While the American military exercise Flintlock 2022 is taking place in Côte d'Ivoire, several studies show that a majority of the leaders of military coups in Africa have been trained by the United States.
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Yahya Jammeh, Gilbert Diendéré, Isaac Zida, Amadou Sanogo, Khalifa Haftar, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi… but also Mamady Doumbouya, Assimi Goïta, Paul-Henri Damiba. All these soldiers, who led coups in Africa, have one thing in common: they were officers who had participated in at least one American joint training in combined exchange (JCET). Some have even undergone extensive US military training.
For followers of conspiracy theories, the cause and effect link is quickly established. Of the 43 military coups that have taken place in Africa, whether failed or successful, 37 have been carried out by US-trained soldiers or on US soil. The only exceptions are Mahamat Déby in Chad, François Bozizé in the Central African Republic (CAR), and Pamphile Zomahoun in Benin, trained in France.
As paranoia invades the minds of African leaders after a year marked by coups, the new Flintlock 2022 counter-terrorism exercise is therefore inevitably scrutinized by leaders.
For the think-tank Rand Corporation, according to a study in 2018, there are “doubts that American military training breeds putschists”. For the American soldier Jonathan Caverley, who analyzed data between 1970 and 2009, there would be "a strong relationship between American training of foreign soldiers and military coup attempts".
Flintlock, the mysterious American military exercise
This year, it is in Ivory Coast that the American exercise Flintlock takes place. Created in 1968, the program took place for twenty years in Europe. It was not until 1999 that Flintlock was held for the first time in Africa, in the Ivory Coast.
Since 2005, the military exercise has taken the format we know today, namely four sub-exercises taking place in different African countries, followed by a joint exercise to close the training. The last exercise includes tactical training in military medicine, law of war, management of specialized units and… democracy and human rights.
In reality, Exercise Flintlock is preceded by months of training for the officers taking part. They are often the most promising elements of African armies, often young. And since 2015, these are exclusively field commanders of proven commando units.
Then Africom selects the participants, with the help of the US State Department. A mandatory procedure under the Leathy Act, to avoid “supporting governments engaging in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”. But concretely, it is just a question of verifying that the trained African soldiers are not accused of war crimes.
This year, the military exercise which ends on February 28 will involve 400 officers from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Niger. Obviously, the soldiers from Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea were not invited. However, since 2015, Burkina Faso and Mali have participated in the Flintlock exercise every year.
A story of democracy… and human rights
Countries that seem excluded on the background of diplomatic differences with the West, following the coups in the West African region. However, the leaders of the said coups had all taken part in the Flintlock exercise in the past.
But most of all, for the US military, it's all about mitigating the criticism that comes with the launch of Flintlock every year. “When the United States prioritizes military training, we overlook longer-term goals that could create more stable governments,” said Lauren Woods, director of the NGO Center for International Policy. “We need more transparency and public debate about the foreign military training we provide. And we need to do a much better job of thinking about the long-term risks – including coups and abuses by the forces we train,” the American activist said.
The US military, for its part, denies that its training encourages dissent among African servicemen. "Military training regularly includes modules on the law of armed conflict, subjection to civilian control and respect for human rights," Africom spokeswoman Kelly Cahalan said in early February. “Military coups are incompatible with American military training and education,” insists Cahalan.
An observation that the statistics invalidate, just as much as the profile of the perpetrators of recent coups in Africa. Even if, in reality, more objective political and social motives exist for these putsches.
An increasingly successful training of putschists?
Burkina Faso's transitional president, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, is just the latest in a carousel of putschists trained by the US military. According to an analysis investigative magazine The Intercept, US-trained officers have attempted nine coups in five West African countries since 9, eight of which were successful.
Read: Burkina Faso: Damiba president, the Constitution restored
Apart from Damiba in Burkina Faso, the Guinean Head of State, Mamady Doumbouya, trained by the French Foreign Legion, had been – along with his unit – trained by the American Green Berets, who arrived in Guinea only for this reason. Since his ascension to head the Special Forces Group (GFS) in 2018, Doumbouya has enjoyed preferential treatment from the US military.
Read: Who is Mamady Doumbouya, Guinea's new strongman?
The President of the Malian transition, Assimi Goïta, participated in at least two Flintlock exercises. He had, in 2020, received military training at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, United States.
A context that does not date from yesterday…
In the case of Mali, Goïta is not even the first US-trained officer to overthrow the government. Amadou Sanogo led the coup against Amadou Toumani Touré in 2012. Sanogo then declared: “The United States is a great country with a fantastic army. I tried to put into practice here (in Mali, editor's note) everything I learned there”. It should be remembered that Amadou Sanogo had 6 years of military training in Texas – he notably learned English there – followed by training in intelligence in Arizona and a final officer training in Georgia. He therefore spent seven years of his life surveying the United States.
In 2014, in Burkina Faso, it was Colonel Isaac Zida, back from the United States after two years of counterterrorism training in Florida, and a Flintlock exercise, who had been placed by Blaise Compaoré and Gilbert Diendéré as Prime Minister, in full wave of demonstrations against the Compaoré regime. After the latter's departure, Zida proclaimed himself president of the transition, the time to be replaced by Michel Kafando.
The following year, General Gilbert Diendéré, Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, and one of the mainstays of Exercise Flintlock for years, attempted to overthrow Kafando. After six days of clashes, his putsch attempt failed. Diendéré had also clandestinely implicated Burkinabe soldiers in the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as in the Ivorian crisis in 2002. He is currently serving 20 years in prison, and is accused of having participated in the assassination of Thomas Sankara, thus risking two additional decades of imprisonment.
…or the day before yesterday, for that matter
In 2008, after the putsch in Mauritania, which brought down President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, a soldier close to the United States started a dictatorship that lasted ten years: Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. At the onset of the coup, the US military's media agency, Stars and Stripes, revealed that Abdel Aziz "worked with US forces training in Mauritania". A revelation confirmed by the training sessions of his unit, the Presidential Security Battalion (BASEP), whose members were all trained in the United States.
In 2014, it was the clash of putschists "made in the USA" that took place in Gambia. Indeed, while Yahya Jammeh, trained at Fort Benning in the early 1990s before leading a putsch in 1994, was traveling abroad, the Gambian dictator's regime suffered an attempted coup. At the origin of the failed putsch, Captain Lamine Sanneh, trained at the National Defense University (NDU), in Washington.
For the former professor of Sanneh, Jeffrey Meiser, the American stay of the soldier would have influenced his choices. “I think his upbringing in the United States influenced his actions. I can't help but wonder if the indoctrination of our international students by 'American values' is ultimately counterproductive and unethical,” Meiser said.
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, before dismissing President Mohamed Morsi, had received his first military training at Fort Benning in the American South, he also spent more than a year at the United States Army War College, a an American institution which never accepts more than ten foreigners per year.