Richard Rouget, a mercenary during two decades of bloody African conflict, is the unlikely face of the American campaign against Mr. Rouget has commanded a group of foreign fighters during Ivory Coast's civil war, was convicted by a South African court for selling his military services and spent time in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands. Now he works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops fighting al Shabab.
The fight against the Shabab has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies. "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.
Yet, during the past year, the United States has quietly stepped up operations inside Somalia. The CIA, which largely finances the country's spy agency, has covertly trained Somali agents, helped build a large base at the airport in Mogadishu and carried out joint interrogations of suspected terrorists with their counterparts. The US has used strikes by armed drone aircraft to kill Shabab militants and recently approved $45 million in arms shipments to African troops fighting in Somalia.
But some American officials believe this hit-or-miss approach will not be enough to suppress the Shabab in the long run. In interviews, more than a dozen current and former United States officials and experts described a strategy in Somalia troubled by a lack of focus and internal battles over the past decade. While the United States has significantly stepped up clandestine operations in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials are deeply worried about Somalia but cannot agree on the risks versus the rewards of escalating military strikes here.