U.S. Military Presence in Africa Growing in Small Ways by David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
Amid a surge of Islamic militancy in North Africa, a team of fewer than 50 U.S. special operations troops with a single helicopter arrived at a remote base in western Tunisia last month.
Their mission: train Tunisian troops in counter-terrorism tactics.
The operation was one of dozens of U.S. military deployments in Africa over the last year, often to tiny and temporary outposts. The goal is to leverage American military expertise against an arc of growing instability in North Africa and many sub-Saharan countries, from Mali in the west to Somalia in the east.
The small-scale operations by the Pentagon's six-year-old Africa Command reflect an effort to avoid provoking anti-U.S. militants in the region — and wariness of getting drawn into new conflicts…