The Next Mercenary Gold Rush: Sub Saharan Africa & Erik Prince

longknife

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2012
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Sin City
by Brandon Webb

North Africa has long been a haven for Islamic extremists. It’s chock full of violence, feuding fractional governments, and natural resources. This a perfect climate for American and European Private Military Companies (PMCs) that want to strike gold. Erik Prince, the founder of the PMC Blackwater USA (BW, Xe, and now Academi), is leaning forward […]

Looking for a job? Want to use your military training? Check out Sub Saharan Africa & Mercenary Erik Prince | SOFREP for other links.

:cool:
 
by Brandon Webb

North Africa has long been a haven for Islamic extremists. It’s chock full of violence, feuding fractional governments, and natural resources. This a perfect climate for American and European Private Military Companies (PMCs) that want to strike gold. Erik Prince, the founder of the PMC Blackwater USA (BW, Xe, and now Academi), is leaning forward […]

Looking for a job? Want to use your military training? Check out Sub Saharan Africa & Mercenary Erik Prince | SOFREP for other links.

:cool:


Very funny (though true)! It is only a matter of time before NATO members pitch their tents in preparation for further plundering in Africa, as usual.
 
Granny says, "Dat's right - we gonna hunt `em down an' drag `em outta dey hidy holes...
:clap2:
Panetta: US Will Work With Africans to Fight al-Qaida
January 19, 2013 — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the United States will continue to work with Algeria and other African countries to fight terrorists. The secretary spoke in London after Algerian troops had launched a second attack against gunmen holding hostages at a natural gas facility, resulting in additional deaths.
Information from Algeria was sketchy when Secretary Panetta and his British counterpart Phillip Hammond spoke to reporters Saturday afternoon. But Panetta said the best way to fight al-Qaida groups like the one in Algeria is to help local governments maintain control of their territory and deal with terrorist attacks when they happen. “I think it's important that as we face this enemy we have to adapt the best efforts to be able to ensure that we do this effectively, and that involves working with these countries in the region to work with us, to develop the capability of identifying where they're located and the ability to conduct operations against al-Qaida,” he said.

Anti-terrorist forces can keep al-Qaida on the run, Panetta said, but no one should be complacent about the effort. He said the United States will not tolerate attacks on its territory, citizens or interests. “Since 9-11, we've made very clear that nobody is going to attack the United States of America and get away with it.” Panetta repeated that the United States will go after al-Qaida wherever it tries to hide.

Secretary Hammond appeared to acknowledge that western countries were not entirely pleased with the Algerian decision to attack the compound where the hostages were held, a move that resulted in several hostage deaths. But he praised Algeria's commitment to fight terrorism. “The nature of collaboration in confronting a global threat is that we work with people sometimes who do things somewhat differently, slightly differently, from the way we would do them ourselves,” Hammond said.

The two men also spoke about the situation in Mali. Secretary Panetta disputed a reporter's suggestion that the United States is not providing much concrete assistance to French forces that moved into the country a week ago to fight another al-Qaida affiliate. “We are, in fact, providing assistance to the French," he said. "We provided intelligence information to them to assist them in that situation. We are providing an airlift to try to assist them to be able to project more of their force into the area.” And Panetta said there are talks about further assistance, as well as more involvement by West African forces. But he and Secretary Hammond said there is no plan to deploy American or British combat forces to the region.

Source

See also:

France Calls on African Forces to Take Lead in Mali
January 19, 2013 — France’s foreign minister has called on African forces to take the lead in the military campaign against Islamist rebels occupying northern Mali. But a highly anticipated meeting Saturday in the Ivorian capitol, Abidjan, featuring heads of state from the West African regional body ECOWAS ended without any major announcements about the African deployment.
ECOWAS leaders have been meeting for the better part of a year to come with a plan to oust the Islamists from northern Mali. The Islamists took control of the north not long after a military coup in the landlocked country last March. But earlier this month, it was France that intervened after the Islamists began a push toward the southern capital of Bamako. Although ECOWAS almost immediately promised to send troops of its own, few have actually arrived, and fundamental questions about the financing and execution of the African deployment remain unanswered.

