My Analysis of the simple message Uganda is trying to communicate
Uganda is protesting because it has been used by the US as a mercenary state for its new World order system in return that the US will use all its power to hide the atrocities and human rights violations of Uganda as a client state.
FIRST READ:
Fooling us about Uganda’s neutrality in the Congo Conflict!!! Militarizing the Congo to help USA and allies to rape Congo resources: DRC troops, civilians fleeing to Uganda after rebel clashes
Congolese Civil Society organizations condemn Uganda’s meddling in the Congo Conflict: Uganda, Angola leaders hold talks over DR Congo conflict
Hillary Clinton’s messianic entry into Uganda amidst the politics of Ebola scare: US’ Hillary starts Africa tour, here in Uganda tomorrow: Washington says Ms Clinton’s meeting with Museveni on Friday will focus on regional security, human rights and democracy: Oh! Really
Government insists threat to recall troops stands
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Government+insists+threat+to+recall+troops+stands/-/688334/1612520/-/3ralp2/-/index.html
By RISDEL KASASIRA & ISAAC IMAKA
Posted Tuesday, November 6 2012 at 02:00
In Summary
The government says allegations linking the UPDF to
the M23 rebels are meant to tarnish the country’s image and should be withdrawn.Kampala
Government yesterday said its threat to withdraw troops from Somalia is not political posturing intended to hold troubled Somalia at ransom and stampede the UN into shelving a report implicating the Ugandan military in supporting Congolese rebels.
The state minister for regional cooperation, Mr Asuman Kiyingi, told the Daily Monitor that it was a “matter of time” for government to recall Ugandan peacekeepers from Somalia if the UN continues and adopts the report. “If they think it’s a bluff, let them wait and see. The NRM government does not work like that. When we say something, we do it,” Mr Kiyingi said.
The M23 rebels have been fighting the DR Congo government since April after they mutinied, claiming that government had neglected them after they were incorporated into the Congolese national forces in 2009.
The leaked UN report alleges that President Museveni’s brother, Gen. Salim Saleh; the IGP, Lt. Gen. Kale Kayihura; the 2 Division commander, Brig. Patrick Kankiriho and the police director of counter terrorism unit, Mr John Ndungutse, are closely in touch with the M23 rebels.
The possible courses of action against Uganda if the UN adopts the report could be sanctions or slamming of travel embargoes against the named officials. But Mr Kiyingi described the lingering feeling that the Kampala regime was using the threat to pull out as a ploy to intimidate the UN, and that it would not withdraw from Somalia, as “ignorance” of what Uganda has done in the past.
“We said we were going to Somalia and people said we couldn’t go and manage. We are now telling them that we will withdraw because we cannot allow these lies intended to tarnish our image,” the minister said.
The chairperson of the UN Security Council-Counter terrorism committee, Mr Hardeep Singh Puri, on Saturday said the report does not necessarily represent the position of the UN, following Uganda’s petition to the UN.
Possible consequences
Somali insurgents, who have been chased away from their key bases and the capital Mogadishu, may regroup and overthrow the transitional federal government which has been largely kept in place by the UPDF contingent of Amisom if Uganda withdrew.
On Saturday, the United States of America under Secretary for political affairs, Ms Wendy Sherman, told journalists at Entebbe International Airport that the leaking of the report was inappropriate.
In response to the allegations, Gen. Saleh said he could not comment on the report, saying he had not seen and read it. Brig. Kankiriho said his troops “have never” crossed into DR Congo to support the rebels. “These are concocted stories by those so called experts. I’m surprised that people can sit down and concoct stories. Why would we be interested in entering Congo without its permission? I have never seen or met those people they are talking about,” he said. Gen. Kayihura and Mr Ndungutse were out of the country, the police spokesperson, Ms Judith Nabakooba said.
Uganda was ordered by the International Court of Justice to pay the DR Congo $10 billion as reparations following another UN Security Council report which accused several UPDF officers of plundering Congo’s natural resources.
Gen. Saleh was again specifically implicated in that report which revealed how military personnel from Uganda and Rwanda had built an elaborate network through which minerals and other natural resources were being illegally spirited out of the DR Congo.
editorial@ug.nationmedia.com
Minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda at the UN delivering Ugandas position.
