"CIA drone mission is expanded in Africa" New York Times September 10, 2018
DIRKOU, Niger — The CIA is poised to conduct secret drone strikes against Al Qaeda and Islamic State insurgents from a newly expanded air base in the Sahara, making aggressive use of powers that were scaled back during the Obama administration but restored by President Trump.
Late in his presidency, Barack Obama sought to put the military in charge of drone attacks after a backlash over strikes that killed civilians, but now the CIA is broadening its drone operations.
So much for Trump being at war with the Deep State.
Nigerien and US officials said the CIA had been flying surveillance drones for several months from a small commercial airport in Dirkou. Satellite imagery shows that the airport has grown significantly since February.
A US official said the drones had not been used in lethal missions but would almost certainly be in the near future, given the growing threat in southern Libya.
Yeah, gunmen just stormed the national oil company while Islamists expect gains in Tunisia's regional elections once the music has stopped.
The CIA declined to comment. A Defense Department spokeswoman said the military had a base at Dirkou for several months but did not fly drone missions from there.
A New York Times reporter saw aircraft about the size of Predator drones, which are 27 feet long, at least three times in six days in August.
“All I know is they’re American,” said Niger’s interior minister, Mohamed Bazoum.
Dirkou’s mayor, Boubakar Jerome, said drones had helped improve security: “If people see things like that, they’ll be scared.”
--more--"
"Drone base in Niger widens a murky US war" by Eric Schmitt New York Times April 22, 2018
AIR BASE 201, Niger — The newest front line in the United States’ global shadow war.
At its center, hundreds of Air Force personnel are feverishly working to complete a $110 million airfield that, when finished in the coming months, will be used to stalk or strike extremists deep into West and North Africa, a region where most Americans have no idea the country is fighting.
And whose fault would that be, NYT?
Near the nascent runway, Army Green Berets are training Niger forces to carry out counterterrorism raids or fend off an enemy ambush — like the one that killed four US soldiers near the Mali border last fall.
Taken together, these parallel missions reflect a largely undeclared US military buildup outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, often with murky authorities and little public attention, unfolding in remote places like Yemen, Somalia, and, increasingly, West Africa.
In Niger alone, the Pentagon in the past few years has doubled the number of US troops, to about 800 — not to conduct unilateral combat missions, but to battle an increasingly dangerous Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and even loosely associated extremist groups with proxy forces and drone strikes.
The military’s missions in Niger are expected to come under scrutiny in a long-awaited Defense Department investigation into the deadly Oct. 4 ambush that is nearing release.
I wonder what crap cover story they came up with.
“The base, and the more frequent flights that its opening will allow, will give us far more situational awareness and intelligence on a region that has been a hub of illicit and extremist activity,” said P.W. Singer, a strategist at New America in Washington who has written extensively about drones, “but it will also further involve us in yet more operations and fights that few Americans are even aware our military is in,” Singer said.
Instead, the war pre$$ has us arguing about race and gender all the time.
Questions about whether the US military, under the Trump administration, is seeking to obscure the expanding scope of operations in Africa surfaced last month, when it was revealed that the United States had carried out four airstrikes in Libya between September and January that the military’s Africa Command had failed to disclose at the time.
Then they fail to disclose their daily assaults on whoever, or the pre$$ is not reporting them!
Soon after, the military acknowledged for the first time that Green Berets working with Niger forces had killed 11 Islamic State militants in a multiday firefight in December. No American or Niger forces were harmed in that gun battle, but the combat — along with at least 10 other previously unreported attacks on US troops in West Africa between 2015 and 2017 — underscored the fact that the deadly ambush in Niger was not an isolated episode.
Just isolated reporting then.
Niger forces and their American advisers are preparing other major operations to clear out militants, military officials say.
“It’s essential that the American public is aware of, engaged in, and decides whether or not to support American military operations in countries around the world, including Niger,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who visited Niger with four other senators this month.
Unless we say we don't want them. Then we are ignored.
Six months after the fatal attack, which took place outside the village of Tongo Tongo near the Mali border, the Trump administration stands at a critical crossroad in the military’s global counterterrorism campaign.
Pull back, pull back, pull back!
