The US may not need a headquarters in Africa for AFRICOM to accomplish what the Bush administration wants to accomplish, access to, and the resources of Nigeria, West Africa, and the entire African continent. The partnership that Yar’Adua appears to have agreed to may give Bush and his cronies everything they want, without needing any base or headquarters. This will be especially true if Nigeria carries this “partnering” into other countries, or more countries agree to “partner”. To see what partnership with AFRICOM, or with the US military really means, we can look at the Philippines or Djibouti. It does not matter whether you use the word AFRICOM or not, the partnership works the same. There are two components of these partnerships, aid, and special forces operations.

With a population hostile to US military bases, true in most of Africa, and in the Philippines, the US establishes training and assistance partnerships and rotates US troops in and out. No US soldier will be in the country for long. Any you see will be leaving soon. And although they are constantly leaving, new troops and new units are constantly arriving, making a steady stream. From At the door of all the east [1]:

As US troops come and go in rotation for frequent, regular exercises, their presence – when taken together – makes up a formidable forward-presence that brings them closer to areas of possible action without need for huge infrastructure to support them and without inciting a lot of public attention and opposition. [1]

The troops will give lectures, participate in military exercises, community infrastructure projects, simulated war games, and related activities.

Largely presented as efforts to modernize the . . . armed forces, the objectives behind the exercises are manifold and overlapping. First, the exercises allow the US military to be more familiar with the capabilities, organization, doctrines, and other characteristics of military forces . . . which they may have to fight against or fight alongside with in the future. [G]iven that these . . . militaries may well be U.S. partners or adversaries in future contingencies, becoming familiar with their capabilities and operating style and learning to operate with them are important.” … Implicit in the relationship – as has been the case in previous US-led wars – is that the US will retain over-all command of any coalition in war. Hence, the goal behind the efforts to build ties with, train, strengthen, and develop the capabilities of local militaries is actually to defacto subsume and subordinate them under the US military organization.
[1]

Instead of a large base, or bases, the US is setting up small cooperative security locations, sometimes called lily pads. Look around, depending on where you are, you may know of one, there are more than one in a number of countries.

“A cooperative security location can be a tucked-away corner of a host country’s civilian airport, or a dirt runway somewhere with fuel and mechanical help nearby, or a military airport in a friendly country with which we have no formal basing agreement but, rather, an informal arrangement with private contractors acting as go-betweens … The United States provides aid to upgrade maintenance facilities, thereby helping the host country to better project its own air and naval power in the region. At the same time, we hold periodic exercises with the host country’s military, in which the base is a focus. We also offer humanitarian help to the surrounding area. Such civil-affairs projects garner positive publicity for our military in the local media… The result is a positive diplomatic context for getting the host country’s approval for use of the base when and if we need it.”
[1]

The creators of AFRICOM keep saying AFRICOM is not about militarization, and not about a host of other things, it is about partnerships, aid, and development. I wondered for a long time why the AFRICOM emphasis on aid and development, aside from PR, until I read the meticulously researched At the door of all the east: the Philippines in United States Military Strategy by Herbert Docena, ISBN 978-971-92886-8-8 [1], which describes exactly what the US military is doing in the Philippines. Most of the quotes here are taken from this article, which reveals a lot about what AFRICOM is trying to do.

Nigeria’s General Malu described something similar from back in the 1970s in a recent interview:

To make matters worse, even when we have reluctantly accepted because of the pressure from our commander-in-Chief, to allow the Americans to train us, the Americans insisted they must live in the barracks with the soldiers. I left Abuja and flew to Sokoto to go and meet the governor, to plead with him to give us an area outside the barracks we would prepare it for the Americans. The governor accepted to do that. But the Americans turned it down insisting that they must live in the barracks with soldiers . . .would you have allowed any army of any other country to come and stay with your own troops in the barracks?

Special forces are another feature of partnering with AFRICOM. The activities of special forces are kept much quieter, but they are there. Docena describes their activity in both the Philippines and Djibouti:

Since 2002, a unit now called the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P) has been deployed to . . . the southern Philippines. [T]his unit has continuously maintained its presence in the country for the past six years.
. . . US troops belonging to the unit have characterized their mission as “unconventional warfare”, “foreign internal defense” and “counter-insurgency”. . . . “We’re very much in a war out here … We’ll spill American blood on Jolo. It’s only by luck, skill and the grace of God we haven’t yet.” . . . In terms of profile and mission, the JSOTF-P is similar to the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-Horn of Africa), which was established in Djibouti in eastern Africa in 2003 and also composed mostly of Special Forces. Like the JSOTF-P, the CJTF-Horn of Africa has also been conducting “humanitarian” missions and aid projects. Similar to the Philippines, Djibouti has also seen a dramatic increase in the amount of military aid it receives from the US. As a sample of the US’s new austere basing template, the CJTF-Horn of Africa has been described as the “model for future US
military operations”. [1]

And the infrastructure and humanitarian projects all have military significance. All of this is relevant to AFRICOM:

But it is not just military assistance per se that has military dimensions. Economic aid, development projects, or other forms of indirect compensation . . . may also be given with military considerations in mind. For example, for the past few years USAID has been constructing dozens of roads, piers, wharfs, bridges, and other infrastructure projects in the very areas where US troops have been deployed. As of 2006, USAID had finished 558 small infrastructure projects and 20 larger ones in Mindanao. As previously mentioned, many of these infrastructure projects support US military mobility; at the same time, they have also proven very useful in gaining local public acceptance for US military presence. For the Special Forces, especially, the infrastructure and humanitarian projects are seen as instrumental in “winning hearts and minds” in the aim of getting what they call “actionable” intelligence. . . . (as one officer said) “To do my job right, I am embedded inside USAID.” [1]

Partnership is likely to provide Bush’s AFRICOM everything it wants and needs. A geographic headquarters will be unnecessary. CJTF-Horn of Africa is the model for AFRICOM, along with the activities of the USS Fort McHenry, the African Partnership Station, that is partnering along the coast of West Africa right now. I have great respect for the US military. The way it is being used by Bush should make anyone skeptical. However, AFRICOM will still be there when Bush leaves. As a bureaucracy it will probably continue to expand at all levels.

Related posts:

1. Open Debate: Does Africa Need AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command Base on the Continent)?
2. AFRICOM, US Military Command for Africa to Stay in Germany
3. AFRICOM: Nigeria off the List
4. On AFRICOM: Nigeria will Partner with U.S. Military Command for Africa [Updated]
5. US Officials Insist New Military Command To Benefit Africa
6. AFRICOM will be Fully Operational by September 2008
7. U.S. Africa Command Marks Startup of Initial Operations