[Peace-discuss] Fwd: USA/Africa: Military Programs

Fri Mar 7 11:15:59 CST 2003

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>Subject: USA/Africa: Military Programs
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>AFRICA ACTION
>Africa Policy E-Journal
>March 7, 2003 (030307)
>                    
>USA/Africa: Military Programs
>(Reposted from sources cited below)
>
>This posting contains a background report from the Association of
>Concerned Africa Scholars on U.S. military programs in sub-Saharan
>Africa. Two other postings today contain excerpts from an interview
>with  the outgoing ambassador of Nigeria to the United States,
>and  a press release from Africa Action and TransAfrica Forum,
>along with other anti-war statements.
>
>+++++++++++++++++end summary/introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>U.S. MILITARY PROGRAMS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 2001-2003
>
>Prepared by Daniel Volman, Director of the African Security
>Research Project in Washington, DC [dvolman at igc.org]. Information
>from the U.S. State Department, Congressional Budget Justification
>for Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 2003, and from various U.S.
>Defense Department web sites and newspaper articles. Information is
>current as of 11 February 2003.
>
>[excerpts only: full text, and PDF version with print-friendly
>tables available on the website of the Association of Concerned
>Africa Scholars -
>  http://www.prairienet.org/acas/military/military.html]
>
>U.S. MILITARY COMMANDS FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
>
>Most African countries fall within the area of responsibility of
>the U.S. European Command (which also covers Europe and the former
>republics of the Soviet Union). However, a number of countries in
>northeast Africa (Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan,
>and Kenya) and the Seychelles are within the area of responsibility
>of the U.S. Central Command; the U.S. Pacific Command covers the
>Comoros, Madagascar, and the Indian Ocean, including the island of
>Diego Garcia. These commands (along with the U.S. Special
>Operations Command and the various branches of the armed forces,
>i.e. the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines) are responsible
>for conducting active military operations in Africa, including
>training exercises, humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, evacuating
>civilians from unstable countries, and other operations.
>
>Most arms sales are conducted through the U.S. Defense Security
>Cooperation Agency, which is falls under the authority of the
>Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
>Certain military hardware (including handguns, rifles, shotguns,
>electronics, police equipment and crowd control chemicals, and
>explosives) is sold under a licensing program administered by the
>Office of Defense Trade Controls under the authority of the U.S.
>State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
>
>U.S. MILITARY LOANS & ARMS SALES TO AFRICA
>
>The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program is the process used by the
>U.S. government to sell weapons and other military equipment to
>foreign governments through the through the U.S. Defense Security
>Cooperation Agency (DSCA). The Foreign Military Financing (FMF)
>program is used by the DSCA to provide low-interest loans to
>foreign governments to finance arms purchases from the U.S.
>government or from private U.S. companies. In the case of all
>sub-Saharan recipients, the U.S. government waives the repayment of
>these loans. The Commercial Sales (CS) program is the process by
>which certain types of military and police equipment are sold to
>foreign governments under licenses issued by the Office of Trade
>Controls. Figures show the value of sales that have been licensed
>or approved by the State Department Office of Defense Trade Control
>in the given year. Even though these sales have been licensed or
>approved, they are not always completed.
>
>U.S. ARMS SALES AND MILITARY LOANS TO AFRICAN COUNTRIES
>
>[table for 2001, 2002, and 2003, by country, in on-line version]
>Total for sub-Saharan Africa
>
>2001 Actual    $21,151,000
>
>2002 Est.  $8,650,000
>
>2003 Est.      $7,744,000
>
>
>U.S. JOINT MILITARY TRAINING EXERCISES WITH AFRICAN COUNTRIES
>
>Countries where the U.S. has conducted joint military training
>exercises in recent years:
>
>Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria,
>Senegal, Uganda
>
>U.S. troops are deployed to African countries to conduct joint
>military exercises through a variety of programs. African
>Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) is the program
>created by the Bush Administration in the spring of 2002 to take
>the place of the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) to
>provide training in peacekeeping operations and regular military
>tactics in Africa to military units from selected countries. Since
>1996, over 8,600 African troops from Senegal, Uganda, Malawi, Mali,
>Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, and Kenya have received training
>through the ACRI program; the training is conducted in the host
>country by 60-man units of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. In FY
>2001, ACRI received $15.6 million in funding; during FY 2002, ACRI
>will receive an estimated $15 million; and for FY 2003, the
>Pentagon has requested $10 million to fund the new ACOTA program.
