How UPDF Somalia mission was planned

Today, the African Union Mission in Somalia is celebrated for largely liberating Somalia, ridding the country’s capital of the terrorist al-Shabaab notoriety.

 The journey to relative peace has been a long and difficult one, dating back more than 10 years when Uganda’s army answered an international call to help this broken country, plunging itself into a very bitter and confusing conflict.In a 14-part series starting today, we bring you the story of how the mission was planned and executed.

The plan to deploy Uganda’s army in Somalia began to take shape in 2005 after President Museveni quietly sent Gen Kale Kayihura; Brig Dick Olum (current 3rd Division commanding officer); and Brig Peter Elwelu (2nd Division commander) to Baidoa to study the security and political situation.

 These officers then held lesser ranks but have since scaled greater heights in the UPDF. All reports coming out of Somalia at the time spoke of a hellish, desolate place ravaged by famine, disease and very bloody clan warfare.

Most of what was left of the government had fled into exile in Nairobi, Kenya. In the prevailing chaos, Somalia was becoming a haven for al Qaeda-linked terrorists, pirates, drug traffickers and assorted criminals.

Something had to be done to restore order as pirates, launching off the Mogadishu coastline had also made the seaway down from the Gulf of Aden very hostile waters for international shipping. Fourteen years earlier, Uganda’s commander-in-chief had visited Mogadishu.

The civil war had just started then. He met warlord Mohammed Farrah Aideed. Details of what was discussed in that meeting have never been made public. What is known, though, is that some sort of thinking was developed which probably informed President Museveni’s decision to bring the Somalia situation to the attention of his generals.

 “Yes, he called us and briefed us on what to do. We spent two weeks there,” Brig Elwelu told Sunday Monitor. Brig Elwelu enjoys the distinction of having been the commanding officer of the first mission troop, Battle Group One (UGABAG1), which landed under a hail of fire in Mogadishu on March 6, 2007.

Olum, Kayihura and Elwelu sat down to talk with senior security and political officials in what was known then as the Somalia Transitional Federal Government based in Baidoa, in the far west of the country. As earlier noted, the transitional government had been kicked out of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, by an Islamic extremist band going by the fancy name, Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

The current terrorist group, al-Shabaab, is an offshoot of the ICU. Gen Kayihura had been sent to study the politics inundating the volatile situation. Brig Olum researched the kind of training UPDF would need if any decision was made to deploy, while Brig Elwelu had to take a long look at the operational possibilities given the unfamiliar terrain.

On returning to Uganda, the three officers wrote a report in which they recommended that this mission was doable. These three officers had been sent to Somalia months after the troubled country’s ‘parliament’, sitting in exile in Nairobi in 2004, formed a transitional government headed by president Abdullahi Yusuf (deceased).

 The government was to be supported by a regional peacekeeping force under the aegis of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad). Igad is a regional body comprising eight countries. This Igad initiative would later be assumed by the continental African Union.

 It was on the basis of the Olum-Kayihura-Elwelu report that President Museveni resolved to deploy UPDF on this mission that has come to be one of the most successful and admirable African-European-American initiatives at conflict resolution.

 Rough start Things did not get off on a smooth start. There was strong internal opposition in spite of the report’s position that the mission was doable.

 A number of politicians in and outside Uganda’s Parliament raised several questions about the costs, security ramifications for Uganda and other consequences given that the army had burnt its collective fingers in the DR Congo debacle of the late 1990s.

In security circles, sources say there was fairly loud opposition to sending Uganda’s women and men to Somalia. On many occasions, President Museveni has referred to these disagreements which almost scuttled the plans as “those who were against the deployment of UPDF”.  Read More