| Radio |
Click on a category to chose your favorite kind of radio
|
|
| Uganda Attack Marks Spread of Somali War to Region |
The bombings in Uganda that left 74 people dead signaled that Somali Islamists are carrying their three-year fight for power to the rest of East Africa, said analysts including Scott Stewart at Stratfor.
Al-Shabaab, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda, yesterday claimed responsibility for the July 11 attacks at a restaurant and a sports club in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The blasts occurred while patrons were watching the final of the soccer World Cup.
Al-Shabaab said it targeted Uganda because of that nation’s deployment of troops to serve an African Union-led peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. It threatened a similar attack on Burundi unless its troops are withdrawn. Uganda has 2,700 soldiers in Somalia and Burundi has 2,550, according to the website of the Francophone Research Network on Peace Operations.
“It looks like al-Shabaab has taken the first step toward becoming transnational,” said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence at Stratfor, the Austin, Texas-based intelligence group. “They’ve clearly shown they have an intent to strike outside of Somalia. Now the big question is to try and find out how far the reach is.”
Islamist militias including al-Shabaab and Hisb-ul-Islam have been battling Somalia’s government since 2007 and now control most of southern and central Somalia, as well as parts of Mogadishu. Both groups have said they want to impose Islamic Shariah law on the Horn of Africa nation, which hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Arrests
Ugandan police late yesterday arrested people suspected of carrying out the attacks, Inspector-General Kale Kayihura told reporters today. Ball bearings found in an unexploded suicide vest in a nightclub in Kampala were similar to fragments found at the bomb sites, he said.
Last week, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, a Djibouti-based body that groups six East African countries, called for the peacekeeping mission in Somalia to deploy an additional 2,000 soldiers to help the government battle “extremist groups.”
IGAD, as the group is known, includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
The organization “calls upon the international community and its member states to strengthen the economic and military support” for Somalia’s government to fight terrorism,” the organization said in a statement handed to reporters in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, today.
‘Sends a Message’
The attack “sends a message to those countries who are thinking of sending troops to Somalia: ‘This is the fate that awaits you,’” Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based analyst at the International Crisis Group, said in a phone interview.
The U.S. ended its two-year “Operation Restore Hope” mission in Somalia, which involved as many as 33,000 U.S. and United Nations forces, after the downing of two American helicopters in Mogadishu in October 1994, an incident made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.”
U.S. citizen Nate Henn, who worked as a volunteer with the charity Invisible Children, was among those killed in the Kampala bombings, according to the website of the group, which aims to end the recruitment of child soldiers in northern Uganda. Another five injured Americans will receive medical treatment in South Africa, Joann Lockard, the U.S. Embassy’s spokeswoman in Kampala, said today by phone.
Peacekeepers
Peacekeepers are in Somalia to help stabilize the country and end one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. About 1.5 million people are displaced within the country and more than 560,000 people are living as refugees in neighboring countries, the UN Refugee Agency said in January. At least 3.2 million people in the country depend on humanitarian aid, according to the World Food Programme.
Al-Shabaab has previously threatened to attack Kenya, which it accused of recruiting ethnic Somalis living in the country to fight against the militia. An estimated 300,000 Somali refugees are being sheltered at the UN’s Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
One of the establishments targeted in Uganda was an Ethiopian restaurant. That “may not be a coincidence,” said Gus Selassie, an analyst at IHS Global Insight, with Ethiopia’s government being seen as a chief backer of the Somali administration.
Consequences
“It’s meant to send a signal to others in the region, mostly Ethiopia, that meddling in Somali affairs, whether its peacekeeping or occupation, would have consequences,” said Philippe de Pontet, Africa analyst at New York-based Eurasia Group.
U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in December 2006, ousting the Islamic Courts Union government that had captured the south of the country. The army occupied Mogadishu and the southern town of Baidoa in an effort to bolster the government, though the forces became bogged down in a guerrilla war with the Islamists who now control most of the country. The Ethiopians withdrew in January 2009.
“Al-Shabaab hates the Ethiopians because they’re the people that kicked the Islamic Courts out of power in Mogadishu,” Stewart said. “They really have an axe to grind against the Ethiopians.”
Nagala Soo Xiriir dhacdo@hotmail.com ama dhacdo@gmail.com
|
| Comments |
#1 |
on August 07 2010 14:43:09
#2 |
on August 18 2010 06:50:45
|
| Ratings |
|
Rating is available to Members only.
Please login or register to vote.
No Ratings have been Posted.
|
|
| Login |
Not a member yet? Click here to register.
Forgotten your password? Request a new one here.
|
| Users Online |
 Guests Online: 11
Members Online: 0
Total Members: 29
Newest Member: Abu-muscab
|
|
465,737 unique visits
