"War on Terrorism's Forgotten Front" (BM)

Dr. J. Peter Pham is a professor at James Madison University and a 2005-06 FDD Academic Fellow.  He is writing a series of essays on Africa's underreported and underappreciated role in the War on Terror.  Peter knows the topic well.  He is the author of two books on African conflicts and he regularly travels there for field research. 

An excerpt from the first, "The War on Terrorism's Forgotten Front":

It has been a long-standing cliché that Africa is the stepchild of U.S. foreign policy, notwithstanding the modest attention recently received by the extradition of former Liberian president Charles Taylor (himself a figure with rather shady dealings with violent extremists, as a number of mainstream journalists, including The Washington Post's Douglas Farah, have extensively reported) to a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal.

In the context of the current struggle against transnational terrorism, however, this lack of attention is not only shortsighted, but it undermines potential successes elsewhere. The Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy recognized as much when it acknowledged that conditions in sub-Saharan Africa threaten "both a core value of the United States—preserving human dignity—and our strategic priority—combating terror," while the new 2006 National Security Strategy affirmed that "Africa holds growing geo-strategic importance and is a high priority" for America. What is needed, however, is not rhetoric but action: already terrorist networks, forced out elsewhere, have found refuge among Africa's weak or failed states.

The rest, published by the World Defense Review (where FDD's Walid Phares is also a contributor and well worth bookmarking), is here.

We will continue to highlight his writings as they become available.