Ugandan soldiers serving with Amisom at a base in Somalia. Set up in
January 2007 by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, Amisom
was meant to be a small, short-term peacekeeping force to keep warring
Somali factions apart as a new transitional government built up support
and credibility. In March that year Uganda landed its first 1,700
soldiers in Somalia, followed by Burundi six months later. PHOTO | AFP
By DANIEL K. KALINAKI
In Summary
- A year after al Shabaab fighters killed 19 Ugandan soldiers and overran their base in Somalia, we reveal chronic shortages of key equipment in Amisom and operational mistakes behind the attack.
- In head-on confrontations, al Shabaab’s fighters were no match for the Amisom forces. However, spread out thinly in an attempt to hold territory and protect civilians, the smaller detachments and encampments of Amisom fighters became easier targets for the Islamic militants.
- Since 2007, the vehicles had taken a pounding, literally, from enemy fire and IEDs, and from operating around-the-clock in Somalia’s saline air. These iron horses of infantry warfare are rugged and designed to last for many years but some of the vehicles in the fleet had been manufactured as early as 1955 and, in the absence of readily available spare parts, had fallen into disrepair.
The explosion went off at around
5:25am. Daylight was breaking in Janaale, a sleepy town in the
southeastern Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, about 90 kilometres from
the capital Mogadishu.
Through the fast-clearing early morning
darkness, two soldiers were on guard duty at the Quarter Guard, were the
first to spot the suicide bomber as he raced an explosive-laden vehicle
into the tree log contraption that served as a gate to the detachment.
The two soldiers fired at the old truck, which veered off sharply, away
from the Quarter Guard, towards a building that housed the
second-in-command of the detachment, before exploding in an orange
fireball of deadly shrapnel.
Almost immediately, the skies above opened
with the angry roar of death, the tracer bullets whizzing like angry
fireflies in the dim light, stinging like bees when they met flesh.
Fighters from Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin—commonly known as al Shabaab—
had launched an attack on a detachment of Ugandan soldiers serving
under the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom).
Captain Swaibu Ayasiga, the
highest-ranking officer at the detachment that day, was awoken by the
explosion and the acrid stench of burning chemicals from the bomb. He
quickly took command of the troops now scrambling to defend their
positions.
Outside, al Shabaab had mobilised a
formidable force of between 300 and 500 fighters. They came in three
waves. At the front, crawling through the long grass, were fresh
recruits whose job was to sneak as close as possible to the
razor-wire-and-sandbag perimeter of the detachment then lob hand
grenades inside.
Providing covering fire behind them was a
formation of more experienced fighters armed with PK assault rifles — a
Soviet-made general-purpose machine gun — as well as AK-47 and G3
rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and 82mm B10 recoilless rifles, which
pack enough punch to knock out a tank.
Bringing up the rear were snipers. To
support the infantry were three Toyota Land Cruisers and a Mitsubishi
Fuso lorry mounted with 12.7mm and 14.5mm single-barrel anti-aircraft
guns and converted into “technicals”, the Somali version of 4x4s
modified into improvised fighting vehicles.
Stirred into action, the Ugandan soldiers
started firing back. To support the infantry, the detachment had one
14.5mm and one 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun, as well as 82mm and 60mm
mortars, general-purpose machine guns and assault rifles.
Crumbling defence
A fierce gun battle ensued and after 35
minutes, there was a pause in the fighting. For a brief moment, it
looked like the attack had been beaten off but inside the detachment the
Ugandan defence was quickly crumbling.
A soldier was reloading the 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun when a sniper’s bullet struck his head. He was saved by his Kevlar helmet.
Next to him, a sniper’s bullet struck
another soldier in the right cheek, through his tongue, and exited
through his left cheek - but he survived.
The crew manning the 12.7mm gun weren’t as
lucky. They had been shot dead as they tried to reload. Like soldiers
in other positions, they had not received second-line ammo. Five boxes
of ammo for the 12.7mm gun, part of a consignment that had been supplied
three weeks earlier, remained in the armoury, out of reach.
The 82mm mortar had jammed after firing
only one bomb and although the 60mm mortar fired all its 62 bombs, it
did not take long for the attackers to notice that one by one, the heavy
support weapons were falling quiet. Inherently opportunistic and
smelling victory in the acrid stench of death and gunpowder, the
attackers poured forth again.
