[US News] As we enter the 17th year of the United States' "war on terror," it is both appropriate, and necessary, to take stock of where our troops are located and for what purpose. The deaths of U.S. soldiers this fall in Niger were a stark reminder that much of the American public, and even many of our country's lawmakers, aren't exactly sure what the war on terror looks like, much less where many of our other military operations are located. According to a new map published this week by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the U.S. is waging this war on terror in 76 countries – or more simply put, 40 percent of the countries on this planet.
What started with President George W. Bush's launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in October 2001 is now a rapid expansion of the U.S. military footprint across the globe. Notably, beyond the Middle East, the tentacles of this expansion stretch into Africa more than any other region.
Right now, across Africa, the U.S. military is providing massive amounts of military technology, hardware, training and expertise to local African militaries and police forces. The continent is home to an "extensive archipelago of African outposts," including U.S. military bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, and "cooperative security locations." U.S. special operations forces have been deployed to track local insurgents across the African Sahel region. Drone strikes to kill terrorist targets have increased substantially (67 into Somalia since 2007, and 125 in Yemen in 2017 alone), causing hundreds of civilian casualties. African and U.S. forces have conducted joint military exercises across the continent.
This expansion is the unsurprising result of the military's emerging focus on Africa, inaugurated with the 2007 creation of AFRICOM. Perhaps this concentration reveals more about the fears of unknowability and criminality that continue to underlie U.S. views of that continent, rather than representing an effective military strategy to combat terrorism. 
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