Scepticism over Uganda's vow to crush Somali insurgents (News Feature)

By Michael Logan and Henry Wasswa Jul 16, 2010, 11:51 GMT

Kampala, Uganda - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni wants to pour thousands of extra troops into Somalia after twin bomb blasts that claimed 76 lives in his country's capital, Kampala, on Sunday.

But analysts question the wisdom of throwing more soldiers at a conflict that foreign intervention has only worsened, and in the midst of growing domestic opposition to Uganda's involvement in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

Sunday's blasts ripped through crowds watching the evening World Cup final at a rugby ground and an Ethiopian restaurant in Kampala, killing 76 and injuring dozens more.

The radical Islamist group al-Shabaab, which is waging a bloody insurgency against a Somali government backed by Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, claimed responsibility and warned that more attacks would follow.

Far from being intimidated, Museveni - no stranger to militaristic posturing - vowed to crush the insurgents after their first attack on foreign soil.

'I can assure you we shall eliminate them,' he said in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday.

Museveni wants to increase the African Union peacekeeping force to 20,000 troops and change the mandate to go after the insurgents - an idea he will undoubtedly push at an AU summit next week in the Ugandan capital.

Prior to the bombings, the East African regional grouping IGAD had said that member states would send another 2,000 soldiers, boosting the peacekeeping contingent to almost 8,000.

A Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman, James Mugume, told the German Press Agency dpa that the bombings will 'help Uganda and the AU to get more resolve and galvanize our efforts to solve problems in Somalia.'

But many AU member states, such as Nigeria, have failed to meet existing promises to send troops and the bombings are unlikely to make governments more forthcoming.

'It has been so difficult to get any other nations to send troops to Somalia ... that something like this is going to make it less likely that other countries will want to get involved,' Roger Middleton, Horn of Africa analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told dpa.

Domestic opposition to Uganda's involvement in a country that has been immersed in chaos for almost two decades has also been boosted by the bombings.

'It was a mistake to send our troops to Somalia and another mistake to be there almost alone without the majority of other countries which had pledged troops,' said Ibrahim Semuju Nganda, spokesman for the recently created Inter-Party Coalition.

'It is a mistake for us to get involved in international ideological wars in which the US is fighting Islamic militants,' he added.

Even if Museveni and the AU - or the United Nations, which has given no date on when it will take over the peacekeeping mission - pump in more troops, few are convinced this will solve the conflict.

The al-Shabaab insurgency grew out of a United States-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in December 2006 to kick out an Islamist regime, which the West feared would encourage a rise in fundamentalism in the region.

The US has rarely been directly involved - save for the occasional airstrike to take out wanted al-Qaeda members - and instead relies on providing money and arms.

Diverse Somali factions and militia came together to battle Ethiopian troops, who left in January 2009, then turned their full attention to fighting the Western-backed government and AU peacekeepers.

Al-Shabaab, which says it has links to al-Qaeda, and its allies now control much of southern and central Somalia, while the government is penned into a few areas of Mogadishu.

Security sources say foreign fighters and terrorists are flocking to the chaotic nation to set up training camps and plan attacks - exactly what Ethiopia and the US were hoping to ward off with the invasion.

An increased military presence now would not only be ineffective given the nature of the conflict, but would further galvanize the insurgents, Middleton said.

'Al-Shabaab can melt into the bush very easily, making it very difficult to pacify them,' he noted. 'There are military elements of policy ... but diplomatic, humanitarian and economic elements are more important.'

'Just simply sending guns and foreign soldiers isn't going to solve it,' he added.

But for some of those who lost friends and loved ones in the Kampala bombings, retreat is not an option - even if it means more terror attacks.

'We know we are in danger, but we have to fight,' a weeping John Mutatwala, 62, told