At 5:45am Capt Ayasiga telephoned the
commander of the 13th Battalion, Maj Noel Mwesigye and Col Bosco
Mutambi, the commander of Uganda’s Battle Group (BG) XVI, to inform them
that his detachment and the C company in charge of it were under attack
and to request for reinforcements. It was a call they were expecting
but one they’d hoped would never come.
Stuck in the sand
Set up in January 2007 by the African
Union’s Peace and Security Council, Amisom was meant to be a small,
short-term peacekeeping force to keep warring Somali factions apart as a
new transitional government built up support and credibility. In March
that year Uganda landed its first 1,700 soldiers in Somalia, followed by
Burundi six months later.
However, the transitional government in
Mogadishu was weak, as was the ineffectual mass of what passed for the
Somali National Army (SNA). Al Shabaab, on the other hand, had become a
formidable and cunning military outfit.
After al Shabaab suicide bombers killed 76
people in July 2010 in Kampala, Amisom’s mandate was quickly changed
from peacekeeping to peace-enforcement, with Uganda and Burundi sending
in more troops.
As Amisom went on the offensive, it
dislodged al Shabaab from Mogadishu in August 2011. In October, Kenyan
troops joined the fray, driving the militant group out of its southern
bases. Ethiopian troops joined in November, attacking from the west.
One by one, al Shabaab lost control of key towns, including Afgoye and the ports of Kismayo and Marka, which provided it with lucrative revenues through control and taxation of import and export trade.
On a balmy night on Monday September 1,
2014, US drones, which kept an eye on al Shabaab from the Somali skies,
struck two vehicles near a small forest in Sablale, in the Lower
Shabelle region. Among the dead was Ahmed Abdi Godane, the al Shabaab
leader.
Decapitated and in disarray, the militants
suffered a series of high profile defections. Now primarily waging
guerrilla warfare, they resorted to looking for vulnerabilities in the
Amisom positions. As it turned out, these were many.
Although now bolstered by troops from
Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, Amisom, with its expanded mandate, was
soon propping up not just key installations, but most of the country.
Uganda was handed responsibility over
Mogadishu, Banadir and the Lower Shabelle regions. Apart from protecting
the airport and key government installations in Mogadishu, the Ugandan
contingent was also responsible for protecting a long stretch of the
main supply route from the capital to Barawe, 208 kilometres south, on
the Indian Ocean coast.
In head-on confrontations, al Shabaab’s
fighters were no match for the Amisom forces. However, spread out thinly
in an attempt to hold territory and protect civilians, the smaller
detachments and encampments of Amisom fighters became easier targets for
the Islamic militants.
Two realities added to this precarious
state of affairs. First, the SNA, which was supposed to take over and
control the areas captured by Amisom, remained weak, poorly equipped and
factionalised along clan lines and political contests.
“We are transforming a clan-based militia
into a national defence force, trained and equipped and well disciplined
to fight a counter-insurgency and counterterrorism also that will
[become] in one or two years [an] international standard army,” then
defence minister Abdihakim Haji Mohamud Fiqi said optimistically in
April 2013.
A month later, during a fundraising visit
to London, Mr Fiqi revealed that the cash-strapped SNA had not received
“a single bullet or one single AK-47 or gun” almost two months after the
UN had lifted an arms embargo against Somalia.
It had followed the unit to the mission
area. First, Maj Mwesigye replaced the Janaale detachment commander,
Capt Justine Eilor within two weeks of their arrival after he reported
intelligence of a looming attack on the position by al-Shabaab, and
labelled him “alarmist and a coward”. Then Maj Mwesigye fired the
company intelligence officer at the end of the first month of deployment
in unclear circumstances.
Military intelligence reports show a
litany of fights between officers in the battalion that by August 2015
was reported to be “disorganised and divided”.
Relations with locals had also been frayed
after soldiers from the battalion got dragged into one side of a local
dispute between two rival Somali clans. The animosity grew after the
troops uprooted a large marijuana garden outside the Janaale detachment
that was a source of revenue for local farmers, and whose produce some
of the Ugandan soldiers had enjoyed.
Significantly, relations between Col
Mutambi and Maj Mwesigye had also suffered. “Let’s just say that they
were not the best of friends,” a military source said, on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Although of junior rank to the BGXVI
commander, Maj Mwesigye was believed to enjoy the ears and confidence of
higher ups in the UPDF echelons, which made it difficult to deal with
the litany of complaints that continued to pour forth from his charges.
