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Morocco: What a simulated battle tells us about a true ally | The Hill
The 2015 African Lion military exercises enhance an already strong partnership between Morocco and the US:
At a time of escalating turmoil and uncertainty in the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. military’s African Lion exercise, Phase II of which wrapped up last week in Agadir, Morocco, is another reminder of just how important it is that the United States continue to strengthen its relationships in the region, and of how we have a strong friend in Morocco.
African Lion, which began in the 1990s as a biennial U.S.-Morocco effort, is now an annual event — and the largest annual U.S. joint military exercise in Africa. Some 2,500 military personnel from not just the US and Morocco, but also the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Senegal, and Tunisia, trained for weeks for the exercise, designed to address potential crises by building, as the U.S. Marine Corps put it, “familiarity and operational proficiency.”
In Phase I of this year’s exercise, held in February in Agadir, a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) was created to prepare for a simulated international crisis, taking troops through a scenario that focused on humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and rapid and stable deployment operations…[Full Story]