Pentagon looks at stepped-up role in Africa to counter IS
WASHINGTON — The United States is considering a stepped-up military presence inAfrica to pursue Islamic State group jihadists looking for new havens after the fall of their "caliphate," American officials say.
After IS lost its de facto capital Raqa in Syria this month, and its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul earlier, the group "has aspirations to establish a larger presence" in Africa, the US military's top officer General Joseph Dunford said on Monday.
From Libya to Egypt's Sinai, to East Africa and West Africa the jihadists have already posed a threat, Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference.
He was discussing the October 4 clash in Niger, West Africa, that cost the lives of four American soldiers.
Along with five Nigerien troops, the US soldiers died on the Niger-Mali border in an attack carried out by locals associated with IS, according to Dunford.
The incident shocked many Americans unaware of the hundreds-strong US military presence in that country.
Dunford said the military will make recommendations to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "for the allocation of forces that meet what we see as the threat, what we anticipate the threat to be."
On Tuesday he meets military chiefs from 75 countries "to talk about the next phase of the campaign" against IS.
Speaking to reporters following a meeting with Mattis last Friday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, said bluntly: "The war is morphing. We're going to see more actions in Africa, not less."
After the Middle East, Africa already has the greatest presence ofAmerican special forces. Official figures show more than 1,300 of the troops are deployed there.
These elite units train local forces in counter-terrorism and "will only accompany those forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely," Dunford said.
These rules of engagement "are going to change when it comes to counterterrorism operations," Graham said.