Geza Ulole
JF-Expert Member
- Oct 31, 2009
- 59,015
- 78,976
18th July 10
Al-Shabaab dossier
Guardian on Sunday Team
The deadly bombings in Kampala during the World Cup final last Sunday are raising concerns over whether the newly formed East African Community is equipped and coordinated enough to ensure the region's security.
For years Tanzania had been reluctant to rush into a political or economic federation that would allow the free movement of people in the East African region before each country could adequately handle such a logistical endeavour. It was only in 2005 that the country succumbed to mounting pressures from both Kenya and Uganda to join the customs union, which is now composed of five member states with a combined population of over 100 million people.
The seeds of Tanzania's initial reservations now appear all the more prescient, as the growing threat of terrorism in the region will require joint security measures to be taken by member states immediately.
US analysts and officials have said the emergence of Al-Shabaab on the world stage fits a pattern of localised Islamic militant groups that have been increasingly able to mount sophisticated operations farther and farther from their base. A prominent such example was the recent attempt by an Al-Qaeda-linked group to blow up a plane on its way to Detroit, Michigan, on December 25, 2009.
The bombings further suggest that the Horn of Africa has become a hive of a new breed of terrorists, complicating the efforts of the United States, which has thrown its support behind Somalias embattled transitional government.
This was a localised cancer, but the cancer has metastasised into a regional crisis, Johnnie Carson, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs told the New York Times, early this week.
Al-Shabaab have been in the cross hairs of intelligence and counterterrorism officials for years. But the groups growing force and alliances with a shifting array of Somali warlords has posed a constant, vexing challenge for the Obama administrations efforts to bolster Somalias weak government and stabilise the country.
Last year, after what a senior administration official described as a fierce internal debate, US President Obama halted American food aid to Somalia after evidence indicated that Al-Shabaab was siphoning some of the aid for its operations.
Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen Arabic for "Movement of Warrior Youth" more commonly known as al-Shabaab, is an Islamist insurgency group in the ongoing war in Somalia. The group is said to control most of the southern and central parts of Somalia, including "a large swath" of the capital, Mogadishu, where it is said to have imposed its own "harsh" form of Sharia law.
By the end of 2009, the movement had an estimated 10,000 militias including foreign recruited and trained terrorists.
The group is an off-shoot of the Islamic Courts Union, which splinted into several smaller groups after its removal from power by Ethiopian forces in 2006. The group describes itself as waging jihad against "enemies of Islam" and is engaged in combat against the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), of which Uganda is a part.
Though Tanzania and Kenya are potential targets because of their geographic proximity to Somalia, for the time being Tanzania seems a bit safer off than Uganda, because the Kikwete administration has not dispatched peacekeeping forces to Mogadishu. When Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bombings in Kampala last Sunday, the group said it was motivated by the Uganda's role in the AU's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab had issued a warning to Uganda and Burundi about two weeks ago that it would strike those countries, following their decision to deploy their forces to Somalia, and it has vowed to continue with more attacks to these countries.
However in what puzzles many, the Ugandan security forces failed to act on that warning by taking preventive measures, and the Somalia terrorists managed to coordinate and carry out the deadly attacks in the country's capital.
Just one day before the Kampala attacks, which left 74 people dead and hundreds wounded, Kenyan police impounded close to 300 bomb detonators that were to be delivered to an unidentified female buyer.
Kenyas foreign minister, Moses Wetangual, had in the past raised an alarm to the international community, saying Al-Qaeda trained militias were moving to Somalia and Yemen as their new stronghold, but the warning wasnt taken seriously.
In Tanzania, there have been dozens of cases of illegal immigrants entering the country illegally, on their way to Mozambique and South Africa. Others have also managed to settle in Tanzania illegally, due to poor border control as well as rampant corruption within the immigration department.
Theres credible evidence that Somali immigrants have managed to secure immigration documents illegally, being assisted by relatives and friends in the country.
If you have money in this country, you can buy off the majority of our law enforcers these terrorists know our weakness and they are using it to strike us, a senior police officer who declined to be named told the Guardian on Sunday this week.
Somali militias could also enter Tanzania via the Indian Ocean, which is notoriously under patrolled by security officials.
Kenyan officials have vowed to tighten their borders following the Uganda attacks.
