Attacks in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania that have claimed the lives of more than 100 people and left scores injured in just one week, have exposed major flaws in the countries’ security structures and prompted some Western countries to boost their defence and intelligence networks.
In Kenya, security forces are grappling with armed attacks on Coastal townships that continue to happen even with an operation underway, while in Uganda, attacks in the Mt Rwenzori area that straddles the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo have left at least 85 people dead.
Tanzania too has become a target for terrorists after a bomb blast injured eight people in Arusha. The terrorist group Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the Kenya attacks, but the government insists the incidents are driven by local politics.
READ: Regional countries up security spending over terror and wars
In response to the security crisis in the region, the United States’ embassies in East Africa have strengthened their intelligence departments with specialist and FBI staff to study the methods that terrorists are now using to wreak terror.
The FBI operatives are also working with the region’s counterterrorism police units on training and surveillance. Kenya is the biggest beneficiary of this, understandably so, because it has been the most targeted lately.
The European Union relocated its training programmes for the Somali National Army from Uganda to Mogadishu earlier this year, partly to give it a more hands-on assessment and capacity of working on the ground directly with Amisom and the Somali army to deal with the problem of Al Shabaab at source.
READ: Security crisis engulfing entire East African region
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni described the July 5 attacks in the Rwenzori region districts of Kasese, Bundibugyo and Ntoroko as “co-ordinated attacks against security forces and civilians.”
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this region was the main war theatre for the Allied Democratic Forces rebel group, which made several raids from its hideouts in eastern Congo, killing civilians and torching schools.
The government has downplayed the attacks, with both President Museveni and police spokesman Fred Enanga calling them “tribal clashes” between ethnic groups in the region — the Bamba of Bundibugyo, Ntoroko and the Bakonjo of Kasese — the latter agitating for dominance of its “monarchy” over that of the Bamba, which was recently created.
“... Some of the cultural institutions have, for some time, now been acting counter to our message of non-sectarianism. They have been actively fomenting sectarian and tribal chauvinism, acting and talking as if the only thing that matters are certain tribes to which respective traditional leaders belong.
“On account of those chauvinistic ideas being bandied around for so long, it seems some groups hatched this criminal scheme that has caused the death of so many people,” President Museveni said in a written statement circulated to the media.
READ: Almost 100 killed in Uganda, army says
The majority of those killed in the attacks were civilians, but President Museveni said eight were members of the security forces, as were many of those injured.
Questions remain as to why attacks in Uganda consistently target security installations or personnel. Former External Security Organisation director David Pulkol said the recent attacks were done with a precision and skill that points to something more than tribal clashes.
“By the time someone shoots a police officer at the level of OC [officer in charge] from afar, he is experienced in long-range targeting and shooting. It’s not just any villager who can do that,” he said.
“Are these soft targets? Army and police barracks are hard targets. If these are tribal clashes, why would they attack police stations? When did police stations become a tribe?” he asked.
The Bundibugyo attacks inflicted the biggest toll, but a look at other attacks since last year that have had a lesser impact shows all have targeted security offices or personnel.
The Ministry of Defence and army barracks at Mbuya Hill in Kampala were attacked in March 2013, while the Nsambya police barracks, also in Kampala, were attacked this year. The Kabamba military barracks were attacked early this year, while Mubende police barracks were attacked in May.
President Museveni also blamed intelligence gathering by security. “Of course, there was a failure of intelligence. How did these people weave such a scheme without being pre-empted?” he asked.
Former director of the Criminal Intelligence Department Herbert Karugaba said that, with Gen Kale Kayihura, a man with a military background, at the helm as Inspector General of Police, there has been a breakdown of civil policing as well as of criminal intelligence, with the police mainly preoccupied with fighting the opposition to keep the regime in power, giving room to criminals to operate.
“Police operations are no longer intelligence based... I attribute this to your disbanding of the special branch department. This department was always been manned by highly experienced and dedicated officers, whose duty was to collect, collate and analyse intelligence affecting the public peace. The department would then produce high value intelligence reports for the IGP and other stakeholders to use in preparing and executing security operations,” Mr Karugaba said in an open letter to Gen Kayihura.
