Tag: GreatLakesNews

{Forces of national liberation of Burundi (FNL) rebels are being accused of stealing and rape charges in the Eastern Congo region (Kivu province).}

According to information from the Rwanda news agency, donors from NGO, s confirmed this information before resuming support to settlers of the Kivu region on 21st January 2014.

They confirmed the witnessing of 2 ladies who were raped in Mushule village before they were set free, 1 who was killed in Kalazi village, and livestock that was stolen in the last 3 weeks.

However, information from Congo media claims the Rebel group may be working in collaboration with the Congo government (FARDC) in these crimes of rape and armed robbery.

Lastly donors from NGO, s are finding it hard to rescue and supplying donations to these victims due to the road that was broke–up by rain in Katobo.
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{The Sudanese government has expressed concern over Ugandan military intervention in the current war in South Sudan. }

Sudan’s minister of foreign affairs, Mr Ali Karti, told the reporters in Khartoum on Monday that his government is refusing any foreign military intervention in neighbouring South Sudan.

“Sudan is the most interested country among the other neighbours of what happening in south Sudan because of much security, economic and strategic reasons,” the minister said, after a meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

“Sudan is standing beside the stability in South Sudan, but we principally reject foreign intervention in that country,” he pointed out.

“This intervention may attract other regional sides to intervene and that is deeply concerning us, and even Ethiopia has expressed its concern over these Ugandan military operations in south Sudan,” he explained.

“The IGAD summit which will be held in Juba on Thursday will discuss the foreign intervention in south Sudan, beside the efforts of how to convince the warring parties to cease hostilities,” he added.

The Ugandan army is fighting beside government troops in south Sudan.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Sudanese political analyst Abdul Ali told the Daily Nation on Monday that the Ugandan military intervention is very sensitive for the other countries in the region.

He further added that there will be conflict of interests and ambitions within the East African countries.

“I think this may also be concern for the international community which pays special attention for the oil-rich world’s youngest state,” he said.

“For Sudan this situation is of great concern because of the oilfields and the flowing of the southern crude through the Sudanese pipeline, because Sudan may even lose the transportation fees paid by South Sudan,” he added.

NO MILITARY INTERVENTION

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) will hold an urgent summit on Thursday in Juba to discuss the latest developments in the crisis in South Sudan.

The Sudanese government has confirmed that it has no intention of intervening militarily in the current war in South Sudan. Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to jointly work to restore oilfields damaged by the fighting between the South Sudanese government and rebels.

Sudan will provide technical support to South Sudan to enable it resume production in Unity and Upper Nile states. The two countries have also agreed to send 900 Sudanese petroleum technicians to the oilfields.

Meanwhile, nine Ugandan soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded during fighting in South Sudan, the army said on Tuesday, dismissing rebel claims to have killed close to 50 Ugandan soldiers in a briefing to Kenyan foreign Ministry.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni confirmed last week that troops had been killed during combat in the war-ravaged young nation in support of President Salva Kiir.

Army spokesman Paddy Ankunda said on Tuesday that nine had died in a single rebel ambush.

“Let there be no speculation any more,” Lieutenant Colonel Ankunda said. “Uganda has lost nine soldiers and 12 injured in South Sudan.”

{{Daily Nation}}

{Nine Ugandan soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded in South Sudan, the army said Tuesday, dismissing claims by Uganda legislature that hundreds have been killed in the month-long battle.}

The army spokesman Lt Col Paddy Ankunda said the troops had been killed in a single rebel ambush on January 14, the day Ugandan Parliament approved its deployment in South Sudan in support of President Salva Kiir.

“Let there be no speculation anymore; Uganda has lost nine soldiers and 12 injured in South Sudan,” Lt Col Ankunda said. “The 9 UPDF soldiers died in a rebel ambush at Gemeza a week ago.”

The rebel groups, however, claim that they have killed scores of Ugandan soldiers.

Last week, opposition MPs made claims in parliament that hundreds of Ugandan soldiers have been killed in the fighting between soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

Daily Nation

{Beni – Democratic Republic of Congo forces attacked Ugandan Islamist rebels in the lawless east on Friday, launching a UN-backed offensive to clear insurgents from the mineral-rich zone.}

Reuters correspondents outside the town of Beni, in North Kivu province, heard heavy gunfire as government troops moved in on positions held by ADF-Nalu rebels who have been based in Congo for years and are seen as a major obstacle to peace.

Another rebel movement, M23, that had operated to the south of Beni was defeated late last year, highlighting how Kinshasa and UN forces have begun to take the fight to gunmen that have plagued eastern Congo for nearly two decades.

“The Congolese army has launched operations against ADF-Nalu in Beni and as usual [UN troops] will support the army to neutralize these rebels, who have been very active recently in this zone,” said UN forces spokesperson Colonel Felix Basse.