>The same countries that participated in ACRI will be the focus of
>the new program. The most significant difference between the two
>programs is that ACOTA will include training for offensive military
>operations, including light infantry tactics and small unit
>tactics, to enhance the ability of African troops to conduct
>peacekeeping operations in hostile environments; under ACOTA,
>African troops will also be provided with offensive military
>weaponry, including rifles, machine guns, and mortars.
>
>The Africa Regional Peacekeeping (ARP) program is the program to
>equip, train, and support troops from selected African countries
>that are involved in peacekeeping operations. The main recipients
>in recent years have been Nigerian, Senegalese, and Ghanaian units
>serving in Sierre Leon and units of the Guinean army along the
>border with Liberia; funding has also gone to support African
>peacekeeping efforts in the DR Congo, Burundi, Sudan, and on the
>Eritrea- Ethiopia border. The training includes offensive military
>tactics and the transfer of weaponry to the forces involved. In the
>future, money from the ARP program will be used to supplement
>Defense Department funding of an annual U.S. European Command
>regional military exercise, to be known as "Shared Accord," to
>enhance the joint operating capabilities of the forces from
>different African countries that might participate in peacekeeping
>or disaster response operations. In FY 2001, the ARP program
>received $30.9 million in funding; during FY 2002, the ARP program
>will receive an estimated $41 million; and for FY 2003, the
>Pentagon has requested $30 million in funding for the ARP program
>
>Along with the training provided in Africa through the ACOTA and
>ARP programs, U.S. troops also conduct joint training exercises in
>other African countries on a regular basis and in special exercises
>designed to prepare U.S. troops to operate in African environments
>and to work with African military forces. In April and May 2002,
>for example, two U.S. Navy hospital ships, the U.S.S. Dallas and
>the U.S.S. Minneapolis, conducted the regular West African Training
>Cruise and Medical Outreach Program mission, spending two-weeks
>stationed off Togo and Ghana. In May 2002, 1,000 American troops
>participated in a month-long joint amphibious assault exercise on
>the Kenyan coast with Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan troops. In
>August 2002, U.S. military medical personnel and Special Forces
>troops held a two-week medical training exercise, known as MEDFLAG
>02, in Entebbe and Sorotti, Uganda. And in September 2001, 200 U.S.
>U.S. Air Force personnel went to the Waterkloof Air Force Base in
>South Africa to participate in the first bilateral training
>exercise with South African forces.
>
>U.S. PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF AFRICAN MILITARY OFFICERS
>
>The International Military Education and Training (IMET) program is
>used to provide professional training to African military officers
>from forty-four countries at U.S. military colleges and other
>military facilities in the U.S. In FY 2002, IMET expected to
>provide training to more than 1,600 African officers (dollars in
>thousands).
>
>African countries that are expected to participate in IMET in FY
>2003: Angola, Benin. Botswana, , Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,
>Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire,
>DR Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon,
>Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar,
>Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger,
>Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Pr!ncipe, Senegal,
>Seychelles, Sierre Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo,
>Uganda, Zambia
>
>U.S. IMET PROGRAMS
>
>[For full table see on-line version. Includes country-level data
>for Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South
>Africa.
>
>Africa totals for 2001-2003 are
>
>2001 Actual:    $8,833,000
>2002 Est.      $10,185,000
>2003 Est.      $11,095,000
>
>U.S. USE OF AFRICAN MILITARY BASES
>
>The United States maintains important military facilities at a base
>on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Although the U.S.
