GEOINT trains sights on Africa
Africa is hot these days, and the geospatial intelligence community is eager to get in on the action. Yes, there is such a community. Known in shorthand as GEOINT (just like human intelligence is HUMINT), these guys have traditionally been the mappers and the analysists who pore over satellite imagery for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ...
Africa is hot these days, and the geospatial intelligence community is eager to get in on the action.
Africa is hot these days, and the geospatial intelligence community is eager to get in on the action.
Yes, there is such a community. Known in shorthand as GEOINT (just like human intelligence is HUMINT), these guys have traditionally been the mappers and the analysists who pore over satellite imagery for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or for private firms.
Today, they do much more. Don’t just think in terms of geography and borders. The GEOINT world is also mapping “human geography,” which, according to Penn State University, "focuses on patterns and processes that shape human interaction with the built and natural environments." It also can help intelligence and defense agencies find warlords like Uganda’s Lords Resistance Army’s Joseph Kony, or Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), or help development groups track poverty and population movements.
“If I want to track Kony, understand human trafficking [or] where AQIM is moving,” then the U.S. needs more GEOINT, said Keith Masback, head of the nonprofit U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF).
“‘Where’ matters,” he said.
Africa is commanding new interest across Washington, thanks to conflicts raging from Mali to the Congo, rising terrorism and narcotics trafficking across North Africa, and the upstart U.S. Africa Command, which is about to get a four-star celebrity general at its command in Army Gen. David Rodriguez.
In response, USGIF’s members are creating their first Africa Working Group, which is expected to meet within the next 60 days. As a member-driven forum, they have no preset agenda, but they want to start a dialogue that they hope will enhance the U.S. government’s Africa expertise, Masback said in an interview.
He also hopes to steer more of AFRICOM’s attention further south on the continent, beyond the conflicts in North Africa that are commanding headlines.
“It’s top heavy, in terms of diplomacy and engagement,” Masback said of AFRICOM’s efforts in Africa. “We gotta get smart about that continent if we’re going to operate there.” The working group, he said, will reach out to a variety of government agencies, including the Defense Department, State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as outside development groups, U.S. special operations forces, and AFRICOM.
“The Africanist crew is pretty small to date and pretty tight and they know each other pretty well,” he said, “and that’s the good news.” But they need more help.
“You don’t really understand Nigeria unless you understand who lives where, what their religions and tribal areas are,” to give just one example, he said.
“You start peeling back the proverbial onion on Africa and it doesn’t get simpler.”
Kevin Baron is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy, covering defense and military issues in Washington. He is also vice president of the Pentagon Press Association. Baron previously was a national security staff writer for National Journal, covering the "business of war." Prior to that, Baron worked in the resident daily Pentagon press corps as a reporter/photographer for Stars and Stripes. For three years with Stripes, Baron covered the building and traveled overseas extensively with the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, covering official visits to Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, China, Japan and South Korea, in more than a dozen countries. From 2004 to 2009, Baron was the Boston Globe Washington bureau's investigative projects reporter, covering defense, international affairs, lobbying and other issues. Before that, he muckraked at the Center for Public Integrity. Baron has reported on assignment from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and the South Pacific. He was won two Polk Awards, among other honors. He has a B.A. in international studies from the University of Richmond and M.A. in media and public affairs from George Washington University. Originally from Orlando, Fla., Baron has lived in the Washington area since 1998 and currently resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, three sons, and the family dog, The Edge. Twitter: @FPBaron
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