Articles by Nick Turse
We found 57 results.
Niger to US: Pack Up Your Forever War
Nick Turse | Consortium News - TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2024
3 Apr 2024 – The latest in a series of stalemates, fiascos, or outright defeats in Washington’s Global War of Terror.
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State Department Declares “Ethnic Cleansing” in Sudan but Won’t Say the Same about Israel’s War in Gaza
Ryan Grim and Nick Turse | The Intercept - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Feb 2024
4 Feb 2024 – The U.S. risks complicity with Israeli atrocities, experts say.
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Niger Coup Leader Joins Long Line of U.S.-trained Mutineers
Nick Turse | The Intercept - TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jul 2023
27 Jul 2023 – Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, who trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, helped oust Niger’s democratically elected president.
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Getting to Yes: What U.S. Africa Command Doesn’t Want You to Know
Nick Turse | TomDispatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Oct 2022
23 Oct 2022 – What’s the U.S. military doing in Africa? It’s an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, straight-jacketed in secrecy, and hogtied by red tape. Or at least it would be if it were up to the Pentagon.
→ read full articleLawmakers Seek Answers on Pentagon’s Role in Deadly Nigeria Airstrike
Nick Turse | The Intercept - TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2022
8 Sep 2022 – A new congressional caucus called on Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III today to disclose details of the U.S. role in an airstrike that killed more than 160 Nigerian civilians at a displaced persons’ camp, including many children.
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The War on Terror Is a Success — for Terror
Nick Turse | TomDispatch - TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jan 2022
4 Jan 2022 – Terrorist Groups Have Doubled Since the Passage of the 2001 AUMF
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The Fall of Kabul
Nick Turse | The Intercept - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2021
15 Aug 2021 – Today, the Taliban entered the Afghan capital of Kabul, and several countries, including the USA, began to evacuate their embassies. As the Taliban seized the presidential palace, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country. “We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events. … But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America’s leadership in the world,” said the U.S. president. But that president wasn’t Biden. It was Gerald Ford on April 23, 1975, as North Vietnamese forces rolled toward Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
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Pentagon’s Own Map of U.S. Bases in Africa Contradicts Its Claim of “Light” Footprint
Nick Turse - The Intercept,
2 Mar 2020
27 Feb 2020 – Since 9/11, the U.S. military has built a sprawling network of outposts in more than a dozen African countries. The Intercept has obtained U.S. military documents and a set of accompanying maps that provide the locations of these African bases in 2019. These formerly secret documents, created by the Pentagon’s Africa Command and obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, offer an exclusive window into the footprint of American military operations in Africa.
→ read full articleMore U.S. Commandos Are Fighting Invisible Wars in the Middle East
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
30 Sep 2019
25 Sep 2019 – The percentage of commandos deployed to the Middle East is on the rise (Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and Marine Corps Raiders among them) at a time when the USA is planning a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, with Trump’s announcements that the Islamic State has been defeated, and that the U.S. is “rapidly pulling out of Syria.” Gone are the military surges and the faddish fixation with counterinsurgency, rehabilitated from the Vietnam War dustbin.
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Violence Has Spiked in Africa since the Military Founded AFRICOM, Pentagon Study Finds
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
5 Aug 2019
29 Jul 2019 – AFRICOM “disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats” in order to “promote regional security, stability and prosperity,” according to its mission statement. But since AFRICOM began, security and stability in Africa have plummeted according to a Pentagon research institution. “Overall, militant Islamist group activity in Africa has doubled since 2012.”
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(Português) A Verdade sobre a Presença Norte-Americana na África
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
31 Dec 2018
26 dez 2018 – Pelo menos 34 bases militares dos Estados Unidos estão espalhadas pela África, com grandes concentrações ao norte, oeste e no chifre da África.
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U.S. Military Says It Has a “Light Footprint” in Africa: These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
3 Dec 2018
1 Dec 2018 – At least 34 U.S. military bases are scattered across Africa, with high concentrations in the north, west, and Horn of Africa.
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The U.S. Is Building a Drone Base in Niger That Will Cost More Than $280 Million by 2024
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
27 Aug 2018
21 Aug 2018 – The Pentagon disclosed that in addition to the base’s $100 million construction cost in Agadez, more than $30 million a year will be spent to operate it.
