Angry Planet - Here’s why China built that military base in Africa

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

China’s military made international news in early July when it announced the opening of its first overseas military base in Djibouti, a small country in the Horn of Africa. China says the base is simply a logistics building, poised to protect the country’s interests in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. It’s an interesting location for a military instillation considering the American military base just four miles away. This week on War College, retired Green Beret Derek Gannon walks us through China’s interests in East Africa and why so many American Special Operations forces are stationed there. According to Gannon, Africa will be the next stage in the global proxy conflict between superpowers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. While the United States has been paying attention to the Middle East, China just went into Africa and said, hey, here's $30 billion. we would like to put a pipeline from Juba all the way across to Mombasa. Is that okay with you guys?

We don't care how you spend it. We don't give any issues to anyone about how they spent their money. We just don't want you to attack our pipeline. And of course, these pseudo-dictators and even dictators themselves take this money, spend it how they want. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. These are the places we think of when we think of America's global war on terror. But the war is global. It's right there in the title.

And Africa is increasingly one of the fronts in that war, but it's one that we don't know much about. Here to help us understand that war is retired Green Beret, Derek Gannon. Gannon is a veteran of the global war on terror and a journalist who covers the war in the Horn of Africa for soft rep. Derek, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right, so I want to start off with a new story from last October. Green Beret Sergeant, First Class Zachary Bannister, died while on duty in Kenya. And though his death was not combat related, it's still a special operations forces soldier deployed in Kenya.

So my first question for you, Derek, is why was there a green beret in Kenya? Well, that's the first thing a lot of people have asked me, and there's been a lot of speculation that there's a shadow war of sorts going on in Africa itself. And I won't prove or disprove that. But basically what Sergeant First Class Bannister was doing in Kenya is that U.S. Army Special Forces or Green Berets, doing in Africa is what they do is they do a lot of training operations with host nation, military. And what they do is they go into these locations where they have some issues with military structure, insurgency, Islamic, or otherwise. And they're looking to clean some sort of professional military experience from. from the U.S. military's professional soldiers, which usually are the Green Berets, who are basically trainers that show up and they can train host nation forces into a better

fighting force. Their missions are usually triple-fold. They go in and they usually set up training facilities almost from basic to advanced marksmanship, patrolling, tactics, logistics, command structure to kind of assist nations into what I basically was saying was kind of develop a more robust professional military. What that team was doing there, I don't know the exact mission, but I have conducted these operations before where you just go in and you are assigned to a host nation major command, and then you basically are parsed out to their individual infantry units to teach them,

basic, to intermediate to advance infantry skills and tactics, so then they can utilize them themselves and conduct, plan, and execute operations completely alone and without U.S. Green Berets or U.S. forces on the ground. All right. And what's the American military presence there like? Where are the bases other than special operations forces? Who else is there? Major military bases that I can believe, that everyone can really know about is that we have

a naval expeditionary force camp or, you know, expeditionary base. which is based in Djibouti and it's been there for quite some time since the late 90s early 2000s that's pretty much the most overtly major installation that's there there's also africom bases outposts if you will in nairobi and these are just liaison positions for the larger major command of u.s africom or african african but there as far as bases as far as permanent installations. I don't know of any permanent installation that the U.S. military has in the horn itself or in Africa itself. They do have a lot of installations on top of host nation bases that they use in conjunction with training and other operations. But as far as the most overt one that most people can, you know, I guess I should use the word Google. Google is the camp lemonade in Djibouti. Right, and that one was in the news yesterday as of our recording because China has opened a military base, I think just four miles down the road from that one in Djibouti, correct? Yeah, I've heard conflicting reports, but yeah, it's basically right across the bay.

It's right across the Gulf that feeds into the Gulf of Aden, which is a major international seaway for the permanent fiber of most of the West and to include China. That's actually an interesting development. The government of Djibouti, I want to say in 2015, 2016 started, I won't say clandestine negotiations, but China came to the Djiboutian government and basically started saying, hey, this is what we can provide for it. We'd really like to put a base right smack dab right here. And their direct, and this base is, now that it's built, it was finished in late, I want to say late 2016, possibly early 2017, about February, March of 2017, because the, The Chinese can build things really rather rapidly.

The negotiation process was relatively short. The Chinese offered the government of Djibouti about $12 billion over 10 years in infrastructural improvement. It was a huge sweet honeypot for the government of Djibouti to take because Djibouti, the country of Djibouti, they don't really have anything of natural resources or anything that they can commodify or trade. So what they actually do commodify is their location in relation to the Middle East and the North African hot spots, if you will.