A Reuters reporter said that Tanzanian troops from a specialist UN “Intervention Brigade”, which is mandated to go after Congolese rebel groups, had deployed near Beni but it was unclear if they had joined the fighting.

ADF-Nalu is an alliance of groups opposed to the Ugandan government that has operated from bases in eastern Congo since the mid-2000s, undermining Kinshasa’s grip on the area and handing Uganda a pretext for intervening there.

Earlier this week, Ugandan and Congolese army officers held a high-level planning meeting in Beni but Ugandan officials were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Rocky relations

Kampala has previously said it would share intelligence and capture fleeing rebels but not intervene directly in operations on the ground in Congo.

Congo and Uganda have long had rocky relations and UN experts have accused Kampala and fellow neighbour Rwanda of backing M23. Both nations denied the charges.

ADF-Nalu has been blamed for a spate of recent attacks and kidnappings around Beni, including the deaths of some 40 civilians in an attack on Christmas Day.

The rebel group is believed to number up to 1 400 fighters and has abducted about 300 Congolese civilians over the past year, according to a UN report.

Having helped the Congolese army vanquish M23, the 3 000-strong UN Intervention Brigade had been widely expected to turn its attention on ADF-Nalu and Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels who are also roaming Congo’s east.

The Ugandan government has said ADF-Nalu is allied with Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab movement but analysts say the nature of these ties is not clear, despite the ADF-Nalu’s clear Islamist ideology.

{Kampala- President Museveni has said although he is old, he still has fresh ideas to lead the country.}

“They say I am old and that I should bring on fresh ideas. These are my new ideas and if there is a fifth one that can be added on the four sectors [agriculture, service, industry and ICT], then somebody should tell me, unless one is talking about working for public sector — government!” Mr Museveni said at the launch of the Finance Trust Bank in Kampala on Friday.

He said he has regularly been reminded about his old age but he was adamant that he is still relevant and vibrant.

He said he cannot adopt fresh ideas before achieving the set targets for the old ones.

“I am opposed to some new ideas because the old ones have not been implemented yet. Let’s first implement the old ones and move on to new one,” President Museveni told an audience of bankers, businessmen, government representatives and technocrats.
According to the President, his relevance is demonstrated by how the country’s economy has been turned around or reshaped.
Recently, the President said he was born in 1944 at Mbarara Hospital, which means he will be turning 70 years this year.

The contradiction
However, the president has sometimes contradicted himself, saying he was not sure of when he was born.

His critics say he is stuck with old ideas as the world continues to move at a much faster pace.

President Museveni listed agriculture, service, industry and ICT sectors as some of his ideas that could turn around Uganda’s fortunes.
“In agriculture money can be made by shifting to commercial farming. And there are also opportunities in the services sector, industry, especially the small scale ones, and ICT,” he said.

However, there have been complaints of how the government has failed to assist the growth of some of the sectors listed above.
For instance, agriculture that employs more than 70 per cent of the population receives less than 10 per cent of the country’s budget . Uganda’s 2013/14 budget stood at about Shs13 trillion.

Dressed in military uniform, the President cautioned the management of the Finance Trust Bank against risks that come with expansion and upgrading to a commercial bank status, which the Central Bank granted them after working for years as a MicroFinance deposit taking institution.

The Bank of Uganda Governor, Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, said the bank was granted a licence to operate as a commercial bank after satisfying the requirements, including minimum required capital of not less than Shs25 billion.
“I have faith that you will do a good job but I must remind you to strengthen your supervision to safeguard your customers and shareholders from unnecessary risk,” Mutebile advised the bank’s management.

During her speech, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer, Ms Annet Nakawunde Mulindwa, said although the bank’s focus is on women, it would also serve the youth and other sections of the population.

The board chairperson and Minister of Energy, Irene Muloni, assured the public that the bank would professionally conduct its duties and provide affordable credit without compromising the rules or exposing customers to unnecessary risks.

THE DEBATE ON MUSEVENI’S AGE

President Museveni’s revelation recently, that he was born at Mbarara Hospital in 1944 stirred public interest that the country was closer than ever before to knowing the actual age of its leader who has been in power for 27 years. The President’s exact age remains a mystery because he has previously professed not to have known his birth date.

In the opening paragraph of his autobiography titled, Sowing the Mustard Seed, published in 1997, Mr Museveni notes that his parents were illiterate and could only approximate timelines based on historical events.

Accounts offered in the book indicated his probable year of birth was “about” 1944. “I use the word ‘about’ because my parents were illiterate and so did not know the date. In such circumstances, dates were associated with events,” Mr Museveni wrote. “In my case, my parents had two events for dating the approximate time of my birth.