At a press conference on the sidelines of Saturday’s summit, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said African armies would need to “take the lead,” but he acknowledged it could be weeks before they are in a position to do so. "Now, we shall have in the coming days more and more African troops coming directly in Bamako and in different places in Mali," said Fabius. "And step by step they will deploy. On the other hand, Europe has decided to train the Malian army because the Malian army is both committed and acting in the combat, but at the same time they have to be trained and equipped in a better way. Step by step, I think it's a question from what I heard this morning of some days, some weeks, the African troops will take over," he said.

Some analysts had predicted further troop commitments, but little news was announced at the close of Saturday’s summit, and organizers canceled a scheduled press conference. The final communique, read aloud by ECOWAS Commission President Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, praised an earlier pledge by Chad to provide some 2,000 troops to the Mali mission, and asked other African countries to become involved. Both Fabius and African leaders urged countries from around the world to help launch the African deployment to Mali. A conference for donors is scheduled to be held January 29 in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

http://www.voanews.com/content/west-african-leaders-meet-to-discuss-mali-crisis/1586999.html
 
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The corporation colonization of the African continent is coming.

If there is sufficient regulation it could be a win/win for everyone. If not it will look like another America.
 
The European Union and the U.S. will continue to support N. African pro western puppet dictators with weapons, money, and mercenary training.

In order to have cheap access to the regions natural resources.

While the average citizen lives in abject poverty.

Blatant colonialism continues unabated......... :cool:
 
You'll never guess who is picking up the tab. (Came across this while researching the DCR thread but never included it.)

Contractors to the Congo / ISN
1 December 2011
Contractors to the Congo

While security and defense contracting in Africa is nothing new, the awarding of another multi-million dollar contract by the US State Department to a controversial private security operation is perhaps indicative of just how thinly stretched the US military is becoming. This does not bode well for either oversight or accountability.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights
DynCorp’s contract

And so it follows: last June, DynCorp International - one of the “Big Three” armed security contractors that arrived in Iraq back in 2003 alongside Blackwater/Xe and Triple Canopy - announced that it had been awarded a State Department contract to provide training to the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the details of the mission remain purposely ambiguous, the contract does specify that the task order was issued by the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, has a base time limit of one year with two additional option years and will focus on training junior to mid-level military personnel in functional areas such as communications, logistics and engineering.
The problem of oversight

Some were skeptical of the State Department’s award. Whilethere is not enough government oversight of these companies and the NGO community has been weak in exposing these firms, Hillary Clinton’s State Department is giving its seal of approval via an export license for DynCorp to gain access to the DRC,” D.C.-based author and investigative journalist Wayne Madsen told ISN Insights.

It may be wondered why DynCorp was awarded another multi-million dollar contract after its Afghan ‘bacha bazi’ dancing boys-and-drugs scandal in northern Afghanistan last year. However, the State Department will undoubtedly gain intelligence from DynCorp, as well as training and security enhancement aligned with its interests in the DRC.
When asked why DynCorp had been awarded a contract back in 2004 to operate in the Sudan, an anonymous US government official told CorpWatch: “The answer is simple. We are not allowed to fund a political party or agenda under United States law, so by using private contractors, we can get around those provisions. Think of this as somewhere between a covert program run by the CIA and an overt program run by the United States Agency for International Development. It is a way to avoid oversight by Congress."
The issue of oversight and accountability of private firms acting on behalf of the US Departments of State or Defense has long been the Achilles’ heel of the private military and security industry. That a private company financed by taxpayers’ money will be representing US strategic goals in a place like the DRC indicates the issue is far from resolved. While the expansion of the market has yet to be realized by the industry, time will tell if Africa provides the next boom for private military and security providers. Until then, DynCorp is leading the way into the jungle.

Wins AFRICAP Training Task Order | DynCorp International
PRESS RELEASE
DynCorp International Wins AFRICAP Training Task Order

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (May 31, 2011) - DynCorp International (DI) announced today that it has been awarded a task order under the Africa Peacekeeping Program (AFRICAP) to provide basic leadership training to personnel within the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We are proud to continue our work in promoting peace and stability in Africa," said DI President Steve Schorer. "DI has extensive experience and success in providing training designed to enhance the leadership and management capability of our partners in the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

The task order, awarded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of African Affairs, has one base year and two option years. The total potential revenue is $17.1 million if both option years are exercised. The AFRICAP program supports regional stability in Africa by building the capacity of African countries and regional organizations to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts on the African continent.

Under the task order, DI will provide basic leadership and specialty training focusing on junior and mid-level military personnel in functional areas such as communications, logistics and engineering.
 
