By Ignatius Bahizi, East Africa Editor, The African Gazette As top Ugandan security managers were chest-thumping, boasting that they are in full control of the safety, and security of all Ugandans, suicide bombers hit the heart of the country – the capital city Kampala.
The terror attacks rocked the city center on a calm Tuesday morning, early November, throwing into disarray government officials and members of Parliament who had just started settling in for their workday.
One of the top government officials – the inspector General of Government Betty Kamya described to a local television how the heavy blast threw her out of her office chair at Jubilee Insurance House. The blast happened right outside the building.
The Jubilee House is a few meters away from the National Assembly (Parliament), where security hurriedly evacuated the speaker, as other legislators dashed for cover from a blast that shook the ground like an earthquake, living cracks in windows of surrounding buildings.
The Police described the blast as a suicide bombing in which an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) made from local materials was used. The bomber carried the device in a backpack before detonating it in the vicinity of the heavily policed government administration center.
This followed a similar blast three minutes earlier just outside the Central Police Station – the Headquarters of the Police which manages security in the city center, and adjacent to the constitution square
In his address to the nation, President Museveni said that police had managed to stop another explosion on the same day by killing a third suicide bomber who was on the way to detonate himself from another busy city suburb. Police say that all the suicide bombers perished in the blasts but also described them as members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which according to reports has metamorphosed into IS-Central Africa province (ISCAP), an offshoot of Islamic State terrorist organization.
WHO ARE THE ADF (IS-Central Africa Province)
Several reports link the birth of ADF in the early 1990s to disagreements between different Muslim sects in Uganda. Jamil Mukulu then a youth leader in the Tabligh sect disagreed with the management of Muslim affairs by top leadership, accusing it of working under government influence. He was arrested after violent confrontations between the warring Muslim groups.
After his release from prison, Jamil Mukulu is said to have started the group-ADF with an intention to fight President Museveni’s government and establish one run under Sharia law.
In the mid-1990s, ADF became notorious for grenade attacks on passenger buses in Kampala, and later torching institutions like schools. With a base in the Rwenzori Mountains, the group was hotly pursued by the Ugandan military until it fled deep into the Rwenzori Ranges over the border into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where it operated for several years without posing any threat to Uganda. The group however wreaked havoc against the Congolese people. According to UN reports, thousands of Congolese have been brutally massacred, sometimes using blunt objects. Hundreds of Congolese suspected of giving information to the government forces about ADF’s movements have also been beheaded or chopped into pieces using machetes.
How, and when the ADF linked with international terror networks is still unclear. However, several reports have come to a conclusion that its current leader Musa Baluku pushed for cooperation between the group and Islamic State (IS), and the widening of its network by linking with other Jihadists across the globe. This was after the capture in Tanzania of his former boss Jamil Mukulu who was more bent on the original cause of fighting the Uganda government. Jamil Mukulu is now undergoing trial in Uganda.
The group has also been linked to several Jihad movements across the region especially the Al-Shabab in Somalia with which they have strong links relating to the training of its fighters, trade, and exchange of logistical support.
ADF’s affiliation to Islamic State was cemented when the latter claimed its first attack in DRC in 2019. According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR), Musa Baluku pledged the group’s allegiance to IS Caliphate (Islamic State) under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and pronounced the group as a branch of Islamic State’s Central African Province (ISCAP).
Baluku declared the end of ADF, and pronounced they had become ISCAP, one of the provinces that make up the Islamic state.
UGANDA SECURITY’S COMPLACENCY
While addressing the nation on the string of attacks that started with a bomb near a police station early October which the authorities downplayed, Museveni said that his security has been asleep but has now been awakened.
Museveni boasted about how the country’s security apparatus has all the necessary infrastructure to prevent terrorism activities in the country, including the street cameras that recorded the cctv footage of the recent bombings by the alleged bombers. He commended the now awakened security forces for arresting several suspects and killing others working for ADF.
Museveni and the national security organs have accused the ADF of being behind the November attacks in Kampala, assassinations of high profile individuals, and Muslim clerics for purportedly rejecting the ADF ideology, as well as targeting the minister for works, for his role in championing joint road infrastructure projects between Uganda and DRC that cut through areas controlled by ADF.
According to Museveni, the attempt on works minister Gen. Katumba Wamala in an attack that claimed the life of his daughter and driver was a breakthrough for security into the sleeper cells of ADF across the country. And one by one, alleged members of the cells have been arrested, those who reportedly tried to resist arrest were killed.
Having gone silent for several years without carrying out an attack on Uganda’s territory, Uganda’s security seems to have gone into a slumber thinking that ADF was no threat anymore. The bomb attacks that happened right in their face, must have disapproved them.
The Minister of security Gen. Jim Muhwezi told the BBC that there is no way a state can police every individual by knowing what they are carrying in their bags, referring to the alleged suicide bombers who are said to have detonated bombs they were carrying in their rucksacks, but security ought to know that terrorism does not occur in the most obvious ways, thus no cause for chest-thumping, because a terror attack can happen in several forms, and at a time you least expect it.
THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA AND ADF/ISCAP CELLS.
Uganda security must have ignored several hints before the bombings in Kampala that linked the ADF/ISCAP to cells in several countries in the region like Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, in addition to the old known connections with Sudan and Somalia.
Months and weeks before the first explosion happened in Kampala, the DRC security authorities arrested several ADF recruits, and agents. Some were traveling from Mozambique, Somalia and beyond through Tanzania and Burundi before entering DRC through Bukavu, and Goma. There were also reports of ADF expanding into new areas of DRC like Ituri and Rutshuru territory near Uganda, and recruiting among the Bantu-speaking communities in those areas.
As it stands, ADF/ISCAP has expanded its network and logistical base in the Great Lakes region of Africa, growing in numbers and capacity, which points to increased support from the region and beyond.
Current regional conflicts among member states of the East African Community, lack of a strong security bond, and lack of a joint robust regional mechanism to fight terrorism, have enabled the terror group-ADF/ISCAP to flourish.
Uganda is pushing the DRC government to allow its troops on her territory to pursue the enemy and is seeking support from the international community to prevail over President Felix Tshisekedi to allow the move. However, there is no guarantee that that will end the activities of ADF/ISCAP once and for all.
Ignatius Bahizi – Currently East Africa Editor of The African Gazette, he is a journalist of repute and an analyst of geopolitics and security of the Great lakes region of Africa. Ignatius has worked in the region for over ten years with different local and international media houses.
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