No longer BFF?
A reuters report this week sheds some light (inadvertently) on the latest projection of US power in the Sahel: via the famous (TSCTI) Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative. You can read a good summary of the initiative at global security. The Reuters report explains that US marines stationed in Mauritania who were engaged in training Mauritanian military units have been pulled out of Mauritania since the Aug. 6th coup which strikes me as perhaps one of the sillier expressions of US dissatisfaction with the coup to date and perhaps indicative of a broader problem with the carrot and stick approach to the junta.
While the coup was certainly not something that the US or EU was ever going to look favorably on– the pullout of troops engaged in training operations makes little sense to me. Certainly the US has/and is continuing to do business with non-democratic leaders in the Sahel region and you would think that more pragmatic heads would have prevailed. Maybe the pullout was partially to demonstrate irritations with General Abdel Aziz’s blatant political manipulation of the terrorist issue but even so, given the importance to the US and other Sahel countries of winning the battle against AQIM and the significant obstacles they face in the region, pulling back these training troops makes little sense– especially if the diplomatic wrangling with General Abdel Aziz is protracted and a resolution takes months.
Part of the problem of course with drawing conclusions from the Mauritanian case is that it is so low on the US radar and because there is little strategic interest in Mauritania from the US perspective EXCEPT for the TSCTI that the US doesn’t have many sticks to hold over Mauritania other than the TSCTI except for sanctions. Moor Next Door (as usual) has a great roundup on Mauritanian happenings from last month which indicates that while sanctions are being threatened they do not appear emminent. Currently the only sanctions are on travel to the US by certain unnamed members of the junta according to the BBC.
This seems like one of those trainwrecks of policy where military and political objectives collide and coherence goes out the window. While I agree that the coup was less than ideal most observors note that there seem to be no signficant domestic push for reinstating the disposed regime and while principals are great (if a little dubious coming from the Bush administration) I don’t know that losing ground in the fight against AQIM is worth taking a stand on democratic elected officials in Mauritania of all places. Although Mauritania is way, way down the list of US diplomatic priorities at the moment (realistically somewhere below that critical study of whether Madonna’s divorce with Guy Ritchie is an auspicious omen for trans-atlantic relations) but these kinds of collisions of politics and security objectives cry out for a slightly more realpolitik unity of policy and strategy.
As almost everyone acknowledges projecting military strength in the Sahara is tough. The US is going to have a hard time building the capacity and abilities of local military units as it is– starting and stopping the process as if it were an infrastructure project or without carefully considering the broader strategic goals at play seems to me to be very shortsighted.
As always we at PF welcome comments from other Mauritania watchers out there or folks who have information on the latest developments.
1 Comment
February 28, 2009 at 10:46 pm
[...] For the record, since the 2008 coup d’Etat the US have officially withdrawn their military advisers from Mauritania. [...]