This icy relationship and the events
immediately after the meeting of August 27 were to have fatal
consequences. The meeting at the BG headquarters near Marka had ended
mid-morning and Maj Mwesigye was given a set of IFVs to transport him to
Quoryoole detachment where he was to assess the situation by 5pm and
attack the al Shabaab positions the following day.
However, Maj Mwesigye only arrived in
Quoryoole at 8pm when it was dark and too late to make an assessment for
the attack. The convoy had lost more than 40 minutes when the vehicles
got stuck on a slippery road between Balidamin and Mashalay but a
subsequent report on the mission would allege “unwillingness of the
commander to execute the mission by creating unnecessary delays.”
There were further delays on August 28 due
to a visit to the area by Lt-Gen Charles Angina, the UPDF’s deputy
Chief of Defence Forces (D/CDF), and on August 29 when the Somali
President similarly visited, forcing the commanders to temporarily hand
over to his use and protection the only set of IFVs they had.
The operation resumed on August 30 at 2pm,
when the Amisom fighters pulled out of Quoryoole with two tanks and 30
soldiers in three APCs headed for Tawakali-Baseri village, a forested
area where al-Shabaab fighters had been spotted.
Eight kilometres into the journey, one of
the APCs got a flat tyre that took an hour to fix. A kilometre later,
one of the tanks broke down – this required an hour-and-a-half to fix.
By nightfall the soldiers were still a kilometre from Cerejedes, a small
town before Tawakali and decided to encamp for the night.
A little after 7am on the morning of
August 31, the armed convoy rolled into Cerejedes. As soon as they drove
past the small outpost, however, they came upon a thick forest as well
as a canal across which lay a small bridge too flimsy to take the weight
of the heavy military vehicles.
The Ugandan soldiers sent in a drone to
recce Tawakali but they had already lost the element of surprise and the
spy plane only caused excitement among the locals — hardly the stuff of
covert intelligence operations. The al Shabaab fighters were nowhere to
be seen. The Ugandan soldiers turned back only two kilometres from
their objective, and headed to their base to plan afresh.
An internal report would later blame the
failed mission on lack of proper guides, the poor state of the roads and
the vehicles, the timing of the visit of the Somali President, as well
as “unwillingness to execute the mission” on the part of the commander.
“The commander had mixed feeling on the
mission and he thought the deployment was a ploy to let him not meet
with the D/CDF who was coming the following day,” the report noted. “He
was even [heard] by almost all officers in Quoryoole talking to the
D/CDF on phone that he was diversionary [sic] taken to Quoryoole and
there was no enemy in his [area of responsibility]. This resulted in a
lack of cohesion as he could not listen to all the staff officers he was
given to work with from the BG HQs.”
The UPDF’s official inquiry into the
matter would note an “untamed breakdown” of communication between Maj
Mwesigye and his fellow officers in the BG HQ. He would accuse them of
refusing to take his telephone calls and they, in turn, would accuse him
of insubordination and not being a team player.
But that post-mortem was yet to come. The
infighting within the 13th Battalion, coupled with the entire battle
group having to share only one set of IFVs had allowed the al Shabaab
fighters to melt away into the forests. They were to reappear like
angels of death.
Trojan horses
September 1, 2015 was the first
anniversary of the death of al-Shabaab leader Godane. It was highly
likely that the militant group would try to mark the day with a show of
might and intent. After successful attacks on military detachments and
convoys belonging to the Burundi and Ethiopian soldiers, the Ugandan
contingent was a likely next candidate.
The previous day, as the pre-emptive
mission fell apart in Tawakali, three Somali locals visited the
detachment at Janaale. One of them, Abdulai, had previously worked as an
interpreter and also sold food to the Ugandan soldiers. He had
disappeared on June 15 when the previous battalion rotated out but had
turned up with his father and uncle.
After initially being denied entry, the
three men were let in and allowed to spend the night but reportedly
spent a lot of time on their mobile telephones. An inquiry would later
note “a high likelihood” that the trio co-ordinated the attack that
started later that night, by giving al Shabaab invaluable information.
Daybreak brought death and destruction.
