The US base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti is a key operational asset in a troubled region, with al-Qaeda active in nearby Somalia and Yemen. Some 3,000 US troops, as well as armour, fighters and drones are based there. But the US is also experimenting with a different kind of military mission – soft power through soldiers as aid workers, in an effort to deny militant extremists support among Africa's poor. The BBC World Service's Dan Damon has been given rare access to the US operation.

Whatever the combat operations out of Camp Lemonnier today, after the killing of 19 US soldiers and the wounding of 70 others in Mogadishu in 1993, there is no appetite for full scale ground operations in Somalia.

Instead, the Pentagon is keen to talk about soldiers in humanitarian and development projects.

Why are soldiers doing what aid workers have traditionally done?

Because they can, says Col Hollingsworth.

"The US military brings a tremendous amount of capability and experience in the kinds of things this new philosophy requires.

"Manpower and budget mean it was inevitable the military would be included in development and diplomacy."

Confused mission

The nomadic herders struggling to survive in the village of Guistir, in the furnace-hot mountains on Djibouti's border with Somalia and Ethiopia, have no hesitation in supporting the CJTF mission.

US soldiers built a clinic in Guistir. Without it, the villagers, who have not seen significant rain in three years and whose animals are either emaciated or long dead, would have to walk dozens of miles to get medical help.

The clinic's nurses also run reading classes for the children; food aid is delivered there.

"What do you think of Americans?" I asked village chief Adil Ali Gedde, a devout Muslim living just a few kilometres from Somalia.

His response would be music to the ears of most US politicians.

"We congratulate the American army and we are very glad to see them here," he says.

Ultimately, though, the chaos in Somalia and the escalation of fighting in Yemen are the really serious problems in the region.

If Yemen continues on its slide to chaos, the militants of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula known to be based there will be able to recruit and train more easily and increase attacks on the West.

Already, at least two aeroplane bomb plots and the Fort Hood shootings have been blamed on radical US Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, currently thought to be in hiding in Yemen.

So there are complaints that the US is mounting a confused mission, far too little to deal with the sources of conflict.

A senior officer in the neighbouring French base in Djibouti told me: "The Americans never share any intelligence with us, about Somalia or about Yemen, which is in a civil war."

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Djibouti, Giorgio Bertin, has spent 30 years trying to mediate between clans and warlords in Somalia.

He is also critical of the US mission: "This is not the right policy. It is taking care of someone who is sick without going to the causes of the sickness. With only a humanitarian approach, we will not solve the problems of Somalia. I'm not against the use of force when it is necessary."

Patronage

The giant US presence has another impact that Djiboutians complain of – in private.

America is paying a lot for the right to use the base and that should give them plenty of leverage over Djibouti's government.

But so far, people say when they are sure they are not being overheard, the Americans appear to have done nothing to deal with the corruption and patronage that blight Djibouti, keeping it from the huge economic potential that goes with its strategic position.

On the road west, that potential is most obvious in the hundreds of overladen trucks grinding their way to Ethiopia.

Since that country's war with Eritrea began more than a decade ago, Ethiopia's only access to the sea is through Djibouti's port.

The port road runs past luxury gated communities and the vast, white presidential palace of Ismail Omar Guelleh, 30 years in power.

Further along the road, the scrap metal shanties and huts made of cardboard and plastic that so many Djiboutians are forced to live in.

It is an ugly contradiction, and so far America's soft power experiment has failed to challenge it.

Originally Published On: www.bbc.co.uk – Original Article Here