U.S. Green Berets ran mock ambushes Wednesday in the sand dunes of central Mali, where Malian troops fired blanks at a pretend enemy - and shouted "bang! bang!" when the blanks ran out.
"Got ya!"
"Did not."
"Did too!"
"Did not!" |
The exercise is part of a months-long American effort to train troops in Mali and three other impoverished West African nations where Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida are alleged to have operated. The Associated Press was among the first media allowed to observe. The foes "could be anyone: bandits, smugglers, terrorists," said one U.S. special operations soldier, part of a U.S. force that began arriving in Mali in November. The American soldiers are in Mali under the State Department's Pan-Sahel Initiative, a $7 million program to help soldiers in Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania boost battle skills amid the worldwide fight against terrorism. U.S. officials say many African armies are too small and ill-equipped to patrol the vast territories they nominally control.
A Green Beret, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the program aimed to boost the ability of the Malian military to secure their country's borders against lawlessness and insurgents. Malian Lt. Col. Younoussa Maiga agreed. "The Americans are helping us reinforce what we already have," he said. There are about 200 American soldiers training troops in Mali and Mauritania. Plans for similar on-the-ground exercises have yet to be worked out for Niger and Chad. The 120 Mali troops under U.S. training will patrol in a military zone nearly the size of Texas, centered around Timbuktu, the fabled town of about 30,000 people about 410 miles northeast of Mali's capital, Bamako. |