Eight Hawaii National Guard soldiers will deploy to West Africa in support of Operation Juniper Shield, a long-running counterterrorism mission in the region.

Friends and family of the Guardsmen, who are members of the 1st Battalion, 487th Field Artillery Regiment Target Acquisition Section, attended a deployment ceremony Saturday at Scho­field Barracks as the service members prepared to make their way overseas.

Photos and video of the Saturday deployment ceremony were posted over the weekend to the military’s online Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. When reached for more details on the deployment, a spokesman for the Hawaii National Guard said he could offer few details about where in West Africa specifically the Hawaii soldiers are headed, but said that their primary mission will be base-defense operations.

The U.S. military oper­- ates out of several facilities throughtout the region conducting a wide range of operations.

Most of the actual fighting is done by African military and police forces, with the U.S. providing training and advising along with logistical and intelligence support in the background. But American forces occasionally do join the fight with raids by elite special operations forces or drone strikes.

Operation Juniper Shield officially began as part of the wider Global War on Terror in February 2007 targeting al-Qaida operatives in West African countries with a focus on Algeria, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Senegal. Since then it has expanded to include operations against ISIS, Boko Haram and other militant Islamist groups as well as expanded into other countries like Burkina Faso, Cameroon and others.

Though most media attention on the GWOT focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan — with most Americans knowing little to nothing about Juniper Shield — operations in West Africa became more widely discussed after the deadly 2017 Tongo Tongo ambush in Niger, during which ISIS militants killed four members of the U.S. Army’s elite 3rd Special Forces Group.

U.S. operations in Africa have lately been complicated by a series of military coups since 2020, including in Niger in July. As of December the U.S. military had somewhere around 1,000 personnel — including both troops and contractors — in Niger along with a roughly $110 million drone base called Air Base 201. The U.S. began withdrawing some forces in Niger after the July coup while concentrating others at Air Base 201.

U.S. officials say the military has stopped working with Nigerian forces on counterterrorism missions in accordance with American rules that prohibit partnerships with military juntas, leaving the future of the U.S. presence in the country in question. But according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. is entering talks with other West African nations about hosting drone bases if Air Base 201 closes.