The U.S. government now knows that Africa is important-and dangerous. Formerly divided between three different strategic military regions, the entire continent (except Egypt) will soon fall under the purview of a new combatant command, AFRICOM.
The White House has announced a new military headquarters dedicated solely to operations in Africa. African Command (AFRICOM), the first new headquarters since the Northern Command was established in 2002, will help stop the continent from careening into conflict and collapse, while also serving U.S. interests abroad and at home.
Tenacious insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to occupy U.S. military and political attention, while China offers increasing strategic competition. This simultaneous focus of U.S. interests on the enormous continent of war-ravaged regions and vast expanses of ungoverned territory marks a monumental foreign policy shift for the United States, which has long avoided Africa because of its myriad problems and lack of strategic value. But now U.S. government leaders have seen the value of a proactive approach to solving Africa's problems.
AFRICOM was conceived soon after the attacks of 11 September 2001, because of growing concern that terrorists could use Africa for training new jihadist recruits. Senior Pentagon and State Department officials realized that the continent's porous borders, nascent security forces, and corrupt dictators could provide a sanctuary for senior al Qaeda members fleeing the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In mid 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld established a committee to review the possibilities of creating a new military headquarters for operations in Africa. The completed proposal was forwarded to the White House, and on 15 December 2006 President George Bush authorized the creation of a new combatant command and a change in responsibilities for U.S. military regions across the globe.
AFRICOM's Enormous AOR
Aside from a huge area of responsibility, the new command faces a daunting mission: help stabilize the continent. The region encompasses 25 percent of the world's landmass and 20 percent of its coastline, The continent's 53 countries account for more than a quarter of nations globally.
On the second-largest continent, African culture is as diverse as its topography. More than 2,000 languages have been identified, and most countries include hundreds of ethnic tribes. North Africa is characterized by its Muslim inhabitants, while sub-Saharan Africa mixes Christianity with traditional African religions.
In accordance with the Pentagon's Unified Command Plan, for strategic military purposes the world's regions are divided into zones. Previously, Africa fell under the responsibility of three different headquarters (combatant commands in military parlance), which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called "an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War."1 The European Command (EUCOM) in Stuttgart had responsibility for 43 of the 53 African nations. The Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa oversaw operations in eight African nations in the Horn of Africa, including Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. And the Pacific Command (PACOM) controlled events in the islands off the Pacific Coast, including Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, and Mauritius.
Where Are the Boundaries?
Exactly where the lines would be drawn was a subject of major debate. Most proponents of the new command insisted that the entire continent fall under the AFRICOM commander's responsibility. But transferring all the various African programs from three COCOMs to a new headquarters was deemed problematic and unnecessary.
Currently, the only U.S. base in Africa resides in Djibouti, home of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). This is the first permanent U.S. military presence on the continent since Wheelus Air Base, near Tripoli, Libya, closed in 1970. Established after 9/11, when the United States was concerned about terrorists fleeing into the ungoverned spaces of Somalia, the task force rests under the responsibility of CENTCOM Commander Admiral William Fallon, based in Tampa.
Some Pentagon officials cited the difficulty of transferring control of a 1,800-person command to a new headquarters that initially will be manned by only 200-300 officers. Further, many on the new AFRICOM staff will be new to the political and social issues in Africa, and probably challenged by the magnitude of establishing a new headquarters. The Pentagon officials recommended permanently leaving the Horn of Africa under CENTCOM's responsibility.
That is not going to happen, but for these and other reasons, the standup of the new headquarters will be a gradual process, spread over the next 12 months. The headquarters for the transition team was established in early February 2007 near the European Command headquarters staff from which AFRICOM, at least initially, will draw much of its expertise. Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, formerly Director of Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J-5) for CENTCOM, manages the transition team, which organized the headquarters staff that will be declared initially operational capable in October.
Among their many tasks, this team developed directives for AFRICOM, identified resource and manpower requirements, organized the interagency staff, and established relations with U.S. embassy personnel in all of the 53 African countries. Moeller will eventually hand over responsibility to a four-star general officer, the first commander of the African Command.
