DAKAR, April 10 (Reuters) - The United States is stepping up its naval presence in the lawless waters off West Africa to secure vital oil supplies and curb drug smuggling being used to finance terrorism, an admiral said.
Washington deployed the USS Fort McHenry, a 600-foot (185 metre) warship, to the Gulf of Guinea last year to train West African navies on improving maritime safety in a region that supplies nearly a fifth of U.S. oil imports.
With local navies too poorly trained and equipped to police their own waters, West Africa has become notorious for crimes from cocaine trafficking to oil theft, known as bunkering.
Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta said the United States was mounting a constant naval presence in the region under a scheme known as the African Partnership Station (APS) to protect the interests of Washington and its European and African allies.
"The maritime waters off West and Central Africa are being used for bad purposes," Kurta told Reuters in an interview.
"Whether it's illegal fishing, illegal migration, oil bunkering, energy security, piracy, drug flows: all of those affect the United States to varying degrees."
In recent months, attacks by al Qaeda's North African branch from Mauritania to Algeria have raised concern over Islamic militancy in the Sahara.
The Lisbon-Dakar rally was cancelled in January after suspected al Qaeda militants killed four French tourists in Mauritania and the group -- believed to finance its activities through drug smuggling across the vast desert -- kidnapped two Austrian holidaymakers in Tunisia last month.
"We know the narcotics trade funds many of the terrorism efforts so that's why the narcotics flow here, while it may not reach the United States, is of interest to us because we know it feeds the activities of the terrorists," Kurta said.
SEEKING EUROPEAN HELP
With European countries concerned by waves of illegal African migrants and rising narcotics trafficking from Africa, the United States is looking at ways of involving allies, such as France and Great Britain, more closely in scheme.
"There has been a growing realisation by a number of countries of the importance of Africa," Kurta said.
Once a permanent presence was achieved in West and Central Africa, Washington hoped to extend the scheme to the continent's east coast, where a luxury French yacht and its 30 crew members were captured by pirates last week.
"We are certainly looking toward that. We are seeing what we can do and what our allies can help us with," Kurta said. "That is a little bit in the future."
The APS's deployment last year came just after the United States launched its African military command (Africom) amid concerns voiced by diplomatic heavyweights Nigeria and South Africa, which fear an attempt to enforce Washington's will.
Many Africans saw its creation as a sign of Washington's determination to control valuable oil and mineral resources, particularly given a rising Chinese presence on the continent.
U.S. officials have downplayed this, saying there will be no new military bases and the focus will be on training African armies, facilitating peacekeeping and distributing aid.
Washington already spends an estimated $250 million a year on military assistance and training in Africa.
With the Fort McHenry docked on Thursday in the Senegalese capital Dakar on the return leg of its mission, U.S. naval instructors coached Senegalese sailors on techniques for boarding and searching small ships and hand-to-hand combat.
"We want to help empower countries like Senegal. We want them to be an independent security force in the region," said Ensign Manooh Azizi, the U.S. officer supervising the training.
Via [Reuters]
