Regardless of the recent defeats of Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, senior African Union Mission in Somalia commanders privately admit that the next phase of military operations is fraught with potential difficulties. Since forcing Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu in August, five years after Amisom first came to Somalia, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force’s 5,500-strong contingent is slowly moving out to assume control of new territory beyond the capital. Any bolder moves to occupy territory further afield, however, depend on leaving currently-occupied zones to Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers and police, whose competence and reliability are in some doubt. Amisom commanders also worry because communications are scant and coordination absent with the Ethiopian forces to the south. Now that the Kenyan forces have been re-hatted as Amisom, links with them should improve.
Lack of trust in the TFG forces who have to take over the Ugandan and Burundian positions when Amisom moves out of Mogadishu is making Amisom tread cautiously. The TFG forces are ...
Uganda’s political and military elite is content with a long conflict in Somalia, while its Ethiopian and Kenyan allies prefer as short an involvement as possible.
The latest intake of MPs from Museveni’s party is causing ructions over oil and corruption as jockeying starts for the presidential succession
A group of truculent members of parliament in the governing National Resistance Movement has forced ministers to resign and is obliging President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to contempl...
After over a year of political and commercial disputes, Ireland’s Tullow Oil has signed for its production licence in Uganda, which means mid-2013 is now a realistic date for oil t...
As the political fallout over corruption spreads in Kampala, the legal battles are getting messier over US$434 million in tax which Kampala says oil companies owe it (AC Vol 52 No ...
In yet another bid to destroy Kony’s militia, President Obama sends in the Special Forces to help local armies
The Lord’s Resistance Army, based in Central African Republic since it was pushed out of Garamba, Congo-Kinshasa, faces a new threat with the arrival of 100 United States Special F...
Accusations in Kampala of high-level corporate bribery are as much about politics as business
Documents purporting to show that Ireland’s Tullow Oil made corrupt payments of 16.5 million euros (US$22.59 mn.) to Uganda’s Foreign Minister, Sam Kahamba Kutesa, and other state ...
President Museveni’s post-election reshuffle is more a political balancing act than a coherent response to unrest over high prices and shortages
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni swore in a new cabinet on 6 June that seemed to be mainly about rewarding loyalists of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) rather than addressin...
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni spent months – and US$1.3 million – planning his inauguration on 12 May only for a gatecrasher to spoil the party. While fanfares sounded and banne...
Following Museveni’s easy re-election, the security forces are making mass arrests and Kampala’s streets resound with gunfire and tear gas
A series of ‘Walk to Work’ protests against escalating food and fuel
prices has caught the public’s imagination and the government is
cracking down. Opposition leaders are unde...
