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| Africa Subsaharan |
| US continuing to train Malian troops |
| 2006-02-12 |
| U.S. Special Forces are teaching Malian soldiers how to fight terrorism in the country‘s northern desert, a region potentially rich in oil but seen by U.S. military officials as a sanctuary for Islamic militants. More than 300 Malian soldiers in the Saharan towns of Timbuktu and Gao and the capital Bamako will practice parachuting into the desert, marksmanship, operating under fire and other activities over the next 50 days, officials said. "It involves three military units and is part of the Pan-Sahel Initiative, a vast regional program to combat terrorism, cross-border banditry and drug trafficking," said Col. Abdoulaye Coulibaly, chief spokesman for the Malian army. At least six international firms have won rights to search for oil under Mali‘s vast desert as the impoverished West African nation seeks to match neighbors Algeria, Mauritania and Niger by striking crude. But the Sahel region, which stretches from Mauritania on Africa‘s western coast through northern Mali, Niger and Chad, is also synonymous with banditry, smuggling and increasingly -- according to U.S. officials -- international terrorism. "Several regional terrorist groups now operate with relative impunity in the vast, uncontrolled northern spaces of these countries," General Charles Wald, deputy commander of U.S. European Command, wrote in a U.S. army publication last year. "These are sanctuaries that must be denied. Training and equipping will, if sustained, enable these countries to eliminate these sanctuaries without direct U.S. involvement." Chinese state-run oil and gas firm Sinopec Corp, Australian firms Sphere Investment Ltd, Baraka Mali Ventures Limited and Trans Ocean Securities, as well as at least two South African firms have all signed exploration deals in northern Mali over the past year and a half. "In securing the desert, we‘re securing those who are searching for oil," the Malian army‘s Coulibaly told Reuters. "At a time when exploration is getting underway in the zone, this training is welcome." The United States has conducted repeated joint training exercises in countries around the Sahel as part of its "Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative" (TSCTI), expected to cost $100 million over five years. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 :> |
| Posted by: 6 2006-02-12 10:14 |
| #1 Love to be in MTT predeployment brief-back...."Sir, and upon arrival in.... Timbuktu .... |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-02-12 08:55 |