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U.S. intelligence wants priority upgrade for Africa

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community has proposed the investment of additional resources in Africa due to the migration of Al Qaida networks to the region.

Officials said the intelligence community has acknowledged that Africa was not a priority for intelligence-collection and analysis. But they said Al Qaida's emergence on the continent required an upgrade of intelligence assets.

Thomas Fingar, deputy director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the agency plans to rebuild its capability in Africa, now assigned to junior analysts. Fingar said the intelligence community required experienced personnel to unravel the religious and tribal ties on the continent.

Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arizona Democrat, urged the intelligence community to increase resources for Africa, Middle East Newsline reported. Pryor said Africa, with an increasing Al Qaida presence, would become a "major problem for the U.S."

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"We really have a rebuilding challenge here, because the level of expertise required to get arms around the religious, tribal, ethnic, economic kinds of cleavages in the regions to understand and identify the more capable leaders with whom one might work to devise strategies," Fingar said. "We don't have the analytic expertise that we need. We've launched an effort to rebuild it." Officials said the intelligence upgrade could take place when the U.S. military establishes its African Command. Africom, with temporary headquarters in a U.S. military base in Germany, would cover virtually the entire continent.

"We are taking the appropriate actions to support the commander, who has a focus on this area right now — Central Command commander." Defense Intelligence Agency director Michael Maples said.

National Intelligence Director John McConnell said the community has instituted the National Intelligence Priorities Framework to determine the priorities of policymakers. McConnell said the community has been preoccupied with the U.S. war in Iraq.

"What we do with that is engage with the policymakers on a regular basis to get them to validate where we focus and so on," McConnell told a recent Senate hearing. "So I think we're better than we were. We have reasonable focus on the area, but in all candor, the focus on Iraq and Al Qaida and other places, it probably is not as robust as we'd all like it."

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