The military has announced that the bodies of dozens of Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers killed by al-Shabaab in Somalia a week ago will be flown home this week, without specifying which day.
The militants attacked and overran a UPDF Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Buulo Mareer, on May 26.
President Museveni announced on Saturday that Uganda had lost up to 54 soldiers, the highest number ever in the course of its Somalia mission, after days of radio silence and lingering concerns about the battlefield situation.
UPDF first deployed in Mogadishu in March 2007 under a United Nations-authorised African Union Peace-Keeping Mission in Somalia (Amisom), now the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, or ATMIS, to which Uganda remains the largest troop contributor.
“Our soldiers demonstrated remarkable resilience and reorganised themselves, resulting in the recapture of the base,” State House, in a statement, quoted Gen. Museveni as having told a retreat of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party caucus at the National Leadership Institute Kyankwanzi (Nali).
He added: “We discovered the lifeless bodies of 54 fallen soldiers, including a commander [Lt. Col. Edward Nyororo].”
The Commander-in-Chief reported that two additional commanders, Oluka and Obbo, both at the rank of Major, had been taken into custody, pending their trial at the General Court Martial for allegedly ordering soldiers to withdraw instead of repulsing the attackers.
It remained unclear what the officers, one of whom the President previously named as Maj Okia, before re-identifying the suspects as Oluka and Obbo, would be charged with.
In a statement shared on Twitter on May 27, a day after the attack, General Museveni noted that “some of the soldiers did not perform as expected and panicked, which disorganised them and the al-Shabaab took advantage of that to overrun the base and destroy some of the [UPDF equipment]”.
“The panic,” he wrote, “it seems, was totally unnecessary because, in fact, both the anti-tank ditch and our soldiers had destroyed the three vehicles of explosives outside the FOB.”
It remained unclear then why the troops, armed with two t-55 tanks, a pair of 14.5mm anti-aircraft guns, and 107mm Katyusha rocket launchers, were ordered to withdraw, leading some to escape to another UPDF base nine kilometres away.
According to Section 29 of the UPDF Act, a person subject to military law who exhibits cowardice in action, such as fleeing from the enemy or encouraging others to do the same, faces either death or life in prison if found guilty of the offence.
We were unable to determine the date of the trial for Major Obbo and Major Oluka, and President Museveni made no mention of the soldiers that al-Shabaab had injured or taken as prisoners of war in his remarks.
In an interview on Sunday, UPDF and Defence Spokesman, Brigadier Felix Kulayigye, said the bodies of the slain soldiers will be flown back into the country this week.
“The process of informing the next of kin [of the deceased soldiers] is going on,” he said by telephone yesterday.
Notifying the next-of-kin first before public disclosure of particulars of soldiers killed in combat is a standard military doctrine the world over, although in this case, the family of Lt. Col. Nyororo, the highest-ranked officer who died in the Somalia attack, said neither the Defence Ministry nor the UPDF had notified them a week later.
The next-of-kin of a soldier killed in action is compensated up to $50,000 (Shs185m) under the force agreement with the AU, which means the continental bloc and the European Union, which picks such bills, is likely to pay close to Shs10 billion for the fifty-four soldiers Uganda lost late last month.
Highly-placed security sources told this newspaper that al-Shabaab after capturing Buulo Mareer ringed it off with explosives, delaying UPDF’s re-entry into the base during a counter-offensive.
The raid prompted the United States Africa Command (Africom), which provides technical and intelligence support to ATMIS, pounded neighbourhoods of the Forward Operating Base in strikes it said targeted and destroyed some of the Al-Shabaab’s war loot, including weapons.
The UPDF Land Forces Commander, Lt Gen Kayanja Muhanga, who is leading a Board of Inquiry established by Chief of Defence Forces Gen Wilson Mbadi, flew to Somalia a day after the raid for a fact-finding mission during which he sought to lift the morale of soldiers on the ground.
In Kampala, President Museveni said the Buulo Mareer was being manned by a company, a military formation of 200–250 soldiers, at the time of the attack.
He noted that they fled when they were overwhelmed by al-Shabaab. The militants claimed in what Kampala dismissed as propaganda that they killed 137 UPDF soldiers and captured others.
“The mistake was made by two commanders, Maj. Oluka and Maj. Obbo, who ordered the soldiers to retreat. They have been apprehended and will face charges in the Court Martial,” Gen Museveni told Members of Parliament at the retreat in Nali which ends today.
The Ugandan soldiers repelled the militants when they made another attempt to attack a UPDF base in Baraawe, Somalia, according to military sources.
It was learned that soldiers who were hurt during the May 26 raid were receiving medical care in Somalia and Nairobi, Kenya, the country’s capital.
The al-Shabaab used Vehicle-Borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) and suicide bombers to breach the defences at Buulo Mareer base at dawn, prompting Ugandan and Somali security chiefs to ban the night movement of vehicles on the Afgoye-Barawe highway in Lower Shabelle.
President Museveni has linked the success of the al-Shabaab attack to corruption within UPDF where he is the commander-in-chief.
In his address last week to the NRM Caucus retreat at Nali, Gen. Museveni told lawmakers that “the army is moving well, but I think you should emphasise the issue of corruption once you happen to be deployed”.
“Make sure corruption which has been a problem in the civilian sector does not come to the army. We have had some cases of corruption,” he said, adding, “Corruption is very dangerous. If you steal fuel from the army, you steal supplies, you steal money, and you are an enemy of the army. Corruption is not the future.”