One path would push ahead with President Trump’s campaign vow to defeat the Islamic State and other violent extremist organizations, not just in Iraq and Syria, but worldwide.
The other would be to pull out and leave more of the fighting to allies, as Trump said he wants to do in Syria, possibly ceding hard-fought ground to militants.
Proving that the AmeriKan government is incapable of self-correction as Trump approves troop increases with no withdrawals.
During a counterterrorism exercise this past week in north-central Niger that drew nearly 2,000 military personnel from 20 African and Western countries, many officers voiced concerns that the United States’ commitment in West Africa could fall victim to the latter impulse.
“It’s important to still have support from the US to help train my men, to help with our shortfalls,” said Colonel Major Moussa Salaou Barmou, commander of Niger’s 2,000 Special Operations forces, who trained at Fort Benning, Ga., and the National Defense University in Washington.
The infamous Fort Benning, huh?
In an interview on the sidelines of the exercise, Major General J. Marcus Hicks, head of US Special Operations forces in Africa, put it this way: “This is an insurance policy that’s very inexpensive, and I think we need to keep paying into it.”
With the lives of your sons to fight a self-serving and self-created enemy.
Where American and Niger officials see enhanced security in drone operations — for surveillance, strikes, or protecting Special Forces patrols — others fear a potentially destabilizing effect that could hand valuable recruiting propaganda to an array of groups aligned with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and that could increase the militants’ menace.
“Eliminating jihadi military leaders through drone operations could temporarily disorganize insurgent groups,” said Jean-Hervé Jezequel, deputy director of the International Crisis Group’s West Africa project in Dakar, Senegal, “but eventually the void could also lead to the rise of new and younger leaders who are likely to engage into more violent and spectacular operations to assert their leadership.”
A rare visit this month to Air Base 201, the largest construction project that Air Force engineers have ever undertaken alone, revealed several challenges.
Commanders grapple with swirling dust storms, scorching temperatures, and lengthy spare-part deliveries to fix broken equipment. All have conspired to put the project more than a year behind schedule and $22 million over its original budget.
Yeah, nature "conspired" to put the U.S. base behind schedule and over budget (good thing it is a co$t-plu$ agreement) -- as if nature could do such a thing!
Niger’s government approved Air Base 201 in 2014. Last November, a month after the deadly ambush, the government of Niger gave the Defense Department permission to fly armed drones out of Niamey, a major expansion of the US military’s firepower in Africa.
American and Niger officers here refused to discuss armed operations, but a Defense Department official acknowledged that the military in January started flying armed missions from Niamey, 500 miles southwest of the base, including the deadly strike in southern Libya last month.
--more--"
Why they are really needed:
"After deadly raid, Pentagon weighs withdrawing almost all commandos from Niger" by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt New York Times September 02, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering withdrawing nearly all US commandos from Niger in the wake of a deadly October ambush against a Green Beret team that killed four US soldiers.
Three Defense Department officials said the plans, if approved by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, would also close military outposts in Tunisia, Cameroon, Libya, and Kenya, as well as seven of the eight US elite counterterrorism units operating in Africa.
He's going to be leaving soon.
The shift in forces is part of the Pentagon’s defense strategy to focus on threats from China and Russia, but they represent a more severe cut of Special Operations forces in Africa than initially expected, leaving a lasting, robust military presence primarily in Somalia and Nigeria.
The U.S.-created, funded, and directed terrorists are simply a cover and excuse for the larger geopolitical purpose.
The proposal does not say that any additional troops would return to Africa even as Special Operations units gradually draw down. Officials said that could reverse progress that has been made against Al Qaeda and Islamic State group affiliates, while diminishing alliances across Africa as both Russia and China move to increase their influence.
I'll believe a drawdown when I see it.
With the reassignment of the counterterrorism teams, US troops could also lose the ability to partner with local forces who act as surrogates to help track and hunt down insurgents. It could also strip those local forces of some of the more advanced US gear they are given when teaming up.
The military’s Special Operations Command is authorized to spend up to $100 million annually to support partner forces around the world under the program, known as 127e. The command spent $80 million during the 2017 fiscal year to finance 21 of the programs worldwide, General Tony Thomas, the Special Operations commander, told Congress in February.
