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11/20/2005:

"U.S. seeks to secure Sahara Desert"

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- The U.S. government will spend $500 million over five years on an expanded program to secure a vast new front in its global war on terrorism: the Sahara Desert.
Critics say the region is not a terrorist zone as some senior U.S. military officers assert. They add that heavy-handed military and financial support that reinforces authoritarian regimes in North and West Africa could fuel radicalism where it scarcely exists.

The Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was begun in June to provide military expertise, equipment and development aid to nine Saharan countries where lawless swaths of desert are considered fertile ground for militant Muslim groups involved in smuggling and combat training.

"It's the Wild West all over again," said Maj. Holly Silkman, a public affairs officer at U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, which presides over U.S. security and peacekeeping operations in Europe, former Soviet bloc countries and most of Africa.
washingtontimes.com

Yeah, a whole bunch of 'Indians' are going to get killed.

China Wages Classroom Struggle to Win Friends in Africa
...The classes are one element in a campaign by Beijing to win friends around the world and pry developing nations out of the United States' sphere of influence. Africa, with its immense oil and mineral wealth and numerous United Nations votes, lies at the heart of that effort.

..."Soft power is said to be coercive, persuading people to do what you'd like them to do, as opposed to hard power, which means forcing them to do what you want to do," said Qin Yaqing, vice president of the Foreign Affairs University, a state-run school that trains China's own diplomats and works with foreign trainees. "In traditional Chinese philosophy we have something similar to this, and it is called moral attraction."