Time has a piece today advancing the long-developing story of the Pentagon's plans for an African Command:
In what may be the most glaring admission that the U.S. military needs to dramatically readjust how it will fight what it calls 'the long war,' the Pentagon is expected to announce soon that it will create an entirely new military command to focus on the globe's most neglected region: Africa.
Pentagon sources say that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is close to approving plans for an African Command, which would establish a military organization to singlehandedly deal with the entire continent of Africa. It would be a sign of a significant strategic shift in Administration policy, reflecting the need to put more emphasis on proactive, preventative measures rather than maintaining a defensive posture designed for the Cold War.
That "significant strategic shift" is well under way. In 2002, the Pentagon set up the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa to support the war on terrorism in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen, and it has long been an open secret that some kind of new command structure was coming to deal with Africa.
Kevin Maurer of the Fayetteville Observer has been on this story, too, writing earlier in August that "Senior special operations officers believe that the creation of an African Command would alleviate the cumbersome bureaucracy that is slowing progress on the Horn of Africa."
-- Dan Dupont
