CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti — Three high-definition television screens, a bank of green military radios and detailed maps line the walls; laptop computers cover three rows of tables; and military officers such as Lt. Cmdr. Victor Cooper keep 24-hour vigil.
The Joint Operations Center, tucked inside a former French Foreign Legion post, is the heart of the Bush administration’s quiet battle against Islamist militants operating in six nations in East Africa and in Yemen.
From here, the U.S. military monitors Marine beach landings, Navy warships, Army infantry maneuvers and Air Force flights, staying in close communication with Central Command headquarters in Qatar and troops in the field.
On a recent day, U.S. soldiers trained with local troops in rural Ethiopia, civil affairs officers helped with rehabilitation projects in Kenyan towns, and Marines landed on a deserted beach in Djibouti.
Offshore, NATO ships coordinated operations with the task force, searching ships in international waters for weapons and terrorists.
“We are the gathering point and dissemination point for all information,” said Cmdr. Cooper, of Jackson, Miss.
Sometimes his job gets boring, he said, but then, that’s good.
The task force uses military training, humanitarian aid and intelligence operations to keep northeastern Africa and Yemen from becoming the next Afghanistan, said Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commander of the task force.
The 1,800 personnel at Camp Lemonier coordinate U.S. military operations in Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Yemen. The region, largely ignored before the war on terrorism, is now one of the war’s main theaters.
“Here you have six countries that very positively desire to be partners in every way possible in the global war on terrorism,” Gen. Robeson said, leaving out Somalia, which doesn’t have a government.
“We are empowering host nations to retake neighborhoods that people are trying to take from them, so you have, in our opinion, sovereign governments here, who are being invaded, who have been invaded … with sleeper cells that are just now coming to life,” he said in an interview at his air-conditioned office.
Djibouti, an arid nation the size of Massachusetts, has long been a strategic link between Africa and the Middle East, with trade ships sailing along the coast for centuries. The French carved the colony out of the Horn of Africa to control the point where the Red Sea opens into the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest waterways in the world.
The French Foreign Legion still keeps a brigade in Djibouti, and French forces train in the desert year-round as its Mirage fighter jets scream overhead.
U.S. forces arrived in June 2002 at Camp Lemonier — a vacant, former Legion post — and the task force began operations from the tented camp in December that year.
The Americans have built a permanent mess hall, gym and convenience store, but troops still live in dusty, crowded tents. The post employs hundreds of local construction workers to rehabilitate the French-built buildings in preparation for what military officials say will be a long stay.
The region has suffered four terrorist attacks — all of them either claimed by or attributed to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network. In August 1998, car bombs destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In October 2000, suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole while it was refueling in Yemen. In November 2002, attackers tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner minutes before a car bomb destroyed a hotel on Kenya’s coast.
Gen. Robeson said his forces have disrupted several terrorist plots and that more than two dozen terrorism suspects have been detained in the region. He declined to provide details, citing diplomatic sensitivities and security reasons.
The task force works with local military commanders to develop strategies to help countries fight terrorists, concentrating on better border security, coastal security, intelligence collection, customs agencies and counterterrorism forces.
In addition to support, medical and administrative staff from the Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force, Gen. Robeson has under his command a Marine helicopter detachment with four CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters, a U.S. Army infantry company, a U.S. Army Reserve civil affairs company, Navy cargo planes, military engineers and a special operations unit.
The helicopters deliver troops and equipment throughout the region. The infantrymen have spent months training with Ethiopian troops and hope eventually to conduct joint exercises and border patrol operations. The civil affairs unit repairs clinics and schools and provides medical and veterinary assistance to Muslims in rural areas, where terrorists may be recruiting members by spreading anti-American messages.
Responsibility for stopping ships that might be carrying al Qaeda members and weapons falls to a fleet of six to seven NATO ships, known as Combined Task Force-150. A French admiral commands the force, which boards several ships a week, said Lt. Cmdr. Dean Matusek, a Navy liaison officer at Camp Lemonier.
This month, the French navy plans joint operations with the Kenyan navy to work on coastal patrol techniques. U.S. Marines also plan to land in Kenya for joint training with the Kenyan army.
When the task force identifies a terror suspect or detects a plot, local authorities are encouraged to act first. But Gen. Robeson said his special operations troops are ready to act independently if necessary.
“If I know there is a terrorist out there, and we have the means to go get him and someone else isn’t, will we go get him? You bet we will,” Gen. Robeson said. He refused to say whether his forces have seized any terror suspects.
The task force also works with what military personnel call OGAs, “other government agencies,” such as the CIA and FBI.
“We share information with each other; we share intelligence with each other. We find that there are places that we can do things that benefit them, and there are places they can do things that benefit us,” Gen. Robeson said.
The general said that for such a small task force to cover such a large area, the operation relies heavily on intelligence collection. Uncovering and infiltrating regional terrorist groups has posed a major challenge to all intelligence and police agencies in the region, he added.
“This is a closed society,” Gen. Robeson said. “But it was the same case with the [Ku Klux] Klan, and the same case with the Mafia. Infiltrating those two was tough; it is tough to get people on the inside.”
He said the ultimate goal is for all the seven countries to have their own modern methods of protecting their borders and coordinating their customs and intelligence activities so that terrorists have no chance of staging attacks or taking shelter in the region.
“In truth, this is more of the model of how the global war on terrorism should be fought — not Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gen. Robeson said.
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