Drones in Niger Reflect New U.S. Tack on Terrorism
NIAMEY, Niger — Nearly every day, and sometimes twice daily, an unarmed
American drone soars skyward from a secluded military airfield here,
starting a surveillance mission of 10 hours or more to track fighters
affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militants in neighboring Mali.
The two MQ-9 Reapers that are based here stream live video and data from
other sensors to American analysts working with French commanders, who
say the aerial intelligence has been critical to their success over the
past four months in driving jihadists from a vast desert refuge in
northern Mali.
The drone base, established in February and staffed by about 120 members
of the Air Force, is the latest indication of the priority Africa has
become for the United States at a time when it is winding down its
presence in Afghanistan and President Obama has set a goal of moving
from a global war on terrorism toward a more targeted effort. It is part
of a new model for counterterrorism, a strategy designed to help local
forces — and in this case a European ally — fight militants so American
troops do not have to.
But the approach has limitations on a continent as large as Africa,
where a shortage of resources is chronic and regional partners are weak.
And the introduction of drones, even unarmed ones, runs the risk of
creating the kind of backlash that has undermined American efforts in
Pakistan and provoked anger in many parts of the world.
The increase in the number of potential threats in the region was made
clear to Mr. Obama during his visit to Africa last week.
“We need in Africa — not just in Senegal but the whole of Africa — to
have the military capacity to solve this problem, but we need training,
we need materials, we need intelligence,” President Macky Sall of Senegal said
after meeting with Mr. Obama in Dakar to discuss fears of a growing
violent Islamist threat in the Sahara, according to Reuters.
The United States military, however, has only one permanent base in
Africa, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, as well as a
constellation of small airstrips in places that include Ethiopia and
Burkina Faso, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop
planes designed to look like civilian aircraft. The challenge for the
United States, with little experience in Africa, is a difficult one.
“The U.S. is facing a security environment in Africa that is
increasingly more complex and therefore more dangerous,” said Michael R.
Shurkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who is now at the
RAND Corporation. “Effective responses, moreover, require excellent
knowledge about local populations and their politics, the sort of
understanding that too often eludes the U.S. government and military.”
And the threats facing Niger are typical of the ones that worry Mr.
Sall. The government of President Mahamadou Issoufou is struggling to
stem a flow of insurgents across Niger’s lightly guarded borders with
Mali, Nigeria and Libya. On May 23, terrorists using suicide car bombs
attacked a Nigerien military compound in Agadez and a French-operated
uranium company in Arlit, both in the country’s north.
Two groups claimed credit for the bombings, which the authorities in
Niger say killed at least 24 soldiers and one civilian, as well as 11
militants. One is led by the Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar and
attacked a large gas field in Algeria in January, and the other is a
regional offshoot of Al Qaeda called the Movement for Oneness and Jihad
in West Africa, or Mujao.
The terrorist attacks in May, combined with an escape from Niamey’s
biggest jail last month by 32 detainees, including many suspected
militants, have left Mr. Issoufou’s government vulnerable to criticism
that it cannot provide security, despite allowing American drones on
Nigerien soil.
The government in Niger has defended that decision, and it is concerned
enough about the threat it perceives from extremist fighters pushed out
of Mali that it initially wanted the drones to be armed, a former senior
American official said. But Obama administration officials thought that
was unnecessary and politically unwise.
To experts on Africa, the possibility that the drones will yet cause a
backlash remains real, especially if Islamic radicals make it an issue.
“The concern would be that a lot of the blowback would be through
channels we can’t easily perceive, such as Salafist mosques,” said
Alexis Arieff, an Africa analyst with the Congressional Research Service
in Washington.
The United States acknowledged the drone deployment here in February —
initially sending a single Predator aircraft and later faster, more
capable Reapers — but since then it has released virtually no
information about their missions, presumably to avoid raising their
public profile. The Pentagon denied a request to interview the Air Force
flight crews, logistics and maintenance specialists, and security
personnel assigned here at a military airfield on the opposite side of
the commercial airport in Niger’s capital.
French, American and Nigerien officials all have a say in the daily
missions of the drones, a Pentagon official said, but clearly the
priority has been supporting the French campaign in Mali. The United
States has flown more than 200 missions in support of the French, with
the possibility that it could expand its operations to support a United
Nations force largely composed of African troops that assumed control of
the peacekeeping mission in Mali on July 1.
In some of the fiercest fighting between French-led forces and the
Islamist fighters in early March, the drones hovered over a rugged
mountainous region in Mali, giving allied forces targeting information
for airstrikes. French and African officials say that perhaps 700
fighters, out of about 2,000 insurgents in all, were killed in the
fighting.
As surviving fighters have melted back into the desert and mountains in
recent weeks, the Reapers have been surveilling vast reaches of the
north for signs of militant infiltration or secret new redoubts — a
daunting task that one American official described as “looking through a
soda straw” across the Sahara. At Niger’s request, American officials
said, the drones may also conduct surveillance along the border before
entering Mali.
Despite the gains, J. Peter Pham, the director of the Atlantic Council’s
Africa Center in Washington, said the French were not fully using the
information from the drones. The French forces, fearing attack from
surface-to-air missiles looted from Libyan stockpiles, have curtailed
helicopter gunship missions in Mali, and they instead rely on
higher-flying but less precise fighter-bombers for any airstrikes, Mr.
Pham said. But a French official said France had not carried out
airstrikes in weeks and played down the missile threat. The official
said that the intelligence was still being used to support ground
operations.
The American missions have not been without incident. On April 9, one of
the drones crashed in a remote part of northern Mali, presumably
because of a mechanical failure. “It was a total loss,” one Air Force
officer said of the wreckage.
Pentagon officials say the drone missions will continue even as France
reduces its force in Mali to about 1,000 troops by year’s end, from
3,500 now, “because we see a continued need for intelligence collection
in that region,” said Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense
for Africa.
France has been impressed enough with the Reapers that it intends to buy
at least two of the aircraft from the United States. “They’ve been
absolutely necessary for us because we don’t have enough drones to
protect our troops and to get permanent visibility about what’s
happening on the ground,” said a French defense official in Paris.
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