NJ Today
by Staff Report
UN troops carry on a stretcher the body of one of the seven UN peacekeepers from Niger who were killed in an ambush, at the airport in Abidjan.
The Islamic militants came on motorcycles toting rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, killing four American service members after shattering the windows of the unarmored US trucks but Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it is not appropriate for the media to second-guess military leaders who botched the operation.
Pentagon sources gave conflicting reports of what happened in the remote corner of Niger, where the Americans and their local counterparts had been meeting with community leaders.
With Americans are asking who the attackers were and how did they know US soldiers would be there that day, many citizens are unclear about why forces are in Africa and what is hoped to be achieved by continued involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting eight strikes consisting of 13 engagements.
The ambush of US troops erupted in controversy after President Donald Trump made insensitive remarks to the grieving wife of one of the slain soldiers after he failed to remark on the incident for 12 days and then criticized the way his predecessors consoled survivors of military casualties.
Karen Meredith, the Gold Star and Military Families coordinator for VoteVets, who lost her son, First Lt. Ken Ballard, in Iraq, said Trump’s “actions and words on this entire matter of the fallen in Niger is disgraceful, and unbecoming of a President of the United States and commander in chief.”
“This is not about you, it is about them. It is about all of us who lost our loved ones, in war,” Meredith added. “For once in your life, please stop making everything about you. For once in your life, at least pretend to know what empathy is.”
Republican Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he is asking for information about the Niger attack and remarked that the Trump administration is not being up front about what happened.
The Niger attack appears to be the work of the Islamic State of the Sahel, a splinter group of extremists loyal to the Islamic State group who are based just across the border in Mali, in the vast Sahel region bordering the Sahara Desert. It is led by Adnan Abu Walid who built ties with various extremists before forming his own group.
Some officials believe Walid’s militants are also holding an American, Jeffery Woodke, who was abducted in Niger a year ago. A rebel leader approached by Niger authorities to conduct negotiations for his release confirmed that Walid’s group is holding Woodke, who had spent 25 years as an aid worker in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Walid’s group is among those suspected of the attack that killed the four American soldiers.
“I just say we honor the troops, every one of them,” Mattis said. “Every life is critical. These young people look past the hot political rhetoric and sign up, volunteer for the armed forces. They’re part of the one percent that are willing to do so in our country, these young men and women.”
Mattis said the United States has been working to improve the combat capabilities and capacities of nations in West Africa to defeat the terrorist threats represented by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other groups who “foment instability and murder and mayhem.”
The United States has about 1,000 troops in the region who work with about 4,000 French service members.
“We’re providing refueling support, intelligence support, surveillance support,” Mattis said. “But also we have troops on the ground. Their job is to help the people in the region learn how to defend themselves. We call it foreign internal defense training, and we actually do these kinds of missions by, with and through our allies.”
Mattis said the soldiers’ deaths are under investigation, which is standard for the Pentagon whenever there is a death or serious accident.
“We in the Department of Defense like to know what we’re talking about before we talk, and so we do not have all the accurate information yet,” Mattis said. “We will release it as rapidly as we get it because we are very proud of our troops.”
“At the same time, war is war, and these terrorists are conducting war on innocent people of all religions,” Mattis said. “They’re conducting war on innocent people who have no way to defend themselves. And I would just tell you that in this specific case, contact was considered unlikely.”
The possibility of contact with the enemy is a consideration when training allied troops, the secretary said.
“It is often dangerous; we recognize that,” Mattis said. “We have been unapologetic about standing by our allies and certainly, the French, with 4,000 troops [in the region], have been engaged down there for years and have lost many, many more troops.”
Mattis claimed he only recommends placing troops in dangerous situations if it is in the best interests of the American people, but his remarks ignore a long history of falsehoods, deceptions and cover ups that are fodder for journalists.
Mattis told reporters last week, “This was a hard fight, this was a very tough fight,” but he provided little detail about what several US officials described as a scene of confusion during an unexpected firefight.
