President George W. Bush created a new command to oversee all military operations in Africa 18 years ago. U.S. Africa Command was meant to help “bring peace and security to the people of Africa.”

The Trump administration now has AFRICOM on the chopping block as part of its sweeping reorganization of the military. According to the general leading the command, its mission is far from accomplished.

Gen. Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, offered a grim assessment of security on the African continent during a recent press conference. The West African Sahel, he said last Friday, was now the “epicenter of terrorism” and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were “unfortunately right here on the African continent.”

The embattled four-star general — who noted his days were numbered as AFRICOM’s chief — was speaking from a conference of African defense chiefs in Kenya, where he had been imploring ministers and heads of state to help save his faltering command. “I said: ‘OK, if we’re that important to [you], you need to communicate that,’” he explained, asking them to have their U.S. ambassadors make entreaties on behalf of AFRICOM.

Current and former defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide candid assessments, were divided on whether Langley deserves a measure of blame for the dire straits the command finds itself in.

One former defense official spoke highly of Langley, calling him “an effective and transformational leader” who “rapidly grew into the job and developed strong, fruitful relationships with members of Congress.”

A current official, however, said almost the opposite, calling the four-star general a “marble mouth” who did a poor job of making a case for his command, “fumbled” relations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and diminished AFRICOM’s standing with legislators. Asked by messaging app if the latter assessment was accurate, a former Africa Command official sent a laughing emoji and replied “no comment” followed by “but yes.” (The official said he could be quoted as such.)

Before 2008, when the command began operations, U.S. military activities in Africa were handled by other combatant commands. AFRICOM’s creation reflected rising U.S. national security interests on the continent and a desire for a single command to oversee a proliferation of post-9/11 counterterrorism activities, predominantly in the West African Sahel and Somalia.

Since U.S. Africa Command began operations, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent — as well as programs, operations, exercises, bases, low-profile Special Operations missions, deployments of commandos, drones strikes, and almost every other military activity — has jumped exponentially.

AFRICOM “disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats” in order to “promote regional security, stability and prosperity,” according to its mission statement. That hasn’t come to pass.

Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and Somalia. By 2010, two years after AFRICOM began operations, fatalities from attacks by militant Islamists had already spiked to 2,674, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. The situation only continued to deteriorate.

There were an estimated 18,900 fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa last year, with 79 percent of those coming from the Sahel and Somalia, according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center. This constitutes a jump of more than 82,000 percent since the U.S. launched its post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts on the continent.

“The Sahel — that’s where we consider the epicenter of terrorism — Mali,........

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