Navy exercise kicks off AfriCom mission

Navy exercise kicks off AfriCom mission
By Todd Pitman - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Nov 5, 2007 9:22:21 EST

DAKAR, Senegal — Monday brings the first military mission to Africa since AfriCom’s founding, a Navy cruiser on a half-year training exercise through the Gulf of Guinea that stops first in Senegal’s capital, Dakar. Just a few years ago, the U.S. military was all but absent from the oil-rich waters of West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea.

Africa’s strategic importance is on the rise, as the U.S. acknowledged last month with the creation of a new unified U.S. military command for the continent called AfriCom.

For American commanders, AfriCom means consolidating responsibility for a continent previously split among three other regional commands, each of which saw Africa as a secondary interest.

However, AfriCom’s creation has provoked so much skepticism on the continent that one of the most basic questions — where it will be located — remains unresolved.

Africans are concerned the new command is an American attempt to project military might, unnecessarily bringing the global war on terror to their own backyard. They also wonder whether it is a ruse to protect America’s competitive stake in African oil and other resources increasingly sought by rising powers like China and India.

“Africans have a feeling AfriCom represents something more than what is being sold to them,” said Wafula Okumu, an analyst at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_africom_071105n/