{"id":18874,"date":"2013-02-03T11:27:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T16:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=18874"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:14:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:14:30","slug":"us-poised-to-increase-involvement-in-mali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/03\/us-poised-to-increase-involvement-in-mali\/","title":{"rendered":"US poised to increase involvement in Mali"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2013\/02\/03\/the-ominous-us-presence-in-northwest-afr\" target=\"_blank\">Sheldon Richman<\/a> explains why it could be a problem if the American presence in northwestern Africa is further expanded:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ominously but unsurprisingly, the U.S. military\u2019s Africa Command wants to increase its footprint in northwest Africa. What began as low-profile assistance to France\u2019s campaign to wrest control of northern Mali (a former colony) from unwelcome jihadists could end up becoming something more.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Washington Post<\/em> reports that Africom \u201cis preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa [probably Niger] so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.\u201d But before that word \u201csurveillance\u201d can bring a sigh of relief, the <em>Post<\/em> adds, \u201cFor now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile Bloomberg, citing American military officials, says Niger and the U.S. government have \u201creached an agreement allowing American military personnel to be stationed in the West African country and enabling them to take on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali, according to U.S. officials.\u2026 No decision has been made to station the drones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The irony is that surveillance drones could become the reason the \u201cthreat worsens,\u201d and could provide the pretext to use drones armed with Hellfire missiles \u2014 the same kind used over 400 times in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, killing hundreds of noncombatants. Moving from surveillance to lethal strikes would be a boost for jihadist recruiters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheldon Richman explains why it could be a problem if the American presence in northwestern Africa is further expanded: Ominously but unsurprisingly, the U.S. military\u2019s Africa Command wants to increase its footprint in northwest Africa. What began as low-profile assistance to France\u2019s campaign to wrest control of northern Mali (a former colony) from unwelcome jihadists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,1117,5,11,13],"tags":[387,47,832,880,149],"class_list":["post-18874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-france","category-military","category-religion","category-usa","tag-alqaeda","tag-islam","tag-mali","tag-niger","tag-uav"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Uq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18875,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18874\/revisions\/18875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}