Step-Siblings in the
War on Terror

By Tara Brown, 04.02.07

While Iraq and Afghanistan tend to steal the international spotlight, other countries play a quieter but no less important role in world affairs. Aside from precluding terrorist activity in the region, the servicemen and women assigned to Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, Africa, also provide humanitarian relief.

“It [Camp Lemonier] has a dual mission of not only counter-terrorism but also humanitarianism,” said Capt. Heather Guzik, a nuclear weapons commander who recently returned to the U.S. from a six month deployment to Djibouti.

This is one place in the global war on terror where there is no bloodshed, just beneficence.

Established six months before Sept. 11, 2001, Camp Lemonier has served every branch of the United States military under the mission of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Its mission is “to prevent conflict, promote regional stability and protect Coalition interests in east Africa and Yemen.”

President of Djibouti, Ismail Omar Guelleh, welcomes the assistance to his country. According to Djibouti Telecom, Guelleh believes the prime issues of his country are the crisis of Darfur, the report of Somalia and the economic issues. He also pressed economic and social improvement within the country as top goals.

During Guzik’s time in Djibouti, the Army and Navy’s civil engineering and disaster relief teams provided flood relief to devastated areas, drilled wells and gave out clothing and food supplies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, the Comoros Islands, Seychelles, Mauritius, Uganda and Tanzania. In the first year of the base’s opening alone, $2.7 million were spent on emergency food, $2 million on neutralizing mines and another $100,000 in self-help and human rights areas. In addition, Camp Lemonier provides programs to train Djiboutian soldiers, uniting locals and the U.S. military in helping the people of Djibouti.

“I would hear from U.S. teams out in the countryside that they attach themselves onto what we’re doing,” Guzik said.

Such team effort is necessary to abate poverty in the continent.

“It’s devastating what people live in there,” Guzik said. “Children come up to you asking you for a bottle of water because their water systems are polluted. Many live in tents and in shacks. At the same time, you see wealthy Djiboutian men. It’s horrible.”

Djibouti’s National Army, which just celebrated its fifth anniversary, has been praised not only for its efforts to ensure the safety of its president but also for their humanitarian support of their own countrymen.

“The majority of the time we worked with them they almost pushed us away so they could do the work themselves,” said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Kris Hesselbrock on the CJTF-HOA’s website. “We were only supervisors.”

The locality of the base and its mission are crucial to the overall health of the region.

“The establishment of a very important American base in Djibouti, the only American one on the continent of Africa, affirms this [strategic] purpose,” according to the French journal “Le Monde.”

The U.S. government, which transferred the CJTF-HOA command from North Carolina to Djibouti in 2003, has seen increased conflict in CJTF-HOA’s Area of Responsibility (AOR), namely in Somalia and Sudan. The U.S. military has responded with increased involvement in the region. In Somalia, the U.S. military recently deployed AC-130 gunships, unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft carriers, and special operations teams into Mogadishu following the invasion by Ethiopian forces, the Transition Federal Government (TFG), and warlords who entered the region to drive the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts from power.

In Sudan, U.S. attention has turned to a video released by the prime minister of Jihadism, Al Zawahiri, who called the followers inside the Darfur area to prepare for a popular Jihad. Zawahiri has also criticized the Islamist government in Sudan, specifically the Janjaweed, for not doing enough to stifle the south’s rebellion, despite the militia’s mass murders of over 200,000 non-Arabs since 2003.

For the time, the efforts made at Camp Lemonier are energizing the economy and preventing the African region from being like its step-brothers, Afghanistan and Iraq. The difference can be seen on the soccer fields in downtown Djibouti, the same place where Guzik went outside the camp and played soccer with the locals, who she now calls teammates and friends.

If interested in furthering the humanitarian effort in Africa or in making a donation to Camp Lemonier’s chapel program, contact Capt. Guzik at the 742d Missile Squadron, 91st Space Wing via global military mail or appropriate public relations channels. For more information on operations in the Horn of Africa, please visit the CJTF-HOA website.