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U.S. Secret Wars in Africa Rage On, Despite Talk of Downsizing
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
30 Jul 2018
26 Jul 2018 – US Special Operations forces in Africa are supposed to be training and advising, but they keep ending up in situations that are indistinguishable from combat. Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and other commandos have been involved in reconnaissance and “direct action” combat raids with local forces in Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, and Tunisia.
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Commandos Sans Frontières: The Global Growth of U.S. Special Operations Forces
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
23 Jul 2018
They’re developing “loitering munitions” in their Maritime Precision Engagement program that will act as “suicide drones” (operated from speedboats). Hey, if ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the rest of that crew have their version of suicide drones — humans with explosives strapped to them, not to speak of off-the-shelf drones — why shouldn’t the U.S. military have the technological equivalent?
→ read full articleIt’s Not Just Niger — U.S. Military Activity Is a “Recruiting Tool” for Terror Groups Across West Africa
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
6 Nov 2017
26 Oct 2017 – The mission never made the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post. It wasn’t covered on CNN or Fox News. Neither the White House chief of staff, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor the president ever addressed it in a press briefing. A deadly attack on Green Beret soldiers in Niger has highlighted an expansion of U.S. military missions in the troubled region.
→ read full articleThe US Military Is Conducting Secret Missions All Over Africa
Nick Turse – Vice News,
30 Oct 2017
25 Oct 2017 – U.S. troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises, programs, and engagements per year, an average of nearly 10 missions per day, on the African continent, according to the U.S. military’s top commander for Africa, General Thomas Waldhauser.
→ read full article(Français) La machine de guerre étasunienne en Afrique
Nick Turse | TomDispatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 May 2017
Pendant des années, AFRICOM a vendu la fiction que Djibouti est le site de sa seule « base » en Afrique. Alors que les États-Unis maintiennent un vaste réseau d’installations militaires dans le monde entier, avec des complexes militaires énormes et difficiles à ne pas voir en Europe et en Asie, les bases d’Afrique ont été mieux dissimulées.
→ read full articleAmerica’s War-Fighting Footprint in Africa
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
1 May 2017
Secret U.S. Military Documents Reveal a Constellation of American Military Bases across That Continent
→ read full articleYear of the Commando: U.S. Special Ops Forces Deploy to 138 Countries
Nick Turse - Salon,
9 Jan 2017
The year ahead will offer clues as to whether Obama’s long war in the shadows will survive.
→ read full articleU.S. Special Operations Numbers Surge in Africa’s Shadow Wars
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
2 Jan 2017
Africa has seen the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops of any region of the globe over the past decade.
→ read full articleU.S. Military Is Building a $100 Million Drone Base in Africa
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
3 Oct 2016
As the only country in the region willing to allow a U.S. base for MQ-9 Reapers — a newer, larger, and potentially more lethal model than the venerable Predator drone — Niger has positioned itself to be the key regional hub for U.S. military operations.
→ read full articleBreaking the Camouflage Wall of Silence: When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, the News Is Grim
Nick Turse – Tom Dispatch,
8 Aug 2016
What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come. If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead.
→ read full articleThe Network: Leaked Data Reveals How the U.S. Trains Vast Numbers of Foreign Soldiers and Police with Little Oversight
Douglas Gillison, Nick Turse and Moiz Syed – The Intercept,
18 Jul 2016
A Rand Corp. analysis from 2013 found that the Pentagon alone has 71 different authorities under which it provides foreign aid as a means of “building partner capacity,” or BPC — part of a system that the report criticized as akin to “a tangled web, with holes, overlaps, and confusions.” The Pentagon, for example, maintains no master list of the people it trains nor does it keep aggregate figures.
→ read full articleHillary Clinton’s State Department Gave South Sudan’s Military a Pass for Its Child Soldiers
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
13 Jun 2016
The State Department under Clinton played a central and unacknowledged role in granting waivers for military aid to South Sudan despite its child soldiers.
→ read full articleDoes Eleven Plus One Equal Sixty?
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
7 Dec 2015
The U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts, transforming the continent into a laboratory for a new kind of war.
→ read full articleIn Mali and Rest of Africa, the U.S. Military Fights a Hidden War
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
30 Nov 2015
A top general says Africa is home to nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” that threaten U.S. interests. But the Pentagon refuses to name more than a handful of them.