Uganda 'stabbed in back' by UN report – Minister
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/637077-uganda-stabbed-in-back-by-un-report-minister.html
Publish Date: Nov 06, 2012
UNITED NATIONS - Uganda maintained a threat to withdraw troops from international peacekeeping operations after UN talks on Monday over accusations that it has backed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Uganda's Communications and Information Minister Ruhakana Rugunda told AFP his country felt "stabbed in the back" by a UN report which said Uganda and Rwanda have helped M23 rebels who are battling DR Congo government forces.
Uganda, a major contributor to peacekeeping forces in Somalia, Ivory Coast, Sudan's troubled Darfur region and East Timor, has threatened to withdraw its soldiers unless the allegations are withdrawn.
Rugunda met with UN deputy secretary general Jan Eliasson and ambassadors from the 15-member UN Security Council to express outrage at the report.
"I said Uganda will withdraw from its peaceful engagements in the region unless there is definitive assurance from our neighbours in the region and also from the United Nations system," Rugunda said in the interview.
"We are waiting now to see how the Security Council will deal with the subject," he added.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said the world body has had "no official communication" from Uganda about the report and UN diplomats said no official threat to withdraw has yet been made.
The report on DR Congo by UN sanctions committee experts has infuriated Uganda and Rwanda, which both border the eastern region where M23 has been battling the government since March.
The experts said Uganda had "actively supported" M23, a movement led by wanted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda, who the report said had bought a house in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
The report quoted DR Congo army commanders and former M23 officers who said Uganda had deployed about 600 troops alongside Rwandan forces to help the rebels prepare attacks.
Rugunda said people who reported the troops to the United Nations had probably mistaken them for about 600 DR Congo troops who fled across the border to Uganda and were eventually sent back in July.
The minister noted that Uganda is the current chair of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, and that Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni is leading a mediation effort for DR Congo.
Rugunda said allegations in the report were an attempt to present Uganda as "a traitorous nation, after the president of the country has accepted the responsibility to mediate."
Rugunda said the allegations risk undermining efforts to bring peace to DR Congo.
"I don't think relations in the Great Lakes region have been better in a very long time," Rugunda said, noting that the group had held four summits in four months with the presence of DR Congo's President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame.
The UN report could "derail the region" as it strives for a political solution to the conflict in eastern DR Congo, he added.
The UN Security Council is due to discuss the international force in Somalia on Wednesday.
Uganda provides more than a third of the 17,000 troops in the African Union-led mission there, which is propping up a new government.
AFP
U.S. expects Ugandan peacekeepers to stay in Somalia
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/05/us-uganda-congo-un-idUSBRE8A410U20121105
NAIROBI |(Reuters) - The United States expects Uganda to keep its peacekeeping forces in Somalia despite a threat to withdraw in protest at a U.N. report, a senior State Department official said on Monday.
The government in Kampala said on Friday it would pull out of peacekeeping missions in Africa unless the United Nations amends a report accusing it of supporting rebels in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Wendy Sherman, under secretary of state for political affairs, who met Yoweri Museveni last week, said the Ugandan president had raised concerns about the U.N. report but that she expected him to keep peacekeeping troops on the ground.
Ugandan troops account for more than a third of the 17,600 U.N.-mandated African peacekeepers battling al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels in Somalia, and their withdrawal could hand an advantage to the weakened al Shabaab rebels.
Backed by U.S. special forces, the soldiers are also leading the hunt for fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony in Central African Republic, with some stationed in South Sudan.
"I fully expect because of (Museveni's) commitment to peace and security in the region that Uganda will continue to play the leadership role it has, both diplomatically and in terms of military security," Sherman told reporters in Nairobi.
Uganda and Rwanda have denied accusations in a leaked U.N. Group of Experts report which said the two neighbors were arming Congo's M23 rebels, whose warlord leader has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
The experts called for sanctions on those who violated an arms embargo.
Uganda's foreign ministry said over the weekend it was "inevitable" Ugandan forces would leave Somalia unless the U.N. corrected "false accusations" against the country.
Somalia's Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid told Reuters on Saturday he hoped Uganda would not pull out its troops at what he said was a critical moment in the fight against al Shabaab.
Sherman said the east and central Africa region needed Uganda's diplomatic and military leadership, which includes Museveni's chairmanship of peace talks between Congo, M23 rebels and Rwanda.