While social needs at home go unmet.
The Pentagon’s defense strategy, issued in January, represents a renewed shift from fighting the insurgent wars of the last 16 years to large state-on-state conflicts.
Getting you ready for the BIG WAR!
To comply with the proposed change, the US Africa Command will reassign hundreds of US troops that are spread across the continent. That move is expected to be carried out over the next 18 to 36 months, but one Defense Department official said the timeline was likely to be accelerated once the proposal was approved and final.
In an interview with The New York Times in July, General Thomas D. Waldhauser, head of the Africa Command, said other training teams could still rotate in periodically for days or weeks of instruction if the Pentagon reduced its permanent troop presence in Africa.
He said those teams could be brought in from National Guard units from California, Indiana, Michigan, and other states.
“We won’t walk away and abandon this,” Waldhauser said.
The defense strategy that was unveiled in January, coupled with the deadly attack in Niger, has fast-tracked decisions by Mattis and General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to end some of the missions in Africa, military officials have said.
Dunford and Mattis, a former four-star Marine general, had little experience working directly with commando units when they were younger officers progressing up the chain of command. That has fostered an institutional skepticism about the US military’s increasing reliance on Special Operations Forces in recent years.
That's the only way to keep the wars hidden from America's attention!
In the interview, Waldhauser said that other combatant commands, such as those that cover the Middle East and the Pacific, will face similar changes, but one Defense Department official familiar with the deliberations said the Pentagon’s changes would largely affect the Africa Command, which was created only in 2007, years after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan got underway.
Another Defense Department official said the move to close the commando outposts would greatly diminish US influence in Africa and could prove to be shortsighted.
The first official, however, said local African forces had become increasingly capable of fighting extremists on their own, and do not need permanent assistance from US troops, at least in some areas.
But we should stay anyway.
US troops on the ground in Africa have already found their missions scaled back by stringent restrictions placed on Special Operations forces following the Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. Extremists linked to the Islamic State group attacked the Green Beret team following its search for a militant near the Mali border, leading to an hourslong gunfight that killed four US soldiers, their translator, and four soldiers from Niger. A Pentagon investigation found failures at every level of the mission.
Since then, US commandos have been refocused strictly to advising and assisting missions from within the walls of their remote bases.
--more--"
That's Niger, not to be confused with Nigeria:
"Army spokesman Colonel Onyema Nwachukwu warned residents to remain watchful and report any suspicious people or activity to security officials. Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people in its nine-year effort to establish Shariah law in Nigeria....."
Who is Boko Harem anyway?
45 Killed in Nigerian Village as Mass Killings Increase
Nigerian troops raped women rescued from Boko Haram
Sectarian clashes in Nigeria kill 86
"A suicide bomber set off explosives Tuesday during morning prayers in a small, crowded mosque in northeastern Nigeria in a deadly attack that comes amid a raft of similar assaults on rural communities in the region. Officials blamed Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group that has waged war for the past eight years in Nigeria and in neighboring countries, has dispatched suicide bombers in a wave of attacks in the past year on mosques, checkpoints, markets, and refugee camps, for the blast. Most of those bombers, many of whom are women and children, have been sent to attack Maiduguri, the capital of the Borno state and the city where the Boko Haram movement was founded, but recently, assaults have also been carried out in towns across the country....."
Can blame them for this, too:
"A gas depot exploded in central Nigeria, killing 18 people and leaving some burned beyond recognition, a witness said Monday. More than 40 other people had burns after the blast in Lafia, the capital of Nasarawa state, taxi driver Yakubu Charles told The Associated Press. He said he helped to evacuate victims after more than a dozen occupied vehicles were set on fire. Victims had to be taken to hospitals on motorbikes as no ambulances were available, he said. Both the Nigeria Police Force and Federal Road Safety Corps confirmed the blast but declined to give a number of casualties. Nigeria’s Senate president, Bukola Saraki, in a Twitter post called the explosion ‘‘horrific’’ and said he met with survivors. He offered prayers for families who lost relatives. Many gas dealers operate minidepots in Nigerian cities with no strong measures to regulate their activities, leading to frequent explosions. In January, 10 people died in a blast in Magodo in Lagos state."
