Via WSWS. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.
US Special Operations troop deployments in Africa surged in 2016
By
Eddie Haywood
3 January 2017
At the close of 2016, Africa saw a dramatic surge in the number of US Special Operation forces deployed across the continent. Since 2006, the US military has increased its operations in Africa from just 1 percent of overall global Special Operations to more than 17 percent.
The rate at which troops have been surged on to the continent far surpasses that of any other region in the world, including Washington’s substantial military operations in the Middle East. There were 700 Special Operation commandos deployed across Africa in 2014; by 2016, the number had more than doubled, to 1,700.
According to a report in the Intercept, the US has deployed elite military forces in 33 nations across the African continent at any given moment, comprising 60 percent of the continent’s 54 countries. Since 2014, these commandos have carried out hundreds of operations in Africa.
The Special Operations force is made up of the “elite” fighting personnel from all four US military branches, and includes Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and Rangers. These are the same elite forces that were responsible for the operation that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.
These troops are party of the US Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which largely carries out its dirty work in secret. Well aware that its wars are deeply unpopular with the American population, the Obama administration has utilized these groups of elite killers, as well as private contractors, to carry out its brutal operations away from the public eye.
The SOCOM operations in Africa are themselves a component of the Pentagon’s US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the military command post overseeing…