Reuters photo
By
Gloria Nakiyimba
In his State of the Nation address on Wednesday in Kampala, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni noted that terrorists of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) who had been responsible for the murder of a number of prominent Ugandans in the recent past are now under the protection of the UN and Congolese government.
“The terrorists of ADF are still in Congo, preserved there by the UN and Congo government,“ President Museveni told the nation.
He noted however that his government is ready to deal promptly and decisively with the ADF should they re-enter Uganda.
Museveni blamed urban terrorism on the ADF rebels whom he said have been defeated in the rural areas.
“Some of the terrorists of ADF as well as other criminal elements, seeing that they could not survive in the rural areas, infiltrated into the towns where we had not fully focused in terms of developing intelligence capacity,” he said.
The ADF rebel group has been linked to the assassination of seven sheikhs, the murder of Major Muhammad Kiggundu, the killing of State Attorney Joan Kagezi and the gruesome murder of police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi in March 2017.
The president noted that the government has already defeated rural terrorism and has now turned its focus on urban terrorism.
“With this new challenge, we put in place a mechanism to build the intelligence gathering capacity in the towns and on the highways,” the president revealed.
According to Mr. Museveni, by 2007 the UPDF, Uganda’s national army, had totally defeated rural based terrorism and banditry.
He assured Ugandans that the country will never be threatened by terrorists operating in rural areas, adding that urban terrorism will also be defeated in the same way.
The ADF operates between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However following the arrest and detention of its leader Jamil Mukulu, the rebel outfit retreated back into the forests of Congo. It had established its bases in the western Ugandan district of Kasese until they were flushed out by the UPDF and are now holed up in the Congo Kivu province.
The ADF is known notoriously for the 1998 attack on Uganda Technical College Kichwamba in Kabarole district. During this attack rebels burnt 80 students alive and abducted 100 others
The same group has been blamed for the 2017 December attacks that left 15 Tanzanian solders dead, five Congolese soldiers killed and 53 peace keepers injured.
In December 2017 the Ugandan army launched an onslaught on the ADF rebels in the DRC killing more than 100 combatants.
Gloria Nakiyimba
Gloria has experience spanning more than five years in Journalism, particularly in field reporting, editing, newscasting and management. She is currently working with Capital Radio Limited [91.3 Capital FM and 96.3 Beat FM] as Head of News, a position she has held since 2010.
Gloria previously worked as the Kampala Correspondent for Radio France International [RFI] generating local story leads with international inference for RFI’s global audience. She also served as Political Editor for The Weekly Mail Newspaper as well as Online Content Editor for the California based Ugandan broadcaster KubutakaRadio.com.
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