The challenges in the various areas of the African continent cannot be met or solved by one country alone, nor can solutions be imposed from without, and that is at the heart of the strategy of U.S. Africa Command, said Marine Corps Gen. Michael E. Langley today.
Langley, in Kenya, spoke with reporters via a teleconference call about his travels through the Sahel region and consultations with African leaders from Somalia to Niger to West Africa.
Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command, said the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Niger was "executed without incident." U.S. military planners are working with State Department officials to look at the way forward in the region. Security cooperation in the Sahel is necessary, the general said. The terrorist threat in the region is persistent, and the countries in the region need assistance to maintain security and stability for their people.
"We're going to stay engaged with them on conversations," the general said. "In the interim, … we are pivoting to some degree of like-minded countries with democratic values and shared objectives and shared challenges across coastal West Africa. We're in talks with Cote d'Ivoire and in talks with Ghana and Benin as well, as we start to reset and recalibrate some of our assets."
This effort — like all efforts by the command — is guided by the principle that "all our activities and our partnership-centric type approach should be African-led and U.S.-enabled," Langley said. "We follow those first principles in any engagement with African militaries across the continent."
The command will continue to speak with partners on all security issues including efforts to combat violent extremist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. Overlaying all this is the concern throughout the continent on what effects climate change will have. Climate change could worsen mass migrations, tribal conflicts and cause conflicts over scarce resources. "All of those are addressed with our African partners first, and then I listen, learn and then we come up with a collaborative solution set to be able to execute and go forward," Langley said.
Earlier this year, Langley observed Exercise African Lion in Morocco which had service members from 20 countries participating. He also visited Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. "This is all about unity of effort — because we know that on the global stage, there's other pressures across the Maghreb and a possibility of a startup again of violent extremist organizations," he said. "Each one of those countries had different types of challenges. I was there to listen. I was there to learn and understand their approach for counterterrorism."
Langley also addressed the situation in Somalia. He has consulted often with Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to address some of the challenges that he has and to discuss the way forward in his campaign against the al-Shabaab terror group.
Langley works with the African Union coalition that is helping Somalia. That means helping the African Union's new Support and Stabilization Mission — also called AUSSOM — get established. The general said he is optimistic that the Somali military will be able to liberate the al-Shabaab held areas and provide the stability those areas need to prosper.
Langley noted that there is Russian and Chinese influence on the continent. He said the Russian influence has been destabilizing from the Sahel to the Central African Republic. Both Russia and China have been putting out disinformation and misinformation throughout the continent, he said.
"Since 2022 when I took command, a lot of my efforts to be able to come in alignment with some of these countries on how we're going to approach the challenges, has been distorted through misinformation or disinformation — untruths of what [Africom] was trying to do with a particular country," he said. "Misinformation and disinformation [have] stoked a lot of instability across civil society and across some of these militaries."