By 30 September 2008, AFRICOM will be fully operational and, with a staff estimated at 700-800, designated as its own combatant command. At this point, AFRICOM will assume responsibility for the entire continent-with the exception of Egypt. Because of its unique diplomatic relationship with the United States, Egypt will remain under CENTCOM purview.
The responsibility for AFRICOM will fall on General Kip Ward, U.S. Army, previously assigned as Deputy Commander of the European Command. At EUCOM, Ward's day-to-day responsibilities included overseeing military operations in 43 African countries.
Currently awaiting congressional confirmation for his new assignment, Ward already has had extensive experience on the continent. He was a senior commander involved with the Somali Relief Mission during Operation Restore Hope in 1993, and later served as the chief of the U.S. military mission to Egypt. Only the fifth African American four-star general in U.S. history, Ward is known for his ambitious and resourceful leadership, someone with a can-do attitude. These will be important traits for tackling the enormous military and diplomatic problems on a continent bigger than the United States, Canada, and Europe combined.
The commander of AFRICOM will be in close contact with the President. With the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, combatant commanders were given control of all military services operating in their regions: they report to the President through only the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense. Unlike other combatant commands, the AFRICOM commander will not have the support of each service working in the theater of operations. The headquarters will comprise a joint staff of officers from different military services-but, for the time being, separate subcomponent headquarters from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps will not be established to support operations in the AOR.
Searching for a Home
Stuttgart may be only a temporary stop for the staff. No one has revealed where the AFRICOM headquarters will be permanently located, but most admit that it should be somewhere on the African continent. Of the five current geographic combatant commands, only the European Command headquarters is located outside the United States. President Bush has said, "We will work closely with our African partners to determine an appropriate location for the new command in Africa."2
But initial negotiations among numerous African countries have revealed a reluctance to host the new headquarters command. Much of this hesitancy stems from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and from suspicions regarding our intentions in Africa. Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant secretary of Defense for African Affairs, recently spoke of the misconceptions of AFRICOM's purpose: "Some people believe that we are establishing AFRICOM solely to fight terrorism or to secure oil resources or to discourage China. That is not true. AFRICOM is about helping Africans build greater capacity to assure their own security."3
As a result of this lack of enthusiasm, recent discussions have focused on establishing a series of "nodes" on the continent from which AFRICOM's responsibilities can be distributed. Exactly how the nodes will be organized-functionally, geographically, by mission-is still under discussion.
A New Model for Regional Military Commands
As a new command significantly different from EUCOM and CENTCOM, AFRICOM will be, according to Pentagon sources, the clearing house for all humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts on the continent. Unlike traditional COCOM organizations, AFRICOM will attempt to coordinate and focus the efforts of myriad government, international, and nongovernmental relief agencies dedicated to improving Africa's deplorable public health problems.
The headquarters will be heavily staffed with State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development representatives, including senior Foreign Service officer Ambassador Robert Loftis, who will serve as the military commander's civilian deputy. Loftis, who has served in embassies in Lesotho and Mozambique, said: "What we're really talking about is taking all of those activities that are already being done and consolidating them into one command."4
Current Military Missions
The U.S. military is already a presence in Africa, dedicated to alleviating the suffering caused by famine and disease. CJTF-HOA, currently commanded by CENTCOM's Navy Rear Admiral James Hart, consists of 1,800 personnel, including engineers, veterinarians, and doctors dedicated to goodwill missions. They assist some of the poorest nations on the planet in an area more than twothirds the size of the United States.