I mean, you can see the furthest point of Yemen from the furthest point of Japan. I mean, you could see right across that straight into the, you know, the AQAP or the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is kind of somewhat Yemenis stronghold, which is why the United States and the United Kingdom, to include the French and the Italians, they all have had installations in Djibouti, specifically in and around Camp Lemineer, which is one of the major bases there, which is rather interesting that Camp Lemonier is there. And this is why the United States is really not happy with the government of Djibouti and China. Now, China's position on this is that this base of which they spend $12 million a year for a 10-year lease on this plot of land is literally right across.

If you want to, you know, it's like a Hatfield-McCoy distance from each other from the United States base of Camp Lemoenere. They can see one another. It's directly across from one another. So you can see where the U.S. would have some serious issues because of who and what is housed in Camp Lemanir and what the operations are doing, what kind of operations they have in Camp Lemanir. Well, what are those operations in Camp Lemanier? So the history of Camp Lemanier has been there for a while. it was a French Foreign Legion outposts for quite a long, long time.

And the French Foreign Legion and the French military still have a presence there. The U.S. moved in during, I want to say, late 1990s, almost early 2000s, and didn't really start investing into Djibouti and Camp Lemanir until right after 9-11, when the global war on terror started actually kicking up. They started realizing that there was a lot of terrorist organizations and terrorist groups that were operating in and around the Middle East, North Africa, or the MENA region, and they used it really as a logistical, strategic jump-off point to, for, you know, most of what you see now is special operations, which are doing the counterinsurgency,

counterterror programs for the global war on terror. Once we started seeing a drawback from Afghanistan, the drawdown of conventional U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which we all know how that. that kind of floundered a little bit. The Obama administration started investing heavily in Djibouti, namely the infrastructure of the camp itself. Now, inside the camp, what they overtly tell you is it's under the major command of the Navy, because it's a naval expeditionary base.

It has the naval frigates and warships coming through there on a regular basis. It is a kind of a hardship tour. But along there, CENTCOM moved a lot of their operations, They're forward-facing operations to Camp Lemanier itself, which if Sencom goes there and they're doing counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations operation, then you have the Joint Special Operations Command who is there as well. And on top of that, you have the Central Intelligence Agency drone operations go in and out of Camp Lemanir exclusively, which is basically pointed towards what you have in Libya, the Sinai, which is kind of heating up with the Sinai Islamic State and the Sinai Peninsula, Islam and a lot. with what you have going on in Yemen with the AQAP or the Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula. So it really sounds like that bases the brain for America's global war on terror. It has become the de facto strategic point for the global war on terror.

Yes. Once we saw the drawdown of Afghanistan and then the eventual complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and coalition troops from Iraq, we really didn't honestly have any somewhat forward operating bases. Now, I'm going to only speak from the special operations point of view for special operations to conduct their counterinsurgency counterterror operations. Djibouti, which was already being used for those types of ops, if you will, in North Africa, the North African, East African, Horn of Africa area, really got an influx of logistical cash flow. And they built that entire region up to operate exclusively.

I won't say exclusively, but to push off tier one, which are high-level elite commando operations, down to special forces, green beret, intelligence gathering, logistics missions, down to training operations for host nations, as we discussed earlier. All right. So what does China want? China has invested heavily, heavily in Africa, while the United States has been paying attention to the Middle East during the global war on terror for not only what the overall. overtermless to, you know, to staunch the flow of terrorism and, you know, inject democracy and all those happy words that we always love, that we've heard for years. China has silently started doing resource grabs. And that's their main operation as far as their global expansion was first to gather the

necessary resources that they need to facilitate and develop their military expansion, which they've been really hitting on in the last four years. So the point that the Chinese came to with the Djiboutian government was that they had an issue in Libya where they had close to, I think it was, near 60 to upwards to 100,000 foreign nationals working on Chinese infrastructure and natural resource businesses or operations, mainly oil in the Libyan plains where the two our eggs were. And once that civil war that Arab Spring turned into a bloody civil war in Libya, the Chinese didn't have any foreign. operating bases to evacuate their nationals. Their main reason for this base, if you will, in Djibouti was a contingency for that because they couldn't get their Navy ships there fast enough. It took them a long time. They eventually got some of their ships there and they could only get out a handful of folks. And the Chinese government ended up having to pay out

a pocket for commercial flights to fly into Libya to get their people out. So they use that as a negotiating to point. And what they told the world, the United Nations was, well, we need a forward operating base, sort of speak, strictly for logistics purposes. This base that they have, which by the way, can house up to 10,000 Chinese troops. There's only 4,000, give or take in Camp Lemineer for the coalition that uses those places. The Chinese can house up to 10,000 at this current base that they have. In Obok, like I said, which is you says, right, four miles across the street. It's on the point OBOC.

