US Counterterror Efforts In East Africa
from NPR & East African Standard

Things seem to be heating up in globar war on terror in Djibouti and Kenya. We covered the US operations in Djibouti here and here among others, and of course you remember Osama bin Laden shacked up in Sudan for a while. Follwing are excepts of two recent reports from NPR & the East African Standard. The full texts are archived in the more link.

from NPR
The US European Command, which overseas American operations in most of Africa, calls this the Pan Sahel initiative. US Special Forces are now training select Malian military units at three sites and Mauritanian military units at one. They're hoping to improve the capacity of local forces to combat the transit of weapons and terrorists across porous borders and along ancient Saharan trade routes. This American soldier with US 10th Special Forces Group is working with an infantry company from the Malian army on fundamentals, from first aid to reconnaissance.

from East African Standard
Initially resisted as infidel intruders into an Islamic community, US Marines and other American security intelligence agencies are finally gaining a foothold on strategic parts of the Kenya coast in a widening web of surveillance disguised as war against terrorism.

American intelligence presence is particularly noticeable along the coast where Marines set up numerous community projects, turning initial hostility from local communities into needy acceptance.

The Marines have penetrated the villages of Lamu and the neighbouring areas with the aim of collecting subtle intelligence, or traces of information, that could spark or spur terrorist activities. The high technology snooping - done
undercover as community services like fresh water, building hospitals and school blocks - has dazzled the local Bajuni community, the oblivious and yet cautious recipients of American generosity for almost two years now.

More

SHOW: Morning Edition (11:00 AM AM ET) - NPR

March 8, 2004 Monday

LENGTH: 1032 words

HEADLINE: United States increasing counterterrorism efforts in Africa

ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS

REPORTERS: ERIC WESTERVELT

BODY:

BOB EDWARDS, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

US and Pakistani military continue to pressure Islamist extremists in
Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's former home base. The US military is concerned that
some of the extremists are seeking new havens in the vast, ungoverned stretches
of north and central Africa. The US military is responding by increasing
counterterrorism efforts on the continent by training local forces. Critics
worry that the efforts make the US reliant on politically weak states with
militaries that have shoddy human rights records. NPR's Eric Westervelt
reports.

ERIC WESTERVELT reporting:

The US European Command, which overseas American operations in most of
Africa, calls this the Pan Sahel initiative. US Special Forces are now training
select Malian military units at three sites and Mauritanian military units at
one. They're hoping to improve the capacity of local forces to combat the
transit of weapons and terrorists across porous borders and along ancient
Saharan trade routes. This American soldier with US 10th Special Forces Group
is working with an infantry company from the Malian army on fundamentals, from
first aid to reconnaissance.

Unidentified Soldier #1: Basic weapon marksmanship. We spent a week doing
that; spent a week doing land navigation training. Currently, we're in the
leaders training, which is focused on preparing plans and operations orders. And
we're going to move into platoon collective tasks focusing on recon, ambush and
raid.

WESTERVELT: Similar training initiatives will soon get under way in Niger and
Chad. In addition, there's now military-to-military cooperation with Algeria,
and European Command hopes to expand the training mission to Morocco, Tunisia
and elsewhere in Africa. The US is also working to gain access rights to local
airports for potential counterterrorism strikes. This anti-terrorism effort
represents a sea change in US policy in the region, says Steve Morrison,
director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.

Mr. STEVE MORRISON (Center for Strategic and International Studies): Ten
years ago, immediate post-Cold War period, west Africa was written off as
marginal and inconsequential. Today it is seen as a place that provides a high
potential for providing haven, particularly in these places like Mali, Niger and
elsewhere, for these groups.

WESTERVELT: The group some in the Pentagon are most worried about is the
Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat. Once seen as comprising purely local
Algerian thugs, some US intelligence sources say there's evidence this group is
aggressively recruiting new members in mosques in northern Mali and that
Mauritanian fighters are being recruited to do battle with the US in Iraq. Last
year, the Salafis claimed responsibility for kidnapping 32 European tourists in
the southern Sahara. Once again, Morrison says, countering the group will come
down to solid, on-the-ground intelligence.