Its a shame for our immigration officers to receive Sh2,000 and allow militia to enter into our territory to kill hundreds of innocent citizens We are going to tighten our immigration rules. government spokesman Alfred Mutua told the BBC on Thursday.
Though Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni vowed on Thursday to deploy more forces in war torn Somalia, the biggest challenge currently facing the EAC is a lack of joint counter terrorism measures to curb the growing insecurity.
East Africa has widely discussed a monetary union, a customs union as well as a common market, but one thing has been lacking a joint security mechanism to protect the EAC common market, which was officially launched on July 1.
The cost of Ignored conflict
In the 1990s when Somalia was collapsing politically and economically after the overthrow of the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, African countries didnt act promptly to tame the situation.
Instead it was the US, under President Bill Clinton, that took the initiative to deploy forces in order to restore peace in Somalia. However, US suffered a major setback in 1992, when its marine soldiers were captured, dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and brutally killed.
After that incident, the US withdrew its soldiers from Somalia, paving the way for the nation's total collapse. Around that time, in the early 1990s, Al-Qaeda managed to penetrate Somalia, while their leader and mentor, Osama Bin Laden, sought refuge in Sudan.
During that period, Africa was confronted by a number of conflicts in the region including the Rwandan genocide, the Southern Sudan guerilla war, the battle for the control of Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Angola and South Africas liberation struggle, which ended officially in 1994.
In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, was also battling another deadly battle with the Lords Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony a battle that has continued till today.
In Kenya, the country was battling the internal political chaos that finally led to the introduction of multiparty system in 1992. During the Daniel Arap Moi regime, Kenya was also experiencing massive corruption, dictatorship and tribal conflicts that finally led the donors to suspend funding to Nairobi regime.
With poorly funded security forces, the Great Lakes region, the horn of Africa as well as North Africa was highly occupied by the deadly wars that killed millions of civilians and displaced million others.
The only country that was considered stable was Tanzania, but it was also exhausted, after its security forces have weathered many war starting with the ousting of Idi Amid Dada in 1979 plus series of liberation struggle in Southern Africa.
Therefore by 1992, Tanzania shifted its focuse to internal problems mainly economic ones, though it continued with mediation efforts to bring peace in the Great Lakes region as well as the rest of Africa.
Somalia became a forgotten conflict, with only Kenya left to try and seek peace under the chairmanship of Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat and the fragile Daniel Arap Moi regime.
With the help of Osama Bin Laden and other radical groups in the region, Somalia slowly became a stronghold for radicals, who used illicit money from internal and international financiers.
By the time Mwai Kibaki's regime stepped in to help form a Somali government about five years ago, it was too late to control the situation. The provisional Somali government formed in Kenya failed to work, and it was at this time that the African Union sent in peacekeeping forces.
Somali warlords had already moved from collecting taxes of imported goods coming through their territory to hijacking ships for ransom.
Al-Shabaab has made a fortune off of local pirates; according to the South Africa Institute of Security Studies, the extremist group has made over $70 million of piracy. This money is used to buy arms to support the so called liberation of Somalia from foreign forces.
At a recent meeting of the East African Community Sectoral Council on Transport, Communications and Meteorology in Arusha, ministers noted that piracy of the Somali coast is having a serious impact on the local economy and transportation, and security.
Kenya Ships Agency Association Secretary David Mackay said Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other countries in the region were losing close to $300 million year in revenues because of pirate activities in the Indian Ocean.
"The total cost of the crime to the East African economies is $275 million annually," he told journalists in Nairobi early this year.
Nearly two decades after political turmoil first erupted in Somalia, today the EAC continues to bear heavy costs, first with piracy and now with terrorist activities in the region.
How Uganda ignored warning for ten months
South Africa had warned Uganda of the threat posed by Somali militants, which culminated in the death of 76 people on Sunday evening, it has emerged. Ugandan intelligence services were alerted last October to the presence of terrorist cells in the country and their intention to attack Kampala, the Ugandan Observer reported this week.
According to the Observer, failings in intelligence screenings meant information from the mother of a Somali radicalised militant was not acted upon by officials. The Observer also reported that it had learned in December that the commander of the Ugandan peacekeeping contingent in Somalia had advised Uganda to put its security forces on extra alert, believing some Ugandan-trained militants could be plotting a terrorist attack in the country.
