Nick Turse: America's Shadow Wars in Africa!

Here's an odd question: Is it possible that the US military is present in more countries and more places now than at the height of the Cold War? It's true that the US is reducing its forces, and giant bases in Europe, and that its troops are out of Iraq, except for that huge, militarized embassy in Baghdad. On the other hand, there's that massive ground, air, and build-up in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration's widely publicized "pivot" to Asia, including troops and ships, those new drone bases in the eastern Indian Ocean region, some movement back into Latin America, including a new base in Chile, and don't forget Africa, where less than a decade ago, the US had almost no military presence at all. Now, as Tom-Dispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse writes in the latest in his "changing face of empire" series, US special operations forces, regular troops, private contractors, and drones are spreading across the continent with remarkable, if little noticed, rapidity. Putting together the pieces on Africa isn't easy: For instance, only the other day it was revealed that three US Army commandos in a Toyota Land Cruiser had skidded off a bridge in Mali in April. They died, all three, along with three women identified as Moroccan prostitutes. This is how we know that US special operations forces were operating in chaotic, previously democratic Mali after a coup by a US trained captain accelerated the unraveling of the country, leading more recently to its virtual dismemberment by Tuareg rebels and Islamist insurgents. Consider this a sample of what Nick Turse calls the US military's scramble for Africa, in a seamy, secretive nutshell.