News Thursday 29 July 2010
A senior Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) officer has criticized a resolution by the AU summit in Kampala not allowing the AMISOM forces attack the al Shabbab elements in Somalia. By Steven Fredrick Magomu, The Uganda Eye Shortly after the Kampala twin bombings, al shabbab, a militant group fighting the interim government of Somalia claimed responsibility.

The officer, who spoke to The Uganda Eye on condition of anonymity, says the failure by the AU summit, sitting in Kampala to change the AMISOM mandate to attack the militants is a big setback for the forces on the ground.

A diplomatic source attending the recently concluded AU summit in Kampala told this newspaper, that AU could not push for the mandate to be changed after the bombings in the Uganda capital city, because of the pressure President Yoweri Museveni was undergoing from his people to act on al Shabaab.

“That is why, the UN, and other international peace keeping bodies have failed to bring about peace. You can’t insist on increasing the forces that are going to stand and wait to be attacked in order to respond, al Shabbab will take advantage and continue destabilizing them at home by throwing bombs every to force AMISOM out of Samalia” he cautioned.

Guinea and Djibouti pledged during the recently concluded AU summit to send 4,000 additional troops to beef up the 6,000 peacekeepers in Mogadishu. The Uganda government owned New Vision newspaper, wrote on Monday that success had been registered this month militarily for peacekeepers and Somali government forces.

The paper quotes a spokesman of AMISOM Maj. Ba-Hoku Barigye, as saying the transitional government forces took over six sites from al-Shabaab militants and reduced the bases from which the Islamists had launched attacks against their side.

Our source, also contends that for AMISOM forces to restore peace in the fragile Somalia, a lot has to be done, apart from just guarding the presidential palace and the port.

“We are fighting people who have been fighting for the last 30years, why do you think that they can easily give up just because we are guarding the president and port?” he asks.

Adding that the AMISOM forces have gained tremendous progress in Mogadishu this month by taking over most parts that had been controlled by the al Shabbab militants “This is because we engaged them forcing them to flee the areas under their control”.

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