The need for the US African Command (AFRICOM), which became fully operational Wednesday, was vividly illustrated during recent interviews with military Special Forces counterterror (CT) officials attached to AFRICOM’s Stuttgart, Germany headquarters.

The Command’s counterterrorists talked to HSToday.us’s Online Editor, Anthony Kimery, while he was in Switzerland last week meeting with officials of companies pioneering micro-technologies that have applicability to homeland security and defense, such as WMD sensors, counterfeit prevention, etc. The meetings were sponsored by Location Switzerland.

The CT officials told HSToday.us that Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-influenced Muslim jihadists in Africa are becoming an increasingly serious terrorist threat that has forced much greater attention to be focused on the region.

“There are some very serious bad guys and bad players there,” one of the officials candidly said.

Although Bush administration officials have emphasized that AFRICOM’s focus primarily is on war prevention and working with African countries and organizations to enhance regional security and crisis response capabilities in support of US interests in Africa, the CT officials HSToday.us spoke to said one of the Command’s fundamental roles is indeed counterterror intelligence and disruption operations.

However, Witney Schneidman, who served as deputy assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton administration, told McClatchy News Service that “in many parts of Africa it is perceived as the US bringing its war on terror to Africa. That is not what AFRICOM is about, but that is how it has been seen.''

AFRICOM takes over the Central Command’s (CENTCOM) Djibouti-based Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCI), which is comprised of nearly 2,000 military members who are tasked with countering terrorist operations in the Horn of Africa, where Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda inspired jihadists have been making strategic inroads.

TSCI officially was launched in June 2005 with Exercise Flintlock, which involved Special Operations Forces training their counterparts in seven Saharan countries in military tactics critical to combating terrorism and insurgencies, and enhancing security and stability.

The goal of TSCI is to prevent African territories from becoming safe havens for terrorist groups.

Also based in Djibouti since 2002 is the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), which also is focused on disrupting terrorist activities.

Africa’s “ungoverned regions provide attractive venues for terrorist groups,” wrote Brett D. Schaefer and Mackenzie Eaglen in a new Heritage Foundation paper.

The CT officials told HSToday.us Al Qaeda in particular has been working to establish a jihadist beachhead in the region.

Critics, however, both in the US and in Africa, have said AFRICOM is an intent to militarize the nation in response to geopolitical concerns over its vast strategic resources which the US certainly has interests in securing and protecting. The US is expected to import as much as 25 percent of its oil from Africa by 2015 – at a time when China also is aggressively working to secure access to the continent’s natural resources.

HSToday.us earlier reported that Beijing is the leading developer of oil reserves in Sudan, where it's estimated to have locked down 40 percent of production, or six percent of China’s total oil consumption. China’s growing pursuit of Middle East, African, and Pacific Rim crude will have profound security implications for the US.

Consequently, Schaefer and Eaglen wrote that the “non-traditional mission [of AFRICOM] has led some to mischaracterize AFRICOM as an attempt to militarize US foreign policy toward the region.”

While long-term US strategic interests in Africa clearly are of concern and under the purview of AFRICOM, the more immediate problem for the US is Islamist terrorism, the CT officials told HSToday.us.

Apparently ignoring AFRICOM’s crucial role in countering the known – and growing - terrorism threat in the region and more concerned that the Command is militarizing the continent, Congress cut nearly 30 percent of the funding for AFRICOM that was requested by the administration for fiscal year 2009.

Indeed, $123 million less than was asked for to fund AFRICOM’s first year of operations was appropriated. Bush had requested $389 million. The House Committee on Appropriations claimed the reduction was due partly to “the failure to establish an AFRICOM presence on the continent,'' which AFRICOM has not been able to do because of widespread opposition among African nations – including South Africa – to host the new Command. The $123 million was still more than the paltry $80.6 million some congressmen wanted to give AFRICOM.

For the time being, AFRICOM will be based in Stuttgart, with covert intelligence operatives working out of US installations and front companies throughout Africa.