As if the U.S. military weren't busy enough in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's now got another project looming: building an entirely new Africa Command from the ground up. For years, the Department of Defense split the continent between three existing commands - Central, European, and Pacific. But on February 6, 2007, the George W. Bush administration announced that Africa was finally going to get individual attention.
Two years later, fevers have cooled, but Africom remains a contentious issue. Here's a look at what the command really is (and isn't), and why it fits in quite nicely with the world of counterinsurgency traditionally left to commanders in the Middle East and Central Asia.
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