By improving conditions there, the unit hopes to prevent disenfranchised youth from being lured toward radicalism and extremist sentiments. One of Hart's predecessors, Marine Major General Timothy F. Ghormley, said: "We're trying to improve the underlying conditions. Poverty itself doesn't bring about terrorism, but destitution with no way ahead brings about a turn to a more radical approach."5
Many officials believe the vast unpatrolled and ungoverned expanses of the Saharan Desert, a region as large as the continental United States, make it a sanctuary for terrorists fleeing Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004 the Pentagon launched Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara (OEF-TS), its biggest anti-terrorist effort outside Iraq and Afghanistan, designed to provide security assistance to our African partners. The idea was to be proactive. As former European Commander Marine General James Jones said, "Modest near term investments will enable us to avert crises that may require costly U.S. intervention in the future."6
OEF-TS is a multi-year effort to improve military capacities of the African armed forces so they can govern the region more effectively. The operation, currently involving nine Sahara nations, includes $100 million of funding each year, through 2013, for U.S. special operations forces conducting training with African military partners.
U.S. experts also believe the region is ideally suited for terrorists to recruit and train new jihadists before exporting members to targets in Europe or Iraq. "The whole gist of this thing is to get ahead . . . before it becomes a really big problem," said former deputy commander of EUCOM Air Force General Charles Wald.7
But critics say the effort could risk destabilizing already shaky African regimes by generating resentment for cooperation with a United States that many perceive as anti-Islamic. John Prendergrast, an African specialist with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said that U.S. counter-terror efforts in sub-Sahara Africa are "very little, and the training is a drop in the ocean. The locals see right through it."8
Other skeptics claim the effort will bolster control of corrupt African authoritarian regimes guilty of human rights abuses and heavy-handed tactics against their constituents. Proponents such as General Jones argue, "We're trying to prevent Africa from becoming the next Afghanistan or Iraq."
Keeping the Peace
One of AFRICOM's most important programs will be training African peacekeeping forces. The continent currently hosts half (8 of 16) of all active U.N. peacekeeping missions; 81 percent of the 54,000 U.N. peacekeepers are serving ih Africa.9 The post-World War II withdrawal from Africa of colonial powers left a power vacuum that was often filled by wars of independence and civil conflict. More than 8 million Africans are estimated to have died from war or war-related causes since 1945, and another 9.5 million remain displaced from their homes, accounting for one of every three refugees on the planet.
The most urgent crisis is in the Sudanese province of Darfur. Fighting between government-backed militia and rebels has resulted in 250,000 deaths and 2.5 million displaced refugees. Despite economic sanctions leveled on Khartoum by the U.N. and a declaration of genocide by the United States, only African Union forces have responded by sending peacekeeping forces to the region.
The effort has failed; African troops, inadequately trained and poorly equipped, have been unable to prevent bloodshed and violence in the regions they are deployed to protect. Seven thousand African Union peacekeepers, mostly from Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya, have not stopped the fighting between warring factions in an area the size of France.
The United States and European nations, spread thin by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been reluctant to commit troops and have limited their contribution to airlifting AU forces into the area. Even the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, a $40 million-a-year U.S. effort to train and equip African peacekeepers, has not provided results.
The success of ACOTA, EUCOM's flagship peacekeeping training program in Africa, is of vital importance for the United States. Our foreign policy has seriously failed in previous disasters on the continent, including Somalia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994. Today, despite a recent agreement on the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force, the suffering in Darfur continues with no end in sight.
U.S. Strategic Objectives
AFRICOM's new mission is of critical urgency for American national security experts. The desperate conditions that most Africans wrestle with every day-civil conflict, disease, broken infrastructure, government corruption, uncontrolled borders, dysfunctional security forces, piracy-result in massive populations susceptible to popular rhetoric. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa Whelan described the objective: "We want to prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming catastrophes."10
Fifty percent of the African population is under 15 years old, and the population is expected to grow from 800 million to 2 billion by 2050. This "youth bulge" is perceived to be especially vulnerable to jihadist sentiment and antiAmericanism.11 Combined with extreme weather and poor infrastructure, the situation is dire. Former CENTCOM commander General Abizaid said: "The combination of these serious challenges creates an environment that is ripe for exploitation by extremists and criminal organizations."12
Military civil affairs units and AFRICOM-supported charity organizations will have the dual assignments of winning the hearts and minds of Africans while improving their desperate conditions. Collaborating closely with the nongovernmental organizations, these teams will conduct goodwill missions such as well-digging and providing medical assistance to tribal areas that rarely see outsiders.
