The Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba has demanded the United States in compensation for losses incurred by Uganda in the U.S.’ war on terror in Somalia.
Mohamed El-Amine Souef, the special representative of the chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia, recently told VOA Somali that the mission had “documented around 4,000 casualties with troops from Burundi and Uganda suffering the most casualties.”
Uganda was the first East African country to deploy troops under AMISOM into Somalia in March 2007.
Uganda would later make up the bulk of the African Union force helping Somalia’s UN-backed government.
The U.S., which had pulled its forces from Somalia following the black hawk down incident in 1993 in which 18 Americans were killed, relied on Ugandan soldiers to achieve Washington’s goals in Mogadishu.
Hundreds of Ugandan soldiers were killed in bloody battles aimed at ousting Al Qaeda-backed Al Shabaab militants from Somalia’s capital. n 2012, UPDF’s Major Duncan Kashoma, who was injured in Mogadishu, told BBC that Ugandan soldiers were used to operating under the cover of the jungle in pursuit of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in the north, but they were not fully prepared for the exposed fighting in Somalia’s desert terrain and in Mogadishu’s shattered cityscape.
Al-Shabaab also were a difficult enemy because they often mingled with civilians and because they had become expert in the use of non-conventional weapons such as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Muhoozi’s tweets come at a time of frosty relations between Uganda and the United States.
The U.S. recently slapped sanctions on Ugandan officials over the enactment of the Anti-homosexuality law and discouraged their business from investing in Uganda.
Washington also scrapped Uganda from the beneficiaries of Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) which provided eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for over 1,800 products.
“The USA must apologize to Uganda for removing us from AGOA,” said Muhoozi.
He emphasised: “We must immediately be reinstated. Then we will talk about compensation for all the soldiers we lost in Somalia. On their orders.”
On the same note, Gen Muhoozi talks on political imprisonment of PLU Director of mobilisation, Hon Michael Mawanda