From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Jul 14 2010 - 13:51:39 EDT
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Al%20Shabaab%20bombs%20Kampala%20it%20must%20now%20expect%20a%20tireless%20enemy/-/440808/957988/-/bdhmws/-/
Al-Shabaab bombs Kampala; it must now expect a tireless enemy
By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
Posted Wednesday, July 14 2010 at 20:18
The Somali radical Islamic group, Al-Shabaab, has claimed responsibility for
the deadly Sunday night bomb attacks in Kampala that killed at least 80
people.
Explosions blasted through crowds at two sites, a popular Ethiopian
restaurant in the happy suburbs of Kabalagala, and the Kyadondo Rugby Club
in Lugogo, as crowds watched the World Cup final. Al-Shaabab wants Uganda to
withdraw its African Union peacekeeping forces from Somalia, and has
threatened to likewise attack the Burundi capital, Bujumbura. Burundi, too,
has a contingent in the forces.
Will it succeed? Probably not. If anything, you can expect President
Museveni’s government to dig in. To begin with, the Uganda mission — except
when a soldier died or there was a scandal about salaries being stolen — was
not top on the mind of most Ugandans.
Many who paid attention took the prejudiced view that it was a waste of
time, because Somalis are “just like that”. They are warlike and don’t love
peace. To others, the Somali mission was a cynical ploy by a discredited
President to curry favour with the West and elongate his rule, by “doing the
dirty” work for the Americans in Somalia.
If the Uganda army’s presence in Somalia was little understood, or viewed
with suspicion, the Al-Shabaab bombs have changed that. The attacks give
Uganda’s role in ANISOM the popular legitimacy it lacked.
If, previously, the reason for the UPDF’s presence in Mogadishu was
questionable, now it is less so because Al-Shabaab has brought the argument
about its mission very close to people who previously didn’t care much. Now
an easier case can be by Kampala being in Somalia — to avenge the killing of
nearly 80 Ugandans, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Al-Shabaab could also have made a strategic blunder. Sources in the know
confirm that there are hawks in the militaries — and governments — of
Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda who have been arguing that the AU peace-keeping
effort in Somalia is ineffective, and that there should be a joint attack on
Islamic hardliners in Somalia before they get entrenched and become harder
to dislodge.
The hawks reason the Ethiopian invasion largely failed because it was
unilateral, tainted with imperial ambition, and didn’t have sufficient
international support. July 11 could tip the argument in their favour. If
there is a united attack on Al-Shabaab — which was very close to taking
power in Somalia — then it will have to wait longer to take power.
In any event, the only war that Museveni — a former rebel leader and still
the ranking army officer in Uganda — walked away from was in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC). First, the discipline of the Uganda forces (the
Uganda People’s Defence Forces) nearly collapsed, and the rank and file were
in danger as officers degenerated into plunderers of the DRC’s gold,
diamond, timber, and even wild game!
The Uganda army was then routed — twice — by its smaller former ally,
Rwanda, when they fell out, partly, over the spoils. But what did it was
that international opinion turned sharply against the two countries’
presence in the DRC. Because it was heavily dependant on foreign aid and
didn’t want to put that at risk by a continued stay in Congo, and the fact
that hostility towards the Congo campaign was palpable, Museveni cut his
losses and ran.
Where there was no such pressure, he has stayed on until he salvages some
kind of victory. The Uganda army first entered southern Sudan in 1990 in
pursuit of the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that was backed by
Khartoum. It has never left, and with the Sudan People’s Liberation
Army/Movement taking over power over what is now a semi-autonomous region
under the 2005 Nairobi peace agreement, it has been able to push the LRA
further into the DRC.
Having learnt its lesson from the earlier debacle in the DRC and first got
international opinion on its side to hunt down LRA’s Joseph Kony, who is
hobbled by an ICC indictment for war crimes, the UPDF entered the northeast
DRC and has been chasing the LRA around in the jungles there.
You can defeat the UPDF in battle, and corruption has undermined its old
fighting mettle. Nevertheless, what is still very difficult to do, as the
LRA has discovered — and Al-Shabaab could soon do so too — is to wear it
down.
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