Why are so many US special forces deployed across Africa?

'War on terror' changes gear: Obama is due to explain his new foreign policy at West Point today

Charles Laurence

The kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by the extreme Islamist Boko Haram group in Nigeria has brought to light a new US military stealth campaign in Africa.

It turns out that the American special forces dispatched to help find and rescue the girls, snatched from their school by al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in April, did not have to travel as far as was thought.

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Charles Laurence is a US correspondent for The Week.co.uk. He is a former New York bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph. He divides his time between Manhattan and Woodstock, upstate New York.