Military focuses on development in Africa

Hathaway, whose Djibouti deployment came after five months in Iraq, says a unique aspect of his Hol-Hol mission is exposure to the local population. In Iraq, he survived incoming mortar rounds to build a runway and military housing but he never left the base. "Here, we see the same people everyday, we're relating one-to-one."

In an effort to overcome the language barrier, the Gulfport team defies Djibouti's punishing summer temperatures to play regular soccer matches with the local children.

"In the beginning, we were suspicious but now we've seen that they are good people and they're doing good things for our village," says Abdul-Rahman Bossis, an unemployed Hol-Hol resident.

Director of Public Affairs Major David Malakoff says he believes these outreach efforts can foster a positive impression of the American military, but he is honest about the challenge. "How much of a difference are we going to make? That's hard to say. It's not something that we can judge short-term," he says. "Our target group is today's children, so we're not going to know for 10 or 15 years. But we hope that, in the long run, we could be saving lives."

Michael O'Hanlon, foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, thinks that civil affairs programs "created in partnership with host governments and combined with efforts to foster economic progress can be very useful as part of a broader strategy."

But Alex de Waal, director of the London-based advocacy and research organization Justice Africa, argues that global media coverage of the US military in combat overshadows the potential good will generated by such small-scale projects.

"January's air strikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia had a disastrous impact on America's image in the region," he says. "US gunships didn't take off from Camp Lemonier but many people in the region assume it is all part of the same plan."

It's not yet clear how Camp Lemonier's function will evolve when the current patchwork of responsibilities under Pacific, European, and Central Commands are consolidated into a single unit for the whole continent.

Rear Admiral Moeller says CJTF-HOA provides a good example of the kind of interagency coordination that AFRICOM hopes to achieve. "We've understood for a long time that the challenges in Africa cannot be solved by the military alone. Economic development, responsive governance, health, crime, and poverty are all pieces of the security environment."

The CSIS's Mr. Morrison says American stakes in Africa have risen dramatically in the last couple of years in relation to energy security, counter-terrorism, and intensifying competition with China. "The creation of AFRICOM reflects the need for a more unified approach and a higher priority in managing US military interests on the continent. But it's still at the planning stage. Decisions about AFRICOM's internal structure and base locations will come when the mission is more clearly defined."

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