NIGERIA has welcomed a US decision to send up to 300 military personnel to Cameroon to help the regional fight against Boko Haram, despite having itself requested more direct help from Washington.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu on Thursday said the deployment was a “welcome development” while the military said it demonstrated cooperation was needed against the Islamists.

Washington last year provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance expertise to Nigeria in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from their school.

The assistance included drones and spy planes as well as up to 80 military personnel sent to Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. In 2013, the US set up a drone base in neighbouring Niger.

But the US is not only involved in fighting back Boko Haram on the continent. In recent years, the US has  quietly ramped up its military presence across Africa, even if it officially insists its footprint on the continent is light. The decisive point seems to have been the election of  President Barack Obama in 2008.

For years, the United States Africa Command (known by the acronym AFRICOM) has downplayed the size and scope of its missions on the continent, and without large battalions of actual boots on the ground, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, you’d be forgiven for missing its unfolding.

“New spice route”

But behind closed doors, US military officials are already starting to see Africa as the new battleground for fighting extremism, and have begun to roll out a flurry of logistical infrastructure and personnel from West to East – colloquially called the “ new spice route” – and roughly tracing the belt of volatility on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert; the deployment to Cameroon is just the latest of many.

These support all the activities that American troops are  currently involved in Africa: airstrikes targeting suspected militants, night raids aimed at seizing terror suspects, airlifts of French and African troops onto the battlefields, and evacuation operations in conflict zones.

Officially, the US has only one permanent base in Africa,  Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, headquarters of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Concrete figures on the number of troops stationed there are sketchy, but  various reports put it anything between 3,500 and 4,500 soldiers. 

It provides a vital base for US Special Forces, fighter planes and helicopters, as well as serving as a base for drone operations into Somalia and Yemen, and maritime surveillance in the Indian Ocean.

A US army observes a counter—IED training in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo/US Army Africa/Flickr).

But the US has numerous other “temporary” bases across the continent, and though on their own they seem small, together they are  sweeping and expansive, forming a seemingly endless string of engagements, projects and operations.

There are drone ports in the Indian Ocean island of Seychelles, off the eastern coast of Africa, as well as in Ethiopia, in the southern region of Arba Minch, that provide support for flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions....CONTINUES