America in Africa. Project or fear?

(Giampiero Venturi)
10/15/15

http://www.difesaonline.it/geopolitica/tempi-venturi/lamerica-africa-progetto-o-paura

On October 14, President Obama informed Congress that 300 American soldiers have begun to displace into Cameroon. The deployment of forces would be within the framework of operations to combat international terrorism and specifically Boko Haram, increasingly present on the territory of the African state.
Forces "equipped with necessary weapons to ensure its security" are intended mostly to aerial reconnaissance and fall into an agreement with the government in Yaounde, transition to the White House seemed to be especially careful. According to statements by presidential forces will remain until it is deemed necessary.
By itself it would fall within the list of military events not very relevant. The political sense of the move to Obama, whose administration stands for the relationship is not always clear to the Pentagon and for obvious difficulties in foreign policy, it is actually significant.
What happens in Africa?
We are used to the '90s and the resurgence of the front "Atlantic-African". The main acts of violence around which revolved the instability in West Africa over the last twenty years are basically three: the civil war in Sierra Leone ended after about 10 years at the beginning of the millennium; the civil war in Liberia, stabilized (according to African standards) in 2005; the crisis in Ivory Coast that since 2000 has forced even France to intervene directly with a simultaneous use of almost 5,000 soldiers.
The picturesque brutality of President Jammeh of the Gambia (would cure AIDS with an ointment but only on Thursday ...), the instability of Senegal linked to the conflict in Casamance, the endless list of coups in Guinea Bissau, served as the boundary to a geopolitical theater that we are resigned to consider fragile.

Subject to the criticality of the endemic state systems in this part of Africa, there is still a worsening of the balance in an area so far immune to major upheavals. We speak not only of signs of crumbling institutions in relatively stable nations like Burkina Faso (we monitored the events of September in Ouagadougou).
We refer to real conflicts. To the crisis in Mali followed by Defense Online, you are appended a series of political turmoil that saw progression involve countries geographically more central continent. Armed clashes in the Central African Republic from around 2015 to be considered part of a real civil war with the aggravation of the religious clash in the background. If we consider that on October 11, a triple bombing of Boko Haram in Baga Sola, Chad has 41 dead and 50 injured, then we can evaluate the whole Sahel virtually in disarray.
The explosions occurred in Chad are not new but mark a qualitative leap decided the crisis in Nigeria and the Boko Haram phenomenon. The use of suicide bombers to the fish market and in a neighborhood inhabited by refugees escaped the Nigerian civil war, part of a program of destabilization aimed at achieving two clear objectives: to hit Nigerians fled across borders, giving the idea of ​​the omnipotence jihad; enlarge definitively the stain of terror even to Chad, a country so far only tangential to the Nigerian crisis.
The move to send American troops in Cameroon can be read so within a framework of general destabilization of the area or is an isolated incident?
The declaration of alliance of Boko Haram to Isis, has ideological value or is a trigger for broader imbalances?
The overlap of the influences of France and the US in the African arena is overt, but it was not always handled with serenity. If Paris by its direct interests in the former colonies (including Chad), what happens in reality where the French presence is weaker?
The Cameroon case is emblematic. The northwest is English-speaking and predominantly Muslim. The enlargement of the jihad will lead a US military involvement wider?
Given the nebulous behavior of local governments (Boko Haram uses cluster bombs taken from the arsenals of the Nigerian Army, whose transparency has not always made light), the geopolitical situation is constantly changing and dramatic deterioration.
The United States, featured heavily in economic terms, can risk a military escalation or simply a soft strategy in the Presidential election of 2016.
Africa is also made of quicksand. We'll see.

(Photo: Armée de l'air du Cameroun)

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IZAKOVIC