The Monitor and The New Vision, Uganda's leading dailies have been running a series of human interest stories about the aftermath of 7/11 the day on which suicide bombers (a first in Uganda) blew themselves and several other people up in Kyadondo and Kansanga. In the wake of the bombings as the particularly graphic pictures of the victims were made public, there was talk about how Uganda had dealt with such a situation before, possibly referring to the urban terror campaign run by the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) in the mid to late nineties.
I was drawn back to an expletive laden conversation back then, with a British Ex-paratrooper who had served in Northern Ireland. He assured all who cared to listen that the ADF were Sunday footballers compared to the Irish Republican Army when it came to bomb making, and , when we Uganda finally got hit by a pro in the same league as the IRA we would know the difference. 7/11 showed us the difference between Sunday footballers and professional footballers, metaphorically speaking.
The law enforcement response was quick, the crime was quickly attributed to Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabab based in Somalia, a geopolitical quagmire located in the horn of Africa. A wave of arrests followed by the obligatory parade of suspects all underscored by reports of rivalry between civilian and military intelligence as to who should run point on the investigation and perhaps who should be blamed for the failure that allowed 7/11 to happen.
As each of the victims and their families dealt with their personal loss and pain at an individual level, beyond their grief and pain, there was talk of Uganda having provoked this attack by sending Soldiers to Somalia when there were no clearly articulated national security goals.
The President on the cusp of hosting an AU summit went all macho, telling all and sundry that he was willing and able to flood Somalia with troops. Promises for more troops were made at the summit , to date, to the best of my knowledge , none have been met, and Burundi and Uganda the only countries to have committed troops a year ago, are still the only ones that have committed troops.
In all this, I would like to believe serious questions; beyond the intelligence failures were posed. How was 7/11 possible in the first place? The taking of ones life is universally frowned upon by virtually all traditional cultures and faiths in Uganda, suicide victims are not formally buried and the body of a suicide victim is usually subjected to beatings and in some cases is set on fire, the traditional treatment given to a suicide victim’s body can be harrowing for those left behind. Against this cultural and religious zeitgeist what would convince anyone to take their own lives and the lives of others.
The major suspects arrested for the attacks of 7/11 had two things in common, they were young and they were Muslim. While they were from all the three traditional East African countries and in spite of the fact that they were ‘doing’ Al Shababs' bidding; they were by and large not directly ethnically related to the Somalis. The key recruiters and financiers were almost certainly Somali, taking advantage of the large local Somali community, and the even larger Somali refugee community to hide in plain sight. Reaching out to local disenfranchised and disgruntled youth with promises of money or a better life in Heaven, each lure tailored to the individual needs of the potential recruit, seemingly rational young men were convinced to commit an irrational act.
In the same manner Civil Society locally and internationally coalesces around societal grievances, building a critical mass upon these grievances to cause change. Al Qaeda and its franchisees operate on the same model and that is what I believe made 7/11 possible and perhaps makes possible solutions intractable.
In scenarios repeated countless times across the world, a foreign recruiter takes advantage of the need for money, the power of ideology, coercion or compromise and one of Maslow’s mid to higher order needs for recognition ,affirmation or belonging young men are being lured into organizations that channel their energy into destructive purposes. In the stories told by the suspects, money and ideology, in this case radical Muslim ideology are the recurring themes.
For the intelligence professionals across East Africa, this has got to be causing some sleepless nights because , the pool from which these franchisees can recruit is virtually limitless, placing all potential suspects under surveillance would be impossible as it would, in the case of Uganda, mean surveilling 80% of the youth population without gainful employment.
For the political leadership a more nuanced approach is necessary, terrorism is in its very nature criminal, a military response such as the kinetic operations by AMISOM in Mogadishu especially if the state does not have the capacity to deal with extended operations of this nature can backfire.
The future does not augur well, as the more balanced, if you can call them that, leaders of the Al Qaeda franchise fade into the background replaced by younger, more radical, certainly more violent individuals.
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