Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
Tactically, man-for-man, the Shabab are actually mind-numbingly incompetent, with rare exceptions. Their loss rates against the Ugandans often appear to be quite high, even within constrained ROE, and what casualties they have inflicted have generally been with IEDs or shoot-and-scoot mortar attacks not in direct firefights.

The TFG, sadly, are even more mind-numbingly incompetent.

That being said, it is hard to see how even a trebling of the AMISOM mission would fundamentally change the dynamics in Somalia. Outcomes are less a product of military force than shifting clan and political alliances.
I hear what you say.

If you have been following other threads where I post you may have seen that I am a great believer in using local forces to do the fighting rather than bring in raw, fresh, ignorant foreigners for that purpose. At the moment in Afghanistan there is no choice but... in Somalia maybe there is a better way.

My comment on the Ugandan army is based on their inability in their own country to deal with LRA which apparently comprises a majority of child soldiers.

Let me start with making the assumption that both Shabab and the TGF draw their forces from the same population with differences in clan and whatever.

While I appreciate that motivation is 9 tenths of the matter would an investment into training the TGF troops not provide a better return on investment rather than bring in "foreign Christians" from Uganda to try to do the job?

There are a number of options as to how this training may be approached and I am wondering what if anything along these lines has be attempted?