Sources told The Observer on Tuesday that an unnamed mother of a radicalised Somali young man living in South Africa, who did not want her son to get involved in terrorist attacks, told Ugandan security officers in October last year that militants were planning to bomb Kampala.
It appears that the security services did not properly coordinate and process this information to avert an attack, even after the Commander-in-Chief, Gen Yoweri Museveni warned his top commanders of a possible attack around the same time.
In a memo dated October 26, 2009 to the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, the Chief of Military Intelligence, Brig. James Mugira and the police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, Museveni instructed them to step up security vigilance at all military installations to prevent a possible attack by Al Shabaab, a militant Islamist group reportedly with links to Osama Bin Ladens Al Qaeda.
Indeed, on Monday, a security source told us that Ugandan intelligence was aware of the presence of terrorists in the country but did not know who they were, where they were hiding, when they planned to strike and which places they were targeting.
Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye couldnt comment on that particular information but simply said that the terror threat has been on since last year.
In fact, in December 2009, highly placed military sources told The Observer that the commander of the Ugandan peacekeeping contingent in Somalia, Maj. Gen. Nathan Mugisha, had advised the Commander of the Lands Forces, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala, to put the UPDF and other security agencies on extra alert as some Ugandan-trained militants could plan a terrorist attack in the country.
It was reported then that the UPDF was training Somali forces at Bihanga Military Training School in the western Uganda district of Ibanda. The UPDF, this paper would later learn, was shocked when it discovered that one of the Al Shabaab fighters killed in a skirmish with AU forces near Medina Hospital in Mogadishu was one of those trained by the Ugandan army at Bihanga.
Another Islamist fighter who was injured in the same fighting was also Uganda-trained, raising fear that the UPDF was unknowingly training fighters for Al Shabaab.
AMISOM has discovered that one [of the Al Shabaab fighters] who died and one of the injured were trained by UPDF, Ugandas Observer reported this week.
The search for any possible terror cells became urgent when the Police Anti- Terrorism Unit (PATU) defused another bomb in Makindye that had been left in a bag inside a busy pub. Police says some people have been arrested, but couldnt say whether they were held in connection with the Kyadondo, Kabalagala or Makindye incidents.
Additional reporting by the Ugandas Observer newspaper.
GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
Al-Shabaab dossier
Al-Shabaab dossier
Guardian on Sunday Team
The deadly bombings in Kampala during the World Cup final last Sunday are raising concerns over whether the newly formed East African Community is equipped and coordinated enough to ensure the region's security.
For years Tanzania had been reluctant to rush into a political or economic federation that would allow the free movement of people in the East African region before each country could adequately handle such a logistical endeavour. It was only in 2005 that the country succumbed to mounting pressures from both Kenya and Uganda to join the customs union, which is now composed of five member states with a combined population of over 100 million people.
The seeds of Tanzania's initial reservations now appear all the more prescient, as the growing threat of terrorism in the region will require joint security measures to be taken by member states immediately.
US analysts and officials have said the emergence of Al-Shabaab on the world stage fits a pattern of localised Islamic militant groups that have been increasingly able to mount sophisticated operations farther and farther from their base. A prominent such example was the recent attempt by an Al-Qaeda-linked group to blow up a plane on its way to Detroit, Michigan, on December 25, 2009.
The bombings further suggest that the Horn of Africa has become a hive of a new breed of terrorists, complicating the efforts of the United States, which has thrown its support behind Somalias embattled transitional government.
This was a localised cancer, but the cancer has metastasised into a regional crisis, Johnnie Carson, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs told the New York Times, early this week.
Al-Shabaab have been in the cross hairs of intelligence and counterterrorism officials for years. But the groups growing force and alliances with a shifting array of Somali warlords has posed a constant, vexing challenge for the Obama administrations efforts to bolster Somalias weak government and stabilise the country.
Last year, after what a senior administration official described as a fierce internal debate, US President Obama halted American food aid to Somalia after evidence indicated that Al-Shabaab was siphoning some of the aid for its operations.
Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen Arabic for "Movement of Warrior Youth" more commonly known as al-Shabaab, is an Islamist insurgency group in the ongoing war in Somalia. The group is said to control most of the southern and central parts of Somalia, including "a large swath" of the capital, Mogadishu, where it is said to have imposed its own "harsh" form of Sharia law.
By the end of 2009, the movement had an estimated 10,000 militias including foreign recruited and trained terrorists.
