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The United States is deploying more soldiers and money into its anti-terrorism campaign in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, including Algeria based on reports that the Middle-east based group Al-Qaeda is building more calls in the areas. Nigeria and Algeria are oil-rich nations where radical Islam has a following.
The United States is deploying more soldiers and money into its anti-terrorism campaign in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, including Algeria based on reports that the Middle-east based group Al-Qaeda is building more calls in the areas. Nigeria and Algeria are oil-rich nations where radical Islam has a following.
A new effort outlined Wednesday in a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Senegal proposes spending $100 million a year over five years to boost security in some of the world's least-policed areas, starting with a joint military exercise in the region next month.
Muslims in west and north Africa, like Muslims elsewhere, generally are moderate. But extremists do exist. Militants have roamed south from oil-rich Algeria into West Africa recent years, and in northern Nigeria, years of poverty and brutal military rule has radicalized some in the population.
"We're concerned with the radical movement," Silkman said. "Islam isn't the problem, it's only the radicals. Nigeria is new to the list. Morrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the United States now appears to have created a "counterterrorism bookend" to its strategy in east Africa, which has seen a spate of terror attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania blamed on al-Qaida.
Notable among the new entries is Nigeria - Africa's most-populous nation at 130 million, and the source of one-fifth of all American oil imports.
"By adding Nigeria, that adds a very significant dimension, because northeastern Nigeria is arguably the area that poses the greatest vulnerability in terms of al-Qaida or affiliates taking root," Morrison said.
An earlier anti-terror exercise with a budget of just $6 million focused on troop training in four west African nations had been embarked upon. The new campaign will target nine north and west African nations and seek to bolster regional co-operation.
Analysts were waiting to see if the program would be fully funded - but said the intended budgetary increase shows the United States is taking West Africa more seriously.
"If they're turning the corner to $100 million, that's graduation into something much larger," said J. Stephen Morrison, Africa director at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's still modest, but it's a dramatic step up."
Maj. Holly Silkman, a U.S. military spokeswoman, said underpopulated border areas could be sanctuaries for "terrorists or would-be terrorists."
"We want to increase security in those areas by training with each country's military and creating a regional focus, rather than just a country focus," Silkman said by telephone from European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
U.S. officials have long viewed northwestern Africa's vast desert stretches as prime real estate for aspiring terrorists seeking to set up training camps or other bases. Some U.S. commanders liken the area's ungoverned expanses to Afghanistan during Taliban rule, when Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror group thrived.
The region is shot through with sandy tracks still travelled by camel caravans - ancient thoroughfares officials say militants can use it to traverse poorly guarded borders. Much of the troop training will focus on units responsible for guarding frontiers, said Silkman.