They weren't repairing the gas lines, were they?
"#BringBackOurGirls activist runs for Nigeria’s presidency" by Sam Olukoya Associated Press October 11, 2018
LAGOS, Nigeria — The woman who led the global campaign to free Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists is now running for president, saying she is fighting for ‘‘the soul’’ of Africa’s most populous nation.
Oby Ezekwesili is the most prominent woman to seek the presidency in Nigeria, where politics, as in many African nations, have long been dominated by men.
A former World Bank vice president, Ezekwesili also cofounded Transparency International, one of the world’s leading organizations against corruption — a widespread problem in oil-rich Nigeria, but she is perhaps most well-known for her vocal work in turning the world’s attention to Boko Haram’s Islamic extremist insurgency and its abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from the community of Chibok in 2014. The #BringBackOurGirls movement, supported by former first lady Michelle Obama and others, put relentless pressure on Nigeria’s government to free the students.
Yeah, and that whole effort turned out to be a staged and scripted fraud!
Police broke up some of the campaign’s protests with violence. Finally, after a breakthrough in negotiations — and, reportedly, millions of dollars paid to Boko Haram — scores of the girls were freed last year.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who promised to fight both Boko Haram and corruption when he took office in 2015, met with the freed schoolgirls while his government claimed a victory.
More than 100 of the Chibok schoolgirls have never returned, however, and a similar mass abduction occurred earlier this year in the community of Dapchi. Almost all of those schoolgirls have been released, but the kidnapping exposed Nigeria’s failure to defeat the extremists despite claims that they have been ‘‘crushed.’’
Now Ezekwesili is challenging Buhari, 75, on his campaign vows, drawing on personal experience on both fronts ahead of the February 2019 election.
A major challenge is the attitude toward female candidates in Nigeria, where many say women are fit only for the kitchen.
Buhari himself once asserted he had ‘‘superior knowledge’’ over his wife and that she belonged to his kitchen, his living room, and the ‘‘other room.’’ He made the comments while standing next to an unimpressed-looking German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the world’s most powerful women.
The president, however, lacks the energy of the 55-year-old Ezekwesili as he continues to face questions about his health after extended stays abroad for medical treatment.
Looks like they are paving the way for a globalist banker to take power.
Ezekwesili’s quest for the presidency is likely to appeal to Nigeria’s booming youth population who say politics has been dominated by the older generation for too long, and to women who want more female participation in the country’s governance.
‘‘Her coming out to contest for the presidency is a good development, given her records at the World Bank, Transparency International, and as a minister [of education]. It is time for us to look beyond our gender bias and our patriarchal setup and be progressive,’’ said Betty Abah, a Lagos-based activist for women and children’s rights.
As she enters Nigeria’s rough-and-tumble, sometimes violent political scene, Ezekwesili has an uphill fight for financial and other support as she takes on both the incumbent Buhari and a former vice president, who represent the two leading political parties.
The ruling party has yet to comment on Ezekwesili’s decision to challenge Buhari.
She has begun her campaign by promising to tackle Nigeria’s economy. Even though the West African powerhouse is one of Africa’s largest economies and one of the world’s top oil producers, years of mismanagement and corruption have left the majority of people desperately poor.
Nigeria has now surpassed India with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty, according to data by the World Poverty Clock reported earlier this year.
‘‘Instead of progress, our country now appears to be marking time, stagnant or declining on all the most important indices,’’ Ezekwesili said on Sunday while accepting her party’s nomination as presidential candidate. ‘‘The few opportunities available are cornered by a greedy political elite.’’
Related: "The latter is frustrated over a city and a country that in its view have become enslaved to big corporations at the cost of shared values, and where sports, the right-wing media, and rich insiders can dictate policy to politicians."
Looks like it's an epidemic.
She pointed to her credentials as a former World Bank vice president, saying: ‘‘I know what sound economics that creates jobs and produces prosperity looks like. I know what it takes to build a productive and competitive economy.’’
And how to enrich her own cla$$ at the expense of everyone else!
--more--"
Related:
Nigeria’s president rebuffs calls to step aside
Trump urges Nigerian leader to remove barriers to US trade
He had better prepare for war.
