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    Connected Countries Part I: Nigeria

    Connected Countries Part I: Nigeria

    Photo By Staff Sgt. Crystal Housman | Top: During a recent trip to Nigeria, Lt. Col. John (back right) poses in a group...... read more read more

    MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, CA, UNITED STATES

    02.10.2017

    Story by Gregory Solman 

    163d Attack Wing   

    MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, Calif. (Feb. 10, 2017) – Lt. Col. John can cite the date April 14, 2014, with the unhesitating recall – and the same infamous emphasis – most Americans reserve for 9/11.

    That’s when the Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram (then, aligned with al-Qaeda) followed infamous mass-murdering raids of Nigerian schools with their most notorious act: the abduction of 276 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, most of whom remain missing to this day.

    “That’s when my personal interest in Nigeria started,” says Lt. Col. John, who normally heads up standards/evaluations for the Formal Training Unit of the 163d Attack Wing’s 160th Attack Squadron, and also leads the Wing’s State Partnership Program with both Nigeria and Ukraine. “Boko Haram roughly translates, ‘Western education is forbidden,’ and anyone who embraces any Western behavior that is not, according to their extreme sect, consistent with Sharia law, is less than human, expendable, subject to burning, whatever. We know they’ve done very horrible things to those girls.” Case in point: A 10-year-old captive was recently forced to become a suicide bomber.

    Tragically, according to subsequent investigations, Boko Haram accomplished the mass abduction despite the Nigerian military’s four-hour window to secure the school. They were reportedly stretched too thin to respond in time.

    “Nigeria is asking for help from various agencies, countries, and everyone else,” Lt. Col. John says. “It is a total war for them because they not only have Boko Haram in the north and northeast but an insurgency in the south. They are very limited in their capability and war-fighting effort.”

    Enter the State Partnership Program (SPP), a 24-year-old Department of Defense initiative managed by the National Guard and executed by the various states. In an SPP, a state National Guard partners with another nation’s “military/security forces in a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship,” according to the SPP, to provide an “innovative, low-cost, small footprint security cooperation program” and cultivate “enduring personal and institutional relationships that enhance influence and promote access.”

    Of the 73 National Guard partnerships around the globe, all California National Guard units work with Nigeria and Ukraine, which are only coincidentally hot spots, Lt. Col. John says. The Nigerian relationship (under USAFRICOM) was established in 2006, before Boko Haram’s murderous rampages began; and the Ukraine program (under USEUCOM) dates back to very beginning in 1993, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and long before the Russian annexing of Crimea three years ago.

    Although Lt. Col. John piloted F-16s and flies the Wing’s MQ-9 Remote-Piloted Aircraft (RPA), both as a mission-control element (once airborne) and a launch-recovery element, the emphasis on the Nigerian SPP is not asset-borrowing, force multiplication, or getting U.S. servicemen to fight their battles. For example, Lt. Col. John’s first trip to Nigeria in 2015—then under the command of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa—was as an air-to-ground integration subject matter expert. “I didn’t go there as an RPA person, but once I was there I was helping them, with all the capabilities they had, to integrate their ground troops with their Air Force to help fight Boko Haram,” he explains.

    “Like every sovereign country, they don’t want to give us full disclosure, but they are fairly forthcoming on how their operations are going,” Lt. Col. John says. “They are struggling to integrate an aging Air Force with a conventional ground attack. And that’s a challenge for anyone in a non-linear fight. There are some counter-insurgents who are bringing the same things to the war that they are.”

    On his last seven-day tour, the Nigerians provided Lt. Col. John’s 12-man security team as he assessed the situation. He believes the government—since a 2015 election, run by President Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Muhammadu Buhari—to be trustworthy and earnest. “We are not their only partner in combating terrorism,” Lt. Col. John adds. “They are looking toward the Chinese, the British, and to a mish-mash of airframes and support they are getting.”

    The Nigerian Air Force flies Dassault-Dornier Alpha Jets, Chinese Chengdu F-7s (upgraded MiG-21s), and Chinese RPA. Now they’re pushing to acquire A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft through the U.S. government—that, in a country still beset with malaria, abject poverty, potable water issues, and roads with curbs so high, a single stalled vehicle can cripple traffic for hours, Lt. Col. John notes. The Nigerian government typically spends less than one percent of gross domestic product on the military, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. A British colony/protectorate as recently as 1960, Nigerians speak English, as well as 256 African dialects. “There are some cultural differences, different customs and courtesies, but they work very well with us.”

    The 163d Attack Wing is “in its infancy in re-addressing our State Partnership Program,” Lt. Col. John suggests. “That’s why I have a vigorous interest in it. We have changed missions, and the mission we do here isn’t real conducive to a lot of these state partnerships. RPAs are new, and not every country has them. So, there is not a lot of crosstalk. A lot of countries want them, but that’s a foreign military-sales issue. We can’t say, ‘Yeah, we’ll lend you some RPAs.’”

    Even still, Lt. Col. John says, the Wing could some day assist in non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), “or what we would call armed overwatch. We have an ISR asset which can impact the battlefield in near-real time…But the program is starting on the ground.”

    In the near future, Lt. Col. John anticipates an air-to-ground workshop; then a process during which the Air Force would distinguish between legitimate Nigerian Air Force and Army requests; then the development of joint doctrine. “As they get increases in technology, and hopefully some foreign military sales, we’ll work on integrating more advanced platforms, such as the A-29,” Lt. Col. John predicts.

    For now, Lt. Col. John sees the SPP mission as an effort to “build cooperation and get some cross-talk going. We have our DIMEs [Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic] to exert U.S. policy influence. But this is a way to do it on a very personalized and individual basis. The Guard differs from the active duty, in that we’ll build a relationship; we’re going to stay there for long periods of time. We provide that reachback and crosstalk to be successful over several years, whereas active-duty [forces] break the bonds that are important internationally, the social bonds.”

    Lt. Col. John’s immediate task is to build lasting partnerships. “And that’s where we are trying to move in the next six months: Figure out the demands, the signals to help, assist and cooperate with them. Then develop a plan for the next couple of years to see that those seeds germinate.”

    *Due to Air Force security policy, Lt. Col. John’s last name is withheld throughout this article and name tapes are blurred in photos.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 02.10.2017
    Date Posted: 01.01.2018 03:29
    Story ID: 261131
    Location: MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, CA, US

    Web Views: 126
    Downloads: 0

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