US Military Says It Has a "Light Footprint" in Africa. These Documents Show
a Vast Network of Bases
By Nick Turse, The Intercept
01 December 18
The U.S. military has long insisted that it maintains a light footprint in
Africa, and there have been reports of proposed drawdowns in special
operations forces and closures of outposts on the continent, due to a 2017
ambush in Niger and an increasing focus on rivals like China and Russia. But
through it all, U.S. Africa Command has fallen short of providing concrete
information about its bases on the continent, leaving in question the true
scope of the American presence there.
Documents obtained from AFRICOM by The Intercept, via the Freedom of
Information Act, however, offer a unique window onto the sprawling network
of U.S. military outposts in Africa, including previously undisclosed or
unconfirmed sites in hotspots like Libya, Niger, and Somalia. The Pentagon
has also told The Intercept that troop reductions in Africa will be modest
and phased-in over several years and that no outposts are expected to close
as a result of the personnel cuts.
According to a 2018 briefing by AFRICOM science adviser Peter E. Teil, the
militarys constellation of bases includes 34 sites scattered across the
continent, with high concentrations in the north and west as well as the
Horn of Africa. These regions, not surprisingly, have also seen numerous
U.S. drone attacks and low-profile commando raids in recent years. For
example, Libya the site of drone and commando missions but for which
President Trump said he saw no U.S. military role just last year is
nonetheless home to three previously undisclosed outposts.
U.S. Africa Commands posture plan is designed to secure strategic access
to key locations on a continent characterized by vast distances and limited
infrastructure, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, told the
House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, though he didnt provide
specifics on the number of bases. Our posture network allows forward
staging of forces to provide operational flexibility and timely response to
crises involving U. S. personnel or interests without creating the optic
that U. S. Africa Command is militarizing Africa.
According to Adam Moore, an assistant professor of geography at the
University of California in Los Angeles and an expert on the U.S. militarys
presence in Africa, It is getting harder for the U.S. military to plausibly
claim that it has a light footprint in Africa. In just the past five
years, it has established what is perhaps the largest drone complex in the
world in Djibouti Chabelley which is involved in wars on two continents,
Yemen and Somalia. Moore also noted that the U.S. is building an even
larger drone base in Agadez, Niger. Certainly, for people living in
Somalia, Niger and Djibouti, the notion that the U.S. is not militarizing
their countries rings false, he added.
For the last 10 years, AFRICOM has not only sought to define its presence as
limited in scope, but its military outposts as small, temporary, and little
more than local bases where Americans are tenants. For instance, this is how
Gen. Waldhauser described a low-profile drone outpost in Tunisia last year:
And its not our base, its the Tunisians base. On a visit to a U.S.
facility in Senegal this summer, the AFRICOM chief took pains to emphasize
that the U.S. had no intension of establishing a permanent base there.
Still, theres no denying the scope of AFRICOMs network of outposts, nor
the growth in infrastructure. Air Forces Africa alone, the commands air
component, has recently completed or is currently working on nearly 30
construction projects across four countries in Africa. The U.S. footprint
on the African continent has grown markedly over the last decade to promote
U.S. security interests on the continent, Navy Commander Candice Tresch, a
Pentagon spokesperson, told The Intercept.
While China, France, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates have increased
their own military engagement in Africa in recent years and a number of
countries now possess outposts on the continent, none approach the
wide-ranging U.S. footprint. China, for example, has just one base in Africa
a facility in Djibouti.
According to the documents obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of
Information Act, AFRICOMs network of bases includes larger enduring
outposts, consisting of forward operating sites (FOSes) and cooperative
security locations (CSLs), as well as more numerous austere sites known as
contingency locations (CLs). All of these are located on the African
continent except for an FOS on Britains Ascension Island in the South
Atlantic. Teils map of Africa Commands Strategic Posture names the
specific locations of all 14 FOSes and CSLs and provides country-specific
locales for the 20 contingency locations. The Pentagon would not say whether
the tally was exhaustive, however, citing concerns about publicly providing
the number of forces deployed to specific facilities or individual
countries. For reasons of operational security, complete and specific force
lay-downs are not releasable, said Commander Tresch.
While troops and outposts periodically come and go from the continent, and
some locations used by commandos conducting sensitive missions are likely
kept under wraps, Teils map represents the most current and complete
accounting available and indicates the areas of the continent of greatest
concern to Africa Command. The distribution of bases suggests that the U.S.
military is organized around three counter-terrorism theaters in Africa: the
Horn of Africa Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya; Libya; and the Sahel Cameroon,
Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, says UCLAs Moore, noting that the U.S.
has only one base in the south of the continent and has scaled back
engagement in Central Africa in recent years.
Niger, Somalia, and Kenya
Teils briefing confirms, for the first time, that the U.S. military
currently has more sites in Niger five, including two cooperative security
locations than any other country on the western side of the continent.
