Commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM), Lieutenant General Stuart Beare, visited U.S. Africa Command headquarters November 28, 2011 to discuss continued partnership between CEFCOM and AFRICOM on the African continent in 2012.



During his visit, Beare met with AFRICOM leaders, which served as an opportunity to discuss mutual interests between Canadian and U.S. forces.



He mentioned that with the drawdown of CEFCOM forces in Afghanistan from 3600 to 950 soldiers, more personnel and resources are now available to support other priorities. Specifically, he wants to see an increase of CEFCOM liaisons at U.S. combatant commands, including AFRICOM, U.S. Central Command, and U.S. Pacific Command, to engage with the Joint Task Forces (JTF) in their respective regions.



"Here on the (African) continent the area for improvement we know we can continue to improve on is our ability to plug into JTFs that AFRICOM would activate for operations," Beare said. "And we'll do that through exercises and other things."



According to Beare, CEFCOM is considering the headquarters of Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti as a potential location where Canadian and U.S. military personnel could collaborate on CJTF-HOA's mission to enhance African partner nation capacity and promote regional stability.



"Again, that provides us a better vehicle to understand the region, and if Canadian Forces ever find themselves in that region, we're already there," Beare stated.



During a briefing to U.S. Africa Command staff, he talked about the logistical advantages of having Operational Support Hubs, the equivalent of U.S Cooperative Security Locations, in East and West Africa.



"Essentially the longest pole in any tent is logistics. In other words, if you are going to be a long way from home, operate effectively from home, and come back home it's all about logistics, " Beare explained. "And we have an expectation that we'll need to be responsive to government of Canada's requirements to deploy globally, as we've done recently in Libya, without much notice."



In order for Canadian forces to be able to deploy quickly, he added, it is important to have an arrangement in place with host nations identifying logistics facilities from which they can operate.



"We are not talking about positioning troops, we are not talking about creating bases, we're talking about creating relationships, contracts and the vehicles we can turn on if we need to use them for any particular contingency in a region," he noted. "In Africa, of course, we see that primarily to enable humanitarian assistance and disaster response type operations and to be complementary to other developmental efforts that are going on for long haul development."



Present on the African continent since the end of the second world war, Canada has continued to be involved in Africa and is currently engaged in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Southern Sudan, Sierra Leone and Darfur.



Beare emphasized that the Canadian Forces aim to further their understanding of current missions and security issues in Africa. Additionally, they would like to see increased capacity to engage quickly with Africa Command.



"It's about having a better understanding of the continent today, increasing our capacity to plug into Africa Command's commanding control systems, its intelligence systems and its logistics framework should we find ourselves in other missions on the continent in the future beyond those we are doing today, " he stated. "We still are in those missions today in the Sudan and the Congo which continue to evolve, in Sierra Leone, and again, we want to make sure what we're doing in those missions is well understood to this command."



Speaking on the relationship between AFRICOM and CEFCOM, Beare stated that the Canadian Forces will continue to use the current liaison officer based in Stuttgart to help them "be smart on the American military perspective on Africa" and participate in exercises to improve military readiness. In the future, Beare said he would like to see the positioning of a Canadian military officer into one of the JTFs.



"That's still be to determined but that's certainly an ambition I'd like to realize," he concluded.