No word on UPDF, America denies involvement
On March 10 fighting intensified in Mogadishu days before the fragile Transitional Federal Government (TFG) would launch a new offensive against the Islamic insurgents in the war torn city. The Islamic insurgents led by the Al Shabaab control a larger part of the country. The TFG backed by the African Union peace keeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) which comprises mainly Ugandan forces, announced it would in weeks launch a renewed military operation against the insurgents. At least 50 people, mainly civilians, had been announced dead in three days of fighting by Friday March 12. The mayor of Mogadishu was advising people to flee the city.
The spike in fighting appears to have been sparked by media reports in early Feb. that the United States was becoming militarily involved and coordinating plans by Somalia’s embattled government to launch an offensive against Islamist fighters, the al-shabaab, in that country.
Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson described the reports as inaccurate.
“The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not coordinate the military operations of the TFG (transitional federal government) and we have not and will not be providing direct support for any potential military offensives,†Carson told a news briefing in Washington DC on March 12.
He said the US had provided limited military support to the TFG through the Uganda-dominated AMISOM.
Carson said the US has been providing up to US$ 185 million to mainly Uganda.
Observers say that American assistance could be crucial to the effort by Somalia’s government to finally reassert its control over the capital and bring a semblance of order to a country that has been steeped in anarchy for two decades.
The New York Times reported that Americans view the operation as part of a “counterterrorism strategy to deny a haven to Al Qaeda, which has found sanctuary for years in Somalia’s chaos and has helped turn the country into a magnet for jihadists from around the worldâ€.
Some look at the said US “assistance†to the TFG in Somalia as the Africom’s first war in Africa. When the US wanted to establish its Africa command base, a number of major countries on the content shied away from offering headquarters to the base. It was Djibouti which is just off the Somali coast that accepted to host the US military base. So it is logical that the US gets involved in the “restoration†of order in Somalia before the situation absolutely gets out of hand. The presence of Al Shabaab which claims to have links with the Al Qaeda is viewed as a potential link to Yemen thereby posing a more serious threat to Africom.Â
The US Africa Command (Africom) has expanded its counterterrorism capacity building activities in East Africa with particular focus on Uganda, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia, which apart from being heavily involved in the peace engagements in Somalia, are directly threatened by terrorists. Indeed in October last year, the U.S. led ten days of military exercises in Uganda code-named ‘Natural Fire 10’ with 450 American troops and over 550 from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The U.S. soldiers were deployed from Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which is the defacto headquarters of AFRICOM and home to the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force/Horn of Africa and over 2,000 US forces. The purpose, according to Ugandan newspapers headlines at the time, the military exercise was “geared towards the formation of the first Joint East African Military Force.â€
Most of the American military assistance to the Somali government has been focused on training through Uganda, including covert training to Somali intelligence officers and logistical support to the peacekeepers, fuel for the maneuvers, surveillance information about insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns. Washington is also using its weight as the biggest supplier of humanitarian aid to Somalia to encourage private aid agencies to move quickly into “newly liberated areas†and deliver services like food and medicine in an effort to make the government more popular
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