Niamey, the countrys capital, is the location of Air Base 101, a longtime
U.S. drone outpost attached to Diori Hamani International Airport; the site
of a Special Operations Advanced Operations Base; and the West Africa node
for AFRICOMs contractor-provided personnel recovery and casualty evacuation
services. The other CSL, in the remote smuggling hub of Agadez, is set to
become the premier U.S. military outpost in West Africa. That drone base,
located at Nigerien Air Base 201, not only boasts a $100 million
construction price tag but, with operating expenses, is estimated to cost
U.S. taxpayers more than a quarter-billion dollars by 2024 when the 10-year
agreement for its use ends.
Officially, a CSL is neither a U.S. facility or base. It is, according to
the military, simply a location that, when needed and with the permission
of the partner country, can be used by U.S. personnel to support a wide
range of contingencies. The sheer dimensions, cost, and importance of
Agadez seems to suggest otherwise. Judging by its size and the
infrastructure investments to date, Agadez more resembles massive bases that
the military created in Iraq and Afghanistan than a small, unobtrusive,
lily pad, says UCLAs Moore.
The U.S. military presence in Niger gained widespread exposure last year
when an October 4 ambush by ISIS in the Greater Sahara near the Mali border
killed four U.S. soldiers, including Green Berets, and wounded two others. A
Pentagon investigation into the attack shed additional light on other key
U.S. military sites in Niger including Ouallam and Arlit, where Special
Operations forces (SOF) deployed in 2017, and Maradi, where SOF were sent in
2016. Arlit also appeared as a proposed contingency location in a formerly
secret 2015 AFRICOM posture plan obtained by The Intercept. Ouallam, which
was listed in contracting documents brought to light by The Intercept last
year, was the site of an SOF effort to train and equip a Nigerien
counterterrorism company as well as another effort to conduct operations
with other local units. Contracting documents from 2017 also noted the need
for 4,400 gallons per month of gasoline, 1,100 gallons per month of diesel
fuel, and 6,000 gallons of aviation turbine fuel to be delivered, every 90
days, to a military installation in Dirkou.
While the five bases in Niger anchor the west of the continent, the five
U.S. outposts in Somalia are tops in the east. Somalia is the East Africa
hub for contractor-provided personnel recovery and casualty evacuation
services as well as the main node for the militarys own personnel recovery
and casualty evacuation operations. These sites, revealed in AFRICOM maps
for the first time, do not include a CIA base revealed in 2014 by The
Nation.
All U.S. military facilities in Somalia, by virtue of being contingency
locations, are unnamed on AFRICOMs 2018 map. Previously, Kismayo has been
identified as a key outpost, while the declassified 2015 AFRICOM posture
plan names proposed CLs in Baidoa, Bosaaso, and the capital, Mogadishu, as
well as Berbera in the self-declared state of Somaliland. If locations on
Teils map are accurate, one of the Somali sites is located in this latter
region. Reporting by Vice News earlier this year indicated there were
actually six new U.S facilities being constructed in Somalia as well as the
expansion of Baledogle, a base for which a contract for emergency runway
repairs was recently issued.
According to top secret documents obtained by The Intercept in 2015, elite
troops from a unit known as Task Force 48-4 were involved in drone attacks
in Somalia earlier this decade. This air war has continued in the years
since. The U.S. has already conducted 36 air strikes in Somalia this year,
compared to 34 for all of 2017 and 15 in 2016, according to the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies.
Somalias neighbor, Kenya, boasts four U.S. bases. These include cooperative
security locations at Mombasa as well as Manda Bay, where a 2013 Pentagon
study of secret drone operations in Somalia and Yemen noted that two manned
fixed-wing aircraft were then based. AFRICOMs 2015 posture plan also
mentions contingency locations at Lakipia, the site of a Kenyan Air Force
base, and another Kenyan airfield at Wajir that was upgraded and expanded by
the U.S. Navy earlier in this decade.
Libya, Tunisia, and Djibouti
Teils map shows a cluster of three unnamed and previously unreported
contingency locations near the Libyan coastline. Since 2011, the U.S. has
carried out approximately 550 drone strikes targeting al Qaeda and Islamic
State militants in the restive North African nation. During a four-month
span in 2016, for example, there were around 300 such attacks, according to
U.S. officials. Thats seven times more than the 42 confirmed U.S. drone
strikes carried out in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan combined for all of
2016, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
a London-based nonprofit news organization. The Libya attacks have continued
under the Trump administration, with the latest acknowledged U.S. drone
strike occurring near Al Uwaynat on November 29. AFRICOMs 2015 posture plan
listed only an outpost at Al-Wigh, a Saharan airfield near that countrys
borders with Niger, Chad, and Algeria, located far to the south of the three
current CLs.
Africa Commands map also shows a contingency location in neighboring
Tunisia, possibly Sidi Ahmed Air Base, a key regional U.S. drone outpost
that has played an important role in air strikes in Libya in recent years.
