Somlia: UPDF sells guns to its enemies
Published on Tuesday 15th July 2008Inside story of how UPDF sold arms to Somali warlords
Sometime between December 5 and 8 of 2007, a United Nations Monitoring team came to Kampala after doing some investigations in Somalia.
They met with key Uganda government officials among whom was the minister for Foreign Affairs, Sam Kutesa, the Ugandan Special Envoy to Somalia, Ngoma Ngime, the Chief of Defense of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), General Aronda Nyakairima, the Director General of the External Security Organization of Uganda and the Mogadishu Station Chief from the External Security Organisation of Uganda, INdependent report said.
According to sources who talked to The Independent, the team was in Kampala to express concern about UPDF’s involvement in arms trafficking in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
After presenting their concerns, the Ugandan side promised to investigate the allegations and get back to the UN monitoring team with its findings.
Five months later, in late May 2008, the UN Somalia monitoring group issued a report of its findings to the UN Security Council. According to the report, the UPDF has been involved in trafficking arms.
Among the allegations is one that UPDF troops on a peace-keeping mission in Mogadishu have been illegally selling arms to Somali gunrunners. The report says that the gunrunners in turn sell the arms to Somali warlords.
According to the report, among the beneficiaries of this arms trade is a Somali militia called Al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab is part of the Islamic Courts Union, the rebel group that had captured Mogadishu last year but was bombed out of the city by United States air force with support of Ethiopian ground troops.
Al-Shabab accuses UPDF of not being neutral in the conflict because the Ugandan army is protecting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
The Al-Shabab militia warlord threatened to and has actually attacked UPDF positions in Mogadishu.
On November 15, 2007, three weeks before the UN Monitoring team’s visit to Kampala, Al-Shabab leader, Sheikh Aden Hashi Ayrow, posted an audio file on a Dayniile website. He said; “To us the Ugandans, Ethiopians and Americans are all the same, they have invaded us and I am telling the Mujahidin [God’s fighters], Ugandans must be one of our priorities.”
In the first three months after March 6, 2007 when the first Uganda soldiers set foot in Mogadishu, a disarmament drive was attempted. Spear-headed by Major General Levi Karuhanga, the exercise yielded quick and unexpected results; insurgents and businessmen surrendered stockpiles of arms.
Other stockpiles of explosives and ammunition were recovered by peacekeepers hidden in underground caches in and around Mogadishu following tip-offs. The arms belonged mainly to Al-Shabab which was at the time pre-occupied with fighting Ethiopian and TFG troops. It is these arms, the report says, that found their way back to the Al-Shabab fighters.
How arms racket worked
The 83-page UN report details how a racket of UPDF officers, gunrunners and militia traded in arms. A racket, involving arms-men at the peacekeeper armories beats all odds of the language barrier and the volatile and hostile situation in Somalia.
“The soldiers have set up a network through their translators who are in contact with the arms dealers; when the arms dealer receives a “wish list” from a client, a representative of the arms dealer contacts a trusted member of the Ugandan battalion stationed at the Mogadishu seaport, where the arms (from Al Shabab weapon caches) are stored;” the report read.
But the Uganda military disputes this particular claim. Lt. Gen. Edward Wamala Katumba, the Commander of UPDF Land Forces who went to Mogadishu to conduct the investigation late last year, says this is a lie.
“Though we have troops at the sea port, we don’t have any armory there. This is one particular piece of evidence that shows the report needs to be dismissed,” Gen Katumba said in an interview with The Independent. “Our arms and those captured are kept at Harani where the AMISOM base is.” Katumba’s report was not shared with the UN.
The UN report further claims; “he (the Ugandan officer involved in arms trafficking in Mogadishu) gains access to the containers (during the night), chooses his weapons and makes sure that they are operational (payment is always made before delivery).”
However, it does not name the officer. Instead, it gives details of the transportation of illegal arms by pickup trucks in isolated areas like a Xooga Korontada (near the electricity plant) or in the bush, to the waiting arms trader.
Other weapons are reportedly transported by donkey-carts in order to avoid being stopped by other Ugandan soldiers who are not part of the network.
“The smaller arms, such as AK-47s, RPG-2/7s, and PKMs, find their way to the Al Shabaab; heavy weapons such as Zu-23s and B-10s find their way to Puntland and Somaliland authorities,” it added.
The report further points out one arms dealer Haniinya Badne, who gave a “wish list” of arms to middleman “Goomey”, including 4 Zu-23s, 5 DShKs, 3 dhuunshilke (1-barrel Zu-23; typical Somali), 18 PKMs, 8 RPG-2/7s, 30 AK-47s and 50 pistols. The following ammunition was also requested: 25 boxes of ammunition for PKMys; 20 boxes for the DShK; 40 boxes for the dhuunshilke; 145 boxes for the AK-47s; 100 rounds for the RPG-2/7s; 180 boxes for pistols; and 1,800 belts and magazines.”
