At what point do we ask: why are we doing this?
Perhaps you haven’t heard of this, because it only rarely makes the credentialed media, but The Wall Street Journal finally covered it.
U.S. Builds New Firewall to Stop Spread of Militant Islamists
Hundreds of American troops join Western allies in Niger to block al Qaeda and Islamic State from advancing violence and influence in West Africa
by Michael M Phillips | Sunday, December 11, 2022 | 10:15 AM EST
OUALLAM, Niger—The front lines in the war between the West and militant Islamists have shifted to Africa, from Somalia on the continent’s eastern tip to the West African Sahel, a semidesert strip south of the Sahara.
In the Sahel, the U.S. and its allies are betting that Niger, the worst-off country in the world by a U.N. measure, offers the best hope of stopping the seemingly inexorable spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Here’s where the Journal’s paywall begins. I’d say that I subscribe so that you don’t have to, but really, it’s the best newspaper in the world, and you should subscribe!
In the heart of the region, the nations of Mali and Burkina Faso are losing ground, roiled by militant attacks and military coups. In contrast, the elected civilian government in neighboring Niger is making slow headway against insurgents with the help of Western forces, U.S. and Nigerien officials said. Mali’s ruling junta has hired Kremlin-linked mercenaries to provide security, while Niger has shunned Russian intervention and welcomed U.S. and French forces.
“We’ve invested a lot with the Nigeriens, and we’re seeing a payoff from that,” said Lt. Col. Chris Couch, commander of U.S. special-operations troops in West Africa. Niger, he said, is emerging as a cornerstone of regional security.
The next few paragraphs describe how Nigerien — as opposed to Nigerian, which would mean troops from Nigeria, not from Niger — troops have been trained by United States Army Special Forces troops, are deployed from French aircraft, but our troops monitor from a “safe distance”.
U.S. commandos accompanied Nigerien forces on combat missions until a 2017 Islamic State ambush killed four American soldiers from the Special Forces outpost in Ouallam. The Green Berets now supervise from a safe distance, while local commandos they train carry out the raids.
I will admit it: it was after reading the previous paragraph that I decided to write about this. Am I the only one who has a difficult time believing that our most highly trained soldiers would actually stand by, monitoring, but not getting involved in the fighting?
Niger is proving a test ground for the U.S. strategy of deploying relatively small numbers of American troops—there are around 800 now in the country—to train local forces.
Historically, the strategy has yielded uneven results. U.S.-trained militaries in Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea overthrew civilian governments. After U.S. troops left Afghanistan in 2020, local forces collapsed under Taliban offensives, despite U.S.-supplied weapons and two decades of training.
“Uneven results,” huh?
Who knows, perhaps the US wanted those civilian governments overthrown. It’s not like we wouldn’t have ever supported military coup d’etat’s before.
But at some point, it has to be asked why we are doing this. Rule by Islamic State is a pretty horrible thing, but is it really any of our business if the Muslim fundamentalists rule in resource-starved Niger?
The Nigeriens will wind up like every other client state we’ve supported: doing things their own way, in accordance with their own culture. They won’t be somehow transformed into Americans or Westerners; they will develop their own society and culture based on how they think, not how we think.