Special Forces exercise trains African armies

Special Forces exercise trains African armies
By Alfred de Montesquiou - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday May 11, 2010 12:31:31 EDT

KATI, Mali — A U.S. Special Forces instructor leans toward a steering wheel, showing some 50 Malian soldiers gathered around an army pickup how a passenger should take control of a car if the driver is killed in an ambush.

The elite Malian troops look on, perplexed.

“But what can we do if we don’t know how to drive?” asks Sgt. Amadou, echoing the concern of many of his colleagues.

There are a few laughs, but the Malians are not joking; most of their unit does not know how. The lack of ability to perform such a basic task illustrates part of the huge knowledge gap the U.S. military is seeking to bridge in Africa as it trains local armies to better face the region’s mounting threats.

The exercises Monday in Kita, a shooting range in the savanna near Mali’s capital, Bamako, are but one leg of an ambitious program led by the Pentagon’s Africa Command, or AfriCom, to provide top-tier training in six African countries during three weeks this month. Over 200 of the Army’s Green Berets and members of the Marines Corps Forces Special Operations Command have deployed in Mali, Mauritania and other countries that line the Sahara Desert’s southern rims.



unhappycamper comment: The regions mounting threats include South-American type death squads. Guess who trains them?

..yet we have to lay off teachers and cut Social Security?