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Doug commands Special Operations Detachment–Africa (SOD-A), a group of about sixty soldiers based near Austin in a facility that was part of the old Bergstrom Air Force Base, and in a typical year, he sends his team to a dozen different countries. His unit’s primary mission is to train African special operations forces to fight terrorism. Doug knows I hunt and shoot, and he has one concern: “Don’t bring anything that makes you look military. You don’t want to look like a target.”

We are headed to Chad to observe Operation Flintlock, an annual counterterrorism exercise that lasts three weeks and brings together soldiers from about two dozen Western and African countries. The trip takes six hours on a wide-body Airbus from Paris to N’Djamena, barely a third of the way into the African continent. The length of the flight is a reminder of just how big Africa really is. The Sahara and Sahel regions alone are nearly 40 percent as large as the continental United States.