{"id":77252,"date":"2016-08-08T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=77252"},"modified":"2016-08-04T13:41:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T12:41:12","slug":"breaking-the-camouflage-wall-of-silence-when-africom-evaluates-itself-the-news-is-grim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/breaking-the-camouflage-wall-of-silence-when-africom-evaluates-itself-the-news-is-grim\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Camouflage Wall of Silence: When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, the News Is Grim"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Aug 2016 – <\/em>It\u2019s rare to hear one top military commander publicly badmouth another, call attention to his faults, or simply point out his shortcomings. Despite a seemingly endless supply of debacles from strategic setbacks to quagmire conflicts since 9\/11, the top brass rarely criticize each other or, even in retirement, utter a word about the failings of their predecessors or successors.\u00a0 Think of it as the camouflage wall of silence.\u00a0 You may loathe him.\u00a0 You may badmouth him behind closed doors.\u00a0 You may have secretly hoped for his career to implode.\u00a0 But publicly point out failures?\u00a0 That\u2019s left<\/a> to those further down<\/a> the chain of command.<\/p>\n

And yet that\u2019s effectively exactly what newly installed<\/a> U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chief, General Thomas Waldhauser, did earlier this year in a statement to the Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC).\u00a0 It\u2019s just that no one, almost certainly including Waldhauser himself, seemed to notice or recognize it for the criticism it was, including the people tasked with oversight of military operations and those in the media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over these last years, the number of personnel<\/a>, missions<\/a>, dollars spent<\/a>, and special ops training<\/a> efforts as well as drone bases<\/a> and other outposts<\/a> on the continent have all multiplied.\u00a0 At the same time, incoming AFRICOM commanders have been publicly warning about the escalating perils and challenges from terror groups that menace the command\u2019s area of operations.\u00a0 Almost no one, however — neither those senators nor the media — has raised pointed questions, no less demanded frank answers, about why such crises on the continent have so perfectly mirrored American military expansion.<\/p>\n

Asked<\/a> earlier this year about the difficulties he\u2019d face if confirmed, Waldhauser was blunt: \u201cA major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and ISIL in Libya.\u201d<\/p>\n

That should have been a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> moment for some of those senators.\u00a0 Three years earlier, the man previously nominated to lead AFRICOM, General David Rodriguez, was asked the same question.\u00a0 His reply<\/a> was suspiciously similar: \u201cA major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of Mali as an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb safe haven, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al-Shabaab in Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that had changed between 2013 and 2016, it seemed, was the addition of one more significant threat.<\/p>\n

In the midst of Rodriguez\u2019s 2016 victory lap (as he was concluding 40 years of military service), Waldhauser publicly drew attention to just how ineffective his run as AFRICOM chief had been.\u00a0 Some might call it unkind — a slap in the face for a decorated old soldier — but perhaps turnabout is fair play.\u00a0 After all, in 2013, Rodriguez did much the same to his predecessor, General Carter Ham, when he offered his<\/em> warning about the challenges on the continent.<\/p>\n

Three years before that, in 2010, Ham appeared before the same committee and said, \u201cI believe that the extremist threat that’s emerging from East Africa is probably the greatest concern that Africa Command will face in the near future.\u201d\u00a0 Ham expressed no worry about threats posed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or Boko Haram.\u00a0 ISIL in Libya didn\u2019t even exist.\u00a0 And even that \u201cgreatest concern,\u201d al-Shabaab, was, Ham noted, \u201cprimarily focused on internal matters in Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, over these last years, each incoming AFRICOM commander has offered a more dismal and dire assessment of the situation facing the U.S. military than his predecessor.\u00a0 Ham drew attention to only one major terror threat, Rodriguez to three, and Waldhauser to four.<\/p>\n

His Own Worst Critic<\/strong><\/p>\n

That said, Waldhauser isn\u2019t the only AFRICOM chief to point a finger at Rodriguez\u2019s checkered record.\u00a0 Another American general cast an even darker shadow on the outgoing commander\u2019s three-year run overseeing Washington\u2019s shadow war<\/a> in Africa:<\/p>\n

\u201cAFRICOM\u2019s priorities on the continent for the next several years will be… in East Africa to improve stability there.\u00a0 Most of that is built around the threat of al-Shabaab.\u00a0 And then, in the North and West Africa is really built around the challenges from Libya down to northern Mali and that region and that instability there creates many challenges… And then after that is the West Africa, really about the Boko Haram and the problem in Nigeria that is, unfortunately, crossing the boundary into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.\u00a0 So those are the big challenges and then just the normal ones that continue to be a challenge are the Gulf of Guinea… as well as countering the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army…\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That critic<\/em> was, in fact, General David Rodriguez himself in an AFRICOM promotional video released<\/a> on multiple social media platforms last month.\u00a0 It was posted on the very day that his command also touted<\/a> its \u201cmore than 30 major exercises and more than 1,000 military to military engagements\u201d between 2013 and 2015.\u00a0 It was hardly a surprise, however, that these two posts and the obvious conclusion to be drawn from them — just how little AFRICOM\u2019S growing set of ambitious continent-wide activities mattered when it came to the spread of terror movements — went unattended and uncommented upon.<\/p>\n

