U.S. Hires Shady Mercenary for Somali Proxy War
\nBy David Axe Email Author – August 11, 2011 – Wired Danger Room<\/p>\n
A French-born mercenary with a criminal record and possible ties to several African coups and at least one murder is the latest agent of the U.S. government\u2019s out-sourced war in Somalia, according to The New York Times\u2018 ace Africa reporter Jeffrey Gettleman and others.<\/p>\n
Richard Rouget, alias \u201cColonel Sanders,\u201d works for Bancroft Global Development, a Washington, D.C.-based \u201cprivate security company\u201d that maintains an approximately 40-man team of self-described \u201cmentors\u201d in Mogadishu, Somalia\u2019s embattled capital city.<\/p>\n
Rouget and the other mentors \u2014 a mix of former French, Scandinavian and South African soldiers \u2014 help train the 9,000-strong, U.S.-funded Ugandan and Burundian peacekeeping force that doubles as the heavy army of the Somali Transitional Federal Government in its long war with the al-Shabab Islamic terror group.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab, the latest in a long chain of Somali insurgent groups, has allied itself with al-Qaida and last year pulled off a bloody twin bombing in Uganda. Al-Shabab actively recruits disaffected Somali-American teenagers to sneak into Somalia to fight. In 2008, one of these young recruits became the first known American-born suicide bomber when he blew himself up outside a Somali government building.<\/p>\n
Uganda and Burundi have paid Bancroft $7 million since 2010 for counter-insurgency training, according to Gettleman and his co-writers. Washington refunds the two African countries for their training expenses. The D.C. company\u2019s assistance has helped \u201cturn a bush army into an urban fighting force,\u201d one adviser told Gettleman \u2014 and is partly responsible for the transitional government\u2019s big advances in Mogadishu and across Somalia in recent weeks. The Associated Press credits Rouget\u2019s bomb disposal experts for the drastic reduction in African Union troops lost to roadside explosives.<\/p>\n
But the battlefield success comes at the cost of American moral credibility. First, there were reports that the U.S.-backed transitional Somali government employs child soldiers as young as 12. And now America has endorsed, however indirectly, a man who for years has allegedly fought against stability, justice and self-governance in Africa.<\/p>\n
The photos accompanying Gettleman\u2019s piece depict the \u201chusky,\u201d 51-year-old Rouget accompanying Ugandan soldiers onto a Mogadishu rooftop to observe a gunfight between peacekeepers and al-Shabab troops. \u201dGive me some \u2018technicals\u2019 and some savages and I\u2019m happy,\u201d Rouget joked, using the slang term for pickup trucks fitted with heavy machine guns. The Associated Press calls Rouget \u201ca cigar-smoking, poetry-quoting, whiskey-drinking former big game hunter\u201d with \u201ca long scar on his thigh from getting shot in Somalia last year.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n