In Africa, U. S. wages quiet fight
Political limits complicate battle against militants
WASHINGTON— Earlier this month, a small team of U. S. special operations troops with a single helicopter arrived at an austere base in western Tunisia, a secret American deployment amid a violent surge of Islamic militancy in North Africa, U. S. officials say.
The force of fewer than 50 soldiers, charged with training Tunisian troops in counterterrorism tactics, is one of dozens of unannounced U. S. military deployments on the African continent in the last year, many to tiny and often temporary outposts.
But the operation in Tunisia highlights the difficulty the Obama administration faces as it seeks to contain what senior U. S. officials and military officers contend is growing instability in North Africa and many sub- Saharan countries, from Mali and Nigeria in thewest to Somalia and Sudan in the east.
Due to Tunisian government concerns about the presence of U. S. troops becoming public knowledge, the Americans operate far from the deserts of southern Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, where attacks from rebel groups, tribal gangs and Islamist militants, some with ties to al- Qaida, have been rising, the officials say.
“They’re not able to do a whole lot, and they are in a place where there isn’t a lot of activity,” said a senior military officer who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the U. S. force in Tunisia.
Unlike during the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Pentagon deployed hundreds of thousands of troops, commanders at U. S. Africa Command face tight limits on the forces and equipment they can put on the ground or in the air, despite a far larger geographic area.
The limits are at the behest of President Barack Obama, who has repeatedly declared his determination to end America’s wartime footing. The restrictions also stem from often fierce opposition to the presence of U. S. troops in the African countries where political instability is worst.
The shift represents a new model for the U. S. military, one that the White House, fearful of being drawn into more protracted land wars, approved last fall in classified guidance that called for the Pentagon to “deter” terror attacks from Africa on U. S. territory, facilities or allies without creating a large military footprint, the officials said.
Africa Command, which oversees U. S. military operations on the continent from headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, has slightly more than 5,000 troops.
That’s a fraction of the forces under Central Command, which oversees the war in Afghanistan as well as a dozen other bases in the Middle East, or to Hawaiibased Pacific Command, which has become a Pentagon priority since the White House announced a strategic “rebalancing” of forces to Asia in 2012.
In Africa, U. S. commanders must rely on small teams of special operations troops, U. S.- trained forces from friendly African countries, and European allies willing to step up their military presence in Africa.
In Niger, U. S. and French air forces, based at an airport in the capital of Niamey, are both flying unarmed Reaper drones as well as manned aircraft. They conduct surveillance across several Saharan countries where some members of the Tuareg minority group have joined Islamist warlords, and farther south in Nigeria, U. S. military officers say.
Benjamin Benson, a spokesman for Africa Command, said U. S. troops have been “advising the Nigerian Army as it establishes” a new special operations command to combat a growing insurgency in its Muslim- dominated north.
The U. S. command acknowledged last month that it had sent a small team of advisers to Somalia in December, the first time U. S. troops have been stationed there since militia fighters in Mogadishu shot down two U. S. helicopters and killed 18 American soldiers in the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident.
“Most of the countries we’re dealing with don’t want a large U. S. presence,” said Army Lt. Col. Robert Lee Magee, the commander of a 130- soldier “crisis response” unit at theU. S. base in Djibouti.
Magee’s unit was formed last year in the wake of the September 2012 attack on a U. S. diplomatic facility and nearby CIA base in Benghazi, Libya. U. S. Africa Command proved incapable of sending help in time to assist CIA and State Department security personnel in fending off militants who stormed the compounds and left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
If a U. S. diplomatic post in East Africa comes under attack or U. S. citizens need to be quickly evacuated, Magee’s unit can move within 18 hours and up to 1,500 miles from Djibouti, he said in an interview.
Another new quick- reaction force of 550 Marines, stationed in Spain, is charged with responding to crises in North and West Africa, officials say.
Both units were sent to South Sudan in December to help evacuate Americans and guard the U. S. Embassy after fierce fighting broke out between rival armed factions.
But the operation also highlighted the risks the Pentagon faces when it seeks to intervene in remote places with light forces. Three V- 22 Osprey aircraft were hit by gunfire and had to abort their mission.
In Tunisia, government security forces have been battling militants from the banned Islamist movement Ansar al- Shariah, one of the radical groups to emerge since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ousted former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Africa Command only acknowledged the U. S. deployment in Tunisia on Friday in a statement that provided few details, including howlong the troops would remain.
U. S. troops are conducting “an episodic training event” that “improves the capabilities of Tunisian forces to protect civilians from current and emerging threats,” it said.
Secretary of State John Kerry visited Tunis, the capital, last week for talks on how the two countries could collaborate on battling militants and the threat of terrorism.
Anne Wolf, a Tunis-based analyst, said that even a small number of U. S. troops could inflame Tunisia’s tense situation.
“Any involvement of foreign troops would risk provoking further responses from violent Salafists,” she said, referring to Tunisia’s Sunni Islamic extremists. “It would confirm their allegations that the government is controlled by foreign powers who are meddling into Tunisian affairs.”