Category Archives: Uganda

Leadership Bloodbath Marks Failure of Uganda’s LRA to Sign Peace Treaty

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Andrew McGregor

April 16, 2008

For two decades Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has plunged northern Uganda into a nightmare of atrocities, sadistic mutilations, child-kidnappings and sexual slavery, all in the name of establishing a Ugandan government based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments. After years of fighting and recent internal dissension, the elusive LRA consists today of little more than 800 individuals, including kidnapped children and young women abducted and given as rewards to loyal LRA commanders. At least half its fighters are believed to be children kidnapped from north Uganda, though many older fighters appear to be drawn by opportunities for looting or even commitment to the cause of Acholi rights.

LRA A

(Economist)

The Acholi-based LRA has its roots in the 1986 overthrow of Uganda’s Acholi ruler, General Tito Okello, by Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA). The Acholi are a sub-group of the Luo people of South Sudan’s Bahr al-Ghazal region who migrated to northern Uganda several centuries ago. Traditionally a dominant force in the Ugandan army, Acholi who feared a loss of influence in the new regime started a host of insurgent groups in north Uganda, many with religious and millennial overtones, such as Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement. Infused with religious zeal, these movements initially adopted bizarre and frequently suicidal military methods such as using holy water to deflect bullets and attacking in cross-shaped formations.

LRA political manifestos, often written by diaspora Acholis, have had little resonance, partly because of successful attempts by the Kampala government to depict the LRA leadership as irrational and obsessed by religious fundamentalism. Typically these statements contain detailed criticism of Museveni’s one-party rule and call for Ugandan federalism, multi-party politics, free elections and broad political reforms [1].

LRA leader Joseph Kony failed to show up on April 10 for the long-awaited signing of the Final Peace Agreement (FPA), designed to bring a negotiated end to years of brutal violence in north Uganda. According to Ugandan government negotiators, all five phases of the complex agreement have been settled and all that remains is the ceremonial signing that will end the LRA’s 21-year “insurgency.” Kony’s failure to appear and sign the peace agreement may mark a bitter conclusion to two years of intensive negotiations brokered by Riek Machar, a former Nuer militia leader and current vice-president of the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS). With the Juba ceasefire agreement of August 2006 set to end on April 16, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has indicated the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) may be ready to resume operations against the LRA (New Vision [Kampala], April 14; Sudan Tribune, April 14).

Supported since 1994 by the Sudanese government as a proxy in Khartoum’s war against the Ugandan-backed Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in south Sudan, the conclusion of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought an end to the civil war and ended Khartoum’s need for the LRA. No longer secure in their bases along the Sudanese side of the border with Uganda, the LRA moved into the wilds of Garamba National Park in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In February Kony led nearly 200 followers into the southeastern Central African Republic (CAR), where they established a new base at Gbassiguri. Once settled, they attacked the CAR village of Obo in early March, abducting over 100 children and adolescents (Daily Monitor [Kampala], March 12; April 10). There are unverified reports that Kony’s group has joined up with a Chadian rebel movement also using the CAR as a base (New Vision, March 23). The area in which the LRA has settled is controlled by the rebel People’s Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy (PARRD) which claims to be fighting the CAR government of President Francois Bozize. Both the Chadian rebels and the PARDD are alleged to be supported by Khartoum (Daily Monitor, February 26).

Kony appears to be using his new base in the CAR to attack his former hosts in South Sudan; on February 19 about 400 LRA fighters raided the Western Equatorian town of Source Yubu, killing seven SPLA soldiers and 11 civilians while abducting 27 people (New Vision, February 27).

The ceasefire agreement calls for all LRA fighters to assemble at Ri-Kwangba, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria province, for final disarmament and demobilization. Some fighters have gathered nearby, but remain in the bush except for collecting their food rations. Most of Kony’s commanders and several hundred fighters appear to have remained behind at Gbassiguri rather than come in to Ri-Kwangba.

Kony’s chief negotiator, David Nyekorach Matsanga, claimed that the LRA leader had come in from the CAR and was in the bush nearby, but later admitted that he had had no contact with Kony for four days before the aborted signing of the FPA. The UK-based Matsanga was arrested by South Sudanese troops on his way to Juba airport on April 13 after being fired as chief negotiator by Kony. Matsanga was carrying $20,000 in cash and a letter to Kony from Yoweri Museveni (Sudan Tribune, April 14).

