Gun for hire is face of US firm training Somalian military

A GUN for hire through two decades of bloody African conflicts, former French army officer Richard Rouget is now the unlikely face of the American campaign against militants in Somalia.

The 51-year-old commanded mercenaries during Ivory Coast's civil war in 2003, was convicted by a South African court for selling his military services and served a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands, the archipelago plagued by coup attempts.

Now he works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company indirectedly backed by the US State Department, training African troops fighting al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group allied with al-Qaeda, through the ruins of Mogadishu.

The advisers typically work from the front lines - showing troops how to build sniper pits or smash holes in walls to move between houses.

"Urban fighting is a war of attrition, you nibble, nibble, nibble," said Mr Rouget, who was wounded in Mogadishu when a piece of shrapnel from a Shabab rocket explosion sliced through his thigh.

Still, he seems to enjoy his work. "Give me some technicals" - a term for heavily armed pickup trucks — "and some savages and I'm happy," he joked.

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Bancroft's Mogadishu team includes about 40 former South African, French and Scandinavian soldiers who call themselves "mentors".

Experts say it has steadily improved the skills of the African troops and cut civilian casualties by persuading them to stop lobbing artillery shells into crowded parts of the city.

One Western consultant who works with the African Union contingent credits Bancroft with helping "turn a bush army into an urban fighting force".

Bancroft plays a vital part in the conflict in Somalia. The fight against al-Shabaab, a group US officials fear could carry out strikes against the West, has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies to avoid sending American troops back to a place that was a graveyard for US military missions in the past.

"We do not want an American footprint or boot on the ground," said Johnnie Carson, the Obama administration's top State Department official for Africa. The US legacy in Somalia includes the "Black Hawk Down" episode in 1993, when Somali militiamen killed 18 US soldiers.

In the past year, the US has quietly stepped up operations inside Somalia. The Central Intelligence Agency has trained Somali intelligence agents, helped build a large base at Mogadishu's airport - Somalis call it "The Pink House" for its reddish paint - and carried out joint interrogations of suspected terrorists. The Pentagon uses strikes by armed drone aircraft to kill al-Shabaab militants and recently approved 28 million in arms shipments.

But many American experts fear the piece-meal approach will not suppress al-Shabaab over the long run. Current and former US officials say American strategy has been troubled by a lack of focus and internal battles for a decade.

While Washington has stepped up clandestine operations in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials are worried about its impact in Somalia. US diplomats are at odds with military and intelligence officials about whether strikes on suspected military camps in southern Somalia, or American commando raids to kill militant leaders, will weaken al-Shabaab or bolster its rank.

Al-Shabaab has been blamed for blocking food supplies to famine victims has already struck beyond Somalia, killing dozens of Ugandans last summer in a suicide attack.

But troops trained by Bancroft this weekend forced al-Shabaab to withdraw from Mogadishu, the capital, for the first time in years.