Jenkins Kiwanuka
It is a year ago since I wrote about Somalia in my article about the ‘gagging’ of the media in Uganda. I said then that the Somali communities indulge in fighting as a hobby, and that some non-Somali parents had withdrawn their children from a Scandinavian school to create ‘more fighting room’ for Somali children.
Now that the Uganda Government, following the withdrawal from Somalia of the Ethiopian forces, is ‘mulling’ over the idea of withdrawing its own troops from that beleaguered country, I am returning to the subject.
But this time I am concerned about the continuing loss of lives by Ugandan troops at the hands of what are increasingly becoming brutal and aggressive Somali tribal communities. I am even asking myself why we went there in the first place, and why we keep staying on when even countries like Kenya and Djibouti which share common borders with and have significant strategic and other interests in Somalia are safely watching the situation from inside their own borders.
In other words, Uganda should stop ‘mulling’ over the idea and instead withdraw her troops immediately from that country. Uganda was the first country to go to Somalia’s aid and has done everything to see that the situation there stabilises, but her efforts are not even being appreciated by the people she went to help. Worse still, now that Ethiopia which had even more firing power and more troops in Somalia has left, the fighting groups there are threatening to annihilate the Ugandan and other remaining forces.
The history of the formation of the 4th Battalion King’s African Rifles (KAR) gives us some background information about the long involvement of Uganda forces in Somaliland wars and other conflicts since the 1890s.
The African levies that had been included among the forces of the Imperial British East African Company operating in Uganda were re-organised after the Uganda Protectorate was established in 1895 as the Uganda Rifles – a regiment of 17 companies.
When serious fighting broke out in Somaliland in 1901, the military units in East and Central Africa were reconstituted as a single regiment, the King’s African Rifles (KAR) to provide adequate garrison forces for Britain’s African dependencies. The Uganda Rifles became the 4th Battalion of this regiment.
During the First World War, the KAR played a notable part in the strenuous campaigns in Tanganyika, culminating in the surrender of the German General von Lettow Vorbeck to the 4th KAR. In the Second World War the East African Rifles were engaged in the defence of East Africa and in the defeat of the Italians in Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
During recruitment in Jinja in 1942, my sister took me with her to the barracks to visit Medical Officer Gideon Bogere. On the municipality’s main road a young man jumped off a lorry that was carrying the recruits and took to his heels. The lorry stopped suddenly and a British officer jumped out and shot the young man in the legs. They threw him back onto the lorry and drove off towards the barracks. That was my personal taste of World War 11.
The KAR also saw service during the Madagascar campaign and later fought in Burma against the Japanese. The 4th KAR also fought in Malaya against the ‘Communist rebels’ and between 1952 and 1955 - according to the colonial administrators – ‘played a distinguished role against Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya’.
After Mau Mau between 1955 and independence in 1962, the 4th KAR reverted to its original duty of helping to maintain law and order in Uganda, and overseeing the security of the country’s frontiers. On 9th October 1962 the 4th KAR was renamed the 1st Battalion Uganda Rifles and became the nucleus of Uganda’s National Army.
The Baganda have a saying in the form of a question: ‘Does a good dancer never leave the floor?’ The Uganda government would be well-advised to stop babysitting what has turned out to be a bottomless and dangerous Somalia.
Mr Kiwanuka is a journalist and retired Foreign Service Officer
0772 433 873
January 13, 2009
 

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