Museveni: UPDF commanders deploying relatives and cooks to fight Al-Shabaab

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Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. Photo Credit: REUTERS

KAMPALA - Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has sensationally claimed some Uganda People's Defense Forces [UPDF] commanders have been deploying "relatives and cooks" to fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, in yet another scathing attack aimed at the top leadership of the Armed Forces.

Museveni's unprecedented remarks come just a few days after Al-Shabaab militants overran a UPDF base in Bulo Marer, southern Mogadishu, killing several soldiers. Initially, Museveni maintained that the soldiers had "panicked" despite being in a position to repulse the attack.

“..it seems at some stage, some of the people who organize put names of their bodyguards, personal assistants, and cooks. They create some sort of ad-hoc instead of integral units,” Museveni said while addressing the NRM caucus in Kyankwanzi.

Friday's attack on the UPDF base is the worst raid on African Union Transition Mission in Somalia [ATMIS] peacekeepers and until now, neither ATMIS nor Uganda has released a statement confirming the number of casualties. Al-Shabaab claims over 137 soldiers were killed.

And Museveni, a former soldier with UPDF, while sounding annoyed, seemed to suggest that commanders were taking advantage of lucrative allowances allocated to soldiers to allocate relatives and people without military knowledge to the peacekeeping mission.

He said these new players in the army without the spirit of patriotism and NRA ideology are scrambling to maximize allowances from the UN rather than look at the needs of the mission, reports the Nile Post.

“The investigation will go on and you will see. Somalia is a very dangerous place, if you go there without a plan, you end up in a bad situation for yourself, some of these people do not look at the mission but the money,” Museveni said.

“It seems one of the suspect factors in the incident could be corruption again by some of these new players in the army. In Somalia, the UN gives big allowances, someone told me that you can get Shs38m in a year when deployed there. Now some of these people ( we suspect) who are selecting people to go to Somalia are not doing the right thing as we were doing before.”

He said that previously, deployments were done by picking from combat units but that at some stage, all this was abandoned and the commanders started selecting who to deploy and that most of these are their relatives and people known to them. Museveni said they did this on the basis that Al-Shabaab has been ‘quiet’ for some time.

“Sending welfare cases on a combat mission is the cause of this problem,” he added.

“This was not Al-Shabaab, it was our internal weaknesses which must be addressed. This business of not listening to the NRA, the mercenary attitude of selfishness, money, etc. We are sorry about the death,” Museveni added.

In the aftermath of the deadly attack, the president pointed out that operations in Somalia and other theatres are combat missions and not welfare missions for people to get UN allowances. Uganda has close to 4,500 soldiers serving in ATMIS.

“It is criminal for anybody involved, to send into such a theatre soldiers who are either not suited for that mission or not properly prepared for it,” he said on Saturday.

Further, Museveni directed his fury at the US and Turkey, noting that they were doing very little to assist combat troops in annihilating Al-Shabaab militants. Both the US and Turkey are responsible for training and equipping a number of elite squads in Somalia.

“I was speaking to commanders in Somalia there, I was telling them that if Americans and Turkey don’t want to assist our ground forces fight Al Shabaab, we shall do it ourselves. We shall find a way of intervening more decisively. I don’t know what they are doing in Somalia (with their UAVs) if they cannot coordinate.”

The UPDF has set up a board of inquiry led by the Command Land Forces, Lt Gen Kayanja Muhanga to investigate the attack in Somalia. The attack comes just days before ATMIS starts official withdrawal from Somalia, with 2,000 set to leave the mission in compliance with Somali Transition Plan.

GAROWE ONLINE

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