PENTAGON RESEARCH CENTER QUIETLY CONTRADICTS OPTIMISM OF DEFENSE SECRETARY AUSTIN – By Nick Turse (The Intercept) / Sept 4, 2022
On the same day Lloyd Austin lauded U.S. troops in Africa, the Pentagon’s Africa Center released a report on rising terrorism there.
LAST MONTH, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the accomplishments of U.S. Africa Command, commending its leaders and personnel for tackling terrorism and making the continent more secure and stable. “Every day, AFRICOM works alongside our friends as full partners — to strengthen bonds, to tackle common threats, and to advance a shared vision of an Africa whose people are safe and prosperous,” he announced at a ceremony honoring the new AFRICOM commander, Gen. Michael Langley.
That very same day, the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, issued a devastating report that directly refuted Austin’s positive assessments. “Militant Islamist group violence in Africa has risen inexorably over the past decade, expanding by 300 percent during this time,” reads the analysis. “Violent events linked to militant Islamist groups have doubled since 2019.”
Austin’s commentary and the Pentagon’s contradictory report come as the Biden administration has ramped up the U.S. war in Somalia, turning the impoverished Horn of Africa nation into one of the prime fronts in the two-decadelong war on terror. After a lull in the spring, when AFRICOM conducted no airstrikes in Somalia, President Joe Biden approved a plan to redeploy close to 500 U.S. ground forces there — reversing an eleventh-hour withdrawal of most U.S. troops by then-President Donald Trump in late 2020 — and authorized the targeted killings of about a dozen leaders of the terrorist group al-Shabab.
In June, AFRICOM conducted an airstrike in Somalia, reportedly killing five members of al-Shabab. Just over a month later, AFRICOM announced another attack that killed two militants. In August, AFRICOM conducted at least five airstrikes that reportedly killed 17 “al-Shabaab terrorists.”
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/09/04/africa-terrorism-pentagon-africom-lloyd-austin/