They're basically, I've been telling the international community that they think, no, no, this is a logistics outpost. It's also designed to have the Chinese Navy, which is being modernized, to protect the international seaway commerce of export that the Chinese used through the Gulf of Dayton down into the Indian Ocean. Because now they also said that the main reason was to protect, like I said, to protect their. national interests to ensure that there's that the their ships which have been getting hit like every other ship has been getting hit along the Gulf of Aden along the coast of Somalia with piracy their their main operation and main mission for that was to protect those seaways and their their nation's national interest exports that were coming out of the region which I find interesting because if you think about what's going on in Somalia specifically in the Southwest

state, and I don't know if you want to get into this, but in the Southwest state, Eric Prince and his Chinese-owned Frontier Services Group have just won a major contract. Let's pause for a break here real quick, and then I want to get into that when we come back. You're listening to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt, and we are on with retired Green Beret, Derek Gannon. All right, you're back on War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. We're here with Derek Gannon, and he is telling us about East Africa.

Derek, right before the break, you were saying you were going to talk about Eric Prince in Somalia and give our audience a refresher on who Eric Prince is real quick. Eric Prince is, as if no one really has been following him or actually knows of him, is he's a former founder and CEO of a private military company named Blackwater. And Blackwater came into fame during the early height of the global war on terrorism and when a lot of contracting and contractors were in Iraq, and there was several incidences of U.S. Blackwater contractors, you know, basically having some fractricide issues, shooting civilians.

And I don't want to say running amok because, unfortunately, I know, because of my background of Special Forces, I have a few friends that have worked with Blackwater or it's, or it's re-designated itself three or four times, Z or Academy. And they're good guys, but there's always some, there was always some issues with, so Eric Prince is kind of like the, if you want to use his last name, the Prince of Private Militaries. Okay. So a few years back, he became, I guess, the new head of a private, I don't want to say military, but private security corporation or company that is basically Chinese known.

It's called Frontier Services Group. Now, he went to Beijing and proposed this new private industry, private security company to the major investors in China, and a state-owned investment company purchased the majority of the proposal and is basically the sole, pretty much the sole investor, sole owner of the Frontier Services Group. And since then, Eric Prince and his Chinese own Frontier Services Group has really been trying to expand in Africa itself and actually now, currently Afghanistan, but to kind I reiterate with the Chinese base, the Chinese naval base in Djibouti, there's touting that that's going to be used for security along the Somali coast. But a couple months back,

Eric Prince's Frontier Services Group had just won a security contract and a development contract for Southwest State in southern Somalia. This sounds a whole lot like the African version of the South China Seas to me. Yes. It's all a part of China's plan for what they call a string of pearls. The String of Pearls kind of scenario is China building all those islands up in Spratly in the Spratley Islands region and the South China Sea. It's just all of a sudden just cropping up these, you know, Lego land-like bases, which they can only, I mean, they're not, they don't call them bases. Some of them are touted to desalination centers, but then you see the 3D satellite overlay images and they've got missiles, missile systems, anti-aircraft missiles, fighter planes, bays, and runways that can, that can, that can, basically land B-52s on them, and they're just saying that, well, this is, the Chinese are trying to

basically connect what they call a string of pearls. And the new base of Djibouti is one of those pearls. And you're right, Eric Prince and his frontier services group could be the southern Somalia of East African coastline, another pearl in that string as well. And what's interesting about southern Somali and Somalia as a whole is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, been pretty war-torn for, for decades. It's, it hasn't really had a functional government since this latest presidency, which he, uh, you know, the, the, the president for Amajo, which that's his, his, his, his last name actually means cheese. It's, it's, it's, that's his, but he's a good guy. Muhammad Famajos is a very good president. It seems to be a

quality leader and he's really kind of leaning heavy on with the U.S. to try to push out that terrorist group Al-Shabaab, but this, and this, but the, but the, but the, the, the, the, the, the thing that's so interesting about Southwest State and Somalia where Eric Prince just won his contract is that the southern portion of Somalia has rather large pockets of held territory by al-Shabaab. But what's interesting about what Frontier Services Group is trying to do is they're basically trying to establish agricultural and infrastructural bases, airports, infrastructure improvements such as ports, deep water ports, ports that have the potential to have oil terminals. So in southern Somalia, no one's really been able to get in there because of the insurgency terrorist threat that's been happening in the southern regions through, you know, with the African Union mission in Somalia, the UN-backed peacekeeping mission, has been really fighting for quite some time with al-Shabaab. But what's interesting about the Frontier Services Group and Eric Prince getting in there is that there's been a lot of resource projection of southern Somalia as it's just they holist a lot of people that are, they analyze. natural resources believe that southern Somalia and the southwest state is sitting on a potentially massive oil field, an untapped oil field. And this kind of falls along, what kind of falls