Daily Nation

{The trial of four men charged in connection with Kenya’s Westgate Mall massacre, an attack claimed by Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked Shebab group, has started.}

Adan Mohamed Abidkadir Adan, Mohamed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah Omar and Hussein Hassan Mustafah all pleaded not guilty to charges of “supporting a terrorist group” on Wednesday.

The men have been accused of supporting the gunmen who carried out the September attack that killed at least 67 people.

In court, witness Stephen Juma described how he had been directing traffic outside the mall when a car pulled up to the building and three men leapt out.

“I began to hear gunshots, I made a radio call for help while running to the main entrance,” Juma said. “I took shelter in a residential compound until when I saw policemen come,” adding that he had not seen the faces of the three men.

A warning to Kenya

Security forces initially reported that a dozen gunmen carried out the attack, but now it is thought that there were only four gunmen.

Two of the shooters are named in court documents as Mohammed Abdinur Said and Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Somali who spent time in Norway.

It is believed that all attackers were killed in the siege. Interpol and the FBI have assisted Kenya in trying to identify four bodies believed to be those of the attackers. But a New York police report said a lack of evidence could mean the attackers escaped.

Al-Shebab said the gunmen came from a special suicide commando brigade and that the attack was a warning to Kenya to pull its troops out of southern Somalia, where they are fighting the group as part of an African Union force.

Western officials have said that as many as 94 people could have died in total in the mall attack, as bodies were buried under tonnes of rubble after part of the mall’s roof collapsed at the end of the raid following an intense fire that burned for weeks.

Source:
AFP

{A senior UN official has given warning of the risk of genocide in the Central African Republic without a more robust international response to communal bloodshed in which at least eight more people have died.}

John Ging, director of operations for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Thursday that the crisis was foreseeable and stemmed from many years of international neglect.

“The stakes are extremely high,” he said after returning from a five-day trip to the country.

“It has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere in places like Rwanda and Bosnia,” he said.

“The elements are there, the seeds are there for a genocide, there’s no question about that.”

The former French colony descended into chaos after a mostly Muslim rebel coalition, Seleka, seized power in March, unleashing a wave of killings and looting that spurred revenge attacks by Christian militia known as “anti-balaka” (anti-machete).

More than a million people have been displaced by the violence since Seleka installed their leader Michel Djotodia as interim president.

Up to 1,000 people were killed last month alone in the capital Bangui, prompting neighbouring countries to evacuate more than 30,000 of their citizens.

However, with swift intervention the country’s dire situation could be reversed, Ging said.

“This one is not a hopeless case,” he said. “The consequences will be dramatic if we don’t act immediately and effectively.”

There has been relative calm since Djotodia resigned last week under intense international pressure, but sporadic violence has persisted in Bangui.

On Thursday, a spokesman for a 15,000-strong group of anti-balaka criticised the interim government and threatened a return to violence if it was not overhauled.

CAR is designated by the UN as one of the top three global humanitarian emergencies, along with Syria and the Philippines. But a UN appeal has received only six percent of a $247m target.

France hurriedly sent some 1,600 troops to its former colony in December.

The deployment of Rwandan troops, the first of whom arrived aboard a US military aircraft on Thursday, will increase the African Union contingent to more than 5,000 peacekeepers this month.

Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies

Uganda’s president says his troops have joined forces with the South Sudanese military and are fighting in Bor to end a rebellion in the world’s newest country.

Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, the military spokesman, said on Thursday that Ugandan forces were helping loyalist forces flush rebels out of Bor, the strategic town near the capital of Juba that has seen some of the fiercest clashes since violence broke out in South Sudan in mid-December.

Ugandan officials have previously denied that their troops have joined the fight, saying their forces were deployed in South Sudan mainly to aid civilian evacuations.

The involvement of a foreign army in South Sudan’s conflict could escalate a crisis set off by a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, the fugitive former deputy president who commands rebel forces.

It comes a day after Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, admitted for the first time to helping his South Sudanese counterpart fend off the rebellion.

Uganda’s troop involvement in combat in South Sudan could raise concerns that other regional countries could be sucked into the conflict, fighting their own proxy wars as has happened elsewhere on the continent, such as Congo.

A spokesman for the prime minister of Ethiopia, where peace talks are taking place, said earlier this month having Ugandan troops engaged in combat would be “absolutely unwarranted”.

“Only the other day, Jan. 13, the SPLA and elements of our army had a big battle with these rebel troops at a point about 90km from Juba,” Museveni said.

“We inflicted a big defeat on them. Unfortunately, many lives were lost on the side of the rebels. We also took casualties and also had some dead.”

Kuol Manyang, South Sudan’s defence minister, said the Ugandan forces in his country numbered “a battalion”, and that
they were there to help quell the rebellion by Machar.

Aljazeera