The Birth of Africom

The long-awaited Africom has just been announced, a new US military command center for American operations on the dark continent. The new headquarters will have a strong focus on helping African nations train their security forces and will include more government civilians than other regional command centers.

Perhaps Chirol can give us a preliminary interview with the first boots on the ground:

President George W. Bush announced on Tuesday he had given approval for the new command, Africom, which will be based initially in Stuttgart, Germany, but later move to an African location yet to be determined.

The reasons for the new command center: Africa is fast becoming just as important as the Middle East in terms of naturall resources for the global economy, and weak governments and official corruption that plagues the region could become a worse danger in the future if left unmanaged now. I’m sure Tom Barnett will be all over this shortly.

At present, the only long-term base for U.S. forces in Africa is Camp Lemonier in the Djibouti, with less than 2,000 troops. The new command center would cover every country in Africa except Egypt, which would remain in Central Command’s area. Africom will be operating by September 2008, with some initial operating capacity by later this year.