The exercise, dubbed “Flintlock 2005,” is one of a number of initiatives that Washington is using to further strengthen its position on the African continent vis-à-vis Paris and London—its main imperialist rivals in the region—and to draw African governments into closer collaboration as part of its “war on terror.”

The Pentagon has labeled Africa’s vast Sahel region, which borders the Sahara desert to its north, a “playground for terrorists.” Flintlock 2005 was based on an imagined scenario of a terrorist group being chased from Mauritania on the continent’s western coast through Mali and Niger to the central African country of Chad. More than 3,000 military personnel from Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad, participated in these exercises, all former French colonies with the exception of Nigeria. A reporter with Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan, spent a month with one of the U.S. Special Forces teams and wrote a glowing account of it in an editorial published in the September 23 Wall Street Journal. “For a relatively small outlay in men and expenditures, the U.S. military has begun developing a badly needed, pan-African intervention force,” Kaplan wrote in the piece titled “Classic Imperialism.” He continued, “Local alliances and the training of indigenous troops, since time immemorial, are what has allowed imperial powers to project their might at minimum risk and expense.”

The exercise is a precursor to the “Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative,” a five-year, $500 million U.S. military initiative in the region. This will be an expansion of the Pan-Sahel Initiative, under which U.S. forces have intervened in the region.

EUCOM includes Africa, although there is a discussion underway about whether to set up a separate U.S. military command for sub-Saharan Africa. “Africa is an important part of our theater, and has been neglected for too long,” EUCOM head Marine Gen. James Jones told the American Forces Press Service March 8.

The Pentagon has largely shifted its armed forces from the post-World War II bases in western Europe to eastern Europe, central Asia and Africa. As part of this the Pentagon is considering setting up 13 “forward operating sites” or “lily pads” bases in Africa with small numbers of rotating troops. The São Tomé and Príncipe islands in the Gulf of Guinea, Sierra Leone, where 3,400 UN troops are deployed, and Ghana are a few of these locations.  
 
 
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