The Pentagon quietly built dozens of African bases despite Africom’s official claims.

Evidence

While the command’s secrecy makes getting a full picture difficult, evidence suggests that Africom’s on-the-ground expansion has been rapid and broad. A 2014 article in the U.S. Army’s magazine Army Sustainment identified nine forward operating locations in the Horn of Africa alone. Likewise, a series of Washington Post reports have shown that since 2007, the Pentagon has quietly created “about a dozen air bases” in countries including Niger, Chad, Ethiopia, and the Seychelles for drones and surveillance operations over Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. In Burkina Faso, special operations forces are using part of the Ouagadougou international airport for “high-risk activities” in Africa’s Sahel. In Mauritania, the military has used a forward operating base to conduct periodic surveillance operations of Tuareg rebels in nearby Mali. The military also had a lily pad in Mali until a 2012 coup forced a withdrawal. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 994

Categorization

• XREF: The secrecy-surrounded proliferation of ‘temporary’ bases parallels the general pattern of base expansion documented throughout the book.