humanitarian operation run not by civilians in the aid business but by military troops with ulterior motives—part of a near-continent-wide campaign utilizing the core tenets of counterinsurgency strategy. The United States is trying to win a war for the hearts and minds of Africa. But a Pentagon investigation suggests that those mystery projects somewhere out there in Djibouti or Ethiopia or Kenya or here in Tanzania may well be orphaned, ill-planned and undocumented failures-in-the-making. According to the Department of Defense’s watchdog agency, US military officials in Africa “did not adequately plan or execute” missions designed to win over Africans deemed vulnerable to the lures of violent extremism.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:42:13 +0000