Kony has repeatedly said that a peace agreement is only possible if the 2005 International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against him are dropped. To accommodate Kony and other LRA leaders, Uganda’s negotiators have proposed a mixture of mato oput (the traditional Acholi system of reconciliation rituals) for lesser crimes and recourse to a special Ugandan High Court for more serious offenses. The use of mato oput, which emphasizes reconciliation rather than punishment, is favored by Uganda’s chief justice, Benjamin Odoki, as well as many Acholi elders who are desperate for an end to the years of LRA terror and often ruthless retaliation from the UPDF (New Vision, May 17, 2007). Nearly two million internally displaced people are also ready to forgo ICC justice in order to return to their homes. The High Court could still charge Kony with various penalties subject to the death penalty, such as treason, murder and rape (Daily Monitor, February 20).

Having been invited into the process by the Ugandan government in 2005, however, the ICC is not so easy to dismiss when it becomes inconvenient. When the LRA began to move out of its traditional area of operations along the Sudanese-Ugandan border, Uganda invited international assistance through the ICC. The ICC responded by issuing indictments for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Kony and four other LRA leaders: Okot Odhiambo, Vincent Otti, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya. Official Ugandan efforts to have the ICC drop the charges have failed; even Riek Machar’s attempt to depict the ICC as “European justice” has had no impact. Two lawyers representing the LRA have arrived in The Hague to file for the withdrawal of the indictments (New Vision, March 19). Under ICC rules, Kampala cannot request the suspension of arrest warrants once issued, even if Uganda were to reverse the ratification of its agreement to sign on to the ICC.

LRA BLate LRA Second-in-Command Okot Odhiambo

With the apparently aimless LRA stripped of its major sponsor and forced farther and farther from its north Ugandan homeland, there is intense internal pressure within the movement to conclude some sort of peace agreement with the Ugandan government. Over the last year Kony has typically dealt with these challenges through bloodshed within his own movement, culminating in the massacre last week in Garamba National Park of his deputy, Okot Odhiambo, and eight other commanders (Daily Monitor, April 14; AP, April 15). Of the five LRA leaders originally charged by the ICC, only Kony and Dominic Ongwen remain alive. Before his execution by Kony last October, LRA deputy leader Vincent Otti was a personal friend of Riek Machar and an advocate of negotiating a peace agreement. Several Otti loyalists surrendered to South Sudanese authorities in 2007 while Otti and his remaining followers were eliminated during and after a gun battle with Kony loyalists (Sudan Tribune, October 23, 2007; Reuters, December 1, 2007; Sudan Tribune, January 24). Raska Lukwiya was killed by the UPDF in August 2006.

There are signs that the continued survival of the LRA is in part due to corruption within the UPDF that has aided and at times abetted Kony’s movement. An ongoing investigation into the commanders of the UPDF’s 4th and 5th Divisions—operating in north Uganda—has revealed that as much of 50 percent of the strength of these units consisted of “ghost soldiers,” non-existent troops for whom salary was still drawn from the central government. The unneeded arms issued for these “ghost soldiers” may have been sold to the LRA for cash. Major-General James Kazini and two other senior officers were sent to prison late last month after being described by the committee of investigation as “conflict entrepreneurs” (Daily Monitor, March 31). There are also charges that Ugandan troops have misused permission given to mount cross-border operations against the LRA in Southern Sudan (Operation “Iron Fist”) to harvest valuable teak forests (VOA, September 29, 2007). The LRA has also been used in an attempt by Uganda to tap into funds available for fighting the War on Terrorism; according to Uganda’s External Security Organization (ESO) Director-General Robert Masolo: “You will recall that bin Laden was training the LRA into killer squads in Sudan, alongside other al-Qaeda terrorists who he was exporting to other parts of the world” (New Vision, June 12, 2007).

There are suggestions that the FPA might be signed in the absence of Joseph Kony, though such an act would be essentially meaningless as Kony’s brigands continue to raid isolated villages in the CAR and DRC. President Museveni has warned that the rebels can only expect to save themselves through signing the FPA: “If they don’t, they will perish” (New Vision, March 10). Kony’s refusal to appear has been a major embarrassment for Kampala and could be the signal for an all-out offensive against the movement to be carried out in cooperation with DRC authorities, who are also trying to bring an end to lawlessness in the eastern Congo.

