AFRICOM Kicks Off

The Blogger's Roundtable featured Ms. Theresa Whelan, Deputy Asst Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, OSD Policy. She was discussing the recent stand-up of U.S. African Command (AFRICOM), which officially became active as of October 1, 2007. Ms. Whelan is very well qualified to discuss African affairs, and it was a true pleasure to participate in the Roundtable. The DOD story is here. I was interested in what she considered AFRICOM's top priorities, considering the Ethiopian attacks into Somolia, the Dafur crisis, diamond smuggling, etc. Here was her response.

MS. WHELAN: Well, I think in one sense the new command is going to be just sort of picking up, at the present time, what we're currently doing on the continent. And we are currently focused in working with countries like Nigeria, like Senegal, like Ghana, Botswana, et cetera, to help them build their capacity to participate in peacekeeping missions so that they can contribute to the A.U. mission in Darfur or elsewhere -- wherever the A.U. has peacekeeping missions -- and/or the U.N. mission. Now we have a hybrid mission in Darfur.

So we're going to continue to -- the command in the next year or so is going to continue to sort of focus on those efforts -- hopefully invigorate them, but not necessarily change them because I think they're very important.

The other thing I think that you will see, which has already begun, is an increased focus on maritime security, which we think is important. It's something that we hadn't really paid too much attention to for a while because we've been focusing more on the peacekeeping problem and sort of the turmoil -- the political and conflict turmoil on the continent. But maritime security is an area that's very important for the continent economically. I think the World Bank did a study not too long ago -- a couple of years ago -- in which they found that -- this was focused on the Mozambican Channel area off the coast of Tanzania and Mozambique -- but that countries like Mozambique were losing in excess of a billion dollars a year in lost revenue from illegal fishing and also the destruction to their reefs -- reef structures and also the depletion of their fishing resources. And so maritime security is important economically to African nations. It's also, though, important from a security standpoint because what we're seeing is more and more drugs being moved through Africa via maritime routes, arms being moved; there's trafficking in persons through maritime routes. And then of course there's piracy, which is influencing or impacting negatively on international shipping.

I really enjoyed the discussion - she's a true professional working in her area of specialty. I'm hoping David Axe is finally happy - he's been pestering Jack for an AFRICOM interview for a while. He was asking about the Somalia fighting, noting that the U.S. military is certainly engaged in that affair. I didn't comment then, but I would observe that it's different these days when SOCOM decides it's going to play in an operational theater. It's not as if CENTCOM or AFRICOM gets to say "no" to such operations, even when they might affect the military operations in theater.

My final observation - the AFRICOM commander is Army General William Ward, and his biggest issue will be maritime security. The CENTCOM commander is Admiral William Fallon, and his biggest issue is overseeing ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's wrong with this picture? Can't we swap these two commanders into the other's theater? Ahhhh, I guess not.

Comments

[Galrahn]

Did they talk about the casualties to the Nigerian Army lately both internally and in Dafur? Several hundreds have died in the last few weeks in fighting in both, but the English news reporting is very limited.

They may have a maritime focus up front with AFRICOM, but if one of the primary nations that provides A.U. troops is heavily engaged, the US Army's role will likely increase in the form of training.

The name of the report discussed is called "Africa's Missing Billions" and it is eye opening.

[J.]

She did not address specific current-day events. Her office is policy, not current ops - maybe AFRICOM will come on line with specifics. The general concept seemed to be "we're not sending troops to Africa, we're supporting the development of their military and economic capabilities, we're doing this in support of the State Department." Maybe we'll see spec ops trainers in country, but they'll be teams, not brigades.

[David Axe]

Yes, I am very happy.

[Galrahn]

Thanks Jason.

If the topic comes up again on AFRICON, ask them if the ROE has changed off Somalia.

Because it looks like it to me...

[Grandjester]

And AFRICOM HQ is in? Stuttgart, Germany? WTF? AN ENTIRE CONTINENT that doesn't want a US base. Guess they still have issues with the whole colonialism thing.

But I am glad Axe is happy.