Number of African insurgents in Iraq increasing

Apparently 25% of captured foreign fighters in Iraq have been from African countries.
That's really surprising as foreign figters from Africa are barely mentioned in the news.

Houston Chronicle

About 25 percent of the nearly 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from Africa, according to the military's European Command, which oversees military operations in most of the African continent.

Some recruits have joined the network of the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has carried out many of the sophisticated attacks and suicide car-bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in the past several weeks, the officials said.

A small vanguard of veterans is returning home to countries like Morocco and Algeria, poised to use skills they learned on the battlefield in Iraq, from bomb making to battle planning, against their native governments, the officials said.

To combat the immediate threat and to prevent terrorists from gaining new havens in the region, the Bush administration is expanding a small military training program that has operated on a shoestring the past two years into a more ambitious program spending $100 million annually to provide airport security, money-handling controls, school construction and other assistance to nine African nations.

As part of this broader strategy, the United States on Monday began training exercises in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria.

Four other countries — Senegal, Nigeria, Tunisia and Morocco — will also participate by the time the exercises finish in two weeks. About 1,000 U.S. troops will train 3,000 African soldiers in marksmanship, border patrol and airborne operations.

The US has been conducting training programs in Africa for quite a while now through programs like Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) now known as Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative(TSCTI). It looks like it's getting stepped up a notch now.

Perhaps they are being used for black ops?

I have a friend from one of those African nations mentioned who has been scooped up for special forces missions in our military. It's very hush hush.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Perhaps they are being used for black ops?

First I thought you were posting a very sarcastic Joke:

African Insurgents = BLACK ops?

Originally posted by Souljah

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Perhaps they are being used for black ops?

First I thought you were posting a very sarcastic Joke:

African Insurgents = BLACK ops?

HA HA! I see... no man, no pun intended.

May I suggest to take a look at my post here? The whole thread is actually related to this somehow.

originally posted by Hellmutt in this post

Apparently an alarming and growing number of jihadis in Iraq come from the sub-Saharan African countries. This pipeline of jihadis has been open for years but the reports has been downplayed until now. The New York Times has a piece on this today. Al Qaeda and Charles Taylor (and Viktor Bout) are among the actors on this scene.

Douglas Farah: An Important Story From Africa

June 10, 2005

The New York Times today has a nice piece on the growing number of sub-Saharan Africans now turning up as jihadis in Iraq. What is truely alarming is that about one quarter of the 400 foreign fighters captured are from that region. While the pipeline has been known to be open for the past couple of years, drawing militants from Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania, the intelligence community often dismissed or downplayed the information in my discussions with them. The belief was that EUCOM, the military command responsible for Africa, was hyping its reporting in order to have a terrorist threat in its theater of operations, thereby justifying increased military spending.

That sort of small minded thinking kept more attention from being focused on what is now being recognized as not only a problem but a potentially-grave threat in Iraq as well as West Africa.It is also the same small-minded thinking that led the FBI to dismiss out of hand public statements by Gen. Charles Wald, EUCOM's deputy commander, supporting my findings and more on al Qaeda's presence in West Africa and its use of diamonds. Now, perhaps, EUCOM has won at least a partial victory and seem to be willing to become more publicly engaged in the very necessary debate over how to deal with the appeal of radical Islam in failed states. These collapsing states offer very little to their own citizens, and are often criminal enterprises, on large or small scales. Obviously, Charles Taylor represented the upper limit of the scale, and Mali and Senegal are rare exceptions of at least efforts in good governance. But if Muslim communities can receive charity help from Salafists, and a chance to wage holy jihad against the infidel, why wouldn't they? As Maj. Gen. Richard P. Zahner, EUCOM's intelligence chief, told the Times, "Al Qaeda is assessing local groups for franchising opportunities. I am quite concerned about that."

Click the link to read the full article...