration.
Coups in Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso have weakened France’s alliances in its former colonies, emboldened jihadists who control large swathes of desert and scrub, and opened the door to greater Russian influence.
All the logisticians of France’s Barkhane force are involved in the transfer of military equipment out of Mali after nearly eight years fighting armed terrorist groups in the Sahel and supporting the armed forces of partner countries against the threat. (French Ministry of the Armed Forces photo)
With the withdrawal from Mali expected to be completed by the end of the summer French officials were negotiating in neighboring Niger to redefine France’s strategy to fight Islamist militants in the Sahel as concerns mount over the growing threat to coastal West African states, Reuters reports.
France’s plan calls for Niger will become the hub for French troops, with some 1,000 soldiers based in the capital Niamey along with fighter jets, drones and helicopters. Some 300-400 French troops would be dispatched for special operations with Nigerien troops in the border regions with Burkina Faso and Mali, French officials told reporters.
West Africa (CIA World Factbook)
Another 700-to-1,000 would be based in Chad with an undisclosed number of special forces operating elsewhere in the region. French troops will no longer carry out missions or pursue militants into Mali once the exit is complete, the officials said.
A key area of concern is how and whether French and European troops will used to support countries in the coastal Gulf of Guinea nations such Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast, where there has been a rise in attacks. Al Qaeda’s regional arm has said it would turn its attention to the region.
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Trouble between Mali and Ivory Coast.
Meanwhile, the military-led government in Mali says it is suspending all new rotations of United Nations peacekeeping troops due to national security reasons, the BBC reports. The action comes days after soldiers from the Ivory Coast were arrested on arrival in Mali on suspicion of being mercenaries.
Officials in Ivory Coast said they were there to support the U.N. mission, known as MINUSMA, under an agreed contract between the two countries. The junta in Mali, which is trying to put down an Islamist insurgency, says its foreign ministry was not informed of the deployment via the official channels.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, said the troops were not officially part of MINUSMA but came as “support of their contingents,” what he described as “a common practice in peacekeeping missions,” the VoA website reported. The Malian government labeled them “mercenaries.” Ivory Coast has called for their release.
Peacekeepers serving with the UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). (Photo: MINUSMA/Harandane Dicko)
The arrests were not mentioned in the statement announcing the peacekeeper suspension.
Since April, the U.N. has been seeking access to the town of Moura, where locals told human rights investigators and journalists that the army and Russian mercenaries carried out a massacre over five days.
The mandate for the mission in Mali was renewed during a Security Council meeting on June 29. During renewal talks, Mali’s U.N. representative said the government would not allow the United Nations to carry out investigations of alleged human rights abuses as part of its mandate.
The U.N. mission in Mali has almost 12,000 troops and 1,700 police officers. It is a visible presence in many of Mali’s northern cities, which were taken over by Islamist militants in 2012 and have seen increasing insecurity in recent months following the French army’s withdrawal from the country, according to VoA.
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Egypt Halts Its Mali Troop Rotation.
Egypt has told the United Nations it will temporarily suspend the activities of its contingent in a Mali peacekeeping mission, citing increased attacks on its peacekeepers who escort convoys supplying U.N. bases, Reuters reported July 15.
The attacks have caused the death of seven Egyptian soldiers since the beginning of the year. Egypt has 1,072 troops and 144 police in the U.N. mission in Mali known as MINUSMA.
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July 17, 2022 at 11:59 pm
Why It’s Called Camouflage.
(U.S. Army photo by Specialist Craig Philbrick)
U.S. soldiers’ uniforms blend in with the rugged terrain as they move through a trench in Thies, Senegal during Africa Readiness Training 16, a joint U.S.-Senegalese exercise last July in West Africa.
These troops from 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat team, were taking part in a company level combined arms live-fire exercise.
This photo is taken from the Army’s 2016 Year in Photos collection.
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January 20, 2017 at 12:48 am
Tree People.
U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Candace Mundt
U.S. soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division cross some unusual terrain in Senegal West Africa. And, no, we don’t know for sure what kind of trees those are. Maybe baobab?
The troops were participating in a platoon-sized live-fire exercise during Africa Readiness Training 16 exercise in Thies, Senegal last month.
These soldiers are with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
To see more photos of Africa Readiness training 16, click here.
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August 6, 2016 at 1:16 am
Sahel Imperiled.
The Sahel Region. (Wikipedia)
The United Nations is seeking a record $2 billion in aid for North Africa’s Sahel region to counter poverty, insecurity and climate change that could tip the area over, generating a new wave of mass migration, Reuters reported Wednesday (December 9).
