Drones in Niger Reflect New U.S. Tack on Terrorism
By Eric Schmitt, NY Times, July 10, 2013
NIAMEY, Niger--Nearly every day, and sometimes twice daily, an unarmed American drone soars skyward from a secluded military airfield here, starting a surveillance mission of 10 hours or more to track fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militants in neighboring Mali.
The two MQ-9 Reapers that are based here stream live video and data from other sensors to American analysts working with French commanders, who say the aerial intelligence has been critical to their success over the past four months in driving jihadists from a vast desert refuge in northern Mali.
The drone base, established in February and staffed by about 120 members of the Air Force, is the latest indication of the priority Africa has become for the United States at a time when it is winding down its presence in Afghanistan and President Obama has set a goal of moving from a global war on terrorism toward a more targeted effort. It is part of a new model for counterterrorism, a strategy designed to help local forces--and in this case a European ally--fight militants so American troops do not have to.
But the approach has limitations on a continent as large as Africa, where a shortage of resources is chronic and regional partners are weak. And the introduction of drones, even unarmed ones, runs the risk of creating the kind of backlash that has undermined American efforts in Pakistan and provoked anger in many parts of the world.
The increase in the number of potential threats in the region was made clear to Mr. Obama during his visit to Africa last week.
"We need in Africa--not just in Senegal but the whole of Africa--to have the military capacity to solve this problem, but we need training, we need materials, we need intelligence," President Macky Sall of Senegal told Reuters after meeting with Mr. Obama in Dakar to discuss fears of a growing violent Islamist threat in the Sahara.
The United States military, however, has only one permanent base in Africa, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, as well as a constellation of small airstrips, including in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft. The challenge for the United States, with little experience in Africa, is a difficult one.
"The U.S. is facing a security environment in Africa that is increasingly more complex and therefore more dangerous," said Michael R. Shurkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who is now at the RAND Corporation. "Effective responses, moreover, require excellent knowledge about local populations and their politics, the sort of understanding that too often eludes the U.S. government and military."
And the threats facing Niger are typical of the ones that worry Mr. Sall. The government of President Mahamadou Issoufou is struggling to stem a flow of insurgents across Niger's lightly guarded borders with Mali, Nigeria and Libya. On May 23, terrorists using suicide car bombs attacked a Nigerien military compound in Agadez and a French-operated uranium company in Arlit, both in the country's north.
Two groups claimed credit for the bombings, which the authorities in Niger say killed at least 24 soldiers and one civilian, as well as 11 militants. One is led by the Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar and attacked a large gas field in Algeria in January, and the other is a regional offshoot of Al Qaeda called the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or Mujao.
The terrorist attacks in May, combined with an escape from Niamey's biggest jail last month by 32 detainees, including many suspected militants, have left Mr. Issoufou's government vulnerable to criticism that it cannot provide security, despite allowing American drones on Nigerien soil.
The government in Niger has defended that decision, and it is concerned enough about the threat it perceives from extremist fighters pushed out of Mali that it initially wanted the drones to be armed, a former senior American official said. But Obama administration officials thought that was unnecessary and politically unwise.
To experts on Africa, the possibility that the drones will yet cause a backlash remains real, especially if Islamic radicals make it an issue.
The United States acknowledged the drone deployment here in February--initially sending a single Predator aircraft and later faster, more capable Reapers--but since then it has released virtually no information about their missions, presumably to avoid raising their public profile. The Pentagon denied a request to interview the Air Force flight crews, logistics and maintenance specialists, and security personnel assigned here at a military airfield on the opposite side of the commercial airport in Niger's capital.
French, American and Nigerien officials all have a say in the daily missions of the drones, a Pentagon official said, but clearly the priority has been supporting the French campaign in Mali. The United States has flown more than 200 missions in support of the French, with the possibility that it could expand its operations to support a United Nations force largely composed of African troops that assumed control of the peacekeeping mission in Mali on July 1.
In some of the fiercest fighting between French-led forces and the Islamist fighters in early March, the drones hovered over a rugged mountainous region in Mali, giving allied forces targeting information for airstrikes. French and African officials say that perhaps 700 fighters, out of about 2,000 insurgents in all, were killed in the fighting.
As surviving fighters have melted back into the desert and mountains in recent weeks, the Reapers have been surveilling vast reaches of the north for signs of militant infiltration or secret new redoubts--a daunting task that one American official described as "looking through a soda straw" across the Sahara. At Niger's request, American officials said, the drones may also conduct surveillance along the border before entering Mali.
The American missions have not been without incident. On April 9, one of the drones crashed in a remote part of northern Mali, presumably because of a mechanical failure. "It was a total loss," one Air Force officer said of the wreckage.
France has been impressed enough with the Reapers that it intends to buy at least two of the aircraft from the United States. "They've been absolutely necessary for us because we don't have enough drones to protect our troops and to get permanent visibility about what's happening on the ground," said a French defense official in Paris.
