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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| US training initative in Niger has supporters and skeptics |
| 2004-09-22 |
| Two dozen U.S. Marines are currently giving anti-terrorism training to Niger's army to protect the West African nation's large desert areas from becoming transit areas for terrorists. Niger is the last stop for the four-country, $8 million U.S. exercises, previously held in Mali, Mauritania and Chad. Soldiers seem to welcome the training, but as VOA's Nico Colombant reports from the Tondibiah military camp in southern Niger, ordinary citizens and human rights activists appear more skeptical. Marines bark orders, as teams of two Nigerien soldiers fire machine guns at the sniper range of the Tondibiah camp on the outskirts of Niamey. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 --That's barely enough time to make the Niger troops' skills 'adequate' and if they don't keep it up, their skills will deteriorate. Then again, any move toward improvement is good.-- Adequate by US or African standards? |
| Posted by: Anonymous2u 2004-09-22 11:36:33 PM |
| #3 It was a good article, but I had to smile at the "too strong" observation. The training was to last seven weeks. That's barely enough time to make the Niger troops' skills 'adequate' and if they don't keep it up, their skills will deteriorate. Then again, any move toward improvement is good. As for the intelligence portion, I suspect that'll be done as well, but not made public. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-09-22 9:43:53 PM |
| #2 One shopkeeper, Maman Iro, says he fears that if Niger’s military becomes too strong, it might unleash a crackdown on Islamist activists like himself. Which is exactly what I want to happen. |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2004-09-22 11:43:05 AM |
| #1 Interesting article. "Some suggested more intelligence was needed instead." That's very perceptive of them. Although I always wonder about "some". What a cop out word. "If there are terrorists in the north of Niger Republic, the answer could not be the violence, could not be the weapons, but the soft power, the negotiations, the dialogue, that’s the best way," The guy quoted doesn't quite understand what's really behind "soft power". Sounds like the French concept. Not very useful in the real world. |
| Posted by: beer_me 2004-09-22 3:56:39 AM |