[Peace-discuss] for the "who's-next" box

[Ricky Baldwin]

[There were much stronger indications than this last
year that Somalia was a possible next target, but of
course the target-Iraq faction in the Administration
won out.  At that time US officials announced that
their sabre-rattling "efforts" and vicious financial
arm-twisting had scared off any potential terrorist
threats around Mogadishu - that is, they declared
victory and left the field.  Now it seems the idea has
come up again.  And where it stops, nobody knows... 
-Ricky]

Larger US Troop Presence May be Needed in Africa, Says
NATO
Commander

By Charles Cobb Jr. 
May 2, 2003; allAfrica.com

http://allafrica.com/stories/200305020307.html

Washington, DC - In a new indication that Washington's
anti-terrorism efforts
may continue to involve U.S. troops in Africa,
President
George W.Bush declared that "from Pakistan to the
Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down
Al-
Qaeda killers."

Events in Iraq are just "one victory in a war on
terror that
began on September the 11, 2001 - and still goes on,"
said
Bush.

And discussing Nato reconfiguration earlier this week,
Nato
Supreme Commander General James Jones, an American
four-star
general, suggested in barely noticed remarks that the
United
States plans to boost its troop presence in Africa,
where
there are "large ungoverned areas... that are clearly
the
new routes of narco-trafficking, terrorists' training
and
hotbeds of instability."

Jones was speaking at a Defense Writers Group
breakfast, an
organization which groups journalists covering the
Pentagon.

A debate about Nato's relevance and future among Nato
allies
began heating up in the run-up to the Iraq war and
continues
to be a hot topic now that the war is concluding. Nato
has
not yet reached any conclusions as to what its future
shape
might be, said Jones. "It has not found its form yet
and
maybe it won't."

But if the organization does have a future, said
General
Jones, expect Africa to be of greater importance to
both
Nato and the United States. "The carrier battle groups
of
the future and the expeditionary strike groups of the
future
may not spend six months in the Med[iterranean Sea]
but I'll
bet they'll spend half the time going down the West
Coast of
Africa."

One of the changes Jones says he wants Nato to
consider is
the establishment of temporary "forward operating
locations"
that could be used for brief training periods and for
deployments in times of crisis. Nato will debut a
prototype
quick-reaction force of about 2,000 to 3,000 fighters
-
encompassing ground, sea and air forces - in October,
said
Jones. Troops in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa may be
a
model for this. The largest U.S. troop presence in
Africa is
located there - close to 2,000 - as part of an anti-
terrorism effort in the Red Sea region and the Horn of
Africa.