This article first appeared in the April 16, 2008 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus

Note

1. Mareike Schomerus, “The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview,” Small Arms Survey, Geneva, 2007.

Oil and Jihad in Central Africa: The Rise and Fall of Uganda’s Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF)

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Andrew McGregor

December 20, 2007

In the midst of all the horrors generated in Central Africa by the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the collapse of Zaire in 1997, a little known group of Islamist radicals has done its own part to contribute to the suffering. Based since 1996 in Bundibugyo, an impoverished and underdeveloped district in western Uganda, the Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF) has killed thousands in its pursuit of an Islamic state in Uganda. Strangely enough, few of its rank and file are Muslims (or even Ugandans), and its leader is a convert from Catholicism. The movement was believed destroyed by the Ugandan Popular Defense Forces 1999 campaign, but seems to have enjoyed a revival after the discovery of oil in Bundibugyo. Now, however, there is word that the ADF is seeking peace talks with Uganda after a series of setbacks to enable the return of some 200 ADF fighters from the forests of the Congo to Uganda (Monitor [Kampala], December 4).

ADF 1The Allied Democratic Forces

Bundibugyo is a small district at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountain range along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It has a natural connection to the vast Ituri Forest, which has become a home for various regional insurgent groups. This mountainous area is the last region of Uganda to go without electricity and is notorious for the poor quality of its roads. Bundibugyo is currently enduring a bout of Ebola Fever that has killed 35 people (New Vision [Kampala], December 11). The ADF did not begin here, however, but started rather in the urban Muslim areas of Kampala and the towns of central Uganda.

The ADF has its origins in the evangelistic Tabliqi Jamaat movement of Uganda, a local offshoot of the larger Indian-Pakistani Tabliq movement founded in the 1920s. Tabliq means “to deliver (the message of Islam).” Muslims are a minority in mostly Christian Uganda, representing about 15 percent of the population. While the Indian-Pakistani Tabliq movement is usually non-political, the Ugandan Tabliqis claimed political persecution after they opposed the appointment of a new national mufti. Following a period of street-clashes and arrests in 1991, many in the Tabliq movement left for the wilds of the Rwenzori mountains where they were joined by radicalized prisoners released in 1993. The absence of Muslims in the higher ranks of President Yoweri Museveni’s administration also contributed to the growing militancy of the Tabliq movement. According to the Ugandan government, the Tabliqis received funds and encouragement from the Sudanese embassy in Kampala, leading to the severing of diplomatic ties in 1995. [1]

The first major strike by the ADF took place in 1996, when the movement’s fighters attacked Ugandan troops in Kasese District along the border with the Congo. At first most of the fighters had little more than machetes, but arms began to flow to the movement from external sources, most likely the Sudan or the DRC government of Laurent-Desire Kabila. During the 1990s, ADF militants carried out 43 bombings in Kampala and Jinja. Never well liked within Uganda, the ADF leaders found it simpler to recruit new fighters from the DRC by offering promises of money and education. Many children were seized on both sides of the border and incorporated into the ranks.

Once in western Uganda, the ADF formed an alliance with the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU), a rebel group that had become fairly inactive. NALU was formed in 1988 and split from the Rwenzori Movement in 1991 [2]. NALU tactics typically involved raids on small villages and attacks on civilians, including a 1998 suicide bombing on a Kampala bus that killed 30. Eventually the ADF was also joined by remnants of the Rwenzori separatist movement and a number of Idi Amin loyalists who were living in the south Sudan.

Kampala’s campaign against the ADF was slow to develop but finally bore fruit in 1999. Borders were secured, roads brought under control, UPDF outposts placed on the high ground of the mountains, and self-defense units organized in the villages (IRIN, December 8, 1999). Despite this, the already impoverished Bundibugyo District was still forced to cope with over 100,000 displaced people.

