In West Africa, Violence Spreads as U.S. Trims Military Footprint by Michael M. Phillips and Joe Parkinson – Wall Street Journal
U.S.-led special-operations exercises that got under way in the scorched scrublands of Burkina Faso last week look much like they have for the past 15 years, with some 2,000 commandos from 32 African, Western and allied countries swapping notes on their martial craft.
American Green Berets coached Senegalese special forces on their favorite techniques for breaking down doors and conducting room-to-room searches. An Austrian soldier trained headquarters troops from Burkina Faso on the mechanics of running offensives. Belgian and Nigerien soldiers road-tripped together for 24 hours across barren landscape to reach a camp in Ouagadougou, the capital city.
But this year’s event has taken on a new sense of urgency in a region facing an onslaught of Islamist militancy, the real world ablaze just outside the schoolyard.
With remarkable speed, several countries in the Sahel, the semiarid belt south of the Sahara, have found themselves infested with violent extremist groups, bolstered by seasoned jihadists returning from Iraq and Syria…