Hearts and Minds

[Jacaylbaro]

A little known part of the U.S. military's war on terrorism operates out of a former French Foreign Legion base called Camp Lemonier, in the afterthought Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. About 1,800 service members form the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, or CJTF-HOA. Their mission is focused on humanitarian assistance -- drilling water wells, rebuilding schools and hospitals, providing medical and veterinary aid -- and building up the capacities of national coast guards and border patrols.

 

After years of disengagement in Africa following the disastrous Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993, CJTF-HOA was formed after 9/11, when the Pentagon saw the "ungoverned spaces" of the Horn of Africa -- particularly Somalia -- as potential breeding grounds for Islamic extremism. As the only fulltime U.S. military presence in sub-Saharan Africa, the mission's goal is to win some goodwill for America and, more fundamentally, fight the poverty that fosters extremism.

 

I first visited Camp Lemonier last January to observe a project in Ethiopia where U.S. troops helped bring a simple irrigation system to a poor village. When I returned to the base over the weekend I saw that it had added two gymnasiums and was in the process of shifting troops from tents into cozy-sounding structures known as CHUs, or containerized housing units. Troops are still working in some of the most impoverished parts of the region, including western Ethiopia, northern Kenya and Yemen. Five years on, all signs are that the Pentagon wants the mission to stay.

 

But in the past year two major developments have changed the calculus in the Horn: the Islamist insurgency in Somalia and the growing humanitarian crisis in the ****** region of Ethiopia. The task force doesn't work in either of these areas, which commanders have deemed too dangerous for a civil affairs-based mission. Have those developments changed the way the U.S. military views its role in the region?

 

On Sunday I sat down with the CJTF-HOA commander, Rear Admiral James M. Hart, who took over the mission in February, to talk about what his troops are up to these days. Here's an excerpt from our conversation, with more to follow tomorrow.

 

Q: Somalia isn't an area that you focus on for civil affairs. Are you focused much on what's happening inside the country?

 

A: What we are doing with Somalia is helping the African Union...by developing capacity with the [1,500] Ugandans [peacekeeping troops]. We've done some training with them, for example, logistics training, medical training, to help them build capacity and support their efforts as peacekepeers in Mogadishu.... [but] we don't go into Somalia.

 

Q: But when you have such a big problem in Somalia, with an insurgency that seems to be getting worse, how does having several hundred U.S. troops here compete with the pull that an insurgency can have on, for example, foreign jihadists?

 

A: Somalia has been ungoverned since 1991. It is a major issue. It's something that we have to watch very carefully. But what we're about is trying to help enable Africans to solve Africa's problems. We see ourselves as the facilitators, the trainers, the mentors.... One thing we try to determine [is] how do we, using the organizations they've set up, help them achieve those goals. It's through those organizations that we think we can make the most difference, because we're not a huge organization.

 

Q: The mission's goal is to go into "ungoverned spaces" and bring some relief. But you don't work in Somalia, the ******, or in the regions of Puntland or Somaliland. And yet these areas would seem to fit right in with CJTF's mission -- it's disaffected people, it's Muslims who have grievances against the West and the U.S. in particular.

 

A: Somaliland, Puntland -- those are areas we're always looking at what might be the opportunities in the future. but we have to wait for our government to tell us what the policie are going to be. Right now we don't have the policies to go in there.

 

Q: There was a report in June out of Puntland that a U.S. Naval ship fired a missile on suspected Islamic militants who had come ashore. But you're saying you don't work with the authorities in Puntland.

 

A: That's not our mission.... Someone told you the wrong thing. There was no coordination or communication with Puntland. We don't have any dialogue with them.

 

Q: In your view, how is the African Union progressing as a military and peacekeeping force?

 

A: Unfortunately they were given varsity problems almost at the beginning. The Darfur issue is a huge problem. I think we should give the African Union credit for having come together and deploying in there and trying to do what they could. They have not been totally successful there. But that mission -- or the mission in Mogadishu -- would challenge any military today to come in and do that job.... Hopefully this fall and winter we will see some real progress, with getting the right troop levels in there, and start to see some stability take hold.

 

 

To be continued on Thursday.

 

 

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