"The training, which will also have troops from Kenya and Tanzania with experts from the US, will be conducted in Kitgum....Last week, the UPDF [Uganda Peoples Defence Force] said it supports the formation of a joint regional army, believing this will handle conflicts in the region.
"The proposal was mooted during a meeting of delegates from the five member countries in Kampala early this month." [8]
The Pentagon is setting up a new African regional military force.
On October 20 a Rwandan news source revealed that "The visiting US commander of US Army Africa, Maj. Gen. William B. Garrett III, has stressed that the US army is interested in strengthening its cooperation with the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF)."
Garrett was quoted as saying "We are hoping to improve the relationship between Rwandan Defence Forces and the US army - this involves increase in interaction between our forces....Likewise, we hope that the Rwandan Defence Forces can also participate in our exercises. So we are hoping to increase the level of cooperation between the US and the Rwandan Defense forces." [9]
The U.S. and its allies previously deployed Rwandan troops they trained and armed to Darfur and Somalia.
In northwest Africa, on October 20 the U.S. ambassador to Mali presented the latest tranche of "more than $5 million in new vehicles and other equipment" to the armed forces of his host country. [10]
Two years earlier the Pentagon led a multinational military exercise, Operation Flintlock 2007, in the capital of Mali with troops from thirteen African and European nations.
In the prototype exercise, Flintlock 2005, the U.S. deployed over 1,000 Special Operations troops, Green Berets, for joint military maneuvers with counterparts from Senegal, Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria and Tunisia.
Flintlock 2005 was employed to launch Washington's Trans Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. An American news report of the exercise bore the title "U.S. Said Eying Sahara For New War Front." [11]
An official with the U.S. Special Operations Command Europe said at the time, "This is just the start of decades worth of work in Africa, [12] a sentiment echoed by an American armed forces publication which wrote "If military planners have their way, U.S. troops are going to be deploying to Africa for years or maybe decades." [13]
Within days of the completion of the 2007 exercise in Mali a U.S. military cargo plane, "flying food to Malian troops fighting rebels in the far north of the country," was hit by gunfire. The plane had remained in the nation after Flintlock 2007.
"Malian troops had become surrounded at their base in the Tin-Zaouatene region near the Algerian border by armed fighters and couldn't get supplies....[T]he Mali government asked the U.S. forces to perform the airdrops...." [14]
The fighters in question were ethnic Tuaregs.
Tuaregs in Mali and Niger, "whose armies have received U.S. counter-insurgency training," have "taken up arms...driven by resentment over unresolved grievances and against what they see as interference in their territories by government armies and foreign companies." [15]
What is in fact the reason for the heightened American military role in Mali and Niger rather than the Pentagon's by now standard claim - alleged al-Qaeda threats - was mentioned in a Reuters dispatch of last year.
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