The Ugandan soldiers fought bravely. Many of them were highly
experienced fighters who had seen combat in Somalia and in the Central
African Republic, but many variables were not in their favour.
The detachment at Janaale had previously
been occupied by battalion-sized troops, somewhere in the range of
500-800. When BGXVI arrived there were only 61 soldiers at Janaale. Col
Mutambi had deployed an extra 59 to raise the force level to 120 but the
position was still too big for them to defend.
In addition, the detachment was less than
100 metres away from a major road next to which was an old disused canal
that gave the attackers cover. The killing ground had also not been
cleared as directed and to the east of the detachment was a grove of
mango trees that allowed the attackers to spy on the position and gave
cover to the snipers. To the south lay a swamp that trailed off to River
Shabelle, whose three major bridges were neither protected nor
secured.
Al Shabaab had started their attack by
targeting two major bridges and blowing them up with donkeys laden with
explosives. This hemmed in the Ugandan soldiers in a detachment that was
already isolated and made it even harder to reinforce. As the attack on
the base raged on and as daylight appeared rapidly, it became clear
that the rising sun was setting on the lives of many fighting men.
As soon as the dreaded call came in from
Capt Ayesiga, Col Mutambi scrambled troops under the command of Lt-Col
Moses Kibirango, the battle group’s second-in-command, to reinforce
those under attack at Janaale.
The reinforcements set off within 30
minutes of the distress call but were struck by an IED in Gondwe. Two
tanks were scrambled with the faster APCs in the lead but the personnel
carriers got stuck in mud.
The tanks then took the lead but one was
then also struck by an IED. The first breakdown took three hours to fix,
the second two hours. Eventually the damaged tank was removed from the
road and the reinforcements proceeded but as they approached Janaale,
the tank in the lead fell into the River Shabelle, only two kilometres
from the base under attack. It was not raining but for the Ugandan
soldiers fate was pouring misfortunes.
Over in the detachment, the soldiers had
been hamstrung by the lack of second-line ammunition and had fought with
their backs to the wall while effecting a tactical withdrawal. The
Ugandans held off the attackers but at around 8am the al-Shabaab
militants took out the 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun and the battle was
effectively over.
Pinned back by the IEDs, the ambush, the
poor state of the roads, the poor mechanical state of the IFVs, and the
loss of a tank in the river, it took the reinforcements nearly nine
hours to cover a distance of 25 kilometres.
Details of al Shabaab casualties weren’t
clear but Amisom intelligence sources put them at 45 killed in action
and over 60 wounded. The official UPDF inquiry put it higher at around
100, citing its own intelligence sources. The attackers did not have
time to line up and parade the bodies of the dead Ugandan soldiers, as
they had done in previous incidents, with one account putting this down
to the need for them to remove their own dead before reinforcements
arrived.
Epilogue
Two days after the attack Col Mutambi, Maj
Mwesigye and Capt Ayesiga were suspended. Both the UPDF and Amisom
appointed separate boards of inquiry into the attack on Janaale. The
UPDF BOI placed responsibility for the attack on the commander of BG XVI
and the commander 13th Battalion.
“The BG Commander had sufficient
information about the attack on Janaale and did nothing more than send a
message to the Commanding Officer 13 Battalion to be on the alert and
asked him to request for what he needs to respond to the attack,” it
noted.
“The Commander 13th battalion had
sufficient information about the impending attack, he too should have
responded by taking extra operational measures to reinforce and increase
military presence.”
Col Mutambi was demoted to Lt-Col in May 2016, arrested in July and arraigned before the General Court Martial in August.
The UPDF BOI, however, noted structural
challenges in its deployment in Somalia. The large area of
responsibility assigned to Uganda “overstretched the UPDF to
unimaginable extents” according to the inquiry report, while the poor
state of equipment has also cost Amisom troops lives.
“No single convoy can travel and make it
to its destination without a breakdown of the IFVs. The constant
breakdown of IFVs is contributory to the delayed delivery of
reinforcement in case of attack,” the report notes. “In fact, this is
what delayed the reinforcement for Janaale.”
In addition, the UPDF decried the lack of
air power, including helicopter gunships, which could have come to the
rescue of the troops in Janaale faster. Gathering moss on the cold,
rainy slopes of Mt Kenya, the crashed UPDF helicopters had, in their
absence, claimed more lives in Somalia, several hundred kilometres
away.
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