The U.N. has increased its appeal for the nine countries of the semiarid band stretching from Senegal on the Atlantic to Eritrea on the Red Sea more than tenfold over the last 10 years, but funding has fallen short each year.
Attacks by militants from the radical Islamist group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad basin, as well as efforts by regional armies to counter them, have already forced 2.5 million people to flee their homes — a figure that has tripled in 12 months, according to Reuters.
Toby Lanzer, a U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator, noted the thousands of refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East flooding into Europe. “Eventually, you are going to have thousands or tens of thousands of people [from the Sahel] who will seek opportunities elsewhere or, if worse comes to the worst, be forced to flee,” he told Reuters.
A portion of the 2016 funding, part of a $20.1 billion record U.N. humanitarian appeal, will also go toward education, which Lanzer hopes will encourage young girls to finish schooling and cap population growth in a region ill-equipped to cope with a forecast sixfold increase in population by 2100.
The biggest recipient in 2016 will be Chad with $567 million, which has suffered a series of Boko Haram suicide bombings in recent months, followed by Mali with $354 million and Niger with $316 million. Other countries in the Sahel include Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Sudan
The refugee appeal comes just a day after U.N. Security Council appealed for greater international security cooperation and more humanitarian aid to bring stability to sub-Saharan Africa.
Concern about terrorist safe havens in Libya and the humanitarian crisis caused by Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, are at the heart of the Security Council’s warning.
In a presidential statement issued two weeks after the top U.N. regional official warned that the sub-Saharan Sahel region will become fertile ground for recruiting terrorists among its tens of millions of disadvantaged people, the 15-member Council called for a dual policy of combatting terrorism and its havens while eliminating its root causes through aid and development.
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December 9, 2015 at 11:58 pm
Somalia Islamists Attacked.
Updates with al Shabaab leader’s death confirmed.
Islamist militants in Mogadishu, Somalia.(Photo copyright, Kate Holt, IRIN)
The U.S. military today (Friday, September 5) that the leader of the African Islamist extremist group, al Shabaab, was killed in the drone missile attack in Somalia earlier this week.
Witnesses said drones fired at least four missiles Monday (September 1) in the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, destroying two al Shabaab vehicles, according to the Voice of America website. On Tuesday (September 2), the Defense Department disclosed that the head of al Shabaab was the target of the attack.
“We have confirmed that Ahmed Godane, the co-founder of al-Shabaab, has been killed,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby announced today in a press statement that did not detail how Godane’s identity and death was cestablished. “Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabaab. The United States works in coordination with its friends, allies and partners to counter the regional and global threats posed by violent extremist organizations,” the published statement continued.
Previously, Kirby said U.S. special operations forces using manned and unmanned aircraft destroyed an encampment and a vehicle using several Hellfire missiles and laser-guided munitions,” according to a transcript of Tuesday’s Pentagon press briefing.
It was the most aggressive U.S. military operation in nearly a year, coming as the President Barack Obama’s administration grapples with security crises in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, the Washington Post noted. Al Shabaab, which means “the youth,” in Arabic, is a jihadist movement affiliated with al Qaeda that started in Somalia “a chronically unstable country on the Horn of Africa,” and has grown into a regional terrorist group that has carried out attacks in Uganda and Kenya — including last year’s Nairobi shopping mall attack that left scores of dead and injured. Al Shabaab has also cooperated with another al Qaeda branch in Yemen, the Post added.
Al Jazeera reported that the jihadist group confirmed it had come under attack but would not Godane’s situation. The attack comes just a few days after African Union troops and Somali government forces launched a major offensive aimed at seizing key ports from al Shabaab and cutting off key sources of revenue, said Al Jazeera. The Associated Press reported that the air strikes killed six militants but it was not known at the time if Godane was among the dead.
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Widening Ebola Threat
Health workers treating Ebola patients in Africa. (World Health Organization photo by Christine Banluta)
The head of an international medical aid, group, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders), says the world is losing the battle to contain the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.
Military teams should be sent to the region immediately if there is to be any hope of controlling the epidemic, MSF’s international president Dr. Joanne Liu told the United Nations Tuesday (September 2), painting a stark picture of health workers dying, patients left without care and infectious bodies lying in the streets, The Guardian website reports.
Although alarm bells have been ringing for six months, the response had been too little, too late and no amount of vaccinations and new drugs would be able to prevent the escalating disaster, Liu told U.N. officials, adding: “Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it.”
