U.S. wages quiet battle in Africa

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.

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