Waldhauser and Rodriguez have not, however, been alone in pointing out increased insecurity on the continent.\u00a0 \u201cTerrorism and violent extremism are major sources of instability in Africa,\u201d Assistant Secretary Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the State Department\u2019s Bureau of African Affairs told<\/a> the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May.\u00a0 \u201cTerrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab, Boko Haram (which now calls itself the Islamic State in West Africa), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al-Murabitoun are conducting asymmetric campaigns that cause significant loss of innocent life and create potentially long-term humanitarian crises.\u201d<\/p>\n

National intelligence director James Clapper, <\/em>who called<\/a> the continent \u201ca hothouse for the emergence of extremist and rebel groups\u201d in 2014, spoke<\/a> of the dangers posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army and al-Shabaab, as well as terror threats in Egypt, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and Tunisia, and instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Burundi, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan<\/a> before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Brigadier General Donald Bolduc who heads Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA), the most elite U.S. troops on the continent.\u00a0 He painted a picture that was grimmer still.\u00a0 Last November, during a closed door presentation at the annual Special Operations Command Africa Commander\u2019s Conference in Garmisch, Germany, the SOCAFRICA chief drew attention<\/a> not just to the threats of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, ISIL, and the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army, but also another \u201c43 malign groups\u201d operating in Africa, according to another set of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n

The growth of terror groups from the one named by Ham in 2010 to the 48 mentioned by Bolduc in 2015 is as remarkable as it has been unremarked upon, a record so bleak that it demands a congressional investigation that will, of course, never take place.<\/p>\n

Questions Unasked, Questions Unanswered<\/strong><\/p>\n

U.S. Africa Command boasts that it \u201cneutralizes transnational threats\u201d and \u201cprevents and mitigates conflict,\u201d while training local allies and proxies \u201cin order to promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.\u201d\u00a0 Rodriguez\u2019s tenure was, however, marked by the very opposite: increasing numbers of lethal terror attacks across the continent including those in Burkina Faso, Burundi<\/a>, Cameroon<\/a>, Central African Republic<\/a>, Chad<\/a>, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo<\/a>, Ethiopia<\/a>, Kenya<\/a>, Mali, Niger<\/a>, Nigeria<\/a>, Somalia<\/a>, South Sudan<\/a>, and Tunisia<\/a>.\u00a0 In fact, data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland shows<\/a> that attacks have spiked over the last decade, roughly coinciding with AFRICOM\u2019s establishment.\u00a0 In 2007, just before it became<\/a> an independent command, there were fewer than 400 such incidents annually in sub-Saharan Africa.\u00a0 Last year, the number reached<\/a> nearly 2,000.<\/p>\n

While these statistics may be damning, they are no more so than the words of AFRICOM\u2019s own chiefs.\u00a0 Yet the senators who are supposed to provide oversight haven\u2019t seemed to bat an eye, let alone ask the obvious questions about why terror groups and terror attacks are proliferating as U.S. operations, bases, manpower, and engagement across the continent grow.\u00a0 (Note that this is, of course, the same Senate committee that Rodriguez misled<\/a>, whether purposefully or inadvertently, earlier this year when it came to the number of U.S. military missions in Africa without — again — either apparent notice or any repercussions.)<\/p>\n

In an era of too-big-to fail generals<\/a>, an age in which top commanders from winless wars retire to take prominent posts at influential institutions and cash in<\/a> with cushy jobs on corporate boards, AFRICOM chiefs have faced neither hard questions nor repercussions for the deteriorating situation. \u00a0(Similar records — heavy on setbacks, short on victories — have been produced by Washington\u2019s war chiefs in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 15 years and they, too, have never led to official calls for any sort of accountability.)<\/p>\n

Rodriguez is now planning on resting at his northern Virginia home for a few months and, as he told<\/a> Stars and Stripes<\/em>, seeing \u201cwhat comes next.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Africa Command failed to respond to multiple requests for an interview with Rodriguez, but if he follows in the footsteps of the marquee names among fellow retired four-stars of his generation, like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, he\u2019ll supplement his six-figure pension with one or more lucrative private sector posts.<\/p>\n

What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come.\u00a0 If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead.<\/p>\n

During his final days in command, AFRICOM released several more short videos of Rodriguez holding forth on varioius issues.\u00a0 In one of the last of these, the old soldier praised<\/a> \u201cthe whole team\u201d for accomplishing \u201ca tremendous amount over the last several years.\u201d\u00a0 What exactly that was went unsaid, though it certainly wasn\u2019t achieving AFRICOM\u2019s mandate to \u201cneutraliz[e] transnational threats.\u201d\u00a0 But what Rodriguez said next made a lot of sense.\u00a0 He noted that AFRICOM wasn\u2019t alone in it — whatever it was.\u00a0 Washington, D.C., he said, had played a key role, too.\u00a0 In that, he couldn\u2019t have been more on target.\u00a0 The increasingly bleak outlook in Africa can\u2019t simply be laid at the feet of AFRICOM\u2019s commanders.\u00a0 Again and again, they\u2019ve been upfront about the deteriorating situation.\u00a0 Washington has just preferred to look the other way.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

Nick Turse is the managing editor of <\/em>TomDispatch<\/a>, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the <\/em>Intercept<\/a>.\u00a0 He is the author of the <\/em>New York Times bestseller <\/em>Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Next Time They\u2019ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan<\/a>. His website is <\/em>NickTurse.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2016 Nick Turse<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come. If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}