From The Danger Room:Quietly and with baby steps, the Pentagon's newest combatant command is intervening in one of the world's most tenacious conflicts. Two-year-old Africa Command ("Africom") has pledged $5 million to help build a new police force in Somalia that combines troops from the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government and -- get this -- former insurgents from an alliance of moderate Islamic groups.
Somalia hasn't had a functional central government in 18 years. Clan conflict, starvation and anarchy have contributed to what the U.S. Army's top intel agent for Africa called a "vortex of violence" where the fighting at times escapes any rational motivation. That vortex of violence is a hallmark of so-called "Fifth-Generation Warfare."
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