ADF leader Jamil Mukulu was an associate of Osama bin Laden during the latter’s stay in Sudan in the 1990s, before launching his first attack in Uganda in 1996. Mukulu is believed to have received training from al-Qaeda both in Sudan and Afghanistan (Monitor, December 1). The ADF leader remains a shadowy figure, usually heard only on the cassette tapes the ADF distributes. Mukulu urges violence against non-Muslims and Muslims who fail to carry out jihad, including a heavy dose of invective against various international leaders: “Let curses be to Bush, Blair, the president of France—and more curses go to Museveni and all those fighting Islam.” According to Lieutenant-Colonel James Mugira, Uganda’s acting chief of military intelligence, “We think [Mukulu] will become the next bin Laden of Africa” (IWPR, June 6, 2005).

The ADF Attempts to Join the Global Jihad

On December 5, 2001, the ADF was added to the U.S. list of designated terrorist organizations. In the chaos that followed the entry of U.S. troops into Baghdad in 2003, reporters were able to obtain a cache of papers from the bombed-out ruins of Iraq’s intelligence headquarters. Among the documents were a series of letters from the ADF’s “chief of diplomacy,” Bekkah Abdul Nasser, to Fallah Hassan al-Rubdie, the Iraqi chargé d’affaires in Nairobi. These 10-15 page English-language letters (translated into Arabic by the Mukhabarat) seek Iraqi financing to set up an African mujahideen front: “We in the ADF forces are ready to run the African mujahideen headquarters. We have already started and we are on the ground, operational.” Another letter suggested the creation of an “international mujahideen team whose special mission will be to smuggle arms on a global scale to holy warriors fighting against U.S., British, and Israeli influences in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East” (Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 2003; Daily Telegraph, April 17, 2003). There was no indication from the files that Iraqi funds were ever sent, or that the correspondence was even encouraged.

During a visit to Washington in 2004, Ugandan Defense Minister Amama Mbabazi emphasized that “Uganda’s domestic terrorist groups have been subsidized and trained by al-Qaeda” (Afrol News, September 30, 2004). Uganda has been a beneficiary of the $100 million U.S.-financed East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative (U.S. Department of State, April 1, 2004).

By 2005, Ugandan officials were warning the ADF had regrouped and were receiving funding and training from other extremist groups. According to Captain Joseph Kamusiime, operations chief for the Ugandan anti-terrorism unit, the ADF had supporters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, but its chief backer was Sudanese Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front. In the early days after its creation in 1996, the ADF was reported to have received training at a camp run by Sudanese intelligence in Juba (Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa, 2004). By 2005 Ugandan intelligence estimated 650-1,000 ADF fighters to be in the Congolese bush, but other sources claimed many of these were only camp-followers. Kamusiime described the ADF as part of a larger Islamist project: “The ADF… is motivated by Islamic fundamentalists—more in line with al-Qaeda ideology like other African terrorist organizations with global reach, such as the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and Somalia’s Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya” (IWPR, June 6, 2005).

A Struggle Going Nowhere?

The 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in southern Sudan ended the usefulness of the ADF and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to Khartoum as counter-measures against Ugandan support for the SPLM/A. The last major attack by the ADF occurred in March, when 60 rebels crossed from the Congo into Bundibugyo to strike the new oil facilities. At least 45 guerrillas, including senior commander Bosco Isiko, were killed in a battle with the UPDF along the Sempaya River in the Semliki game reserve on March 27 (Radio Uganda, April 3; Monitor, November 20). In the three months between April and June of this year, nine ADF commanders were killed by the UPDF, effectively destroying the group’s command structure (New Vision, June 19).

ADF 2ADF Leader Jamil Mukulu during Extradition Hearing in Tanzania, 2015

Seven captured ADF rebels were granted amnesty in November after undergoing “psycho-social counseling” by the Ugandan Red Cross and officers of the UPDF (Monitor, November 21). Four Ugandans who aided the organization from the Ugandan side of the border with the Congo were not so lucky—they have been charged with treason (New Vision, October 12).

Ugandan security services claim to have interrupted a plot to bomb last month’s Commonwealth summit in Kampala. The plan, allegedly devised by ADF leader Jamil Mukulu, involved the use of state television vans to deliver bombs through security lines (The Monitor, December 1). Intended targets included the queen and about 45 other international leaders in attendance. Extensive searches of the vans by the Presidential Guards Brigade turned up nothing, but the security services claimed a success.