Gen. Katumba attacks the report as flawed when it comes to transporting a 23 millimetre gun on a pickup truck. “This is impossible, this gun can only be towed and cannot fit on any pickup truck,” he said.
“The whole thing beats me, how can soldiers sell arms to insurgents to put himself in harm’s way,” he said adding; “this report does not make any sense and is by people who are against AMISOM’s objective which is to bring peace to that country.”
The report said the Ugandan contingent of AMISOM involved in the transaction received US $80,000. “The arms were eventually bought back by the Al-Shabaab, via their representative at the Somali Arms Market, Abdirisaaq Godane.”
But the spokesman of AMISOM major Barigye Ba-Hoku also dismissed all these details as a mere fabrications. “Interactions of the troops with the common man in Mogadishu, who would act as a link, are almost non-existent.
The people we interact with are essentially sick people who come to our area to seek medical help,” Major Barigye said in an interview with The Independent.
This is not the first time the UPDF is accused by the UN of dirty dealings when its troops have been involved in international combat. It is also not the first time UPDF soldiers have been accused of complicity in illicit trade in combat zones.
In 2000 and in 2002, the UN Panel of Experts issued a report to the Security Council where senior UPDF officers were accused of involvement in the plunder of Congolese resources.
Among those directly implicated by the UN were Maj. Gen. James Kazini, then UPDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Salim Saleh, brother to President Yoweri Museveni, Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire who had been presidential advisor on the Congo and Brig. Noble Mayombo (RIP) then Chief of Military Intelligence.
Over the years, the UPDF has been implicated in illegal arms sales and trafficking in almost all areas of military operation ranging from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war, Karamoja forceful disarmament, and the 1998-2003 Congolese Civil War in which Uganda took part.
The UN and human rights organisations issued reports accusing UPDF personnel of selling arms to warring ethnic groups and training militias, including child soldiers.
Last year, the Army leadership unanimously agreed on a policy shift from using arms-men resorting to arms-committees to manage UPDF armories in Karamoja.
Arms-men refer to individual officers in charge of armories. This followed allegations that soldiers were selling arms to Karamojong cattle rustlers.
In early 2004, for example, the Intelligence Officer for 4 Division in Gulu, Lt. Ochira, wrote to the Chief of Counter Intelligence at CMI headquarters in Kampala complaining about the poor working relationship between UPDF and Internal Security Organization (ISO).
In the report, Ochira reveals that the Deputy Director General of ISO, Col. Elly Kayanja, invited Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel defectors for a meeting in Gulu on November 5, 2003 without informing CMI on the ground.
“Col. Kayanja promised these LRA commanders a lot of money which made them to conspire to steal arms from their squad armory which were given by 4 Division for operations i.e. two RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenades] bombs without fuses, three 60mm mortar bombs and 125 rounds of G2 ammunition,” the report reads in part, “On the 6th of November 2003, Captain Otto and Lt. Egwalu went and hid these arms in Koc-Orum and later informed Col. Kayanja that they had an ammunition dump.”
According to the report, the LRA defectors were literally taking arms from UPDF armories and then returning and selling the same arms to the army.
Corruption in the UPDF had become so endemic that in 2002, Col. Mayombo wrote a report to the Army Commander arguing that soldiers in the armored units were stealing fuel and lubricants made to service tanks and APCs [Anti Personnel Careers].
This, soldier’s report argued, had left many tanks and APCs in unserviceable condition and therefore could not be deployed against the enemy.
Among the worst indictments from within the Ugandan military about graft that had eaten the fabric of the UPDF was when, while investigating fake names on the UPDF nominal payroll or the “Ghost Soldiers scandal,” a committee led by the Senior Presidential Advisor on Security, Gen. David Tinyefuza.
The committee discovered that UPDF soldiers were involved in filling the army register with ghost soldiers and thereby creaming off money into their pockets.
“After extensive examination of available data and the evidence gathered from several witnesses, the committee has established that ghost soldiers exist in the UPDF and its auxiliary forces,” the report’s introduction says.
“The committee has further found out that the phenomenon is so large that it covers all units of the army. It has further been established that many officers of the UPDF are involved in this practice…”
The report went on to reveal that “The ghost soldier problem is so grave that the former Army Commander Maj. Gen James Kazini told the committee that Uganda has no standing army and that it depends on the good politics of President Museveni and his ability to mobilise militias.”