Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), stood at a podium in Algeria and addressed the deteriorating security conditions in the neighboring country of Mali. (For those geographically-challenged, remember when you were a kid and people used to say, “that’s way out in Timbuktu”? Well, this is that place, literally). …
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Nick Turse corresponds with an officer at AFRICOM
Ignoring trillion-dollar annual budget deficits and a nearly $16 trillion national debt, the American Empire is still growing. The latest imperial foray is expanding the ineffectual U.S. drug war into Africa to combat such smuggling into Europe. Yes, Europe. Not only does the United States spend tens of billions of dollars a year subsidizing the …
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Nick Turse on the Pentagon’s ‘New Spice Route’
By mid-2007, the 50,000 Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in late 2006 found themselves increasingly bogged down, facing much fiercer resistance than they had bargained for as Somalis of all stripes temporarily put aside their differences to stand together against the outside invader. As the military incursion turned increasingly sour, then-U.S. Undersecretary of State for …
Continue reading “WikiLeaks Reveals US Twisted Ethiopia’s Arm to Invade Somalia”
When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, it was widely expected that he would dramatically change, or even reverse, the militarized and unilateral security policy that had been pursued by the George W. Bush administration toward Africa and other parts of the world. After one year in office, however, it is clear that …
Continue reading “Obama Expands Military Involvement in Africa” 
