Our military is making an effort to stem the tide of jihadists flowing out of Africa into Iraq and elsewhere. From CNS News, with thanks to Nicolei.
Nairobi, Kenya - United States Marines and Special Forces are in West Africa for counter-terrorism training with 3,000 African troops amid concerns that terrorists have regrouped in the region.
The U.S. European Command (EUCOM) initiated the joint military training, known as Operation Flintlock, which began last week.
The joint training comes in wake of a recent attack by Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) against a Mauritanian military post. The assault left 15 Mauritanian troops and nine terrorists dead.
The attack is believed to be the first by the al-Qaeda-linked group outside its Algerian homeland.
Intelligence reports say the group and another, the Moroccan Combat Group, are attempting to establish a foothold in the region.
The GSPC is believed to have spent about $7 million, which it obtained in ransom for releasing 17 European tourists kidnapped in 2003, on surface-to-air missiles, heavy machine-guns and mortars.
Reports said the group also bought satellite-positioning equipment to enable it to conceal weapons in buried caches in the Sahara Desert, and later return to access them.
Operation Flintlock aims to help countries in the region reduce weapons smuggling and stop extremists finding havens around the Sahara, EUCOM's Major Holly Silkman told reporters in Senegal...
EUCOM's officials said about 25 percent of the nearly 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq were from Africa...
Black Africa requires more than military aid. It requires American intervention to show that we will not stand for the complete islamizatio of the Sudan, nor Egypt making threats to Ethiopia over the diversion of headwaters of the Nile (Egypt acts as if it, and only it, can use the Nile waters, as if it is an Islamic river).
And Nigeria, which cannot last as a state beyond the next decade or two, must be made safe for the Christians, of whom the world recalls, if it recalls at all, that business of Biafra which will not, for Ibos, go away (google the word "MASSOB" or go to the various Biafran websites). Biafran independence was delcared in 1967; it was a response to massacres of Christians, by Muslims, all over the north and central parts of Nigeria. The constant Muslim aggression, called rightly a "jihad" by the Biafran leader Colonel Ojukwu in his Ahiara Declaration, was aided, of course, by outside Muslim help. One forgets that Egyptian pilots strafed Ibo villages, killing tens of thousands. The Ibo, and other Christians in Nigeria, and even black Christians elsewhere in Africa, are keenly aware that the West did nothing to help Biafra. Only Israel and Ghana recognized Biafra. The entire West, the United States as well as the old colonial powers England and France, did nothing for the Biafrans. They were intent on appeasing Muslims in the north, and indeed, Muslims everywhere. They also seemed swayed by the hollow argument that Nigeria, a completely artificial concoction of Great Britain, including such disparate places as Calabar and Kano, and tribes quite varied in every respect (but to Western colonialists, those differences did not matter -- they were simply blacks, African blacks), and by forcing the Christians to remain within the same pseudo-nation-state as their Muslim oppressors and aggressors, condemned them to permanent persecution and discrimination. Why? The same question could be asked of the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, which for some reason it is believed must be held together, though splitting off the Christians (and perhaps the blacks in Darfur who may be ready to slough off the religion of the Arabs who murder, rape, loot, and enslave them), who also possess the oil of the south, would do wonders not only for the wellbeing of the blacks held in thrall, but also for other black Africans who are not Muslim, and who are waiting for some help, real help, to show that the West will not repeat its folly of indifference and ill-thought out (if "thought-out" as an adjective can be applied at all) strategy during the Biafra War.
Biafra will come back. And it will include not only Ibo, but a good many people from Yorubaland, and many of the smaller tribes and peoples, who will not put up with the Muslim nonsense that has led to a reappearance and spread of polio in West Africa, has diverted funds from the Ibo (still treated, in the south, as if the Biafran War had just ended -- that is, roughly), and has offered the spectacle of such things as the lady journalist who had to flee for her life for writing, during the Miss Universe contest (which was moved out of Nigeria after Muslim outrage and threats), that Muhammad would have approved for he had an eye for the ladies. That could not be denied, but she had to flee for her life nonetheless.
Military training is the least of what black Christians in Africa should be offered. It should be made clear that the Christians will be supported, and Islam opposed. The Saudis are pouring money into Da'wa, into mosques and madrasas everywhere. They must be opposed and checked.
For if one wishes the countries and peoples of Africa well, what is the first thing you would wish for them? You would wish them not to be Muslim, not to embrace the habit of submission, not to embrace something that discourages artistic expression, or music, or free and skeptical inquiry. You would not wish upon them a doctrine that encourages an attitude of inshallah-fatalism. You would not wish upon them a doctrine that tells converts they must regard their non-Islamic identities as unworthy, as deserving to be cast off, as they take on psuedo-Arabic names and identities.
And the United States, and the rest of the Infidel world, has a stake in checking the spread of Islam, and indeed reversing it. The spread of Christianity in Africa will be easier than in Europe itself. And if the American government cannot pay for missionaries, then there are few things better for the wellbeing not only of Africans, but of the Western and entire Infidel world, than encouraging missionary activity to counter the sustained campagin, by an army of Muslim missionaries who will stop at nothing to inveigle others into "accepting" Islam, which is to say -- in enrolling in the Army of Islam, from which, of course, they cannot get out.
Hugh - Thank you for putting very difficult to find information into context. Once again we salute you.