>government established these facilities under a treaty with
>Britain, which claims sovereignty over the island, the African
>country of Mauritius continues to assert that Diego Garcia and
>other islands of the Chagos archipelago are part of its territory.
>
>The U.S. government uses the island to base a floating stockpile of
>tanks, armored vehicles, ammunition, and other military hardware
>sufficient to equip an Army brigade of up to 3,500 troops and a
>division of 17,300 Marines. The U.S. Air Force also bases B-52 and
>B-2 bombers at airfields on Diego Garcia. The facilities at Diego
>Garcia played a significant role in the Persian Gulf War of 1991
>and U.S. military operations in Afghanistan; they are certain to
>play an equally significant role in the impending U.S. war with
>Iraq.
>
>The United States does not possess its own bases on the African
>mainland, but relies on the agreement of African governments to use
>local bases and other military facilities in times of need. The
>only country that had concluded a formal agreement with Washington
>for the use of local military facilities is Kenya, which signed an
>agreement in February 1980. The Kenyan agreement allows U.S. troops
>to use the port of Mombasa, as well as airfields at Embakasi and
>Nanyuki. These facilities were used to support the American
>military intervention in Somalia in 1992-1994 and have been used in
>the past year to support forces from the United States and other
>coalition forces involved in counter-terrorism operations in the
>region.
>
>After 11 September 2001, the Pentagon received permission from
>Djibouti to establish the headquarters for the Combined Joint Task
>Force-Horn of Africa (its regional counter-terrorism command
>center) in that country. The principal mission of the Task Force is
>to monitor and interdict possible terrorist travel routes at sea
>and suspected terrorist activities in nearby countries,
>particularly in Somalia. The U.S. Task Force operates in
>coordination with military personnel from several European
>countries that are participating in the effort. Along with the
>headquarters element, 800 U.S. Special Forces troops have set up
>base at Camp Lemonier outside of the city Djibouti and the
>amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Mount Whitney, with 600 Marine on
>board, is stationed off shore. In December 2002, 2,400 Marines from
>the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based on ships off shore,
>conducted military exercises in Djibouti in preparation for the
>impending war with Iraq. In addition, C.I.A. operatives are working
>out of Djibouti, from where they directed the flight of the
>Predator drone aircraft that was used to fire the missiles that
>killed an alleged al-Qaeda leader and four others in Yemen in
>November 2001.
>
>The United States has not yet asked other African countries to use
>their military facilities. It is likely that other facilities, such
>as the recently expanded air base in Botswana, would be available
>for the use of U.S. troops if the United States wanted to use them
>in the future. But this would be up to the host country on a
>case-by-case basis. The West African country of S o Tom, and
>Pr!ncipe has attracted attention recently by offering to host an
>American naval base, but the Pentagon is unlikely to take them up
>on their offer because the facilities are inadequate and are not
>needed by U.S. forces.
>
>LINKS TO INFORMATION SITES ON U.S. MILITARY PROGRAMS IN AFRICA
>
>Information on the Commercial Sales program, the U.S. government
>budget for foreign operations, and U.S. policy toward Africa can be
>obtained through the web site of the U.S. State Department:
>http://www.state.gov Information on the Foreign Military Sales
>program, military loans, military education and training programs,
>military exercises, and other military issues can be obtained
>through the web site of the U.S. Defense Department:
>http://www.defenselink.mil
>
>[ADDITIONAL LINKS WITH BACKGROUND ON DIEGO GARCIA
>(provided by Africa Action)
>
>Note: these diverse links include news stories, articles, and
>official U.S. government sites, and are provided for background
>only.
>
>http://allafrica.com/stories/200301120001.html
>http://allafrica.com/stories/200212270109.html
>http://allafrica.com/stories/200210170049.html
>http://www.awitness.org/news/november_2001/diego_garcia.html
>http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/36/index-eib.html
>http://www.dg.navy.mil
>http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/diego-garcia.htm]
>
>+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Date distributed (ymd): 030307
>Region: Continent-Wide
>Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +security/peace+ +US policy focus+
>
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-- 

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