"We basically have to find out who sent these guys there, figure out what they want to do in Niamey and stop them, while getting the boat out of the water from Somalia," Major Patrice Hidabro of Chad explains.

"This is the kind of terrorism that is menacing many countries that we are here to learn how to prevent."

In a region where national boundaries are at times as fluid as the Sahara desert, cross-border trafficking and banditry have plagued Sahel countries for years.

But in the last decade the spectre of terrorism has loomed ever-larger, hanging over cash-strapped armed forces without the means or technology to do battle.

A deadly incursion earlier this month into remote northeastern Mauritania claimed by Algeria's hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which has known links to Al-Qaeda, underscores the potential threat posed in a region considered by the United States to be an incubator for terrorism.

Hoping to mount a coalition of cooperating forces, able to assist in any operation be it for humanitarian, emergency or security purposes, the US military has eased into peer-to-peer training for African militaries.

Biannual exercises, this year known as Operation Flintlock 2005, aim to be part of a broader regional effort called the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorist Initiative.

Funded to the tune of 100 million dollars over five years, the initiative is aimed to help the African militaries mount their own counter-terrorism policies, while also rooting out banditry and curbing clandestine immigration.

On Friday and Saturday, representatives from nine African militaries -- Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Senegal -- were in Dakar for a multinational command post exercise conducted by the United States that worked through scenarios such as the one in Niger.

"We are acting as advisers, facilitating the exercise which we initiated and put in place as an instruction tool," said US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Stewart.

"Where normally we would engage in such a directive under the US umbrella, in this case we are acting as support staff... helping coordinate so that in the future no one country is surprised by the actions of another."

The scenario training in Dakar for the highest level commanders of the nine militaries involved is a complement to two weeks of field training in Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria, in which 3,000 African troops will until June 26 be schooled in orientation, marksmanship and field communications.

"These exercises involve us, our partners, our neighbors and our allies," said Senegal Lieutenant Colonel Antoine Wardini.

"The hope is to develop an interdependence."

Such an interdependence with the United States could backfire, critics such as the International Crisis Group warn, by radicalizing populations and creating a fundamentalist base disposed to providing havens to Islamic militants where one did not exist before.

"Ultimately, the Americans are going to do what they want here, and this helps us see what their priorities are, even if they don't reflect our own," said one bemused participant in Friday's role-playing game.

"For us, the threat of terrorism is overshadowed by the threats posed by poverty -- because when someone needs to eat, or to feed his family, he will stop at nothing."