SAO VICENTE (Cape Verde): The islanders of Cape Verde are slowly getting used to German armoured vehicles and Spanish helicopters descending on their sun-drenched beaches as US fighter F-16 jets roar overhead.
“It was a bit of a surprise at first,” said 48-year-old fisherman Constantino Valentin of the two weeks of Nato war games taking place this month on the Atlantic Ocean archipelago 500 km off the west coast of Africa.
“But it’s good to have them here. At least they spend a lot of money,” he said of the 7,800 troops involved in the manoeuvres, the alliance’s first major presence on African soil.
The Nato “Steadfast Jaguar” exercises are the final test of a 25,000-strong rapid-reaction force due to be ready from October to dive into troublespots around the world and deal with everything from natural disasters to terrorist attacks.
Four years in the planning, the Nato Response Force is the flagship of alliance efforts to mend a common image of it as an irrelevant vestige of the Cold War and prove it can take on the more diverse security threats of the 21st century.
Just as important to Nato’s image makeover is the choice of the remote former Portuguese colony for the exercises, and the lengths to which the alliance is going to show a friendly face to those who see it as a Trojan horse for US meddling abroad.
Hungarian Nato troops have built a water purification plant as a gift to be left behind after the June 15-29 war games. Alliance ships are using “passive sonar” devices it pledges will not harm the humpback whales that feed in Cape Verdean waters.
“When we show up, the first reaction can be ‘what’s your ulterior motive?’ But everyone’s amazed that when they brush up against Nato it’s a good experience,” Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, James Jones, told reporters.
It is no accident that Cape Verde is hosting the event.
Keen to gain exposure for their islands and their tourism industry, Cape Verdean officials and residents have welcomed the war games. Street interviews with locals yielded not one bad word on the alliance.
“Nato is very welcome here. It is a chance for us to gain experience,” said 59-year-old Antao Graca, administrator of a sporting club in the port of Melindo, referring to the fact that local troops were taking part in the operations.
The island republic wants to involve Nato in tackling some of the new security threats occupying alliance planners at their Brussels headquarters — for example by staging joint shipping patrols against drug traffickers.
While there is no talk of a Nato outpost on the archipelago, Cape Verde’s position as a stable democracy within reach of the turbulent region of west Africa makes it just the type of country with which many in the alliance want to promote ties.
The manoeuvres — held before dozens of journalists and VIP visitors from Europe — offer a telling insight into the type of future roles Nato sees for itself in the area.
One day, troops are flushing out a fictitious terrorist cell that has infiltrated one of the islands. The next, they are staging a mock evacuation of residents in a scenario in which the local Fogo volcano blows its top.
“Africa was a great choice. It is possible the Nato Response Force could come here one day,” said US Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Chestnutt, whose unit of F-16 fighters was deployed in the 1991 Gulf War and later conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.
However, others, both inside and outside the alliance, disagree, underlining how far Nato has yet to go in its transformation.
Cape Verde emerged as the venue for “Steadfast Jaguar” after France vetoed a candidate on the African mainland, Mauritania.
While France ended up contributing 1,000 troops to the exercises, Paris and other European capitals are much less keen than Washington about a role for Nato in Africa.
They say the continent is geographically and historically closer to Europe and argue the European Union should have first refusal when Africans ask for security help.
Nato encountered regional suspicion of its motives when it offered in 2004 to help African Union troops struggling to quell violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
It ended up offering transport and training to AU troops, but its presence on the ground has never amounted to more than a handful of logistics personnel. Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer rejects speculation that it wants a combat role.
While this month’s exercises show the Nato Response Force could be a potent tool, what missions it will be allowed to undertake is unclear.—Reuters
