Top U.S. General in Africa Paints Grim Picture of U.S. Military Failures in Africa

The Intercept

5 hours ago

President George W. Bush created a new command to oversee all military operations in Africa 18 years ago. U.S. Africa Command was meant to help 'bring peace and security to the people of Africa.'
The Trump administration now has AFRICOM on the chopping block as part of its sweeping reorganization of the military. According to the general leading the command, its mission is far from accomplished.
Gen. Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, offered a grim assessment of security on the African continent during a recent press conference. The West African Sahel, he said last Friday, was now the 'epicenter of terrorism' and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were 'unfortunately right here on the African continent.'
The embattled four-star general — who noted his days were numbered as AFRICOM's chief — was speaking from a conference of African defense chiefs in Kenya, where he had been imploring ministers and heads of state to help save his faltering command. 'I said: 'OK, if we're that important to [you], you need to communicate that,'' he explained, asking them to have their U.S. ambassadors make entreaties on behalf of AFRICOM.
Current and former defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide candid assessments, were divided on whether Langley deserves a measure of blame for the dire straits the command finds itself in.
One former defense official spoke highly of Langley, calling him 'an effective and transformational leader' who 'rapidly grew into the job and developed strong, fruitful relationships with members of Congress.'
A current official, however, said almost the opposite, calling the four-star general a 'marble mouth' who did a poor job of making a case for his command, 'fumbled' relations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and diminished AFRICOM's standing with legislators. Asked by messaging app if the latter assessment was accurate, a former Africa Command official sent a laughing emoji and replied 'no comment' followed by 'but yes.' (The official said he could be quoted as such.)
Before 2008, when the command began operations, U.S. military activities in Africa were handled by other combatant commands. AFRICOM's creation reflected rising U.S. national security interests on the continent and a desire for a single command to oversee a proliferation of post-9/11 counterterrorism activities, predominantly in the West African Sahel and Somalia.
Since U.S. Africa Command began operations, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent — as well as programs, operations, exercises, bases, low-profile Special Operations missions, deployments of commandos, drones strikes, and almost every other military activity — has jumped exponentially.
AFRICOM 'disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats' in order to 'promote regional security, stability and prosperity,' according to its mission statement. That hasn't come to pass.
Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and Somalia. By 2010, two years after AFRICOM began operations, fatalities from attacks by militant Islamists had already spiked to 2,674, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. The situation only continued to deteriorate.
There were an estimated 18,900 fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa last year, with 79 percent of those coming from the Sahel and Somalia, according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center. This constitutes a jump of more than 82,000 percent since the U.S. launched its post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts on the continent.
'The Sahel — that's where we consider the epicenter of terrorism — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are confronted with this each and every day; they're in crisis. The terrorist networks affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda are thriving, particularly in Burkina Faso,' said Langley. During his tenure, the U.S. was largely kicked out of the region, forced to abandon key nodes of its archipelago of West African bases and many secret wars across the Sahel that were largely unknown to members of Congress as they played out.
Langley noted that, since the U.S. left Niger in September of last year, AFRICOM has observed a rise in violence across the Sahel.
He neglected to mention that terrorism increased exponentially during the years of heaviest U.S. military involvement, leading to instability and disenchantment with the U.S. He also failed to note, despite having been previously grilled about it during congressional testimony, that the military juntas that booted the U.S. from West Africa were made up of U.S.-supported officers who overthrew the governments the U.S. trained them to protect.
As violence spiraled in the region over the past decades, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror — including the three nations Langley emphasized: Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022), Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021), and Niger (in 2023). At least five leaders of the 2023 coup d'état in the latter country, for example, received American assistance.
U.S. war in Somalia which has ramped up since President Donald Trump retook office, also got top billing. The U.S. 'is actively pursuing and eliminating jihadists,' said the AFRICOM chief. 'And at the request of the Somali Government, this year alone AFRICOM has conducted over 25 airstrikes — double the number of strikes that we did last year.'
The U.S. military is approaching its 23rd year of operations in Somalia. In the fall of 2002, the U.S. military established Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa to conduct operations in support of the global war on terror in the region, and U.S. Special Operations forces were dispatched to Somalia. They were followed by conventional forces, helicopters, surveillance aircraft, outposts, and drones. By 2007, the Pentagon recognized that there were fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, and Somalia became another post-9/11 stalemate, which AFRICOM inherited the next year.
U.S. airstrikes in Somalia have skyrocketed when Trump is in office. From 2007 to 2017, under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. military carried out 43 declared airstrikes in Somalia. During Trump's first term, AFRICOM conducted more than 200 air attacks against members of al-Shabab and the Islamic State.
