The Pentagon said Thursday that it has not restarted counterterrorism operations in Niger, a day after the top of U.S. airpower for Europe and Africa said those flights had resumed.
Gen. James Hecker, responding to an issue from The Associated Press at a security conference Wednesday, said the U.S. military has been capable of resume some manned aircraft and drone counterterrorism operations in Niger.
However the Pentagon issued a press release Thursday saying those missions are only for shielding U.S. forces and never the more sensitive, and broader, counterterrorism operations U.S. forces have successfully run with the Nigerien military up to now, adding “stories on the contrary are false.”
“We are only flying ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) with a view to monitor for any threats,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at a press briefing Thursday. “We’re flying ISR for force protection purposes and that’s it.”
Niger’s president was ousted in late July by a military junta. Within the weeks since, the roughly 1,100 U.S. forces deployed there have been confined inside their military bases. News that some flights had resumed was seen as a very good sign that State Department diplomatic efforts with the junta were improving security on the bottom. For weeks the political uncertainty following the coup and the unstable security situation that followed has led to the U.S. consolidating a few of its forces at a base farther from Niamey, Niger’s capital.
In a clarifying statement Thursday, the spokesman for air forces in Africa, Col. Robert Firman, said that in his Wednesday remarks, Hecker was just referring to the air component perspective and was not addressing the general counterterrorism program in Niger.
In a preview provided by Hecker’s staff of an Atlantic Council taped program set to air Friday, he further elaborated on the efforts on the bottom in Niger.
“The last item we would like to have occur is, we don’t need a shooting war over there. And the excellent news is we’ve been vastly successful at doing so with the assistance of the State Department,” Hecker said. “The airspace is beginning to slowly come back up. And we’re capable of do a few of our surveillance operations primarily for force protection in the world. In order that’s helping us up quite a bit to ensure that that we’re comfortable.
“And all of the intelligence shows without delay that the danger to to our forces is fairly low. But we’d like to ensure that that if something happens, we’re able to go. And we’re in a very good position now that they’re beginning to allow us to make use of a few of our surveillance for force protection.”
The U.S. has made Niger its most important regional outpost for wide-ranging patrols by armed drones, training of host nation forces and other counterterrorism efforts against Islamic extremist movements that over time have seized territory, massacred civilians and battled foreign armies. The bases are a critical a part of America’s overall counterterrorism efforts in West Africa.