You know, flying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones out
of Tunisia has been taking place for quite some time, said Waldhauser, the
AFRICOM commander, last year. [W]e fly there, its not a secret, but we are
very respectful to the Tunisians desires in terms of, you know, how we
support them and the fact that we have [a] low profile
Djibouti is home to the crown jewel of U.S. bases on the continent, Camp
Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion outpost and AFRICOMs lone forward
operating site on the continent. A longtime hub for counterterrorism
operations in Yemen and Somalia and the home of Combined Joint Task
Force-Horn of Africa (CJTFHOA), Camp Lemonnier hosts around 4,000 U.S. and
allied personnel, and, according to Teil, is the main platform for U.S.
crisis response forces in Africa. Since 2002, the base has expanded from 88
acres to nearly 600 acres and spun off a satellite outpost a cooperative
security location 10 kilometers to the southwest, where drone operations in
the country were relocated in 2013. Chabelley Airfield has gone on to serve
as an integral base for missions in Somalia and Yemen as well as the drone
war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. United States military
personnel remain deployed to Djibouti, including for purposes of posturing
for counterterrorism and counter-piracy operations in the vicinity of the
Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and to provide contingency support
for embassy security augmentation in East Africa, President Donald Trump
noted in June.
Cameroon, Mali, and Chad
AFRICOMs strategic posture also includes two contingency locations in
Cameroon. One is an outpost in the north of the country, known as CL Garoua,
which is used to fly drone missions and also as a base for the Armys Task
Force Darby, which supports Cameroonian forces fighting the terrorist group
Boko Haram. Cameroon is also home to a longtime outpost in Douala as well as
U.S. facilities in Maroua and a nearby base called Salak, which is also used
by U.S. personnel and private contractors for training missions and drone
surveillance. In 2017, Amnesty International, the London-based research firm
Forensic Architecture, and The Intercept exposed illegal imprisonment,
torture, and killings by Cameroonian troops at Salak.
In neighboring Mali, there are two contingency locations. AFRICOMs 2015
posture plan lists proposed CLs in Gao and Malis capital, Bamako. The 2018
map also notes the existence of a CSL in Chads capital NDjamena, a site
where the U.S. began flying drones earlier this decade; its also the
headquarters of a Special Operations Command and Control Element, an elite
battalion-level command. Another unidentified contingency location in Chad
could be a CL in Faya Largeau, which was mentioned in AFRICOMs 2015 posture
plan.
In Gabon, a cooperative security location exists in Libreville. Last year,
U.S. troops carried out an exercise there to test their ability to turn the
Libreville CSL into a forward command post to facilitate an influx of a
large number of forces. A CSL can also be found in Accra, Ghana, and another
CSL is located on a small compound at Captain Andalla Cissé Air Base in
Dakar, Senegal. This location is very important to us because it helps
mitigate the time and space on the continent the size of Africa, said
AFRICOM commander Waldhauser while visiting the Senegalese capital earlier
this year.
Only one base lies in the far south of the continent, a CSL in Botswanas
capital, Gaborone, that is run by the Army. To its north, CSL Entebbe in
Uganda has long been an important air base for American forces in Africa,
serving as a hub for surveillance aircraft. It also proved integral to
Operation Oaken Steel, the July 2016 rapid deployment of troops to rescue
U.S. personnel after fighting broke out near the American Embassy in Juba,
South Sudan.
We Have Increased the Firepower
In May, responding to questions about measures taken after the October 2017
ambush in Niger, Waldhauser spoke of fortifying the U.S. presence on the
continent. We have increased, which I wont go into details here, but we
have increased the firepower, weve increased the ISR [intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity, weve increased various response
times, he said. So we have beefed up a lot of things posture-wise with
regard to these forces. This firepower includes drones. We have been
arming out of Niger, and well use that as appropriate, Waldhauser noted
this summer, alluding to the presence of armed remotely piloted aircraft, or
RPAs, now based there.
AFRICOM did not respond to multiple requests to interview Waldhauser.
After months of reports that the Defense Department was considering a major
drawdown of Special Operations forces in Africa as well as the closure of
military outposts in Tunisia, Cameroon, Libya and Kenya, the Pentagon now
says that less than 10 percent of 7,200 forces assigned to AFRICOM will be
withdrawn over several years and no bases will close as a result. In fact,
U.S. base construction in Africa is booming. Air Forces Africa spokesperson
Auburn Davis told The Intercept that the Air Force recently completed 21
construction projects in Kenya, Tunisia, Niger and Djibouti and currently
has seven others underway in Niger and Djibouti.
The proliferation of bases in the Sahel, Libya, and Horn of Africa suggests
that AFRICOMs counterterrorism missions in those regions of the continent
will continue indefinitely, UCLAs Adam Moore told The Intercept. Hours
after Moore made those comments, the Pentagon announced that six firms had
been named under a potential five-year, $240 million contract for design and
construction services for naval facilities in Africa, beginning with the
expansion of the tarmac at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
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