“One point I would make having seen some of the news reports — the U.S. military does not leave its troops behind, and I would just ask that you not question the actions of the troops who were caught in the firefight and [not] question whether or not they did everything they could in order to bring everyone out at once,” the secretary said. “And I would also ask — don’t confuse your need for accurate information with our ability to provide it immediately in a situation like this.”
Details related to the deadly military breakdown remain murky two weeks after the incident in Niger as investigators work to determine precisely what happened.
In the deadliest combat mission of Trump’s presidency to date, the Defense Department has identified all four service members killed in the ambush that occurred near the Niger-Mali border by up to 50 fighters from ISIS in the Greater Sahara. Sgt. La David Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright died as a result of the October 4 ambush in Niger, which highlights how extremist groups have shifted and rebranded since a 2013 French-led military operation ousted them from power in northern Mali.
Those extremists lost Mali’s northern cities but regrouped in the desert, including the man suspected of ordering the attack on the Americans.
Walid, 38, also known in some circles as Adnan al-Sahrawi, descends from the Sahrawi people, who are found across southern Morocco, Mauritania and parts of Algeria. He has long been active with Islamic extremists in Mali, at one time serving as the spokesman of the Mali-based group known as MUJAO that controlled the major northern town of Gao during the jihadist occupation in 2012.
That group was loyal to the regional al-Qaida affiliate. But Walid parted ways and in October 2016 a video circulated on the internet in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
In the year since then he has called for attacks on foreign tourists in Morocco and the UN mission in Western Sahara, according to audio messages released in his name. It is not clear if Walid is receiving financial help from the Islamic State group or if the links are purely ideological.
Walid’s following now includes numerous members of the Peul ethnic group in the Mali-Niger border areas, who are active in the area near where the attack on the US soldiers took place. Before the attack on the US troops in Niger, Walid’s followers are believed to have staged a series of bloody attacks on military installations in Niger.
In February, they were blamed for an assault in Tliwa where a dozen Niger soldiers were slain.
Walid’s Islamic State in the Sahel does not yet pose a threat as great as the al-Qaida militants in the region though that could shift with time, said Ibrahim Maiga with the Institute for Security Studies in Bamako. Walid clearly appears to have learned from his former colleagues on how to infiltrate and influence locals, he said.
“He has succeeded … in creating links with local people despite the fact that he is a stranger to the area,” he said.
The growing threat posed by Walid’s group comes as the international community is already facing an escalation in violence across the Sahel. A UN report warned that the security situation in the Sahel is in “a continuous downward spiral.”
For several years American and French forces have provided training and support to the militaries of Mali, Niger and other vulnerable countries in this corner of Africa where Islamic extremism has become increasingly entrenched over the past decade. Now the UN is urging the international community to finance a 5,000-strong regional force, with the head of the UN saying “the stability of the entire region, and beyond, is in jeopardy.”
The 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Mali has become the most dangerous in the world as Islamic militants routinely attack UN convoys across the north.
And the future of the regional security force known as the G5 Sahel Multinational Force – made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – appears to be in jeopardy.
France, the former colonizer which has a 5,000-strong military operation to help stabilize the region – has been a major financial backer. Funding, though, has come up short.
The Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution in June welcoming the deployment, but at U.S. insistence it did not include any possibility of U.N. financing for the force. So far only one-quarter of the needed funds have been raised, throwing into doubt whether the regional forces will begin operations this month as scheduled.
Maiga, the Malian security expert, said winning the battle against extremism will not be only a question of firepower. If it were a conventional conflict with two armies respecting roughly the same rules, the G5 would come out stronger.
Jihadist groups, though, are infiltrating the population, exploiting the absence of government in some of these remote areas. That is how Walid’s group may have learned about the visit of the US troops to local communities. Within the communities where troops are attacked, someone is tipping off the extremists.
“The outcome of this battle will not depend solely on the size of the troops,” he said, “but also on the ability of states to regain the confidence of the population.”
