African Allies Grapple With Rise in Terrorist Attacks as U.S. Pulls Back

The United States has already conducted 23 airstrikes this year against Shabab targets in Somalia, compared with 47 all of 2018.About 6,000 United States troops and 1,000 Defense Department civilians or contractors work throughout Africa, mainly training and conducting exercises with local forces.The military’s Africa Command plans to cut 10 percent of those personnel by January 2022, including about 300 Special Operations forces from the roughly 1,200 commandos who were deployed across the continent last year.American Green Berets from the Third Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., advise their African partners on planning and carrying out operations, but rarely join them on missions, said Col. Nathan Prussian, the group commander.American commanders said the changes reflected the progress made by the African troops and denied that the United States was backing away from its commitment to the region.“The notion that we’re leaving the Sahel is simply not true,” Maj. Gen. Amadou Koundy, a Nigerien special forces officer who trained in Senegal and at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.Military officials and independent analysts stressed that American and other Western military aid may at best buy time for African allies to address poverty, lack of education, government corruption and other grievances that extremist groups seek to exploit.“There are no fully military solutions here, just holding actions,” said Alice Hunt Friend, a former top Pentagon official for Africa and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.For now, though, African troops and their Western allies are racing to establish security.At an Army training range in Loumbila, 15 miles northeast of Ouagadougou, Malian and Burkinabe commandos practiced marksmanship with AK-47 rifles and Glock pistols under the watchful eye of Czech and Polish trainers barking out instructions in French.With temperatures nearing 100 degrees under a blazing sun, the African troops also rehearsed how to thwart militant ambushes and roadside bombs, and clear militant-infested buildings.The troops also honed their skills in the propaganda wars of winning hearts and minds.