The group is an off-shoot of the Islamic Courts Union, which splinted into several smaller groups after its removal from power by Ethiopian forces in 2006. The group describes itself as waging jihad against "enemies of Islam" and is engaged in combat against the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), of which Uganda is a part.
Though Tanzania and Kenya are potential targets because of their geographic proximity to Somalia, for the time being Tanzania seems a bit safer off than Uganda, because the Kikwete administration has not dispatched peacekeeping forces to Mogadishu. When Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bombings in Kampala last Sunday, the group said it was motivated by the Uganda's role in the AU's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab had issued a warning to Uganda and Burundi about two weeks ago that it would strike those countries, following their decision to deploy their forces to Somalia, and it has vowed to continue with more attacks to these countries.
However in what puzzles many, the Ugandan security forces failed to act on that warning by taking preventive measures, and the Somalia terrorists managed to coordinate and carry out the deadly attacks in the country's capital.
Just one day before the Kampala attacks, which left 74 people dead and hundreds wounded, Kenyan police impounded close to 300 bomb detonators that were to be delivered to an unidentified female buyer.
Kenyas foreign minister, Moses Wetangual, had in the past raised an alarm to the international community, saying Al-Qaeda trained militias were moving to Somalia and Yemen as their new stronghold, but the warning wasnt taken seriously.
In Tanzania, there have been dozens of cases of illegal immigrants entering the country illegally, on their way to Mozambique and South Africa. Others have also managed to settle in Tanzania illegally, due to poor border control as well as rampant corruption within the immigration department.
Theres credible evidence that Somali immigrants have managed to secure immigration documents illegally, being assisted by relatives and friends in the country.
If you have money in this country, you can buy off the majority of our law enforcers these terrorists know our weakness and they are using it to strike us, a senior police officer who declined to be named told the Guardian on Sunday this week.
Somali militias could also enter Tanzania via the Indian Ocean, which is notoriously under patrolled by security officials.
Kenyan officials have vowed to tighten their borders following the Uganda attacks.
Its a shame for our immigration officers to receive Sh2,000 and allow militia to enter into our territory to kill hundreds of innocent citizens We are going to tighten our immigration rules. government spokesman Alfred Mutua told the BBC on Thursday.
Though Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni vowed on Thursday to deploy more forces in war torn Somalia, the biggest challenge currently facing the EAC is a lack of joint counter terrorism measures to curb the growing insecurity.
East Africa has widely discussed a monetary union, a customs union as well as a common market, but one thing has been lacking a joint security mechanism to protect the EAC common market, which was officially launched on July 1.
The cost of Ignored conflict
In the 1990s when Somalia was collapsing politically and economically after the overthrow of the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, African countries didnt act promptly to tame the situation.
Instead it was the US, under President Bill Clinton, that took the initiative to deploy forces in order to restore peace in Somalia. However, US suffered a major setback in 1992, when its marine soldiers were captured, dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and brutally killed.
After that incident, the US withdrew its soldiers from Somalia, paving the way for the nation's total collapse. Around that time, in the early 1990s, Al-Qaeda managed to penetrate Somalia, while their leader and mentor, Osama Bin Laden, sought refuge in Sudan.
During that period, Africa was confronted by a number of conflicts in the region including the Rwandan genocide, the Southern Sudan guerilla war, the battle for the control of Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Angola and South Africas liberation struggle, which ended officially in 1994.
In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, was also battling another deadly battle with the Lords Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony a battle that has continued till today.
In Kenya, the country was battling the internal political chaos that finally led to the introduction of multiparty system in 1992. During the Daniel Arap Moi regime, Kenya was also experiencing massive corruption, dictatorship and tribal conflicts that finally led the donors to suspend funding to Nairobi regime.
With poorly funded security forces, the Great Lakes region, the horn of Africa as well as North Africa was highly occupied by the deadly wars that killed millions of civilians and displaced million others.
The only country that was considered stable was Tanzania, but it was also exhausted, after its security forces have weathered many war starting with the ousting of Idi Amid Dada in 1979 plus series of liberation struggle in Southern Africa.
Therefore by 1992, Tanzania shifted its focuse to internal problems mainly economic ones, though it continued with mediation efforts to bring peace in the Great Lakes region as well as the rest of Africa.