"President Museveni and Uganda have played critical roles, not only in terms of their military capabilities but their diplomatic capabilities to try to navigate, negotiate and mediate concerns in the region," she said. (Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg; Editing by Duncan Miriri and Robin Pomeroy)
Uganda holds Somalia hostage in high-stakes diplomacy
Monday 5 November 2012
Threat to withdraw troops from fragile neighbour is political posturing that suggests some truth to UN accusations
It was a damning conclusion, and caused diplomatic shockwaves throughout the region; with Rwanda also blamed for assisting the rebels, the conflict in North Kivu started to look less like a rebellion and more like a regional war.
Uganda denied wrongdoing in no uncertain terms, and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi castigated what he described as a baseless, unfair and malicious report; one that was compiled without following due process and with minimal input from concerned stakeholders. This was two weeks ago.
Since then, the Ugandan government has got even angrier, until it decided to play its trump card. Fine, they said; if the international community insists on propagating these baseless accusations about Uganda, then they shouldn't expect Ugandan troops to keep on keeping the fragile peace in a country where the international community fears to tread: Somalia.
Since 2007, Ugandan soldiers have been the backbone of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). At any one time since then, there have been at least 5,000 Ugandans on the ground in Somalia, and the number is often higher. Given the unwillingness of other countries to contribute troops (with the exception of Burundi initially, and now Djibouti, Kenya and Sierra Leone), it is no exaggeration to say it was the Ugandan military that kept Somalia's unstable transitional government in some semblance of power for so long, providing the foundation for the recent assault on Al-Shabaab that severely damaged the Islamist militant group.
Even in the wake of the recent successes, Somalia is a dangerous country, and its capital, Mogadishu, particularly so. With no real security forces of its own to rely on, the Somali government continues to be propped up by Amisom, which is still disproportionately reliant on Ugandan soldiers, which account for a full third of its troop contingent in Somalia. Take the Ugandans away, and it is likely that the entire fragile edifice will come crumbling down.
But that is what Uganda wants to do, according to Security Minister Wilson Mukasa. "We are tired of being maligned even after sacrifices have been made to ensure that our friends, our neighbours are okay. The 'thank you' we get is that you are now aiding this, you are this and that, so we are tired," he told reporters in Kampala. This has forced the government to conclude that it is safer and easier to forget about this business of international peacekeeping and intervention: "Let's stop all these initiatives. We will concentrate on ourselves. Whoever wants to cause us trouble, they will find us at our home." He added that Uganda had already despatched an official to New York to inform the United Nations of this decision.
While in New York, one suspects that this unnamed official will also have a few meetings with other unnamed officials from the United States, which has its own vested interests in Somalia. The US has been deeply concerned for a long time about the threat posed by Al-Shabaab, and in particular its links with al-Qaeda. This makes Somalia another front in the War on Terror, but one in which the US is reluctant to participate directly. A happy solution was found in which African countries – primarily Uganda – were supported, both technically and financially, to put non-American boots on the ground. If Uganda is thinking about deserting its position on the frontline of the War on Terror in Somalia, risking an Al-Shabaab resurgence, it is likely the White House or State Department will have a few things to say.
Chances are, however, that Uganda has no intention of actually going through with its threat of summary withdrawal. "It's just politics and playing to the gallery. They won't pull out," said analyst Hamza Mohamed, a specialist on Somalia. His sources in Mogadishu suggest there have been no plans to follow through on the threat, which is likely designed as a warning to the international community to ease its criticism of Uganda's Congolese adventures. "Things will be quietly settled behind closed doors with perhaps future reports not being so critical," he added.
It's hard to see any other outcome. With the international and African community happy to outsource the establishment of Somali democracy to countries like Uganda, which doesn't exactly have a wonderful governance record itself, it should come as no surprise when those countries demand their quid pro quo.
In this case, Uganda is asking the international community to choose between exposing the roots of the conflict in the eastern DRC and maintaining Somalia's tenuous hold on stability. There's no doubt that Somalia will win this particular trade-off, especially given America's heavy investment in a successful outcome there. It seems less likely, however, that Uganda's involvement in the DRC will be forgotten. If anything, the heavy-handedness of its response – coupled with the evidence in the controversial UN report – suggests that there is some truth to the accusations.
