The men gathered in a graveyard in the
dead of night. They wore
body armor, boots and carried
semi-automatic weapons. Their target
lay a mile away, the official residence
of the president of The Gambia, Yahya
Jammeh — a
U.S.-trained military officer who
seized power in 1994. Those in the
cemetery planned to oust him, but within
hours, they were either
dead or on the run.
One of those killed, the ring-leader
and
former head of Gambia’s Presidential
Guard,
Lamin Sanneh, had previously earned
a master’s degree at the Pentagon’s
National Defense University in
Washington, D.C.
Some of the plotters were eventually
convicted in the United States “for
their roles in planning and executing an
unsuccessful coup attempt to overthrow
the government of The Gambia on December
30, 2014.”
Four pled guilty on counts related
to the Neutrality Act — a federal law
that prohibits Americans from waging war
against friendly nations. A fifth was
sentenced in March 2017 for buying and
exporting
weapons used in the failed coup,
which pitted two generations of
U.S.-trained mutineers against each
other.
The State Department doesn’t know
about any of this — or doesn’t want to.
A simple Google search reveals this
information, but when Responsible
Statecraft asked if Yahya Jammeh or
Lamin Sanneh had received U.S. training,
a State Department spokesperson
responded: “We do not have the ability
to provide records for these historical
cases at this time.” When asked about
other trainees in other nations that
have experienced military uprisings, the
response was the same.
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Responsible Statecraft has found that
at least 15 U.S.-supported officers have
been involved in 12 coups in West Africa
and the greater Sahel during the war on
terror. The list includes military
personnel from Burkina Faso (2014,
2015, and twice in
2022); Chad (2021);
Gambia (2014);
Guinea (2021);
Mali (2012,
2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008);
and Niger (2023).
At least
five leaders of the most recent coup
in Niger, received U.S. training,
according to a U.S. official. They, in
turn, appointed
five U.S.-trained members of the
Nigerien security forces to serve as
governors, according to the State
Department.
The total number of U.S.-trained
mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may
be far higher than is known, but the
State Department,
which tracks data on U.S. trainees,
is either unwilling or unable to provide
it. Responsible Statecraft identified
more than 20 other African military
personnel involved in coups who may have
received U.S. training or assistance,
but when asked, the State Department
said it lacks the “ability” to provide
information that it possesses.
“If we are training individuals who
are executing undemocratic coups, we
need to be asking more questions about
how and why that happens,” said
Elizabeth Shackelford, a senior fellow
at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
and lead author of the newly-released
report, “Less
is More: A New Strategy for U.S.
Security Assistance to Africa.” “If
we aren’t even trying to get to the
bottom of that, we are part of the
problem. This shouldn’t just be on our
radar — it should be something we
intentionally track.”
Shackleford and her colleagues say
that the U.S. penchant for pouring money
into abusive African militaries instead
of making long-term investments in
bolstering democratic institutions, good
governance, and the rule of law, has
undermined wider American aims.
In addition to training military
mutineers in Africa, other U.S. security
assistance efforts during the war on
terror have also foundered and failed.
Ukrainian troops trained by the U.S. and
its allies
stumbled during a long-awaited
counteroffensive against Russian
forces, raising questions about the
utility of the instruction.
In 2021, an Afghan army created,
trained, and armed by the United States
over 20
years dissolved in the face of a
Taliban offensive. In 2015, a $500
million Pentagon effort to train and
equip Syrian rebels, slated to
produce 15,000 troops, yielded just a
few dozen before being scrapped.
A year earlier, an Iraqi army built,
trained, and funded — to the tune of at
least $25 billion — by the U.S. was routed by
the rag-tag forces of the Islamic State.
“U.S. policy in Africa has for too
long prioritized short-term security to
the detriment of long-term stability by
prioritizing the provision of military
and security assistance,” Shackelford
writes in the
new Chicago Council report.
“Partnerships and military assistance
with illiberal, undemocratic countries
have delivered little, if any,
sustainable security improvements, and
in many cases have prompted further
instability and violence by building the
capacity of abusive security forces.”
