Rick Rozoff: Battle-Hardened Troops Headed To Africa

After the US begins to wind down more than ten consecutive years of combat, mainly counter -insurgency, operations in what has variously been labeled the Broader, Greater and New Middle East, war-tested troops are being prepared for redeployment to Africa and Latin, largely South America. Last September President Barack Obama hailed the five million US soldiers that have served in the so-called global war on terror, what he called the 9/11 generation, in the preceding decade. American commanders issue regular statements that war-time experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has trained the armed forces for new operations in other parts of the world. Africa, Latin America, those parts of the Middle East so far not undermined and attacked, the Balkans-Black Sea-Caucasus arc and the Asia-Pacific region. On June 8, the Gannett newspaper chain's Army Times cited the commander of US Army Africa, Major General David Hogg, disclosing that a brigade-size force of US troops, 3,000 "and likely more" will begin regular deployments to the African continent beginning next year. As a component of US Army Africa's regionally aligned force concept, the American military personnel will concentrate on training the armed forces of US Africa Command's new military allies, which have grown to include all 54 African nations, except for Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe after the overthrow of the governments of Ivory Coast and Libya last year, and, in Pentagonese, to advise, assist, partner, enable and mentor in counterinsurgency campaigns like those underway in Mali, Somalia and Central Africa. As Africa is alone in not being the site of extensive and sustained US military deployments, according to Hogg As far as our mission goes, its uncharted territory. In the words of the Army Times, Africa is "the Army's last frontier."