Coast Guard members aboard the Nashville instructed African naval officers in security techniques as part of a mission aimed at promoting maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea.
(Karin Brulliard/ Washington Post)
US reaches out in western Africa
Navy effort reflects growing interest in region's stability
Coast Guard members aboard the Nashville instructed African naval officers in security techniques as part of a mission aimed at promoting maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea.
(Karin Brulliard/ Washington Post)
PORT GENTIL, Gabon - It took Gabonese sailors days to get one of the country's few patrol boats fueled up. But once they had zoomed out into the Atlantic, it was less than an hour before they spotted trouble. There on the horizon was a blue trawler, which they soon found was manned by a Chinese crew, brimming with fish and lacking the required permits, catch logs, and immigration documents.
"We could do this all day," one Gabonese officer said about tracking down seaborne lawbreakers.
But the exercise last month was made possible by the United States, which bought gas for the boat and organized the patrol squad's training from a Navy ship docked nearby. The USS Nashville had stopped at this coastal oil town during a five-month mission to train navies on Africa's western edge to police the Gulf of Guinea, which military officials and analysts warn could become as anarchic as the pirate-infested seas off Somalia
The two-year-old effort is one window into Africa's growing strategic importance to the United States, which last year launched a controversial command on the continent that officials said would focus on preventing wars as much as fighting them. In the Gulf of Guinea, officials said, helping African navies could promote stability, build economies that will require less US aid, and secure shipping routes in a region that sends as much crude oil to the United States as the Persian Gulf does.
"The majority of people on this ship are there to ensure that the sea lines of communication, which essentially means commerce, which essentially means economies, are safe," said Tushar Tembe, the Nashville's captain. "So that years from now, maybe the United States Navy won't have to come down here to patrol the seas."
The waters off western Africa are plagued with problems. Illegal fishing - which Somalia's pirates also cite as one reason for their attacks - strips an estimated $1 billion in yearly revenue from sub-Saharan Africa. Desperate migrants pack into small boats for journeys north to Europe or south from Benin, Togo, or Ivory Coast to relatively prosperous Gabon. South American traffickers shipping drugs to Europe have made Guinea-Bissau a key transit stop.
Military officials acknowledge that the goal of the US effort, the Africa Partnership Station, is daunting. The governments of this region include some of the world's most corrupt. Nearly all have weak navies and maritime laws, poor communications technology, and little money.
Gulf of Guinea waters are now the world's most perilous after Somalia's, the International Maritime Bureau says. That is largely due to robberies and kidnappings in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta by seafaring militants that have cut oil exports by about 20 percent since 2006 and have recently spread south to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
That worries Equatorial Guinea's neighbor . Oil wealth and the nearly 42-year rule of President Omar Bongo, who Western diplomats say has used cash to quell opposition, have kept the country one of the most peaceful in a rough neighborhood. But illegal fishing is common, as are the boatloads of unauthorized migrants lured by stability. And Gabon's oil could become a target of rebels from the north.
"We never know what might happen," said Lieutenant Junior Grade Moussavou Ghislain, an officer in the country's 400-member navy. "We have never had war here."
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