→ read full articleThe Drone Papers -Target Africa (8 of 8)
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
26 Oct 2015
The U.S. Military’s Expanding Footprint in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
→ read full articleU.S. Special Ops Forces Deployed in 135 Nations
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
28 Sep 2015
2015 Proves to Be Record-Breaking Year for the Military’s Secret Military – These men–and they are mostly men–typically spent the better part of a decade as more conventional soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen before making the cut.
→ read full article“We Come As Friends” Explores the Beautiful Nightmare of South Sudan
Nick Turse – The Intercept,
24 Aug 2015
As a filmmaker, Hubert Sauper does not take the road less traveled. That would be far too easy. He doesn’t, in fact, take roads much at all. First he spent two years on his French farm building his own ultralight plane out of tin and canvas and lawnmower wheels. Then, in 2010, he flew it from France to southern Sudan. And then things got interesting.
→ read full articleThe Kids Aren’t All Right – Presidential Waivers, Child Soldiers, and an American-Made Army in Africa
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
18 May 2015
17 May 2015, South Sudan — I didn’t really think he was going to shoot me. There was no anger in his eyes. His finger may not have been anywhere near the trigger. He didn’t draw a bead on me. Still, he was a boy and he was holding an AK-47 and it was pointed in my direction. It was unnerving.
→ read full articleSex, Drugs, and Dead Soldiers: What U.S. Africa Command Doesn’t Want You to Know
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
27 Apr 2015
Six people lay lifeless in the filthy brown water. It was 5:09 a.m. when their Toyota Land Cruiser plunged off a bridge in the West African country of Mali. For about two seconds, the SUV sailed through the air, pirouetting 180 degrees as it plunged 70 feet, crashing into the Niger River.
→ read full articleThe US Carried Out 674 Military Operations in Africa Last Year. Did You Hear About Any of Them?
Nick Turse – The Nation,
20 Apr 2015
The US military publicly insists its presence in Africa is negligible. Is that why they call it an American “battlefield” behind closed doors?
→ read full articleThe Golden Age of U.S. Black Ops
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
26 Jan 2015
U.S. Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015
→ read full articleThe Outpost That Doesn’t Exist in the Country You Can’t Locate – Why Is the US Military So Interested in Chad?
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
24 Nov 2014
The US military continues a long series of mistakes, missteps and mishaps across Africa. A base camp, an authoritarian regime, and the future of U.S. blowback.
→ read full articleThe U.S. Military’s New Normal in Africa
Nick Turse – TomDisptach,
19 May 2014
A Secret African Mission and an African Mission that’s No Secret
→ read full articleAFRICOM Goes to War on the Sly
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
28 Apr 2014
U.S. Officials Talk Candidly (Just Not to Reporters) about bases, winning hearts and minds, and the “War” in Africa.
→ read full articleWhy Is the US Military Averaging More Than a Mission a Day in Africa?
Nick Turse – The Nation,
31 Mar 2014
The officers running secret operations there have been calling Africa “the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”
→ read full articleWashington’s Back-to-the-Future Military Policies in Africa: America’s New Model for Expeditionary Warfare
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
17 Mar 2014
Despite repeated assurances by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) that military activities on the continent were minuscule, a 2013 investigation by TomDispatch exposed surprisingly large and expanding U.S. operations — including recent military involvement with no fewer than 49 of 54 nations on the continent.
→ read full articleThe Special Ops Surge: America’s Secret War in 134 Countries
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
20 Jan 2014
Since Sep. 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, from their numbers to their budget. This presence — now, in nearly 70% of the world’s nations — provides new evidence of the size and scope of a secret war being waged from Latin America to the backlands of Afghanistan, from training missions with African allies to information operations launched in cyberspace.
→ read full articleAmerica’s Black-Ops Blackout: Unraveling the Secrets of the Military’s Secret Military
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
13 Jan 2014
SOCOM is tasked with carrying out Washington’s most specialized and secret missions, including assassinations, counterterrorist raids, special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, psychological operations, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
→ read full articleA Failed Formula for Worldwide War
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
29 Oct 2012
Several times this year, Dempsey, the other joint chiefs, and regional war-fighting commanders have assembled at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico to conduct a futuristic war-game-meets-academic-seminar about the needs of the military in 2017. There, a giant map of the world, larger than a basketball court, was laid out so the Pentagon’s top brass could shuffle around the planet.
→ read full articleObama’s Scramble for Africa: Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon’s “New Spice Route” in Africa
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
23 Jul 2012
Unbeknownst to most Americans and people around the world, the US has been steadily increasing its military footprint in Africa. In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant outposts.