Mr. MORRISON: There's debate within the intelligence community about how
serious this is and how extensive it is. There's debate as to whether it is
significantly tied into Wahabist charity channels coming out of Saudi Arabia,
whether there may be a linkage into other movements.

WESTERVELT: Some US officials believe the Salafi group is al-Qaeda's main
franchise in Africa, having once received direct payments from Osama bin Laden.
The group's founding is tied up in the convoluted civil war politics of Algeria
in the 1990s. Al-Qaeda funders, including bin Laden, were apparently troubled
by the Muslim-on-Muslim atrocities committed by the Algerian armed Islamic
group, so bin Laden sought a kind of radical middle way.

Richard Chasdi is research associate at the University of Michigan's Center
for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

Mr. RICHARD CHASDI (Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies,
University of Michigan): And so bin Laden bankrolls the Salafi Group for the
Call and Combat because he understands that it's not politically efficacious for
him to have a group which is attacking Sunni Muslims and doing such horrific
damage to Sunni Muslims in this way.

WESTERVELT: Chasdi believes the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat has
ambitions that extend well beyond kidnapping tourists for money. Chasdi says
they're trying to find a new Afghanistan in Africa's hinterlands to train,
organize, recruit and prepare for potential attacks in Africa and Europe.

Mr. CHASDI: Remote areas with very weak central governments--that's a great
place to regroup after, from their perspective, the catastrophe in Afghanistan.
And what bin Laden has been able to do is very much like the Henry Ford of
terrorism. He's been able to mass produce terrorism in ways and to integrate
persons in terrorist groups in ways that we really haven't seen before.

WESTERVELT: These new State and Defense Department training initiatives in
Mauritania, Mali and Algeria may push the US to work direct with militaries that
have sketchy human rights records. Steve Morrison wonders how effective the US
Pan Sahel initiative will be without simultaneous political and economic
investment in these struggling countries.

Mr. MORRISON: How much capacity are you going to be able to really create
there, and how much attention can you devote to the civil governance side?
Because some of these states are not ones that are managed very well or that
have a fine record of respecting democratic norms and human rights. And if we
get too deeply invested in this without paying attention to the civil governance
side, Capitol Hill will shut these programs down.

WESTERVELT: US Central Command has some 1,400 troops at a forward operating
base in Djibouti, working in the Horn of Africa region. They, too, are training
local forces, as well as gathering intelligence and occasionally conducting
combat missions. A Pentagon source says right now the Special Forces soldiers
in the Sahel are focused only on training local military, but they could be
called to take part in combat missions in the area if the need arose.

Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Washington.

LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2004




HEADLINE: Kenyan paper says USA "widening" surveillance in country's east coast

SOURCE: East African Standard web site, Nairobi, in English 7 Mar 04

BODY:


Text of report by Awadh Babo in Lamu, Maina Muiruri in Mombasa, and David
Makali in Nairobi entitled "How America is spying on Kenya - German, French
spies also join rush for control" published by Kenyan newspaper East African
Standard web site on 7 March; subheadings inserted editorially

Initially resisted as infidel intruders into an Islamic community, US
Marines and other American security intelligence agencies are finally gaining a
foothold on strategic parts of the Kenya coast in a widening web of surveillance
disguised as war against terrorism.

American intelligence presence is particularly noticeable along the coast
where Marines set up numerous community projects, turning initial hostility from
local communities into needy acceptance.

The Marines have penetrated the villages of Lamu and the neighbouring areas
with the aim of collecting subtle intelligence, or traces of information, that
could spark or spur terrorist activities. The high technology snooping - done
undercover as community services like fresh water, building hospitals and school
blocks - has dazzled the local Bajuni community, the oblivious and yet cautious
recipients of American generosity for almost two years now.

But while the techniques employed by the Marines to collect intelligence and
plant surveillance equipment is advanced beyond the comprehension of residents,
intelligence sources told the Sunday Standard that the foray of Americans into
Kenya and the eastern Africa region - with official support - is likely to
intensify.

