The United States is focused on three big global challenges. In the Middle East, it struggles to prevent a full regional war while supporting its ally Israel; in Europe, it supplies Ukraine with arms to blunt the Russians; and in the Western Pacific it strengthens a network of alliances to contain Chinese expansionism.
Meanwhile, the United States funds an intelligence community composed of 18 different agencies, which monitor the globe for prospective hot spots but are often surprised, as in the case of Hamas’ attack on Israel last October. While the three big challenges above remain today’s focus, one might ask: Where will the next crisis occur?
A recent Italian film, Io Capitano (“I am the Captain”), draws attention to the dangers posed by the evolving crisis in the Sahel, largely ignored in Western capitals. It’s a fictional account (based on documented real-world experiences) of two boys who leave home in Dakar, Senegal for a better life in Italy. Seydou and Moussa spend all their earnings to obtain false passports and hire smugglers to get them from Senegal to Niger and then to Libya on foot through the Sahara Desert. Along the way they are deprived of food and water, robbed, tortured and imprisoned. The two boys are separated but eventually reunite in Libya for the harrowing transit across the Mediterranean. Lacking adequate funds, the smugglers offer Seydou a chance to earn his and Moussa’s ticket by agreeing to captain the ship that will transport the migrants. At 16 years of age, he is unlikely to be prosecuted by authorities upon arrival in Italy. I recommend the film and won’t spoil the outcome.
Io Capitano resonated with me, having been involved in the US Navy’s Africa Partnership Station off and on for almost a decade while stationed in Naples, Italy. Starting in 2008 the Africa Partnership Station trained and worked with African navies and coast guards. When I first arrived in Naples in 2010, it was apparent to me that coastal African nations suffered from “sea blindness” – they failed to see the threat posed by piracy on the high seas. So we went to work with the goal of training and equipping African navies and coast guards so they could protect their own sovereign interests at sea. The main tool to accomplish this goal was a series of US-organized exercises with our African partners—Cutlass Express in East Africa; Phoenix Express in North Africa; and Obangame Express in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.
In order to establish the rule of law on the high seas, we enacted the African Maritime Law Enforcement Program and established cooperative links among navies, law enforcement agencies and the court systems of coastal countries on the African continent, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea. After the formulation of the Yaoundé Code of Conduct in 2013, the coastal nations of the Gulf of Guinea set up a maritime system to address problems with piracy; illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; illegal trafficking; and terrorism.
The US relationship with African navies grew stronger every year. In February 2016, the Africans demonstrated the ability to police their own waters with the spectacular take-down and arrest of pirates on Motor Vessel Maximus, a gasoline tanker, which was pirated in the Gulf of Guinea with the crew and cargo held for ransom. The take-down of these pirates, enabled by the Yaoundé Code of Conduct, and facilitated by the navies of Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, was a turning point in the organic defense of the African coast.
By 2017, Europe began to take notice. NATO established a Strategic Direction Hub for the Middle East/North Africa at Joint Forces Command in Naples and I took the Hub to full operational capability in 2018. We manned a liaison office to the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa and assisted it in finding African solutions to African problems. Then COVID hit, Ethiopia and Eritrea entered into yet another conflict and Western assistance was put on hold.
The United States and China remain in competition for influence in Africa. As George Ward indicated in an article in 2021, the United States was ahead at the time in countries where it had more established relationships, such as the naval cooperation cited above. Ward also warns, however, against complacency. The Chinese have been continuously upgrading their bilateral relationships with a large number of African countries while American and other Western influence has waned.
The future of the African continent has taken a back seat to preventing the spread of conflict in Europe and the Middle East. Western ambivalence has led to chaos in Africa. Since 2020, there have been eight successful coups d’état in West and Central Africa to include Gabon, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad (and one failed attempt—Sierra Leone). Despite a $100 million investment in a US base in Niamey Niger, the ruling junta demanded that the United States withdraw its military presence from the country, only to be replaced by Russian forces days later. Sudan is mired in a civil war, exacerbated by drought and famine.
Lawlessness and ungoverned spaces in the Sahel enable a nexus between illegal traffickers and terrorists. What happens in Africa today will affect Europe and the United States tomorrow. As chronicled in Io Capitano, the flow of migrants has already created a crisis in some Western nations.
It is time for the US to restore a strong focus to Africa in general and the Sahel in particular. Western nations must revisit their policies and priorities on the African continent before it is too late. The rule of law must be reestablished in the Sahel region and that requires a multinational strategy, cooperation, and resources. Doing anything less will create an opportunity for exploitation by Russia, China, Iran, and other nefarious actors.
We should remember that 30 years ago al-Qaeda roamed the globe looking for the right place to establish “the base” where it could rule with impunity and prepare the series of attacks leading to 9/11. Sudan was one such place. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, this could be “déjà vu all over again…”
