Africa, U.s. Military | featured news

The US has deployed 100 troops to Niger to assist French forces in neighbouring Mali, President Barack Obama says.

The U.S. military was closely tracking a one-eyed bandit across the Sahara in 2003 when it confronted a hard choice that is still reverberating a decade later. Should it try to kill or capture the target, an Algerian jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or let him go?

The military’s Africa Command is making preparations to install unarmed drones as Islamist extremist groups are seen as posing a growing menace to the region.

A U.S.-military dominated peacekeeping force of 1,650 troops in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is finding itself caught between restive Bedouin tribesmen and an escalating Egyptian army offensive against insurgents.

The acknowledgment that United States military forces have taken “direct action” in those countries opens the window further into the president’s secret war on terrorists.

Behind razor wire and bamboo walls topped with security cameras sits one of the newest U.S. military outposts in Africa. U.S. Special Forces soldiers with tattooed forearms and sunglasses emerge daily in pickup trucks. They carry weapons, supplies and translators — as well as the expectations of a vast region living in fear of a man and his brutal militia.

Clearly frustrated with Obama, Republican leaders are propelling the House toward crucial votes on the U.S. military role in Libya.

Relations between Congress and the White House are reaching new lows as the administration refuses to back down on President Obama’s three-month long military campaign against Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi.

A bipartisan group of House members will file a lawsuit Wednesday challenging U.S. participation in the Libya military mission. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is set to defend U.S. military involvement in Libya to Congress, according to the White House.

President Obama cast the U.S. military action in Libya in stark strategic and humanitarian terms Monday in an address to the nation.