Uganda : Nation Hangs On in Somalia

[Kamaavi]

Uganda House, the 14-story building that Idi Amin purchased in 1975 right across from the home of the United Nations, stands shoulder to shoulder with the flashy new New York quarters of the US State Department. This October, the distance between the two countries, admittedly strange bedfellows, for one is a rich superpower and the other a developing country, was narrowed a little further.

 

For the greater part of the last two years, Uganda has been a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council where America is top honcho. In October, for the second time in its membership, Uganda was the chair of the council - in theory the world's most powerful body.

 

As is often the case in unequal relationships, Uganda has been serving as a willing surrogate for a variety of US security intentions in Somalia, the Horn and South Sudan. It's not an easy job. And as transpired on the Security Council this month, getting paid for it is no walkover either.

 

By all counts, US policy, and to a lesser or greater extent (depending on how you view Kampala's freedom to act), Ugandan policy in Somalia is a stillbirth. This should not be a surprise; after all, Mogadishu has a high record of policy stillbirths and miscarriages that have left the country bleeding and convulsing. Yet even if success in Somalia is measured by the rate of failure, the current debate on what to do next reveals the need to revisit the relationship between the United States and Uganda.

 

September summit

 

During the September summit at the United Nations, word has it that President Yoweri Museveni threw down the gauntlet and asserted that with a billion dollars, he would have the means to run the latest bad boys in Somalia, the al Shabaab, out of town.

 

A month later, Uganda presided over a Security Council internal debate on Somalia as well as peacekeeping in Africa. Uganda's military leaders do not consider that there is any peace to keep in Africa's version of Afghanistan, but are restrained by their relationship. While the US is not naïve about peace in Somalia, international relations behooves that even if one is fighting a war, it can be called other names.

 

The ensuing conversation on the Security Council, couched in diplomatic speak, was basically about who will pick the bill, not just for Somalia, but in other hotspots on the continent where the United Nations "outsource" the maintenance of peace and security. In other words: get allies to fight their wars.

 

"Two years ago when we started talking of the UN financing African-led peace-keeping, there was a lot of resistance. Several months down the road, that resistance has worn down," said Arthur Kafeero, a diplomat at the Uganda mission. "It's because of the situation on the ground," he adds.

 

Since mid this year, tensions in Somalia have been on the boil. The attrition rate of civilians has caused uproar as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) struggles with the exclusive help of Ugandan and Burundian troops to ward off an existential threat posed by the al-Shabaab.

 

The group has upped not just its conventional war, but also increased ambushes and suicide attacks, including one in Kampala, which killed more than 70 civilians.

 

Uganda was forced to reinforce its troops on the ground to regain some leverage, but argues that without the money to put a substantial number of boots on the ground, that leverage will slip. It wants to boost the numbers gradually to 20,000. This makes sense. The Ugandan and Burundian forces are fighting a battle to survive - hardly making headway militarily or politically in the country.

 

But herein lie some sticking points in the relationship. The UN, a conveyor belt of the thinking of the big powers like the US, has now provided a small support package of 80 million dollars for the African Union Peace-Keeping Mission in Somalia [AMISOM].

 

This little step is in fact a giant leap in its relationship with the African Union in Addis Ababa, whose flag the peacekeepers fly in Mogadishu. But the figure is only a fraction of what Uganda and Burundi say they need. Currently AMISOM's budget, together with the UN package, comes to $176m, according to Ugandan diplomats. An additional $25m dollars is drawn from a Trust Fund contributed to by a group of countries, including France, Britain, the EU and Japan.

 

Big push

 

Uganda's proposed big push strategy for Somalia is forcing the issue not just of how the bill for this military surrogacy will be settled, but also about the future configuration of the relationship between the UN and the AU, as moderated by the power, money and interests of the big powers. In a statement about Somalia on October 21, Uganda's permanent representative Dr Ruhakana Rugunda said the situation required "sustained and predictable financial and logistical support." The complaint is that funding right now is arbitrary and risks the military situation on the ground.

 

The big-push strategy has other elements, which includes enforcing a no-fly zone and a naval blockade of the Somali coast, but over all, even the problem of piracy, one of the Frankenstein dilemmas of the Somali question, Ruganda says would be "effectively dealt with by addressing the situation in Somalia itself." All require the committed support of particularly the United States. But judging from the reaction so far, Uganda is unlikely to have its way, at least in the short-run.

 

On the same day, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, presented a 33-page report on how the organisation could work with the AU in Somalia. It contained "bridging" solutions, a series of bureaucratic hoops, which largely focused on how the UN would remain the accounting officer for monies that the AU spent on its behalf for peacekeeping. For now, they include a UN Office at the African Union [uNAO].

 

This office, according to Ban Ki-Moon, who appeared worn out and yawning next to Uganda's Deputy Prime Minister Eriya Kategaya (Kampala had dispatched him, a senior official, to chair the council on the financing debate on October 22 as a sign that Uganda was gravely "seized" of the issue) would provide "an additional conduit through which the UN and AUcan work together more closely in areas including: mediation; good offices and conflict prevention; elections; security sector reform; disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration; public information; military and police operations; mine action; and security-related matters". The office is yet to be established but a bureaucracy at the UN is already at work on it, appointing an under secretary to head it.

 

Commenting on Ban Ki-Moon's proposals, Kategaya said the "UN package not withstanding," Uganda was still in the budget quicksand of "voluntary contributions."

 

"When the AU [read Uganda] deploys peace-keeping troops authorised by the Security Council, it is doing so on behalf of the UN and the international community," he said and warned that the prevailing financing mechanism was "unsustainable."

 

In the next few days, Kategaya, the closest sign that President Museveni himself was following the issue, who camped at the New York Hemsley Hotel, meeting privately with British and American officials. During the debate he chaired, the big powers had showed polite restraint at the Uganda proposals for a surge in Somalia. It is understood, however, by those in the know that there was irritation that Uganda was pushing the subject and goading the US in particular to “do something."

 

“They feel additional meetings or debates will not help because the heads of state had met over this,” said a seasoned UN hand. Still diplomacy is what the UN is about, and if the US was planning to continue to use Uganda as its regional avatar, then the state of the avatar was a legitimate question that Ugandan diplomats spent literary sleepless nights crafting.

 

“Frank” discussion

 

Less polite were the British whose representative called for a “frank” discussion in the session, which East African attended. To show the weight attached to it; the Brits put one offer on the table.

 

They would pay for salaries for an increased UN staff presence at the AU as reforms got underway to ensure that money is properly accounted for. The US representative also quipped that proper financial management was “a door” to more sustainable funding while the African group led by Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Odien Ajumogobia (and not surprisingly Somalia) backed calls for faster action.

 

This situation where funding is leading the way in discussing war-torn Somalia’s future betrays some uncomfortable truths. In the final analysis, the talk of financial aid (it’s essentially what it is, except it’s not for bringing down HIV/Aids figures) is reminiscent of the problem of all aid, in fact, and carries with it that curse of failure for many aid-assisted projects.

 

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