Al-Qaeda is responsible for Kampala bomb blasts

Aug 05, 2010

It is erroneous for leading sections of the opposition to argue that the July 11 Kampala terrorist bomb attacks, solely arose from President Museveni’s internationalist decision.

By Kintu Nyago
It is erroneous for leading sections of the opposition to argue that the July 11 Kampala terrorist bomb attacks, solely arose from President Museveni’s internationalist decision.

They claim Museveni’s decision to deploy the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces in Mogadishu for the good of Uganda, the region and the world was the reason for the attacks.

On the other hand, the Ugandan press, across the spectrum, has manifested a praise-worthy response.

This noted, however, there is need to critically appreciate the gravity of the problem at hand. For our press to blame the Lugogo and Kabalagala attacks on the rag tag Somali al-Shabaab movement, is misleading.

Although al-Shabaab are sworn enemies to the people of Uganda, and the region, much of their spokesperson’s chilling threats are mere hot air. They have neither the means nor experience to implement bomb attacks.

Evidence from the press presents patterns that point to the diabolical handy work of al-Qaeda — that professional global terror network.

Evidence such as the multi-nationality of the suspects so far arrested and their rather sophisticated cross boundary networks is the work of al-Qaeda. Those arrested include Yemeni, Somalis, Kenyans, Ugandans and Pakistanis.

It is not possible for the ragtag al-Shabaab to marshal such cross-border international linkages. This organisation is still primarily a Somali outfit without the means and experience to marshal regional and global terror operations on its own.

Al-Qaeda on the other hand, does have this capacity. It has attacked Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Yemen, Europe and America, to mention but a few.

In Uganda, their close collaborators or stooges, are the Allied Democratic Front (ADF).

Currently, the Yemeni government is engaged in an intractable conflict against Al-Qaeda on its remote northern frontier. And indeed Al-Qaeda is active in the Maghreb and Sahel regions, Somalia, Western Europe, and also did conduct activities, in the recent past, in Kenya and Tanzania.

Consequently, Uganda’s current war with terrorism is not merely against localised Somali insurgents. It is one against the very core of global terror.

Our allies in Eastern Africa, the African Union and the international community need to realise that the moment al-Shabaab and its al-Qaeda mentors and puppet masters take over Somalia, the current, bad enough, rendezvous involving occasional pirate raids, in the Red Sea and the north western Indian Ocean and the real and perceived terror attacks in the region, would resemble a Sunday school picnic.

Al-Qaeda’s antagonism with the NRM government dates back to before Uganda deployed the UPDF to Somalia or even America’s 9/11.

It is traceable from the mid-1990s when Osama Bin Laden was a state guest of Sudan through the invitation of Hassan Al-Tourabi and Omar Bashir and their National Islamic Front regime.

Prior, Bin Laden had led a CIA, Pakistani intelligence (the famed ISS) and Saudi Arabian supported internationalist Mujahadeen movement to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This coalition generously funded and encouraged volunteers from all over the Islamic world to join the jihad against the Soviets, while concurrently encouraging their imbibing all manner of lunatic fringe versions of Islam.

After the Soviets were defeated in the late 1980s, the Americans and Saudi’s abandoned Afghanistan and the jihadists. This left the now iconic Bin Laden and his battle hardened and ideologically driven mujahadeen bitter and in the cold.

He, in turn, relocated first to Saudi Arabia, and later to Sudan and then back to Afghanistan after the Taliban take-over. And in the process re-organised his dejected, internationalist jihadist mujahadeen outfit into the Al-Qeada.

In the mid-1990s Al-Qaeda and Khartoum correctly viewed President Museveni and the NRM revolution as a hindrance to their regional expansionist ambitions, to create among others an international caliphate.

Museveni and the NRM initiated democratic reforms that reconstituted the Ugandan state and society, while concurrently supporting regional liberation movements such as the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement.

In the 1990s Kampala had not yet answered the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and African Union call to deploy the UPDF in Mogadishu.

However, around that time al-Qaeda and Khartoum propped up the Lord’s Resistance Army, and at the time Joseph Kony even claimed to have converted to Islam.

More fundamentally, however, Bin Laden, Tourabi and Bashir pivotally assisted in the creation of the ADF.

It is erroneous, therefore, for Col. Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change and Olara Otuunu of the UPC to naively link Uganda’s noble internationalist intervention in Somalia to the Lugogo and Kabalagala terror attacks.

Even in the late 1990s, the ADF launched terror attacks that killed and maimed more than 100 innocent Ugandans in Kichwamba, Kampala and Jinja. They did this at the bidding of al-Qaeda and Khartoum.

Al-Qaeda was also then responsible for the 1998 Nairobi and Dar-es-salaam attacks.

Against this background, President Museveni and the NRM Government were farsighted in their Somali intervention.

Terror attacks, regionally and globally, are bound to become much more commonplace when al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab overrun Somalia.

While the solution to the Somali crisis is political, such a calculation should not involve surrendering to al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab under the guise of negotiations and compromises.

Al-Qaeda’s worldview is extremist and totalitarian, they either win or you lose, with no grey in between.

The required solution has to involve serious funding and capacity building to re-create the Somali state and national economy, along the current Afghanistan model. And it is in the direct interest of the US, Western Europe, the Gulf and other developed countries to engage in this effort.
The writer is the deputy principal private secretary to the President

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