A regional security analyst in Kampala also said that the timing of the Bundibugyo attacks raises fears of other actors in the complex web of regional conflict. The Rwenzori region lies close to the volatile eastern Congo, where until late last year, the M23 rebels were fighting the Kinshasa government.
However, eastern Congo is also home to a number of militia groups — including Uganda’s ADF.
In Tanzania, security agents investigating last week’s blast at Vama Traditional Indian Cuisine — in which eight people were injured —said they were looking into links to business rivalry and terrorism.
A security official told The EastAfrican that one of the causes could be a business war among gemstone traders in the mineral-rich city, which has graduated from shootouts to the use of explosives.
Differences among extremists and moderate Muslims have been associated with a grenade attack at the home of an Islamic preacher, Sheikh Sood Ally Sood of Qiblatan Mosque, on July 3. “Sheikh Sood is one of the moderate Muslim clerics who do not subscribe to extremist ideologies,” the official said.
In Kenya, security experts say local terror groups comprising radicalised Muslim youth in the Coastal region joined by local insurgents with grievances, could be behind the spate of attacks.
The experts say the country has become more vulnerable to attacks from terrorists and other militias because of numerous challenges facing the police force in particular, and the security agencies in general.
Among the challenges are delays in the police reform programme that have resulted in a lack of clear structures of command, while the security agencies that are involved in the fight against terrorism are working at cross-purposes. Also cited are the lack of clear-cut training requirements and regular misappropriation of police funds for equipment due to lack of accountability structures.
Last December, the Parliamentary Committee on Security recommended that intelligence sharing within and across security agencies should be a core function of all security organs.
Applying a military approach to dealing with extremism is also seen as a hindrance to the war on terror as it results in hardening of positions. According to Emmanuel Kisangani, a senior researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, the country’s youth have genuine grievances such as marginalisation, poverty and land issues.
“Failure to address these issues has resulted in a situation where the youth become radical for the sake of it and their initial grievances are lost in the process,” said Dr Kisangani.
Apart from the controversial issues of marginalisation of Coastal people and Muslims in Kenya, similar sentiments are emerging in Zanzibar and Pemba, where Muslims have been calling for secession from mainland Tanzania.
Abdulrahman Wandati, the executive director of the Muslim Consultative Council, said the inability of the security agencies to dig deep into the factors driving these conflicts is the biggest problem.
“It is a pity that Kenyan security agencies have been operating on a template and branding every attack as Al Shabaab without investigating each case on its own merit. Secondly, the Muslim community in the country are not happy that they are often fingered for being responsible for the growing security risks in the country, which in most cases lowers their ability to co-operate with the security agencies,” he said.
Two days before the attacks in the Rwenzori area, security forces in Kampala Metropolitan Area, which covers the capital city, Entebbe, and Mukono towns, were on high alert after receiving specific intelligence reports that had been “passed on to the US Embassy that an unknown terrorist group would attack the airport between 9pm and midnight.”
READ: US warns of 'specific threat' of attack at Kampala airport
Security deployed heavily around the entire Metropolitan Area and Entebbe International Airport.
Was warning a ploy?
In hindsight, security officials believe this was a ploy by the Bundibugyo attackers to divert security away from the real target, a security source said.
“We believe we were duped. There was no terrorist attack at the airport,” he says. “Terrorists don’t operate this way; they don’t alert security on specific targets and times they will strike.”
Indeed, the police later disowned the alert that the airport was a target of terrorists.
In a previous interview, IGP Gen Kayihura had told The EastAfrican that the regional police forces were sharing intelligence on terrorist cells and identities of known terrorists. But he admitted that there is never specific intelligence on what location is to be attacked.
Then there is the way security operatives look for the “easy and obvious targets” who are usually Somali or Muslim.
For instance, following the terror alert in Uganda that Entebbe Airport would be attacked, the police arrested “two terrorists” at Forest Mall in Kampala. But upon interrogation, according to government spokesman Ofwono Opondo, the police established the two were innocent Eritreans dressed in Islamic garb.
By Julius Barigaba, Fred Oluoch and Christopher Kidanka