Conclusion

MONUC (Mission de l’ONU en RD Congo) has confirmed that the ADF has approached the UN mission to facilitate peace talks with Kampala. The initiative seems to have been spurred by a rift between Jamil Mukulu and his deputy Abdallah Kabanda (Monitor, December 4). MONUC is already demobilizing and resettling ADF rebels in the eastern Congo before a final operation to flush out remaining rebels in the region (New Vision, December 2). In a new complication for the Ugandans, Congolese dissidents are now crossing into Uganda to take refuge there from DRC/MONUC sweeps.

There is no question that some of the Ugandan estimates of ADF strength were exaggerated and the description of Jamil Mukulu by Ugandan intelligence as “the next bin Laden” seems calculated to draw U.S. military and financial assistance. Nevertheless, the ADF has been an integral part of a wave of violence that has denied security and development to millions of Africans in the Congolese-Ugandan-Rwandan border region. The collapse of this would-be international jihadi movement would be a welcome development in returning peace and security to this beleaguered part of Africa.

Notes

  1. Alex de Waal, ed.: Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa, Indiana University Press, 2004.
  2. The Bakonjo-Baamba people of Rwenzori made an abortive attempt at independence for the Rwenzori region in 1962. While the attempt failed, a small separatist movement lived on in the bush.

This article first appeared in the December 20, 2007 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

Into the Somali Void: Somalia’s Islamists Target Uganda’s Peacekeepers

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Andrew McGregor

Terrorism Research Initiative Perspectives on Terrorism

November 30, 2007

The 1,400 man contingent from Uganda represents the sole contribution so far to the African Union’s peacekeeping mission to Somalia (AMISOM). The mission was supposed to deploy 8,000 troops, but Nigeria, Burundi, Ghana, and Malawi have all failed to send detachments. AMISOM was originally intended to field nine battalions of African Union peacekeepers with air and military support. AMISOM has a mission to provide support to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in establishing stability, facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid and create conditions for long-term reconstruction, reconciliation and development (Communiqué of the 69th meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council, January 19, 2007). Approximately 1,500 Ugandan troops expecting to be the vanguard of the mission arrived in Somalia in March 2007. To date they remain the only element of AMISOM to actually deploy.

ugandans amisomPublic opinion in Uganda quickly turned against the mission due to the deaths of Ugandan peacekeepers in an attack in May, the impression that Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni was using the peacekeepers to gain favour with the United States, and a general feeling that the mission used military resources that could have been better employed in bringing a decisive end to the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda (VOA, May 19, 2007). The six-month Ugandan mandate ended in September. However, President Museveni has held to his initial word that the Ugandan force would remain in Somalia until stability has been restored, and indeed the Ugandan mandate has been renewed until January, 2008.

The “War against Foreign Forces”

The persistence of the Ugandan presence in Somalia is not without consequence. In this regard, Aden Hashi Ayro, a leading Islamic Courts Union (ICU) militant and al-Qaeda associate, issued a 20 minute audiotape on 14 November (Qaadisiya, November 14).Carried by an ICU affiliated Somali website, the message ordered al-Shabaab (a military wing of the ICU) militants to target Ugandan peacekeepers as well as the Ethiopian occupation force. Ayro, who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, accused the Ugandans of invading Somalia. After opening with a greeting to Osama bin Laden, Ayro’s message described a “war against foreign forces…To us the Ugandans, Ethiopians and Americans are all the same; they have invaded us and I am telling the mujahidin, Ugandans must be one of our priorities”. Ayro continued his message with a threat directed towards Ethiopian civilians; “They beheaded our children, women and elderly people in Mogadishu and we must behead theirs in Addis Ababa”.

The tape contained essentially the same message ICU leader Shaykh Hassan Dahir Aweys gave in an interview with al-Jazeera last June, where he said that “it makes no difference to us whether [the occupiers] are Ugandans or Ethiopians. We will continue fighting with them as long as the foreign forces are on Somali soil” (East African Standard, June 23, 2007). At the time Shaykh Hassan was angered by what he perceived as the use of Ugandan troops and tanks in support of Ethiopian forces in April, claiming the Ugandans had “arrived in Somalia only to back up the Ethiopian occupation”. The AMISOM mandate to support the Somali TFG is similar to the proclaimed mission of the Ethiopians, leading many Somalis to believe the Ugandans are there to impose an unwanted government. In fact, Uganda’s government has a sincere desire for stability in Somalia, as it believes insecurity there is a major factor in the flow of arms into Uganda’s northeastern Karamoja region. This cattle-herding region is awash in guns, which are seen by locals as the only means of guarding against cattle raiding. A disarmament campaign that began in 2001 in Somalia may actually have spurred new shipments of modern arms into Karamoja.

