A lasting defeat of the Islamic State terrorist organization must involve fighting its adherents in Africa as well as the main body of militants in Iraq and Syria, according to the chief of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).
Africa’s growing importance as a focal point of U.S. counterterrorism efforts was underscored Friday when Gen. David Rodriguez briefed reporters in Washington, D.C., while gunman held more than 100 hosted in a besieged hotel in Mali. That attack likely was not the work of ISIS, but highlights the difficulty of defending soft targets against terror plots on the continent, regardless of location or perpetrator, he said.
Rodriguez said the continent is home to myriad criminal networks that traffic in drugs, people and weapons. Several deadly terrorist networks also have taken hold, some of which have pledge allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“ISIS has already declared that what they want is a … base in Libya as part of their whole solution and Caliphate as well as part of Nigeria,” Rodriguez said. “I think that, long-term, that has to be a part of the solution and the eventual defeat of ISIS.”
The Mali attacks likely were not an ISIS operation, Rodriguez said. The hotel siege instead bears the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, which operates in West Africa. Boko Haram, an existing terrorist group based in Nigeria, continues to murder, rape and pillage in East Africa and recently aligned itself with ISIS, though its connection is thought to be less concrete than militants in Libya, Rodriguez said.
ISIS is largely present in lawless Libya, where they took hold and began recruitment after the civil war there, Rodriguez said. The group has and will likely again use Libya as a staging base and launchpad for terrorist activities in Europe, Rodriguez said.
“That’s probably the biggest worry right now,” Rodriguez told reporters during a breakfast meeting Friday morning in Washington, D.C.
AFRICOM, one of the smaller U.S. combatant commands — by funding and number of personnel — focused mainly on crisis response and protection of U.S. personnel on the continent, is in store for an increase of both funding and manpower in coming years, Rodriguez said. He said a budgetary increase at least is anticipated in fiscal year 2017 to increase its other mission of capacity building with allied African nations.
“The capacity building is really the main effort to what we do because it’s really the long-term solution and we have some pretty good success stories,” he said. “For their militaries and for their institutions, some of the things that are most important are their abilities to grow and develop leaders, and select the right people and build those kind of systems that help sustain their effort for the long term.”
The U.S. military already supplies airlift, aerial refueling and intelligence-gathering capabilities to African allies on the front lines of the fight against ISIS and various other terrorist organizations, Rodriguez said. It also has an established history of providing training to personnel at all levels of allied African militaries.
“They ask for everything that’s in the news about fancy equipment that works,” Rodriguez said with a smirk.
Allies on the continent most commonly ask for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support, though some are developing indigenous capabilities, Rodriguez said. They also lack the institutional training capabilities to reliably produce competent frontline soldiers and senior leaders, he said.
Many African nations also need improved command, control and communications, logistics support and mobility of troops and supplies, he said. While U.S. special operations forces regularly operate on the continent in an advise and assist capacity, they only conduct unilateral raids in the ungoverned nations of Somalia and Libya, Rodriguez said. U.S. allies in African need to develop their own units with “specialty skills” like targeted raids and explosive clearance, he added.