Posted by From Mike Oduniyi in Houston, USA with agency report on
The United States has voted $500 million for a major new counter-terrorist initiative expected to begin this month in North and West Africa, with particular focus on oil producing countries such as Nigeria, Algeria and Chad.
The United States has voted $500 million for a major new counter-terrorist initiative expected to begin this month in North and West Africa, with particular focus on oil producing countries such as Nigeria, Algeria and Chad.
The Trans-Saharan Counter-terrorism Initiative will officially start this summer with "Exercise Flintlock 2005", said Theresa Whelan, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for African affairs.
Following the increasing rate of terror attacks against the US and its interest around the globe from terrorists mainly from the Gulf Arab World, the super power has increasingly looked towards the West Africa region for its oil supply.
Nigeria, in particular, is a major crude supplier to the United States. The US special operations force's aim at training their counterparts in nine countries: Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Niger, Chad and Mali and to encourage the states to work together toward confronting regional issues.
The aim of the Washington initiative is also to prevent terrorist groups gaining a foothold in those parts of the Sahelian region that are sparsely populated and where security is lax.
Traditional caravan routes in this area can provide hideouts and staging areas for international and regional terrorists, and criminals who move goods and money to support their operations without detection or interference, Whelan said.
This latest strategy, which will include funding of $100 million per year over the next five years, builds on its predecessor, the Pan Sahel Initiative, which suffered poor funding.
Apart from the US Department of Defence, the programme will involve other government agencies such as the Agency for International Development, the State Department and the Treasury.
News of the initiative comes hard on the heels of a US gathering of experts sponsored by Washington's National Intelligence Council (NIC) that sought to assess how sub-Saharan Africa would develop over the next 15 years.
The forum suggested that Africa was unlikely to become a major supplier of international terrorists but foreign terrorists may seek sanctuary on the continent or attempt to hide weapons and assets there.
A report on the gathering said only South Africa, Africa's oil producing states and a handful of other African countries would have the "best chance of attracting (the) international investment needed to compete and survive".
NIC also said that a major risk to the area's stability could be the possibility of the outright collapse of the Nigerian state.
"While Nigeria's leaders are locked in a bad marriage that all dislike but dare not leave, there are possibilities that could disrupt the precarious equilibrium in Abuja," said the report, suggesting the most important would be a junior officer coup that could destabilise the country.
"If Nigeria were to become a failed state, it could drag down a large part of the West African region," it said, suggesting countries up to and including Ghana would be destabilised.
The NIC report prompted a sharp response from President Olusegun Obasanjo. "If our detractors cannot see our far-reaching reforms, our fight against waste and corruption, the new culture of service delivery that is gradually emerging, the various political reforms... then they must have some dubious or diabolical benchmarks for measuring efforts," he said.