along the latif of what China has been doing in Africa is finding these areas and getting in there fast, quick, with a lot of money, no questions asked and how it's spent by a human rights violations or genocide that you can that you can that you tend that you actually do see in Sudan and South Sudan where they just say you know what as long as you don't touch our oil production facilities and refineries we don't care how that money spent we don't care how what the the men weapon and equipment that work that has been given to you along with ammunition and weapons as long as you leave our oil and our resource collection process alone and in a lot of the African East African countries are great with that they're getting a

ton of money with no questions asked. So there's a lot of infrastructure development going on that has a lot of Chinese money. And it's just, China is now with this base in Djibouti that everyone, you know, is very concerned about Chinese military expansion. Well, there's an op-ed in the state-owned news outlet Global Times in China that says, well, China is strong now.

You know, this is what we're doing. We're becoming a major country. We're becoming a superpower, which they've always been, but they're also wanting to start to flex their muscles militarily. And that has a huge potential since the United States really, I want to say this, and this is just a personal opinion, I feel like the United States went all in in the Middle East, only to have that completely cavitate onto itself

and just sectionalize off. I don't think the United States and its coalition really understood the tribal and clan differences of what they were doing is in stabilizing that region. And we focused heavily on those oil fields in the Middle East and listened, I believe, and again, this is just my own personal opinion, we listened a lot to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia on what the Gulf states wanted to have happen and see in that region. And we kind of got caught up in a giant quagmire, whereas China just went into Africa and said, hey, here's $30 billion.

we would like to put a pipeline from Juba all the way across to Mombasa. Is that okay with you guys? We don't care how you spend it. We don't give any issues to anyone about how they spent their money. We just don't want you to attack our pipeline. And of course, these pseudo-dictators and even dictators themselves take this money, spend it how they want. The only thing the Chinese care about is gathering as many natural resources as they possibly can. and Chinese interests.

That's what they're looking at in the continent of Africa. And it's been rather largely underreported, mainly because nobody really sees any issue with what or any kind of withdrawal or any issue with what China is doing in Africa. Because mainly Africa, if you think about it, nobody really understands what's going on there regardless. What do you see big picture that's going on there then? Big picture, I see a huge potential for the two. two biggest kids on the block to get into a, to get into a little bit of a push pull here,

a little shoving match. And it's, it could potentially be, could potentially be that base in Djibouti. The Chinese are directly across from Camp Lemanir, who's, you know, has been there rather unimpeded for, for a decade itself. The base in Djibouti is also very strategic, as a very strategic location, because China's also invested heavily in Ethiopia, heavily into Ethiopia's government heavily into Ethiopia's infrastructure to include a fast light rail system that they are hoping that will connect Ethiopia to their to Djibouti all the way to Khartoum. The interesting thing about that is China is always looking like a spider trying to figure out how they can get their oil out of Sudan.

And one of the pipelines is obviously going through Khartoum, but another way is on rail. and they're building a rail systems, large rail systems to get their resources out, that one's going to Mombasa, another one through the Ethiopian terminals. It's not so much everyone should be worried about their military expansion. That's happening right now. Their industrial expansion is in the final phases. They're already connected. We can't stop that.

They have their fingers and everything. But what we can't, I don't know what we can do other than try to sweeten the pot or try to lure some of these nations. and some of these leaders away from China or at least get our fingers in the pot. And I don't see how we could do that. My background is basically strategic. I don't know anything about economic warfare. We want to follow this thread just for a second. China wants to take those resources and turn them into things that they're going to sell back to us in the European market, right?

Yes, that's what's fascinating is that we're basically financing their industrial military expansion. We are financing it. The consumer is. I'm not saying everybody stopped buying things and live like Neanderthals on a paleo diet and drying meat on their cars. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is if you, every time look underneath anything they're using, a glass, a cup, anything, everything that says made in China. Now that's free trade commerce. You're absolutely correct.