The units will need to be aware of cultural intricacies. Diplomatsoldiers like the current pool of foreign area officers in each service will be critical to developing language skills and cultural sensitivity. "We don't have a lot of people who understand the region well," said former CJTFHOA commander Rear Admiral Richard Hunt of his mission among the eight nations of the Horn of Africa.13
Can We Do It?
Already bogged down countering a costly insurgency in Iraq, the United States may have little fight left for the problems in Africa. U.S. military forces, "stretched nearly to the breaking point by repeated deployments to Iraq," according to the Iraq Study Group report, will be hardpressed to send adequate troops.14 A multitude of African nations have an immediate need for training and advisement.
One staff officer involved with the AFRICOM planning effort calculated that the total annual financial assistance for all of Africa last year would last 16 hours in Iraq. A drawdown there may free additional troops for duty in Africa, but the heavily used equipment in Iraq will require years before it can be brought back into working condition. Another critical question is whether the new Democratic-led Congress will permit another military foray into uncharted territory.
There is no guarantee of success in an area with such enormous problems. Indeed, though most officials believe the standup of an African Command is long overdue, there is some pessimism about its ability to do much good on such a vast continent. "It's almost even asking too much to have one command for Africa, since there are such differences between northern Africa, sub-Sahara Africa, and even within the regions," said one strategist.15
The reputation of the United States-which many resent for having invaded two Muslim countries in the last five years-requires damage control if it's going to overcome suspicions on this continent. One West African representative at a recent maritime conference said to me: "You have invaded Iraq for its oil. Now we think that you are coming here for our oil."16
But regardless of perceptions, the best hopes of preventing an African apocalypse ride on the shoulders of the new African Command. (All opinions expressed here are my own and in no way reflect an official position of AFRICOM or Special Operations Command, Europe.)
1. Jim Garamone, "DOD Establishing U.S. Africa Command," American Forces Press Service, 6 February 2007.
2. White House press release, "President Bush Creates a Department of Defense Unified Combatant Command for Africa," 6 February 2007.
3. John Kruzel, "Pentagon Official Describes AFRICOM's Mission, Dispels Misconceptions," American Forces Press Service, 6 August 2007.
4. Vince Crawley, "U.S. Creating New African Command to Coordinate Military Efforts," U.S. Information Agency, 6 February 2007.
5. Vince Crawley, "Troops Tackle Humanitarian Projects in Horn of Africa," Navy Times, 24 October 2005.
6. General James Jones, USMC, U.S. Department of State, testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 28 September 2005.
7. Gordon Lubold, "Euro Command Wants a Heftier Presence in Northern Africa," Navy Times, 10 January 2005.
8. David Morgan, "Africa Key to Pentagon Counterterrorism Plan," Reuters News Agency, June 2006.
9. Stephan Faris, "Containment Strategy," Atlantic Monthly, December 2006, p. 34.
10. Deborah Tate, "U.S. Officials Brief Congress on New Military Command for Africa," Voice of America News, 1 August 2007.
11. United Nations Population Fund, statement commemorating World Population Day, 11 July 2005, http://www.unfpa.org.
12. Mark Trueblood, The Spectrum, 18 October 2006.
13. Jim. Garamone, "Admiral Cites Complexity in Horn of Africa Mission," American Forces Press Service, 24 April 2006.
14. James A Baker III and Lee Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report (New York: Vintage, 6 December 2006), p. 51.
15. Joseph Giordono, "U.S. Military Aid in Tanzania a Huge Step Forward," Mideast Stars and Stripes, 17 September 2006.
16. Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative, Gulf of Guinea Maritime Security Conference, Accra, Ghana, March 2006. Comments made to author.
Lieutenant Commander Paterson, a Navy Foreign Area Officer, recently completed an assignment with Special Operations Command Europe. He was a strategic planner for Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) and coordinated U.S. Special Operations Forces employment in 43 African countries.