UPDF plans new mission in Somalia

A smaller force to stay behind as ATMIS exits

ANALYSIS | IAN KATUSIIME |  Lt. Gen. Sam Kavuma, the new Force Commander of African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), arrived in Mogadishu on July 28 to oversee the last phase of a troop drawdown process that started five years ago.

A former Contingent Commander (CONTICO) of Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) in Somalia, Gen. Kavuma knows the terrain of the country where the Ugandan army has had a presence since 2007.

ATMIS is planning to send back home 2000 troops to Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda in September in a continuation of the drawdown process.  By December 2024, another 2000 will be expected to leave.

Even though the force is already much smaller, it has now dawned on Somali security forces, the African Union and the European Union; the funders of the mission, that an entire troop drawdown leading to the exit of ATMIS is not possible this year.

As a result, a new bilateral mission between Somalia and Uganda comprising a smaller force is in the offing, according to interviews held in Mogadishu with soldiers, commanders, diplomats and Somali leaders.

The drawdown has been a buzzword in diplomatic circles. There is donor fatigue among the European Union who have been footing the bills of the peace mission.

The apathy has been compounded by the war in Ukraine which caused a rethink on where they should spend money. Since June 2023, the drawdown has been in overdrive.

The Somali National Army (SNA) which is expected to fill the gap left by the departing troops has continued to build its capabilities with various trainings. It also has a lightning brigade known as “Danab” trained by U.S. forces and another special force called Gogor, trained and equipped by Turkish forces.

But other stakeholders of the mission; especially the Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs), have advised caution among those pushing for troop reduction.

“After this September, the remaining force cannot be reduced anymore without compromising its security if it remains with the same tasks,” says Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Nathan Mugisha in an interview with The Independent at the Ugandan Embassy. He is the Deputy Head of Mission and also an experienced hand on Somalia issues.

“It takes time to gain experience, to train a soldier, to train a crew, and to train a battalion, that is how you build esprit de corps,” he says.

Gen. Mugisha says there is need by the Somali security forces to generate a requisite force to replace the departing troops for Somalia to marshal its security threats. He cites a need to bolster zonal (Darwish) and community defence forces.

With the drawdown in the final stages, the Ugandan embassy is working on a Status of Force Agreement with Somalia with a goal to have it signed before the end of the year.

The agreement accompanied with a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) will stipulate division of roles between Uganda and the host nation. It will address other issues such as how cohesive the forces are, and how to achieve a unified command.

“There is also constant engagement with Addis Ababa (the African Union),” Gen. Mugisha says.

Another of those voices well versed with dynamics in Somalia is Brig. Anthony Lukwago Mbuusi, current CONTICO, and a veteran of Al Shabaab wars.

Mbuusi first arrived in Somalia in 2010 where he commanded a unit under a battle group. In 2016, he went back for his second tour of duty as a Battle Group commander. Now in his third tour of duty as commander of UPDF troops, Mbuusi spoke to The Independent about fighting the Islamic militants amidst a troop drawdown and other challenges.

He says this year, UPDF had a plan to send home 900 soldiers; 400 left in June and another 500 are set to depart in September. “We have expanded and now we are overstretched,” he says in relation to the number of forward operating bases (FOBs) that have been closed in the troop reduction.

There is wide acknowledgment that the sun is setting on Uganda’s mission even from the army itself.

Mbuusi says some UPDF forces will stay in Somalia after the drawdown timeline which was mapped out till the end of 2024.

“This will be a bilateral mission,” he says.

Mbuusi like others welcomes the drawdown but is skeptical of how it is being rushed and rolled out. The donors of the peacekeeping mission demanded a withdrawal that was not conditions based complicating the entire process.

The commander says the drawdown brings extra handicaps because some external partners are now not stepping in as expected.

UNSOS will provide logistic support to only UN mandated troop strength. UNSOS is United Nations Support Office in Somalia.

Uganda remains the main player in ATMIS with an estimated 4000 troops. The Ugandan contingent has three battle groups; 39, 40 and 41. But Mbuusi explains that the exercise has left the force vulnerable.

Some of those vulnerabilities were reflected in the attack against an ATMIS convoy hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in early July. A Ugandan soldier, Major Patrick Awany Opio, was killed and about a dozen other soldiers were injured in an attack that demonstrated the omnipresent threat posed by Al Shabaab. The ambush was akin to the one staged by the same militants in May 2023 when 54 UPDF were killed, according to the Ugandan government.

Mbuusi says the incident which happened in Bulo Mareer, an estimated 200km from the capital, was a result of a breakdown in communication.

“Areas handed over are collapsed or taken over by an ill-equipped force,” he says of the drawdown where TCCs have handed over FOBs to Somali security forces.

Mbuusi says the UPDF has attempted to reorganise itself to plug the gap but adds that the SNA will have to do more in the event of an ATMIS exit.

There remains hope in dealing with the enormous security issues in the country through the civil military relations that have been a core part of UPDF’s strategy in Somalia.

