Gen. William Ward becomes head of AFRICOM
DefenseLink issued a news release today, naming Gen. William 'Kip' Ward as the new head of Africom (via Tom Barnett's blog).
Earlier this year, I posted on the President's announcement of the creation of AFRICOM, and cited a Time Magazine article which speculated that Gen. Ward was the most likely candidate for the position.
He is a really good choice. As cited in my earlier post, not only does he have boots on the ground experience from his time in Somalia during the BlackHawk down incident, but he already oversees US military relations with 48 African countries. This means that not only is he familiar with the type of conflict we will continue to face in this Long War, but already has an established relationship with many countries in the continent, making the transition of this AOR from CENTCOM, PACOM and EUCOM all that much easier. Something that can only help, given the difficulty military officials are encountering in finding AFRICOM a home on the continent, as African countries remain wary of American intentions (h/t Civil Military Relations blog). This is particularly true following our operations in Somalia.
6 comments:
This is great news!
I question if AFRICOM is truly up and running yet. The transition webpage for AFRICOM has no contact information and the Army's Institute of Heraldry has nothing yet. They have to register a device or seal through Heraldry, and it seems weird that they would announce before it was approved.
Sorry Chy, I didn't meant to give the impression that AFRICOM was up and running yet. He was reappointed to the rank of general of Africa Command in transition. AFRICOM is not supposed to become active until September 2008. Until then, he will be based in Germany, while he runs AFRICOM as a sub-command under EUCOM.
Thank you, my job is to keep track of the Heraldry so we can have a challenge coin ready for sale and I thought I'd missed this one.
Any word on where it will be headquartered when it is up and running? Djibouti seems an obvious choice. Maybe Ethiopia?
Not yet Soob. Earlier this month, there were a couple of articles on the difficulty State and the Pentagon were having in finding AFRICOM a home. So far, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and even Libya have turned down hosting it. In fact, only Pres. Sirleaf in Liberia has even acknowledged the good AFRICOM could do for Africa. I blogged on this, here.
I also noted that the Pentagon seems to be looking at initially starting AFRICOM as a Networked Command, whereby there is no one central base, but rather a slew of smaller bases placed throughout the continent. Till then, however, they'll continue to be based in Germany.
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