Chagos Islanders protest in London, March 2014. Rachel Megawhat/Demotix. All rights reserved.I’m sure that you’ve heard about the three bare-bones 'staging outposts' or, in the lingo of the trade, 'cooperative security locations' that the US Marines have established in Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon. We’re talking about personnel from Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa, a unit at present garrisoned at Morón, Spain. It would, however, like to have some bases—though that’s not a word in use at US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees all such expansion—ready to receive them in a future in which anything might happen in an Africa exploding with new or expanding terror outfits.
Really? You haven’t noticed anything on the subject? Admittedly, the story wasn’t on the nightly news, nor did it make the front page of your local paper, or undoubtedly its inside pages either, but honestly it was right there in plain sight in Military Times! Of course, three largely unoccupied cooperative security locations in countries that aren’t exactly on the tip of the American tongue would be easy enough to miss under the best of circumstances, but what about the other eight “staging facilities” that AFRICOM now admits to having established across Africa. The command had previously denied that it had any "bases" on the continent other than the ever-expanding one it established in the tiny nation of Djibouti in the horn of Africa and into which it has already sunk three-quarters of a billion dollars with at least $1.2 billion in upgrades still to go. However, AFRICOM’S commander, General David Rodriguez, now proudly insists that the 11 bare-bones outposts will leave US forces “within four hours of all the high-risk, high-threat [diplomatic] posts” on the continent.
Really, you didn’t hear a peep about those bases either, even though Stars and Stripes had the story front and center?