Kenya to become "watchtower" for US security concerns in east Africa

In the past two years since the 11 September 2001 bombing of New York,
America has sent hordes of Federal Bureau of Investigations sleuths swarming
into Kenya, which is to be converted into a watchtower for America's security
concerns in East Africa and the Horn of Africa region. Kenya landed into the
spotlight after two successive terrorist attacks - first on August 1998 on the
American embassy in Nairobi, and November 2002 on Paradise Lodge in Kikambala -
in which hundreds of local residents and foreign nationals were killed.

But the surveillance is not restricted to the coast; pockets of American FBI
and CIA agents have festered all over the country that have a potential
commercial or security interest to America. Sentence as published

For five years, American intelligence services have laid traps for Rwandese
fugitive Felicien Kabuga for what impeccable sources now say may have nothing to
do with the genocide that unfolded under America's watch.

Rwandan fugitive sought over disappearance of uranium from eastern DRCongo

Other sources told Intelligence that Kabuga is being sought in connection
with several tonnes of uranium which disappeared without trace from eastern
Democratic Republic Congo but which America fears could have landed in the hands
of terrorists. Part of the consignment, it is alleged, may have been sold to
India and Pakistan, the two warring neighbours that have since carried out
nuclear tests in competition. It is not known where the rest went, the reason
why Kabuga is among the most sought-after fugitive.

Besides, American intelligence holds him responsible for the killing of
eight "tourists" in Bwindi National Park, western Uganda, in March 1999.
Although the State Department reported the victims of the attack - among them
two Americans - as tourists, other sources say there were spies on Kabuga's
trail in the team. After the murder, America offered a 5m-dollar ransom for
information leading to the arrest of Kabuga.

Rwandan genocide suspect "allegedly" has French intelligence protection

Kabuga, who owned the Radio Milles Colines that was used to incite Hutus
against Tutsis in the Rwanda genocide, is alleged to enjoy French intelligence
connections and protection. Although he is believed to be holed up in secret
locations in Kenya, attempts to capture him have resulted in several fatalities.

Experts say America's foremost interest in Africa, besides neutralizing
terrorism, is to secure sites of strategic minerals like oil and uranium, which
fall in mainly former French colonies or Muslim countries.

In the emerging second scramble for Africa, Western countries are digging in
for new protectorates of their interest. Besides American spy agencies, German
and French intelligence presence has peaked over the past two years. German
spy-planes deployed to patrol the Indian Ocean coast in the heat of the Gulf War
last year have not retreated. France has also intensified its interest and
surveillance of the region.

At the coast, besides the terrorism concerns, impeccable sources say the
prospects for oil exploration along the coast up to Lamu have provided new
impetus to American activities.

Marines using "powerful concealed" communications equipment

Because the Marines have fostered the image of community workers and hardly
operate like soldiers, they have won the grudging trust of the residents.

Powerful concealed communication equipment and high-tech surveillance gear
are part of the field items the Marines have, but the local Lamu people see only
the work implements needed for community projects because the Americans are keen
not to be seen to be spying.

But most of the Americans on this "social" mission are either trained
soldiers who are not in active service back home or are undercover intelligence
officers who cannot admit they are Federal Bureau of Investigations or Central
Intelligence Agency spies.

For over two years, they have been arriving in teams that work for a
specific period, before being replaced by a new group. The visible results of
their stay are the social amenities that have now began to dot the formerly poor
neighbourhoods of Lamu. No one knows about their intelligence work tracing links
to suspected terrorists and terrorist activities, or their recruiting local
residents in a ground network of espionage, or much less their exploratory
activities.

Marines "almost running" Lamu

The Marines are part of the Civil Affairs Wing of the US Army headquartered
in Djibouti. Their deployment was initially part of the patrol of the Horn of
Africa and the Red Sea where, in 2001, America suffered another attack from
terrorists who bombed warships off the coast of Yemen killing six soldiers.

The Marines began with a series of projects in the far-flung archipelago but
have since wormed their way into almost running the island: no boats enter or
leave the island without their knowledge of the mission.

"They have laid a ground network of informants among the local community who
tell them what happens on every narrow street of either Lamu or Pate," says one
local leader.

The Americans have also set up community projects in Pate Island, two
kilometres from Lamu Island.

posted by prof_booty | 01:58 PM