That's capitalism. But that money is financing a state-run government. Anything that that country makes goes back to the state, and then that state uses to expand its industrial, military, industrial, complex, it's industrial complex, anything to do with expansion, unfortunately, global consumers of Chinese products are somewhat in some shape, fashion, or form financing this expansion. We've brought up al-Shabaab. Who are they? What do they want? How do they feel about China? Do we know? Answer your last question first. I honestly don't know how Al-Shabaab personally feels about China, I do know that al-Shabaab is very nationalist. They started off rather early in the mid-90s

during the Somali Islamic Court's Union development and kind of metastasized into a militant wing of Harakha al-Shabaab al-Muhazhaddin, which the Haraka al-Shabaab or Al-Shabaab actually means youth. It just means the youth, or actually it used to mean the boys. Because another thing that Plagues Africa, especially in East Africa, is the majority of the youth. I'm talking ages between 12 up to 25, 26 are really on, there's no employment, none whatsoever. It's really hard, it's hard to find employment. Now, Mogadishu in Somalia is kind of seeing an uptick in financial and commerce gains,

but the majority of the country is still living well below the poverty line. al-Shabaab, it's a very strict adherent to Salafism. It's a very strict Sharia law-focused version of Islam. It's a very apocalyptic. It's exactly the same type of, Salifism is exactly the same type of Islamic teachings that the Islamic state follows. However, al-Shabaab is, has been committed to and has pledged fealty, if you will, to al-Qaeda since the early 2000s. And in al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, I guess those two groups really don't get along. One's more extreme than the other.

The other one wants to do, wants to usurp global jihad and global Sharia law, which is the Islamic State. And what's interesting about al-Shabaab is al-Shabaab really started off as a national, nationalist islamist movement. They wanted the entire nation of Somalia to be Muslim under Sharia law Islamist rule. And of course, inside Somalia is a very clan-based. It's a very clan-based. And it's a very confusing, very convoluted twists upon itself. It's very, very, very interesting structure of clans to sub-clan.

and what clan is loyal to this clan. And that's a lot of the reasons why their government and politics is having such a hard time because if you have a leader, that's a different clan member than that other clan could potentially go to war with this clan. What Al-Shabaab has done is it's really unified these tribes under their religious beliefs and views, but they also really, really control portions of the southern Somalia area with like with a really kind of an iron sharia law type of fist. They look at any kind of form of UN help outside Western influence as invaders.

Now, all Somalis kind of look at it that way. Somalia for Somalians. They're very prideful in their country. They also don't like outside help, although they do need it and they do, they have benefited from it. Al-Shabaab kind of twists that onto itself and basically calls everybody, a crusader, and that they're trying to destroy their country, to include Ethiopia and Kenya, which is also still very clan-based.

So how does someone like Eric Prince hope to break al-Shabaab? See, that's the thing that's, I don't, he pertly is not trying to break al-Shabaab, but Eric Prince is steeped heavily in clandestine private military operations, private security operations. I think Eric Prince feels that he can take his security forces, I'm going to use that word strategically, security forces into southern Somalia, and without the handcuffs of global political international output or outcry, can really conduct a bloody, if not kind of steamrollish kind of counterinsurgency operation under the auspices of this being a security. operation, basically clearing out whole swaths of al-Shabaab controlled, you know, regions of southern Somalia. Now, Eric Prince is going to have help with that because back in April when President Formaggio just got into office, he swore to turn the country, the Somalia country into a war zone

against al-Shabaab. He gave al-Shabaab 60 days anesty period, which actually ended in the beginning of July. And after that, it was going to be a full-on offensive. And some of my sources inside the Somali government, Somali military, have basically said to me that this offensive has already been planned, it's ready to go, and they expect it to last no longer than two years. So al-Shabaab, according to the government of Somalia and the capital of Mogadishu and the president itself, Al-Shabaab has a shelf life of two years

where they're going to see a complete and total sweep of a military, offensive from north to south. Now, the interesting thing about that is Al-Shabaab will just disappear into Kenya and into the forest Kenya and the forest of Ethiopia and do exactly what it's been doing for quite some time has just come back in an insurgency operation and hit and run guerrilla attacks. So, is al-Shabaab ever going to be wiped out? More than likely, no. Will they be degraded and depleted? Yes. I think they're going to have to reconcilicate somewhere else and then the best thing to do is, is, you know, they're more than likely going to disappear into Ethiopia, Kenya, and in Tanzania. They've been, they've been seeing a lot of

Al-Shabaab folks down in Tanzania kind of setting up forward operating bases, but they haven't heard anything about that in quite some time. Derek Gannon, thank you so much for coming onto War College and telling us all about East Africa. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hedick. Matthew Galt hosts the show and Wrangles the Guests. It's produced by me, Bethel Hobday. You can tweet us suggestions for future shows. We are at War underscore College. Thanks for listening.