Ebola has spread to a fifth West African nation. Senegal’s health minister, Awa Marie Coll Seck has confirmed that country’s first Ebola case. On Friday (August 29), she said a young man from Guinea with the deadly disease had crossed into Senegal, where he was promptly put in isolation, according to Al Jazeera. Other countries reporting Ebola cases include: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.
The current outbreak, which first appeared in Guinea, has killed more the 1,900 people across the region since March, according to the World Health Organization, the BBC reported. At least 3,000 people have been infected with the virus and the World Health Organization has warned the outbreak could grow and infect more than 20,000 people.
Meanwhile, fear and ignorance is blamed for the violent — and unhelpful reaction is some places in the region. In Liberia, one of the three hardest-hit nations, there have been clashes between soldiers and residents of quarantined slum area in the capital, Monrovia. In Nigeria, residents in some areas are protesting against the idea of building isolation units in their neighborhoods. The Voice of America reported Friday (August 29) that people have taken to the streets in the northern city of Kaduna, protesting plans to convert sections of a local clinic into an Ebola treatment center. In many parts of Nigeria residents say they fear Ebola more than Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group that has killed thousands of people.
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2nd Niger Drone Base UPDATE
Map of Niger
(CIA World Factbook)
After months of negotiations, the government of Niger in West Africa has authorized the U.S. military to fly unarmed drones from the mud-walled desert city of Agadez, according to Nigerien and U.S. officials, the Washington Post reports.
The previously undisclosed decision gives the Pentagon another surveillance hub — its second in Niger and third in the region — to track Islamist fighters who have destabilized parts of North and West Africa. It also advances a little-publicized U.S. strategy to tackle counterterrorism threats alongside France, the former colonial power in that part of the continent, the military newspaper said.
The United States started drone surveillance flights out of Niamey, Niger’s capital, in early 2013 to support French forces fighting Islamist militants in northern Mali. Washington always intended to move the operation further north and now the details have been worked out to relocate the flights to a base in Agadez, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Niamey, said a U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity, Defense News reported.
The U.S. Air Force also flies unmanned aircraft out of Chad to help locate hundreds of school girls kidnapped by the radical Islamist group, Boko Haram, in Nigeria.
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Rwanda Verdict
A South African court has found four of six suspects charged with trying to assassinate a former Rwandan Army general guilty of attempted murder. Two other men accused in the 2010 attack on Faustin Nyamwasa in Johannesburg, South Africa that left him wounded.
Nyamwasa fled Rwanda in 2010 after a dispute President Paul Kagame, al Jazeera reported. According to the an Al Jazeera reporter, Nyamwasa does not blame the four who were convicted, saying they were “used” by the Rwandan government. According to Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, the trial judge was convinced the murder attempt was politically motivated by people in Rwanda. Kagame denies involvement in the attack.
Police broke up another murder plot against the general in 2011 and early this year armed men attacked his Johannesburg house in a separate incident.
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Africa at Bastille Day UPDATE
African troops march in Bastille Day parade in Paris July 14.
(Photo: SCH Sébastien Lelièvre/SIRPA Terre)
Troops from several African nations that served as peacekeepers during the French intervention in Mali were among the contingents July 14 during the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris. Among the troops in this photo, all wearing the blue United Nations beret are soldiers from Chad, Niger, Senegal and Nigeria.
(Click on the photo to enlarge. To see more photos of the 2014 Bastille Day military parade in Paris, click here.
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September 3, 2014 at 11:51 pm
West Africa and the Sahel
The Sahel Region. (Wikipedia)
West Africa and the zone between the Sahara and the savannah lands, known as the Sahel, are being buffeted by a wave of troubles from cocaine trafficking and sectarian strife, to piracy and a growing food crisis. Here’s a rundown from numerous press acounts:
Cocaine Trafficking
South American drug cartels are taking advantage of West Africa’s poverty, corruption, weak law enforcement and porous borders to ship drugs worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Europe, according to a United Nations agency.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that cocaine trafficking in est and Central Africa generates “some $900 million annually,” the Associated Press reports.
And U.N. Secretary Ban-Ki-Moon has growing concern about stability in West Africa and the Sahel region to the north “because of a rise in organized crime, drug trafficking and piracy, a growing food crisis and the influx of weapons from the upheaval in Libya,” AP says.
Food Crisis
Sahara Desert countries. (Map courtesy of Enviro-map.com)
The United Nations says 10 million people in the Sahel are facing a food crisis brought on by drought, poor harvests and population dislocation in the region due to the Libyan revolt, a Tuareg rebellion in Mali and violence in other parts of the region, according to another press report.
Countries affected by the crisis include Senegal, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Senegal’s government, caught up in a contentious presidential election, doesn’t appear to be focusing on the situation, according to the Voice of America.