This entails relations with ordinary Somalis where extending acts of kindness to children for example, goes a long way in changing the perception of the army from forces of occupation to members of the same community. UPDF termed this philosophy as winning over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Somali people.

This appears to be a tried and tested method in the UPDF’s seventeen year stay in Somalia.

UPDF legacy

With many battles fought and won, UPDF has imprinted its legacy in the Horn of Africa. From the pitched battles at Bakara Market in 2011 that repulsed Al Shabaab from Mogadishu, to the community engagements in the local population and to the outposts it has had in faraway parts of the country to restore stability, the Ugandan army established Somalia as its stomping ground.

Level 2 hospital in the UPDF Base Camp in Mogadishu is a symbol of UPDF’s far reaching legacy in the country. This is where the injured UPDF officers are treated. When on a visit here, they narrate the incidents they have encountered, including the one in Bulo Mareer. Here one can discern the kind of alertness needed to ward off the terrorists.

The hospital is run by the UPDF with Capt. Dr. Margaret Nansubuga as its medical superintendent. The facility has an administrative officer, an intelligence officer and a chief nurse; all UPDF officers.

It also provides services to Somali civilians and it is essentially a referral for hospitals in the Sector 1 area of ATMIS which encompasses Mogadishu and Banadir, the administrative area that skirts the city.

The hospital has treated soldiers through the many attacks that Al Shabaab has inflicted on Uganda and other armies since the mission opened. It nursed Maj. Gen. Nathan Mugisha after the bomb blast in September 2009 shortly after taking over as AMISOM Force Commander. He had bomb fragments in the head.

Maj. Gen. Juvenal Niyoyunguriza, a former deputy force commander, who was still in Mogadishu at the time did not survive in what was the first major ambush by the Somali militants on the peacekeeping forces. 25 soldiers lost their lives.

Several Ugandan military commanders have had stints in Somalia since March 2007. From Maj. Gen Levi Karuhanga, the first AMISOM force commander to Maj. Gen. Francis Okello, Maj. Gen. Nathan Mugisha, Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha. When the mission was renamed ATMIS in 2022, Uganda has still led it with Lt. Gen. Sam Okiding and currently Lt. Gen. Sam Kavuma.

Other officers have served as CONTICOs, rotated on an annual basis. Col. Peter Elwelu, the very first one, to Brig. Michael Ondoga, Brig. Paul Lokech, Brig. Dick Olum, Brig. Kayanja Muhanga, Brig. Keith Katungi, Brig. Gaetano Omola, and now Brig. Mbuusi. This includes the rank and file of the army who are deployed in different battle groups every year.

The peacekeeping mission which quickly evolved into a peace enforcement mission thanks to repeated Al Shabaab artillery, equipped the UPDF with invaluable urban warfare skills. The Ugandan army was used to guerilla infantry against LRA in savanna environments.

The first years of the battle against the Islamic insurgents were characterised by street fighting, dealing with snipers, infiltration. In Mogadishu, the UPDF were operating in a built up area and they had no armored equipment. It was attritional warfare and they had to adjust quickly.

Nearly two decades later, the transformation is clear: better reconnaissance, deeper civil military cooperation (CIMIC) and training of the Somali security forces in areas including handling of explosives like IEDs, route search courses, and special operations.

UPDF’s enduring legacy extends to the camaraderie with the SNA where the two armies have carried out joint operations to deal with a common enemy.

Al Shabaab strength

But surmounting that enemy; the Al Shabaab–always lurking and deeply embedded in Somali society–is a high mountain to climb. On Aug. 2, the terror group claimed responsibility for a beachside bomb in Mogadishu that claimed 32 lives.

“Al Shabaab is stronger than most people realise,” says a politician who is now a member of parliament in Somalia.

He says al-Shabaab’s main strength is their intelligence arm.

In an interview at a hotel in Mogadishu, he told The Independent that the al-Shabaab make a lot of money from Somali society.

“Nomads are always taking them cows, camels, they also collect money from businesses, land etc.” he said. “And they spend a lot of money on Amniyat (the Intelligence arm), he says.

According to grey dynamics, an intelligence site, Aminyat is so influential and powerful in that there would be no Al Shabaab without it. The site adds that the unit conducts counterintelligence operations by drilling fear into the hearts of the group’s members.

The legislator adds that Al Shabaab has recruited journalists—one of the oldest tactics in intelligence gathering—anywhere.

He recounts the example of a brilliant young Somali he knows called Abdullahi Osman who goes by the moniker ‘Ismail Engineer’. He graduated top of his class while studying telecom engineering in Sudan.

“When they saw the genius he was, they recruited him,” he says. “He’s the man making drones for Al Shabaab. Engineer Ismail is the organisation’s tech wizard and because of his prominence, he is now a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. He says Engineer Ismail once worked for Al Jazeera, the global news network based in Qatar.

The MP says since ATMIS is withdrawing, the hope of the Al Shabaab is “to turn Somalia into a second Afghanistan”.