The Pentagon Plans An African Command
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Courtesy Of: Time.com
By Sally B. Donnelly
Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006

In what may be the most glaring admission that the U.S. military needs to dramatically readjust how it will fight what it calls 'the long war,' the Pentagon is expected to announce soon that it will create an entirely new military command to focus on the globe's most neglected region: Africa.

Pentagon sources say that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is close to approving plans for an African Command, which would establish a military organization to singlehandidly deal with the entire continent of Africa.

It would be a sign of a significant strategic shift in administration policy, reflecting the need to put more emphasis on proactive, preventative measures rather than maintaining a defensive posture designed for the Cold War.

The Pentagon has five geographic unified combatant commands around the world and responsibility for Africa is awkwardly divided among three of those:

European Command, Pacifice Command and Central Command which is also responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Creating an African Command would be an important structural move to coordinate U.S. defense policy for the continent, as well as provide a single military organization for agencies like the State Department and the CIA to work with in the region.

...A former military officer...Says creating an entirely new command compounds an existing problem. "The size and number of headquarters already is skewed too far in favor of 'tail' at the expense of warfighting 'teeth.' Want to increase 'boots' on the ground? Eliminate or downsize some of these staffs, don't create more," says this observer.

...Gen. John Abizaid, the Centom commander, laid out a laundry list of concerns to the Senate Armed Services Committee last March. While Abizaid spoke about the Horn of Africa, the threats stretch across much of the continent.

"The Horn of Africa is vulnerable to penetration by regional extremist groups, terrorist activity, and ethnic violence. Al-Qaeda has a history of planning, training for, and conducting major terrorist attacks in this region, such as the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The volatility of this region is fueled by a daunting list of challenges to include extreme poverty, corruption, internal conflicts, border disputes, uncontrolled borders and territorial waters, weak internal security capabilities, natural disasters, famine, lack of dependable water sources, and an underdeveloped infrastructure.

The combination of these serious challenges creates an environment that is ripe for exploitation by extremists and criminal organizations."

Source:
http://time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1328840,00.html