Somalia became a forgotten conflict, with only Kenya left to try and seek peace under the chairmanship of Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat and the fragile Daniel Arap Moi regime.
With the help of Osama Bin Laden and other radical groups in the region, Somalia slowly became a stronghold for radicals, who used illicit money from internal and international financiers.
By the time Mwai Kibaki's regime stepped in to help form a Somali government about five years ago, it was too late to control the situation. The provisional Somali government formed in Kenya failed to work, and it was at this time that the African Union sent in peacekeeping forces.
Somali warlords had already moved from collecting taxes of imported goods coming through their territory to hijacking ships for ransom.
Al-Shabaab has made a fortune off of local pirates; according to the South Africa Institute of Security Studies, the extremist group has made over $70 million of piracy. This money is used to buy arms to support the so called liberation of Somalia from foreign forces.
At a recent meeting of the East African Community Sectoral Council on Transport, Communications and Meteorology in Arusha, ministers noted that piracy of the Somali coast is having a serious impact on the local economy and transportation, and security.
Kenya Ships Agency Association Secretary David Mackay said Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other countries in the region were losing close to $300 million year in revenues because of pirate activities in the Indian Ocean.
"The total cost of the crime to the East African economies is $275 million annually," he told journalists in Nairobi early this year.
Nearly two decades after political turmoil first erupted in Somalia, today the EAC continues to bear heavy costs, first with piracy and now with terrorist activities in the region.
How Uganda ignored warning for ten months
South Africa had warned Uganda of the threat posed by Somali militants, which culminated in the death of 76 people on Sunday evening, it has emerged. Ugandan intelligence services were alerted last October to the presence of terrorist cells in the country and their intention to attack Kampala, the Ugandan Observer reported this week.
According to the Observer, failings in intelligence screenings meant information from the mother of a Somali radicalised militant was not acted upon by officials. The Observer also reported that it had learned in December that the commander of the Ugandan peacekeeping contingent in Somalia had advised Uganda to put its security forces on extra alert, believing some Ugandan-trained militants could be plotting a terrorist attack in the country.
Sources told The Observer on Tuesday that an unnamed mother of a radicalised Somali young man living in South Africa, who did not want her son to get involved in terrorist attacks, told Ugandan security officers in October last year that militants were planning to bomb Kampala.
It appears that the security services did not properly coordinate and process this information to avert an attack, even after the Commander-in-Chief, Gen Yoweri Museveni warned his top commanders of a possible attack around the same time.
In a memo dated October 26, 2009 to the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, the Chief of Military Intelligence, Brig. James Mugira and the police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, Museveni instructed them to step up security vigilance at all military installations to prevent a possible attack by Al Shabaab, a militant Islamist group reportedly with links to Osama Bin Ladens Al Qaeda.
Indeed, on Monday, a security source told us that Ugandan intelligence was aware of the presence of terrorists in the country but did not know who they were, where they were hiding, when they planned to strike and which places they were targeting.
Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye couldnt comment on that particular information but simply said that the terror threat has been on since last year.
In fact, in December 2009, highly placed military sources told The Observer that the commander of the Ugandan peacekeeping contingent in Somalia, Maj. Gen. Nathan Mugisha, had advised the Commander of the Lands Forces, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala, to put the UPDF and other security agencies on extra alert as some Ugandan-trained militants could plan a terrorist attack in the country.
It was reported then that the UPDF was training Somali forces at Bihanga Military Training School in the western Uganda district of Ibanda. The UPDF, this paper would later learn, was shocked when it discovered that one of the Al Shabaab fighters killed in a skirmish with AU forces near Medina Hospital in Mogadishu was one of those trained by the Ugandan army at Bihanga.
Another Islamist fighter who was injured in the same fighting was also Uganda-trained, raising fear that the UPDF was unknowingly training fighters for Al Shabaab.
AMISOM has discovered that one [of the Al Shabaab fighters] who died and one of the injured were trained by UPDF, Ugandas Observer reported this week.
The search for any possible terror cells became urgent when the Police Anti- Terrorism Unit (PATU) defused another bomb in Makindye that had been left in a bag inside a busy pub. Police says some people have been arrested, but couldnt say whether they were held in connection with the Kyadondo, Kabalagala or Makindye incidents.
Additional reporting by the Ugandas Observer newspaper.
GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
Al-Shabaab dossier
