Hundreds of elite North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) troops backed by fighter planes and warships will storm a tiny volcanic island off Africa’s Atlantic coast this week in what the Western alliance hopes will prove a potent demonstration of its ability to project power around the world.
Thursday’s amphibious landing on Sao Vicente island in front of Nato’s top brass is the centrepiece of a two-week war game in the Cape Verde archipelago — the alliance’s first exercise on African soil.
Exercise Steadfast Jaguar is designed to test the new Nato Response Force, which the alliance is struggling to declare fully operational in October as the 25 000-strong spearhead of a modernised military pact focused on managing threats and crises over long distance.
By using the jagged mountains and remote beaches of Cape Verde, Nato hopes to underscore the break from its Cold War past when allied manoeuvres would push tanks across the north German plains in preparation for a Russian attack.
Over 7 000 Nato troops, including French and German infantry, American fighter pilots and Spanish sailors, will confront a fictional fight between rival factions battling for control of island energy resources and rescue civilians from a pretend volcanic eruption.
Nato officials insist the scenarios they will encounter are completely imaginary — and not directly linked to talks on giving the alliance a new task protecting energy supplies in West Africa.
That could entail naval patrols to protect tankers off the coast of West Africa or security for storage and production facilities in areas such as the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to James Jones, Nato’s top operational commander
The government of Cape Verde, which lies 500km west of Senegal on the West African mainland, hopes hosting the war games will help it draw closer to the Western alliance.
The exercises have proved controversial.
France — wary of the United States-led Nato taking too big a role in Africa — blocked the original plan to hold the manoeuvres in Mauritania, on the African mainland.
Nato has also gone to lengths to reassure environmentalists that the exercise will not harm Cape Verde’s flora and fauna. Special whale-friendly sonar will be used by the Nato warships.
Nato’s military headquarters have been developing the Response Force since 2002. The force is formed by land, air and maritime units ready to respond at short notice to crises ranging from full-blown conflicts to humanitarian relief.
The challenges of operating over 2 500km from the European mainland are designed to push the resources of the force, units of which have already been used in humanitarian operations to the US after hurricane Katrina and in Pakistan following last year’s earthquake. — Sapa-AP