By the end of his first term, Trump was ready to call it quits on the sputtering conflict in Somalia, ordering almost all U.S. troops out of the country in late 2020.
But President Joe Biden reversed the withdrawal, allowing the conflict to grind on — and now escalate under Trump. The Biden administration conducted 39 declared strikes in Somalia over four years. The U.S. has already carried out 33 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025, according to AFRICOM public affairs. At this pace, AFRICOM is poised to equal or exceed the highest number of strikes there in the command's history, 63 in 2019.
Despite almost a quarter-century of conflict and billions of taxpayer dollars, Somalia has joined the ranks of signature forever-war failures. While fatalities from Islamist attacks dropped in Somalia last year, they were still 72 percent higher than 2020, according to the Africa Center.
AFRICOM told The Intercept that the country's main militant group, al-Shabab, is now 'the largest al Qaida network in the world.' (Langley called them 'entrenched, wealthy, and large.') The command called ISIS-Somalia 'a growing threat in East Africa' and said its numbers had tripled from 500 to an estimated 1,500 in the last 18 months.
The U.S. recently conducted the 'largest airstrike in the history of the world' from an aircraft carrier on Somalia, according to Adm. James Kilby, the Navy's acting chief of naval operations. That strike, by 16 F/A-18 Super Hornets, unleashed around 125,000 pounds of munitions.
Those 60 tons of bombs killed just 14 ISIS members, according to AFRICOM. At that rate, it would take roughly 13,000,000 pounds of bombs to wipe out ISIS-Somalia and about 107,000,000 pounds to eliminate al-Shabab, firepower roughly equivalent to four of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
Troubles loom elsewhere on the continent as well. 'One of the terrorists' new objectives is gaining access to West Africa coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking, and arms trading,' Langley warned, not mentioning that U.S. counterterrorism failures in the Sahel led directly to increased attacks on Gulf of Guinea nations. Togo — which sits due south of Burkina Faso — saw a 45 percent increase in terrorist fatalities in 2024, according to the Africa Center.
Langley also referenced trouble in Africa's most populous nation. 'We're observing a rise in attacks by violent extremist organizations, not only in Niger but across the Sahel to include Nigeria,' Langley warned. He offered a somewhat garbled plan of action in response: 'The scale and brutality of some of these incidents are really troubling. So we're monitoring this closely and these events, and offering of sharing intel with the Nigerian and also regional partners in that area remains constant. We are committed to supporting one of the most capable militaries in the region, in Nigeria.'
U.S. support to the Nigerian military has been immense, and Nigerian people have suffered for it — something else that Langley left unsaid. Between 2000 and 2022, alone, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid to the country. In those same years, hundreds of Nigerian airstrikes killed thousands of Nigerians. A 2017 attack on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria, killed more than 160 civilians, many of them children. A subsequent Intercept investigation revealed that the attack was referred to as an instance of 'U.S.-Nigerian operations' in a formerly secret U.S. military document.
A 2023 Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based armed violence monitoring group, found that more than 2,600 people were killed in 248 airstrikes outside the most active war zones in Nigeria during the previous five years. That same year, an investigation by Nigeria's Premium Times called out the government for 'a systemic propaganda scheme to keep the atrocities of its troops under wraps.'
In his conference call with reporters, held as part of the 2025 African Chiefs of Defense Conference, Langley took only written, vetted questions, allowing him to skirt uncomfortable subjects. AFRICOM failed to provide answers to follow-up questions from The Intercept.
During the call, Langley offered a farewell and a pledge. 'This will likely be my last, final Chiefs of Defense Conference as the AFRICOM commander. A nomination for my successor is expected soon,' Langley told The Intercept and others. 'But no matter who holds this position, the AFRICOM mission remains constant. AFRICOM will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with African partners into the future.'
Langley's pleas at the conference suggested less certainty.
For years, AFRICOM — and Langley in particular — has been paying lip service to a preference for 'African solutions for African challenges' or as Langley put it last week: 'It's about empowering African nations to solve African problems, not just through handouts but through trusted cooperation.' But he has seemed less than enamored with African solutions that include severing ties with the United States.
In April, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he accused Burkina Faso's leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, of misusing the country's gold reserves 'to protect the junta regime.' Langley partially walked back those comments last week and appeared to seek reconciliation. 'We all respect their sovereignty,' he said. 'So the U.S. seeks opportunities to collaborate with Burkina Faso on counterterrorism challenges.'
For more than two decades, the U.S. was content to pour billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into failed counterterrorism policies as deaths mounted across the continent. Today, the dangers of terrorism loom far larger, and the U.S. finds itself shunned by former partners.
'I've been charged by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to mitigate threats to the U.S. homeland posed by terrorist organizations,' said Langley. 'It's about the mutual goal of keeping our homeland safe, and it's about long-term capacity, not dependence.'
The current Pentagon official said that Langley had used up what good will he once had. 'I don't think many will be sad to see him go,' he told The Intercept. Langley's tenure may not have sown the seeds of AFRICOM's dissolution, he said, but if the command is ultimately folded into European Command — as some have proposed — he likely helped to hasten it. 'He's been part of this problem,' the official said. 'Maybe him leaving could be one solution.'