In apparent response to Ayro’s appeal, Somali insurgents attacked the Ugandan base in Mogadishu’s K-4 neighbourhood on November 15 with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. With insurgents, Ethiopians, TFG forces and now Ugandans all involved in the fighting, Mogadishu is once again coming to resemble a battleground. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 60% of the city’s population has fled, with more leaving every day (BBC, November 20).

The May attack in Mogadishu

The raid on the K-4 base was not the first time Ugandan troops have been targeted in Somalia. Five Ugandan soldiers were killed and a number of others seriously wounded in May when a truck from an AMISOM convoy struck an improvised explosive device (IED) outside the Ministry of Finance in Mogadishu. TFG troops are known to frequent the area of the attack, and initially a Ugandan Army spokesman said al-Qaeda “definitely carried out the attack, not the insurgents.”(Shabelle Media Network, May 21, 2007)

In a subsequent joint press conference, Col. Iliyupold Kayanda (head of Ugandan military intelligence) and State Defence Minister Roth Nankapirwa rejected claims that al-Qaeda was involved in the attack, suggesting that the Ugandan truck struck an IED intended for Ethiopian or TFG troops. Alternatively, the bomb might have been set off by militants who mistook the Ugandans for TFG or Ethiopian forces; “The Ugandans did not reveal they were going to the area where the blast occurred and the bomb was not there for them, but it accidentally exploded while passing, according to our intelligence” (Shabelle Media Network, May 21, 2007).

Conclusion

After the K-4 attack, Ugandan army spokesman Major Felix Kulayigye vowed that the assault would not make the Ugandans “run away,” while strongly denying that the Ugandan forces were operating in cooperation with the Ethiopians or TFG. He stated that “we have maintained a neutral stance, so it will not change our position. However, should we get targeted, as [the militants] have done before, we shall defend ourselves.” (VOA, November 15, 2007)

The prospects of additional participation in AMISOM are less than positive. Malawi has withdrawn its offer of troops for AMISOM, while Burundi is “almost ready” to send several hundred peacekeepers (though this has been the case since last spring). There are also reports that Nigeria is preparing to send troops (The Reporter, Addis Ababa, November 17, 2007) but Nigeria’s military is busy fighting militants in the Niger Delta. Moreover, its resolve has probably soured on African Union peacekeeping missions after the slaughter of Nigerian troops in September at the African Union base in Haskanita, Darfur. The military sent a high-level delegation to investigate after reports emerged that the troops at Haskanita did not have enough ammunition to defend themselves from the rebel raid. Nigeria is unlikely at this point to commit to Somalia.

UN peacekeepers are also not likely to deploy in the near future. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon suggests the deployment of a vague “robust multinational force or coalition of the willing” to create conditions for an Ethiopian withdrawal. However, according to Ban Ki-moon, a UN peacekeeping operation is “not realistic or viable given the war-wracked African country’s security situation” (UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary General on the situation in Somalia, November 7, 2007).

While there were questions in May as to whether Ugandan troops were being deliberately targeted by Somali militants, this ambiguity no longer exists. The Ugandans are being pulled into the conflict, in part because AMISOM lacks an international character. Although a larger, multinational force might be able to command the respect and authority needed to complete AMISOM’s mission, Aden Hashi Ayro offered unveiled caution, stating “we will fight and assassinate [Ugandan] officers. All other African troops sent to Somalia will face the same fate.” (Qaadisiya, November 14)

Situation in Somalia Remains Precarious

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Andrew McGregor

May 22, 2007

After several weeks of relative calm in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, expelled Islamist leaders now based in Eritrea have pledged to continue attacks despite setbacks suffered in battles with Ethiopian troops in March and April. Two-thirds of the original Ethiopian force has now been withdrawn, and a three-week old cease-fire between Ethiopian troops and Mogadishu’s dominant Hawiye clan appears to be holding. Some 1,500 Ugandan soldiers of the African Union’s peacekeeping force are patrolling Mogadishu, but the rest of the projected 8,000-man force has yet to materialize, despite pledges from Nigeria, Burundi, Ghana and Malawi. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry claims that 800-900 insurgents were killed in March and April, although this figure appears to include some of the 1,400 civilians killed in the fighting. Ethiopia also disputes the number of refugees, claiming the existence of only 80,000 displaced persons as opposed to UN estimates of 400,000 (SomaliNet, May 19). The UN’s relief chief for Somalia has described the refugee crisis as “worse than Darfur” (Shabelle Media Network, May 15).

