Ground Zero for a veritable terror diaspora set in motion in the wake of 9/11: MANIFEST DESTINY?

The overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya by an interventionist coalition including the US, France, and Britain similarly empowered a host of new militant Islamist groups such as the Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, which have since carried out multiple attacks on Western interests, and the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia, whose fighters assaulted US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In fact, just prior to that attack, according to the New York Times, the CIA was tracking "an array of armed militant groups in and around" that one city alone.

According to Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Libya, that country is now "fertile ground" for militants arriving from the Arabian Peninsula and other places in the Middle East as well as elsewhere in Africa to recruit fighters, receive training, and recuperate. "It's really become a new hub," he told me.

Obama's scramble for Africa

The US-backed war in Libya and the CIA's efforts in its aftermath are just two of the many operations that have proliferated across the continent under President Obama. These include a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, consisting of intelligence operations, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, drone strikes, and US commando raids; a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and his top commanders in the jungles of the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; a massive influx of funding for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; and, in just the last four years, hundreds of millions of dollars spent arming and training West African troops to serve as American proxies on the continent.  >>From 2010-2012, AFRICOM itself burned through US$836 million as it expanded its reach across the region, primarily via programs to mentor, advise, and tutor African militaries.

>>continueCLICK>>http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-200613.html

FURTHER READING

http://theartof12.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-hysterical-shrew-sniggering.html 

http://theartof12.blogspot.com/2013/03/sniggering-shrew.html

http://theartof12.blogspot.com/2013/04/ritualized-atrocity-imperialism-is.html