Pre-2007 Africa was a military afterthought, Somalia combat having bred retreat.

Evidence

Until recently, the Pentagon had paid little attention to Africa. Before the creation of an Africa Command (Africom) in 2007, there was no command strictly responsible for Africa. The continent was essentially an afterthought overseen by the European Command. The largest U.S. military involvement in Africa came in the early 1990s, when the Pentagon deployed more than twenty-five thousand troops as part of UN humanitarian operations in Somalia. After U.S. soldiers took heavy casualties in Mogadishu in 1993, there was a rapid retreat from the country and from any thought of sending U.S. troops into African combat. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 989