Ethiopian TanksEthiopian Tanks in a Somali Market

Indiscriminate retaliatory shelling from Ethiopian troops, following attacks on their bases, devastated many Hawiye neighborhoods and cost the insurgency in terms of local support. After assessing their losses, the insurgents appear to have abandoned their preferred methods of hit-and-run mortar attacks and open gun-battles in favor of a shift to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and targeted assassinations. For example, a remote-controlled roadside bomb hidden in a pile of trash killed four Ugandan soldiers and injured five more on May 16. Four days later, a large roadside explosive device hidden in a plastic bag killed two civilians, while another bomb narrowly missed a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) convoy, killing two civilians instead. The main road through the Bakara market was closed the same day when another bomb was discovered close to a TFG base.

TFG Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi was nearly killed on May 17 by a grenade thrown by a would-be assassin. Former warlord and new Mogadishu mayor Muhammad Dheere was targeted on May 20 by grenades thrown from an assassin in a tree. Dheere survived, noting: “It seems the Islamic insurgents are still active in Mogadishu, but we will get rid of them” (Shabelle Media Network, May 20). The TFG has responded with controversial new tactics of its own, including seizing and burning women’s veils to prevent insurgents from disguising themselves in women’s garments (al-Jazeera, May 9).

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged AU members to pursue a more vigorous form of “peacemaking” that is closer to conflict intervention than the traditional definition of “peacekeeping.” “If we follow the UN concept of waiting for peace to return before we deploy peacekeepers, then we are bound to lose many lives,” he explained. “We should deploy even when fighting is still going on” (Shabelle Media Network, May 16). Ugandan troops are struggling alone in Mogadishu, waiting for the arrival of the rest of the AU peacekeeping force. The deadly attack on a Ugandan convoy suggests that the insurgents regard any foreign detachment as an occupying force. It does not help that the AU headquarters are located in Addis Ababa. The trouble is that the AU deployment was intended to replace the much-hated Ethiopian army, not work alongside it. There is little alternative, however, as an immediate Ethiopian withdrawal would place an isolated Ugandan force in a precarious position, with little choice but to drive an evacuation column overland back to Uganda or to evacuate by sea from their base on Mogadishu’s waterfront. The AU’s and Addis Ababa’s U.S. patrons have warned the Ethiopian government against making a hasty withdrawal. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi complains of the “onerous” financial burden imposed on Ethiopia by keeping its troops there. According to Zenawi, the resistance has been broken and conditions have been established for peacekeepers “to do their job” (Shabelle Media Network, May 15). Zenawi has promised that Ethiopian troops will leave as soon as AU forces arrive in support of the Ugandans.

Mogadishu’s powerful business associations have begun to transfer small arms to TFG depots, but lacking confidence in the permanence of the new government, they have failed to turn over their heavy weapons or “technicals” (armored pick-up trucks equipped with anti-aircraft weapons) (Banadir, May 4). After several large-scale robberies by men wearing TFG uniforms, the businessmen are now demanding that Ugandans rather than TFG men provide security for the commercial district (Shabelle Media Network, May 17).

On May 17, the United States appointed career diplomat John Yates as special envoy to Somalia. Yates wasted no time in claiming that the roadside bombing that killed four Ugandans was evidence of al-Qaeda activity in Mogadishu (Reuters, May 18). A spokesman for the AU also alleged al-Qaeda responsibility for the attack (Shabelle Media Network, May 18). In Uganda, public opinion is quickly turning against the Somali mission as reports of casualties come in. There are calls in the Ugandan press for the AU to admit its inability to manage the Somali mission and turn over responsibility to the UN. The chairman of the AU Commission, Alpha Konare, conceded on April 27 that, “If other countries do not commit troops soon, it will be a disaster for Africa” (New Vision [Kampala], May 7).

 

This article first appeared in the May 22, 2007 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus