Entebbe — The African Union (AU) has reviewed the mandate of UPDF in Somalia and allowed the Ugandan forces to attack the Al-shabaab militants, the Defence Minister announced yesterday.
Dr Crispus Kiyonga told Journalists after flagging-off three UPDF battalions to Somalia at Entebbe military airbase yesterday that the earlier mandate constrained the UPDF and was deadly as it demanded the peacekeepers to fight back only if they were attacked first.
The new mandate now means that the UPDF can carry out pre-emptive attacks on the insurgents in the war tone Horn of Africa country.
While three battalions left Entebbe yesterday, three others returned from Somalia in a rotational arrangement.
Mr Kiyonga told journalists yesterday that the UPDF mandate was reviewed last week at the AU emergency summit in Libya.
Mr Kiyonga represented President Yoweri Museveni at the summit.
"Our view as Uganda and Burundi has been that the mandate under which we are operating was very constraining," Mr Kiyonga said. "We would have made much more progress if the mandate was more facilitating. Currently, the army just seats where they are in their detachments even when they have information that insurgents are just two kilometres away," he said, "They [UPDF] can not attack them. We wait for insurgents to shoot first and we respond."
Uganda and Burundi have more than 4,000 troops deployed in Somalia.
The heavily undermanned and underfunded peacekeeping force is meant to secure the Presidential Palace, air and sea ports and the city's main roads but has come under increasing attacks from Islamic extremists.
Comments Post a comment
It's a mistake to change the original mandate!
It's a mistake to change the original mandate!
It's a mistake to change the original mandate!
It is a humongous blunder to displace a wise African mandate with a foolish/eurocentri one!
All necessary steps necessary to maintain Law, Order, Peace & Justice in Somalia can be achieved with the original mandate!
At the end of the day, Africans need to coexist in a Afrocentric culture!
It is utterly unwise for Africans to appear as adopting the stupid, divisive and destructive strategy of eeurocentric and imperialist warmongers!
Africa has already become too much of a battle ground because of the criminal and racist invaders from the Arabian Peninsula and from Europe.
There are no 'militants' in Somalia. Let's not again join the evil europeans and rob Africans of their indigenous identity.
The Somalis are AFRICANS!
And Law, Order, Peace & Justice must be maintained, but maintained among Africans!
Let's not depersonalize Africans and make it easier to ignore the obligation for compassion for fellow AFRICANS!
Africans can eradicate the islamic insanity from the Arabian Peninsula without eradicating fellow Africans on behalf of anti-African foreigners in europe and elsewhere!
It is time for the people of Somalia to realise that their destiny is on their own hands and that they should bring peace to themselves.The World is changing rapidly and that they should not be left bebind as they continue to fight against or with each other for years now with no sign of stopping.If Somalia fails to take advantage of the World's peace efforts for Somalia to make peace for themselves,they may end up regretting it at last.The A.U.,U.N.and the Western World may be at a point to say enough of this man made crisis ought to end or leave the people of Somalia to their own fate.Somalia should make heys while the sun shines.Please get down to business , talk to each other, be your brother's keeper and stop the killings of one another may be you will find peace and harmony in your Country for you do not have any other Country but Somalia.
The change of Mandate of the African forces is a foolish decision most probably ordered by America. AMISON has neither the manpower nor the training to fight street fights against no uniformed insurgents. The UN forces are presenting them selves to be dragged in the streets of Mogadishu by children and women whos hasbands and fathers were killed by the indiscriminate shelling of AMISON. Amison has blood on its hands by daily bombarding civil areas in the name of defending a minority faction that controlls less then three KM of Mogadisho so it is against humanity that they are to be hired again to fight inside residential and built areas. They are heading for their exist in disgrace and will be a scare in the moral of futire peace keeping forces - how can they know who is insergent and who is civilian and how they can work arround an invicible enemy. Uganda and Brundi must quickly withdraw their sons before it gets late.