Grace Matsiko
24 August 2008
The Uganda Police Force now stands at 36,000 and counting following the recent pass-out of an additional 4,000 personnel. This is still not enough but the heavy police presence in and around Kampala - and possibly most urban areas - would suggest that the country is a little more secure today.
And with good reason too because Uganda was supposed to have been attacked the same day suspected terrorists hit American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam 10 years ago in attacks that left hundreds dead and thousands injured, a former American intelligence kingpin reveals in his book.
This fact has long been an open secret within certain levels in the local intelligence community here. And Gen. David Tinyefuza, who co-ordinates Uganda's intelligence services, confirmed saying: "It was not by luck that we survived, we never used witchcraft, we were vigilant and co-ordinated in our security services and we also used to share intelligence."
The bombings that were launched on August 7, 1998, claimed the lives of 222 people and injured more than 4,000 in the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals.
After Uganda survived the '98 attacks, the terrorists apparently never gave up. Writing in his book, At the Centre of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, published in May 2007, former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet says: "Unbeknown to many, a terror attack had been planned targeting the U.S. embassy in Uganda in July of 2001, just two months before the September 11 attacks in America."
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon building in Washington DC into which terrorists crashed passenger aircraft claimed 2,973 lives.
"Four trucks filled with C-4 explosives had been brought to Kampala, in Uganda, and operatives there had begun casing the American embassy," writes Mr Tenet.
C-4 or Composition 4 is a common variety of military plastic explosive, according to the Internet. A major advantage of C-4 is that it can be molded into any desired shape. C-4 can be pressed into gaps, cracks and voids in buildings, bridges, equipment or machinery.
Gen. Tinyefuza said Ugandan security averted both terror attacks because "we did serious analysis. We had experienced personnel not like our colleagues [Kenya and Tanzania] who suffered the attacks. Uganda had had a long time with dealing with terrorism here for example the ADF [Allied Democratic Forces] - the Khartoum-sponsored terrorists," he added.
The general said they impounded bomb-making materials that had been planned for use in the attacks. "The culprits were tried in military courts and some were imprisoned," he said. "They are serving their terms."
Gen. Tinyefuza, however, said he could not remember details about the culprits off-the-cuff. What remains clear to him to though, is that the said terrorists "had contacts with al-Qaeda and the Allied Democratic Forces". Security sources say Uganda became a target because the Kampala government is considered a US puppet.
Whether geopolitics are a factor or not, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda prefers to take President Museveni's long-held claim that Uganda had been dealing with terrorism "long before the world woke up to it".
Said the minister: "Uganda has effectively responded and has neutralised their plans and stopped them. Uganda remains prepared and vigilant to avert terrorism plans that may be hatched. As to the target and details I am not in position at the moment to comment on that".
According to Mr Tenet, the 2001 plan against the US embassy in Kampala had been hatched by a Southeast Asian organisation allied with al-Qaeda in retaliation for the jailing of the Blind Sheikh.
Blind Sheikh's full name is Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian Muslim cleric currently serving a life sentence in the United States for "seditious conspiracy" related to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.
This is the same Trade Centre felled in 2001. Ugandan security sources who could not be quoted for this report because they are not authorised to speak to the press said trucks laden with explosives were already in the basement of "a tall building on Kampala Road" when the 1998 plot was foiled.
The people, including Ugandans, detailed to carry out the bombing were trained in the use of high explosives, forgery, coding, and other such skills at a Bin Laden-financed camp near Soba, 10 km south of Khartoum, in the 1990s.
A string of bombings rattled Kampala between 1998 and 1999 targeting bars, restaurants, buses and other public places killing about 40 people.
Security officials blamed the explosions on an urban terror group with links to the rebel ADF, who it insists were supported by al-Qaeda. ADF chief Jamil Mukulu was trained in Sudan in the mid-1990s when Osama bin Laden lived there. He got further training in Afghanistan.
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