Maryland: The US military has resumed flying drones and manned aircraft out of air bases in the Niger more than a month after a coup temporarily halted all those activities there, the head of US Air Forces for Europe and Africa said Wednesday.
\nSince the July coup, the 1,100 US forces deployed in the country have been confined inside their military bases. Last week the Pentagon said some military personnel and assets had been moved from the air base near Niamey, which is the capital of Niger, to another in Agadez. Niamey is about 920 kilometers away from Agadez.
\nIn response to a question from the Associated Press on how the US was able to continue its counterterrorism missions without those flights, Gen. James Hecker, the top Air Force commander for Europe and Africa, said in recent weeks some of those intelligence and surveillance missions have been able to resume due to US negotiations with the junta.
\n\u201cFor a while we weren\u2019t doing any missions on the bases, they pretty much closed down the airfields,\u201d Hecker said. \u201cThrough the diplomatic process, we are now doing, I wouldn\u2019t say 100 percent of the missions that we were doing before, but we\u2019re doing a large amount of missions that we\u2019re doing before.\u201d
\nIn a statement, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that the US was flying missions again but said they were confined to protecting US forces.
\nHecker, who spoke to reporters at the annual Air and Space Forces Association convention at National Harbor, Maryland, said the US is flying both manned and unmanned missions and those flights resumed \u201cwithin the last couple of weeks.\u201d
\nThe significant distance between the two bases also means that the while flights are going out, some missions are \u201cnot getting as much data, because you\u2019re not overhead for as long\u201d because of the amount of fuel it takes to get out and back, he said.
\nThe US has made Niger it\u2019s main regional outpost for wide-ranging patrols by armed drones and other counterterror operations against Islamic extremist movements that over the years have seized territory, massacred civilians and battled foreign armies. The bases are a critical part of America\u2019s overall counterterrorism efforts in West Africa.
\nThe US has also invested years and hundreds of millions of dollars in training Nigerian forces.
\nIn 2018, fighters loyal to the Daesh group ambushed and killed four American service members, four Nigeriens and an interpreter.
\nWest Africa recorded over 1,800 extremist attacks in the first six months of this year, which killed nearly 4,600 people, according to ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States.
\nThe Islamic extremist group Boko Haram operates in neighboring Nigeria and Chad. Along Niger\u2019s borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama\u2019at Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin pose greater threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maryland: The US military has resumed flying drones and manned aircraft out of air bases in the Niger more than a month after a coup temporarily halted all those activities there, the head of US Air Forces for Europe and Africa said Wednesday. Since the July coup, the 1,100 US forces deployed in the country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-355860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n