→ read full articleThe New Obama Doctrine: A Six-Point Plan for Global War
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
19 Jun 2012
Special Ops, Drones, Spy Games, Civilian Soldiers, Proxy Fighters, and Cyber Warfare
→ read full articleThe Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
4 Jun 2012
Drones may be effective in terms of generating body counts, but they appear to be even more successful in generating animosity and creating enemies. A decade’s worth of futility suggests that drone warfare itself may already be crashing and burning, yet it seems destined that the skies will fill with drones and that the future will bring more of the same.
→ read full article450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet: The Pentagon’s Afghan Basing Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
20 Feb 2012
Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today the number tops 450. The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan.
→ read full articleThe Drone That Fell From the Sky
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
26 Dec 2011
What a Busted Robot Airplane Tells Us about the American Empire in 2012 and Beyond – The skies seem full of falling drones these days. The most publicized of them made headlines when Iran announced that its military had taken possession of an advanced American remotely piloted spy aircraft, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel. Questions about how the Iranians came to possess one of the U.S. military’s most sophisticated pieces of equipment abound.
→ read full articleObama’s Arc of Instability: Destabilizing the World One Region at a Time
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
19 Sep 2011
It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them — from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia — Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.
→ read full articleA Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon’s New Power Elite
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
8 Aug 2011
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently.
→ read full articleHueys over Yemen
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
2 May 2011
How to Arm a Dictator – In recent weeks, Yemeni protesters calling for an immediate end to the 32-year reign of U.S.-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been met with increasing violence. Some of the military helicopters used in the crackdown may be recent additions to Saleh’s arsenal, provided courtesy of the Obama administration as part of an $83-million military aviation aid package. Despite weeks of violence and hundreds dead or wounded, President Obama has yet to publicly and unequivocally call for Saleh to step down as he did, albeit belatedly, with former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and, more recently, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
→ read full articleOverkill: Future Weapons, Future Wars, and the New Arms Race
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
7 Feb 2011
Six terrifying new weapons being created by the Pentagon. Here is the Pentagon’s battlefield vision of tomorrow.
→ read full articleEmpire of Bases 2.0
Nick Turse – TomDispatch,
17 Jan 2011
Does the Pentagon Really Have 1,180 Foreign Bases?
→ read full articleDigging Deeper into WikiLeaks Afghan Files
Nick Turse – Asia Times,
20 Sep 2010
In its initial coverage, the Times led with allegations contained in the documents that America’s ally, Pakistan, allowed members of its spy service to meet and conspire with members of the Taliban. The Guardian, instead, primarily focused on the unreported killings of Afghan civilians, beginning its lead article by declaring: “A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents.”
→ read full articleHow Much “Success” Can Afghans Stand?
Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
13 Sep 2010
With the arrival of General David Petraeus as Afghan War commander, there has been ever more talk about the meaning of “success” in Afghanistan. At the end of July, USA Today ran an article titled, “In Afghanistan, Success Measured a Step at a Time.” Days later, Stephen Biddle, a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, held a conference call with the media to speak about “Defining Success in Afghanistan.” A mid-August editorial in the Washington Postwas titled: “Making the Case for Success in Afghanistan.” And earlier this month, an Associated Press article appeared under the headline, “Petraeus Talks Up Success in Afghan War.”
→ read full articleTHE 700 MILITARY BASES OF AFGHANISTAN: BLACK SITES IN THE EMPIRE OF BASES
Nick Turse - Tomdispatch,
11 Feb 2010
In the nineteenth century, it was a fort used by British forces. In the twentieth century, Soviet troops moved into the crumbling facilities. In December 2009, at this site in the Shinwar district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, U.S. troops joined members of the Afghan National Army in preparing the way for the next round of […]
→ read full articleTHE DRONE SURGE: TODAY, TOMORROW, AND 2047
Nick Turse - Tomdispatch.com,
26 Jan 2010
Robots Will Soon Do All Our Killing For Us In the years ahead, unmanned machines will increasingly fight our wars. One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same […]
→ read full articleAN AMERICAN WORLD OF WAR – THE YEAR OF THE ASSASSIN
Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse - TomDispatch,
9 Jan 2010
What to Watch for in 2010 According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. We don’t name our years, but if we did, this one might prospectively be called the Year of the Assassin.We, of course, think of ourselves as something like the peaceable kingdom. After all, the shock of September […]
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