As Diplomacy Shifts, U.S. Expands Military-Style Counterterrorism Training
As Diplomacy Shifts, U.S. Expands Military-Style Counterterrorism Training by Jessica Donati – Wall Street Journal
The U.S. State Department is opening new, military-style training facilities around the world, expanding plans to prop up local forces battling terrorism as the Trump administration seeks cutbacks in conventional diplomacy and development programs.
Three new State Department training centers—in Africa and Southeast Asia—are joining two centers in the Middle East that train and equip forces responding to terrorist attacks in their home countries.
While the U.S. Defense Department conducts training programs for foreign military forces around the world, including Africa, the State Department works with local law-enforcement agencies and counterterrorism authorities in a fast-growing and steadily spreading war against jihadist groups in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.
The State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance, or ATA, program runs the centers and is carrying out the expansion, details of which haven’t been previously reported.
Officials opened the newest training center in 2018 in Senegal, in West Africa, as a first step toward broadening the program’s role in training and equipping forces around the world…