Bryan Maygers - The War in Africa the U.S. Military Won't Admit It's Fighting
"What the military will say to a reporter and what is
said behind closed doors are two very different things -- especially when it
comes to the U.S. military in Africa." So writes investigative reporter
Nick Turse in his latest book, Tomorrow's
Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa.
Adapted from a series of articles written for
TomDispatch.com from 2012 to late 2014,Tomorrow's Battlefield methodically
follows Turse's exploration of the U.S. military's Africa Command, or AFRICOM,
a reporting mission that Turse says was continually re-inspired by his
subjects' lack of cooperation. "Basically, it was AFRICOM that made me do
it. They were really responsible for this book," he told HuffPost in a
recent interview.
From the outset of his reporting, Turse faced continual
resistance and was refused even the most basic information or access in
response to his questions. When asked for a simple tally of U.S. installations,
military spokespersons repeatedly emphasized to Turse that the command
maintains only one permanent "base," Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti,
contradicting documentary evidence of activity and infrastructure on a much
larger and rapidly growing scale.
Turse's investigations eventually showed that the U.S.
military has been involved in one way or another -- "construction,
military exercises, advisory assignments, security cooperation, or training
missions" -- with more than 90 percent of Africa's 54 nations. He writes,
"While AFRICOM... maintains that the United States has only a 'small
footprint' on the continent, following those small footprints across the
continent can be a breathtaking task."
Beyond raising the alarm over the growing scale of
operations, Turse's book explains how American actions have almost unfailingly
resulted in disastrous unforeseen consequences, a pattern that has done little
to deter the U.S. military's expansionist zeal. In this conversation, Turse
outlines some of those consequences, how the military's efforts to block and
undermine his reporting shaped Tomorrow's Battlefield and whether the
lessons of recent history or competition with China have any chance of altering
the United States' military-first approach to Africa...
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