Marcus Hicks

The al Qaeda - and ISIS-inspired threats in Lake Chad Basin and here in the Sahel are very real and continue to grow in strength.

We are not walking away from our African partners. In fact, because their capability has improved to the level it has, they're capable of conducting lots of these tactical operations on their own, we're going to help them to degrade the enemies that we share in common. They are fighting America's enemies. These are sworn enemies of the United States, United States's why we're here. We can fight them here or we can fight them somewhere else at a much higher cost.

Both ISIS and al Qaeda franchises here should be taken seriously, they both have either carried out or attempted attacks on western interests in West Africa, and they both have aspirations to continue attacks on western interests here, and then to attack the west beyond here.

What concerns me most specifically is al Qaeda, because I believe that al Qaeda-associated threats here, so al Shabaab and JNIM and the other offshoots of formerly known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, are taking direction from al Qaeda core and are sort of walking through the al Qaeda playbook to develop clandestine infrastructure, and I think they have a disciplined, patient approach to building a base that will allow them to form a caliphate when the time is right.

My intent there was to remind -- a lot of West Africa is coming out of Afghanistan, and to remind them that we are not in Afghanistan. We have multiple sovereign nations here, and this is going to be a long, deliberate effort to develop their capability, and that our focus is really on working by, with and through our African and western partners.

I cautioned my force to back away from pushing it too hard is because the resource rich environment that we enjoyed in Iraq and Afghanistan exists virtually nowhere in West Africa.

We're mindful of the limits of our resources. by Marcus Hicks

We're mindful of the limits of our resources.