Pentagon weighs increased presence in Africa

As Congress and the Pentagon consider closing or downsizing some bases in western Europe, officials are looking at stepping up the U.S. military's presence in Africa.

"I think Africa is a continent that is going to be of very, very significant interest in the 21st century," Gen. James Jones Jr., head of the United States European Command, told the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee last week.

While he stopped short of saying the United States would open its first base on the continent, Jones said he believes "that we're going to have to engage more in that theater," in part because large ungoverned sections of Africa "could become terrorist breeding grounds."

Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both mentioned the strategic importance of Africa when discussing their proposal to appoint an independent commission to consider changes in a U.S. base structure that outlasted the Cold War and might leave U.S. troops and equipment out of position for conflicts in other parts of the world.

"Many of us think we have ignored Africa, at great risk for the future," Feinstein told Jones.

In addition to the potential for terrorism, Jones said in written testimony that crime, drugs and "sinking human conditions" will make it necessary for a greater U.S. military presence in Africa.

During former President Clinton's two terms in the White House, U.S. troops were part of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Somalia, Angola, Rwanda and Mozambique and engaged in small-scale training missions, but otherwise steered clear of the region.

Clinton's predecessor, former President George H.W. Bush, was first to raise the U.S. military profile in sub-Saharan Africa, dispatching teams of Green Berets to Zimbabwe, Senegal, Niger and other countries to train local armies. Some 200 U.S. airborne troops flew to Botswana in 1992 for one of the largest U.S. training exercises ever in the region.

The Pentagon continues to have an arrangement to use an airstrip in Kenya but has no permanent presence in Africa. Instead, forces are moved in and out of the region as needed, under a policy that Jones called "largely reactive."

Such was the case last September, one year after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when the Defense Department sent special operations units into the Horn of Africa to hunt for suspected terrorists linked to those events and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

Decisions about which European installations to replace or relocate, and related moves of U.S. assets into or closer to Africa are probably at least a year away, committee aides said.