US fights terrorism in Africa to secure its own interests

Ahmed Adel

There are many indications for the appointment by the US of a new ambassador to Somalia.

The new ambassador is called Richard Riley. He will succeed Larry Andre who served as US ambassador to the African country in the past few years.

Some analysts talk about a change in the American strategy towards Africa, especially after Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took over as the president of Somalia.

This change, they say, also comes after the election of Bola Tinubu as president in Nigeria.

Security, military mechanism

African affairs specialist, Nourhan Sharara, said the US was viewed for long as only seeking its security interests in Africa.

This was especially true, she said, after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

“The US had a security-military mechanism throughout the continent,” Sharara told The Reference.

She referred to remarks made in 2003 by James L. Jones, commander of the Atlantic forces in Europe, in which he showed that the US can no longer stay away from developments in Africa.

Jones noted that the US cannot keep monitoring the situation in the continent from the sea.

“It is time to land in those vast areas of the Sahara that have become a hotbed of crime and arms trafficking,” Sharara quoted the American general as saying then.

Four years later, she said, George Bush Jr. announced the establishment of a unified military command for Africa that includes all African countries, except Egypt.

“This command came to facilitate military cooperation between the US and the rest of the continent,” Sharara said.

She added that the absence of American colonial history in the area helped in this step.

The US, she said, easily gained the trust of Africans, and stepped forward militarily until Barack Obama came to the White House.

Obama, she said, reconsidered the US strategy towards African countries and made a fundamental change in foreign policy.

“This change introduced diplomacy at the expense of military action,” Sharara said.

She added that under former president Donald Trump, US-African relations went through what she described as their ‘worst phase’.

This gave way, she said, to the entry of other superpowers to the continent, such as China and Russia, which played an important role in excluding American presence and dispensing the African continent with the US.

“When he came to power in the US, Joe Biden realized this,” Sharara said.

She added that the American president showed good intentions towards Africa during the African-American summit in Washington at the end of last year.