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."