Over the past several years, the U.S. government has been quietly boosting military assistance to Mali, an impoverished, landlocked state in western Africa. It's all about location: Mali's northern border is deep inside the Sahara, and the training and equipment is supposed to help Mali's military police its porous desert frontier.
The latest addition to Mali's arsenal: 37 brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser pickups, plus communication equipment, courtesy of the U.S. government. According to a news release from U.S. Africa Command, the new gear will help Malian troops "move, transport and communicate across wide expanses of open desert."
In 2005, the U.S. government announced the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership, an ambitious program to help Mali and its neighbors fight al-Qaeda franchises such as the Algerian al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM (previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat). The partnership was essentially a re-branding and expansion of an earlier border security program and counterterrorism program called the Pan-Sahel Initiative.
Mali has been a major beneficiary. In addition to some equipment, Army Special Forces teams have regularly deployed to the country to run training courses for the Malian military. Back in late 2007, I was able to watch a team from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, as they conducted a five-week course of instruction to a group of Malian soldiers. The Malian soldiers were part of a motorized infantry company that patrolled the country's 5th Military Region, a vast desert expanse that borders Algeria and Mauritania.
Providing trucks, however, isn't enough. As I watched a drill with Malian soldiers leaping out of the back of a pickup, one of the instructors noted dryly that it was a pretty big deal for the troops to have enough gas to spare for a training exercise.
[PHOTO: Nathan Hodge]
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