Originally posted at TomDispatch.
Colonel Mark Cheadle, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), recently
made a startling disclosure to Voice of America (VOA). AFRICOM,
he said, is currently mulling over 11 possible locations for its second base
on the continent. If, however, there was a frontrunner among them Cheadle
wasn’t about to disclose it. All he would say was that Nigeria isn’t
one of the countries in contention.
Writing for VOA, Carla Babb filled in the rest of the picture
in terms of U.S. military activities in Africa. “The United States
currently has one military base in the east African nation of Djibouti,”
she observed. “U.S. forces are also on the ground in Somalia to assist
the regional fight against al-Shabab and in Cameroon to help with the multinational
effort against Nigeria-based Boko Haram.”
A day later, Babb’s story disappeared.
Instead, there was a new article in which she noted that
“Cheadle had initially said the U.S. was looking at 11 locations for a
second base, but later told VOA he misunderstood the question.”
Babb reiterated that the U.S. had only the lone military base in Djibouti and
stated that “[o]ne of the possible new cooperative security locations
is in Cameroon, but Cheadle did not identify other locations due to ‘host
nation sensitivities.’”
U.S. troops have, indeed, been based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti since 2002.
In that time, the base has grown from 88 acres to about 600 acres and has seen
more than $600 million in construction and upgrades already awarded or allocated.
It’s also true that U.S. troops, as Babb notes, are operating in Somalia
– from at least two bases – and the U.S. has indeed set up a base
in Cameroon.
As such, the “second” U.S. base in Africa, wherever it’s eventually
located, will actually be more like the fifth U.S. base on the continent.
That is, of course, if you don’t count Chabelley Airfield, a hush-hush
drone base the U.S. operates elsewhere in Djibouti,
or the U.S. staging areas, cooperative security locations, forward operating
locations, and other outposts in Burkina
Faso, Central
African Republic, Chad,
Ethiopia,
Gabon,
Ghana,
Kenya,
Mali,
Niger,
Senegal,
the
Seychelles, Somalia,
South
Sudan, and Uganda,
among other locales. When I counted late
last year, in fact, I came up with 60 such sites in 34 countries. And
just recently, Missy Ryan of the Washington Post added to
that number when she disclosed that
“American Special Operations troops have been stationed at two outposts
in eastern and western Libya since late 2015.”
To be fair, the U.S. doesn’t call any of these bases “bases”
– except when officials forget to keep up the fiction. For example,
the National Defense…