In September 2009, a foreign intelligence service routinely passed on information about an impending attack against the African Union forces in Somalia comprised of only Ugandan and Burundian troops.

The receiver of the information, a ranking intelligence officer, attempted to reach his superiors through several channels. One was the minister for the sector.

The other, his immediate boss and the head of one of Uganda's more than 10 semi-autonomous security agencies, eventually picked his phone.

There was nothing surprising about the warning. The al-Shabaab at the time had lost one of its leaders to a targeted US killing.

Salah Ali Saleh Nabhan -- after whom the unit which carried out the attacks over the weekend -- is named, had been wanted for similar attacks in Kenya. Upset, the leaders of al-Shabaab had issued a statement that they would retaliate in three days.

The warning delivered to Ugandan intelligence said as much. An attack on AMISOM would be forthcoming. The attack did happen almost killing Gen. Nathan Mugisha, the Ugandan commander of the peacekeeping force at the time. His Burundian counterpart Gen. Juvenal Niyoyunguruza - a politically connected officer back in Bujumbura, was not so lucky.

Uganda has been very lucky that even with its "dispersed" security system, it has contained several groups or attacks. However, considering the new terror threat and the admission of so-called intelligence failure by ruling party leaders, some self assessment is forthcoming.

Homeland security

Some have suggested security sector reform - to bring the agencies together under one 'Homeland Security' outfit. It's too early to say what form any reforms will take. Others have warned that the security sector has long mirrored the social and political life which has become increasingly compartmentalised into multiple identities.

There are few occasions when the issue of Ugandan identity arises and the tragic events of the bomb blasts during the football World Cup finals ironically embody both; football and terrorism.

Such is the irony that the passion being summoned by the security authorities for vigilance against further attacks has roots in something Ugandans rarely dip into -- the elusive feeling of nationalism or patriotism.

Nationalist fervour

If Uganda had been represented at the tournament, the country would no doubt have been consumed with nationalist fervour, instead some of that passion migrated to the remainder of Africa's pride in the tournament and their bitter rivals.

The issue of Ugandan identity being driven by foreign events such as a sporting tournament is not accidental. National identity in this heterogeneous society is not a domestic political construct yet. Indeed it has always been bifurcated - between the violent competition for state control alternately by northern tribes (first half of post-independence Ugandan existence) and southern tribes (since 1986).

The southern and more peaceful half of the country, for example, was less responsive to the 20-year Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) war and its spates of violent terror attacks on the populations of the north and east.

LRA has since taken on a more national profile as a terrorist export operating in neighbouring countries and not as the marauding terror against helpless civilians in its time incubated inside Uganda.

Ethnicised corruption

"Let's do this for Uganda" or "For God and My Country" has remained muted in the national conversation dominated by a political culture of ethnicised corruption and patronage that have softened state institutions and created apathy in the delivery of all public goods -- security included.

Collective security

And yet, for the so-called long war on terror, a national esprit de corps is being summoned to guarantee collective security. Now that Uganda appears committed to a policy of uprooting the al-Shabaab from Somalia - a possible longer campaign with its associated threat of even more attacks at home - the country will have to lean heavily on the investment in national identity and pride and cohesion of its porous security institutions.