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AFRICOM shaping up as
model of support
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, March 27, 2007
ARLINGTON, Va. — About a dozen servicemembers
are expected to go to Liberia this year to help
train that country’s military, said Theresa
Whelan, deputy assistant defense secretary for
African affairs.
The troops, likely to come from U.S. European
Command, will help the Liberians with
“small-unit” training, as part of the U.S.
government’s ongoing efforts since 2003 to help
Liberia demobilize its old army and raise a new
one of 2,000 troops, Whelan said in a Thursday
interview with Stars and Stripes.
The mission is typical of what U.S.
servicemembers can expect to perform once U.S.
Africa Command becomes fully operational by
2008, she said.
“The model of the U.S. in a supporting role
using a few people to support the Africans in
addressing their security needs — which in turn,
will help address ours — that’s essentially the
model that we’re looking at,” she said.
On Feb. 6, Defense Secretary Robert Gates
announced the creation of AFRICOM, which will
ultimately be responsible for all of Africa
except Egypt, which has existing military ties
with U.S. Central Command.
Right now, most of the continent falls under
EUCOM’s purview, with CENTCOM responsible for
seven nations in northeast Africa and U.S.
Pacific Command responsible for Madagascar and
other islands off the continent’s east coast.
AFRICOM’s purpose is to make Africa the primary
concern of one combatant command instead of a
“secondary or tertiary” concern for three other
commands, Whelan said.
Still some people have a misconception about
AFRICOM as a “massive concentration” of U.S.
troops on the African continent, she said.
“AFRICOM isn’t a force, I guess, is the main
point,” she said. “Some people don’t quite
understand that. They seem to think some kind of
U.S. military division is going to roll across
the Sahel (northern Africa) or something.”
The overall U.S. troop presence on the African
continent, now about 1,800, is not expected to
change much once AFRICOM becomes fully
operational, Whelan said.
“We will have small training teams, just like we
do now right now in the Sahel,” Whelan said. “We
still have our troops at Camp Lemonier
(Djibouti). We still have the U.S. Navy making
ship visits and port calls up and down the
coasts and U.S. Navy personnel conducting
training missions.”
The command’s goal will also be to help Africans
improve their own security, Whelan said.
“It’s not the United States doing it for
everybody, it’s the United States being there
with them and being supportive,” she said.
As such, missions U.S. troops can expect to
perform in Africa include helping train African
forces to conduct peacekeeping operations and
secure their border, Whelan said.
The command also plans to re-focus efforts to
help African navies and coastal forces cut down
on illegal fishing, especially in the Gulf of
Guinea and southwest Indian Ocean, she said.
As for responding to crises that arise on the
African continent, any missions that AFRICOM
would undertake would be part of the overall
response from the U.S. government, Whelan said.
“It won’t just be an AFRICOM decision about what
it would do or would not do in a particular
crisis,” she said. “It would be a broader U.S.
policy decision and AFRICOM would be a component
of the overall response, if it was determined
that a crisis required some kind of military
response.”
Asked how AFRICOM would deal with the volatile
Horn of Africa, where Islamic insurgents are
fighting government forces and African
peacekeepers in Somalia, Whelan reiterated that
AFRICOM would be part of overall U.S. policy,
not a policy-maker in its own right.
“AFRICOM will not be responsible for solving the
problems of the Horn of Africa,” she said.
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