Senegal Tensions
CIA World Factbook
Senegal’s capital, Dakar, has been wracked by demonstrations as opposition groups threaten to make the West African country ungovernable if the incumbent president, 85-year-old Abdoulaye Wade, runs for a third term in this weekend’s coming election.
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is in Senegal as an election observer, is trying to make peace, according to an AP story via Time magazine.
The opposition galvanized when the Senegalese Supreme Court ruled that Wade could run again. At least six people have been killed in demonstrations this year. Previously, the country has been seen as a model democracy and remains the only one in the region where the Army has never seized power.
Nigerian Violence
Meanwhile, more violence is reported in northern Nigeria where a radical Islamist group has killed at least 300 people. The latest incident was a series of explosions in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, in the predominantly Muslim northern part of the country.
There were no immediate reports of casualties but authorities are concerned that it might be another attack by Boko Haram, a increasingly violent group bent on imposing sharia, or Islamic, law in northern Nigeria.
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February 22, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Drug Gangs May Be Using Submarines off West Africa
Cocaine seizures in West Africa are down, says a United Nations counter narcotics official, but that doesn’t mean authorities have won the war on drugs.
If anything, the amount of drugs passing from Latin America to Europe via West Africa is up – with an estimated value of $800 million, says Alexander Schmidt, the head of the U.N.’s regional Office on Drug Crimes.
Schmidt told a recent international gathering in Dakar, Senegal, that the drop in drug busts – down from 47 tons to 35 tons between 2008 and 2009, the BBC reports – indicates drug cartels are repositioning their trafficking routes and using more sophisticated transport means – possibly even small submarines or semi-submersible craft.
U.S. Coast Guardsmen seize a self-propelled, semi submersible craft carrying narcotics off Central America's Pacific Coast in 2009. (Coast Guard photo)
While no subs have been seized in West African waters, there is anecdotal evidence suggesting gangs may be using them there, said Schmidt, the Associated Press reports. Lightweight submarines, some constructed in the jungles of South and Central America, have been used by drug cartels to transport cocaine and other narcotics around the Caribbean and Latin American waters.
While a few hundred Latin Americans still dominate the trade in West Africa, more locals are taking control, as they did in the Mexican narcotics trade, said Schmidt. He noted that just as Mexican gangs increasingly displaced Colombian cartels in moving Andean cocaine to the United States, West Africans are taking more responsibility, according to Reuters.
International law enforcement has been concerned for years that Latin American gangs have taken advantage of weak or corrupt governments in West Africa to use the region as a transit point, first to the U.S. and now to Europe. There are also worries that al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb may be involved in the drug trade although there is no firm evidence yet, Schmidt said.
He spoke late last month at the inaugural meeting of a policy committee, the West Africa Coast Initiative, made up of U.N. officials, government ministers and Interpol representatives.
To see a video of the U.S. Coast Guard stopping a semi submersible in Latin American waters click here.
Click here to see raw AP video footage of a big sub seized in the swamps of Ecuador (little sound, no narration).
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July 1, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Senegal Bounces French from Bases
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to take over all French military bases in the former West African colony. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock)
To mark the 50th anniversary of its independence from France, Senegal is taking over control of French military bases in the West African nation, President Abdoulaye Wade announced over the weekend. Effective immediately, Senegal will reclaim sovereignty over French military and naval facilities, Wade said in a speech delivered Saturday.
French authorities, however, say reducing French military manpower to about 200 in Senegal has been a topic of discussion between the two countries for the last two years. Senegal achieved its independence from France in 1960.
And a top leader of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, says the shift isn’t expected to affect AFRICOM’s mission of providing training, medical and civil assistance to partner nations in West Africa. “We don’t anticipate it will present any challenges,” Moeller, AFRICOM’s deputy commander for military operations told bloggers in a Defense Department roundtable today (April 7).
France and its former colony have had a defense agreement since 1974, and 1,200 French soldiers are currently “re-positioned” in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, one of three permanent French bases in Africa, says AFP.
The move reduces the number of French military installations on the continent two: a former French Foreign Legion post – shared with U.S. forces – in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa and Libreville in Gabon, also in West Africa, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Courtesy UN.org
Moeller indicated Senegal’s move doesn’t appear to have any wider implications for French bases in Africa, including Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. He said the the French government has not signaled any change in the status of its presence at the 500-acre base, which the U.S. leases from the Djiboutian government. Since 2003, Camp Lemonnier has been headquarters to the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.
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April 5, 2010 at 12:14 am
4GWAR 