The New Colonialism: Washington's Pursuit of World Hegemony by Paul Craig Roberts http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24074

Forty-nine countries participate in the US Africa Command, but not Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast. There is Western military intervention in these non-member countries except for Zimbabwe.  www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23940  One traditional means by which the US influences and controls a country is by training its military and government officers. The program is called International Military and Education Training (IMET). AFRICOM reports that “in 2009 approximately 900 military and civilian students from 44 African countries received education and training in the United States or their own countries. Many officers and enlisted IMET graduates go on to fill key positions in their militaries and governments.” AFRICOM lists as a key strategic objective the defeat of the “Al-Qaeda network.

” The US Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) trains and equips “partner nation forces “ to preclude terrorists from establishing sanctuaries and aims to “ultimately defeat violent extremist organizations in the region.” Apparently, after ten years of “the war on terror” an omnipotent al-Qaeda now ranges across Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia in Africa, across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UK and is such a threat within the United States itself as to require a $56 billion “Homeland Security” annual budget. The al-Qaeda threat, a hoax as likely as not, has become Washington’s best excuse for intervening in the domestic affairs of other countries and for subverting American civil liberties.