An indepth look at Mali...
:eusa_eh:
Is Mali the next Afghanistan?
January 20, 2013 WASHINGTON — The war rages about cities with names such as Goa and Timbuktu, in a sparsely populated, mostly flat, dusty and landlocked country in northwest Africa.
The combatants include a nomadic Berber people known as Tuareg, the French Foreign Legion and a coalition of al-Qaida affiliates who identify themselves with the Maghreb, the desert region of Northwestern Africa. It sounds as if it could be the plot for a new Indiana Jones adventure. But those who study international terrorism say it would be a mistake for Americans to think of this conflict as anything but deadly serious. The war in Mali is the new front in the war on international terrorism. Some U.S. officials have downplayed the threat, noting in congressional testimony that those involved in Mali don't appear capable of striking outside West and North Africa.

But in some ways, what's happening in Mali reminds experts of events in another little-known, faraway land in the latter half of the 1990s: Afghanistan. Back then, a fledgling al-Qaida, though already a known threat, was using remote terrain to train a generation of elite terrorist fighters. The threat of those fighters was that once trained, they were disappearing to await plans and opportunities to strike at the hated West. "When we look back at Afghanistan, we wonder if we could have stopped what was to come," said Daniel Byman, a national security and terrorism expert at Georgetown University who served as a staff member of the 9/11Commission.

J. Peter Pham, a terrorism expert at the Atlantic Council research center, with particular emphasis on central Africa, notes that despite the continued focus of much of the resources of America's anti-terrorism efforts on central Asia, the potential threat in Mali should look familiar. "Jihadists aren't wedded to any one place over another," he said. "They go to where the fight is. For the past year, northern Mali has been the place." The Islamists rolled over their opposition. Mali's U.S.-trained army, which staged a coup in March to protest a lack of government support in the fight to regain control of the north, was almost wholly ineffective. An international force of regional African troops approved by the United Nations - but not funded - existed in resolutions only.

The nomadic Tuareg have been a nationalist group whose goal is an independent homeland. They at first had been aligned with the Mali government in battling al-Qaida, but many have since switched sides to fight with the Islamists. The terrorist groups in the regions are flush with money from years of smuggling and kidnapping. They possess an arsenal of weapons obtained as Col. Moammar Gadhafi's Libya collapsed, and they enjoy a strong, regional core of dedicated and violent jihadists, with more international fighters seeking to enlist in the battle. Not even Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida had ever threatened to control an entire nation.

The belief is that when al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb goes global, the most likely target would be France, the former colonial power in the region. So the French stepped in to help first. An initial deployment of 500 troops has been expanded, and might eventually reach 2,500, though reports indicate they arrived unprepared for the fight they're facing, both in terms of the ferocity of the opponents and the necessary equipment, such as vital mosquito netting to protect them from malaria as they sleep.

More Is Mali the next Afghanistan? - Africa - Stripes
 
I think the fundamental difference between Iraq/Afghanistan and many of these struggling countries is the existence of a legitimate government, even if it is hanging on by a thread. I believe we do have a viable mission in Africa. I believe that we should have boots on the ground. Partly because from all I have heard the UN Security force is ineffective at the best. I also believe it should be the model of how we trained the 391st. I don't believe we can go in there and think we are going to turn the situation around in a day. Given the examples of Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan I would say we are have not learned our lesson and I doubt we ever will. When I refer to those previous wars, and all the CIA puppet governments before, during, and after, I don't mean the experiences of the soldiers but the attitudes of the people who got us in there.

One example of a need to understand the situation and that things might not be black and white on the ground is the example of the M23 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This group is a violent and ruthless organization whose aim is to overthrow the government. They are not a terrorist organization however and their grievance is with their own government. Basically it is a mutiny and they fight like they know how. They fight because they believe they were cheated out of power during the last election. Going in to simply wipe out this group is not a wise course of action.

The drums of war are being beaten however. The four horsemen are restless. Such an example is an article which came out in the Boston Herald today.

U.S. policy makes mess of Mali | Boston Herald
Indeed, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said: “If we don’t deal with these militant groups and terrorists swiftly and effectively, they will only pose an increasing threat in the future as they already have in Benghazi and now Algeria and Mali.”

American and European officials have reportedly said these terror groups could use Mali as a platform for attacks not only in Africa, but beyond — which likely means at least the United States and Europe.
 
Gaddafi had to go. He simply would not play ball the way they wanted him to play.
 

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