By James Thembo
December 31, 2012
Many years ago when I was young
in the village, I witnessed in public occasional fights between men. The
reasons for these affrays as they are called in criminal law terms were
numerous: Land ownership disagreements, non payment of debts, infidelity
issues, drunken vulgarities or simply waste of time arguments on what was
likely to be the day’s weather.
The fighting duo
would land brutal blows on each other, neither side often not easily accepting
to be flattened like they were weaklings. But other times, there was a clear
loser. He would extricate himself from a rain of punches and resort to issuance
of threats ranging from rushing home to pick his panga or spear to finish off
the rival.
The current
global threat of Islamic fundamentalism reminds me of the above scenarios, but
we will make the connection later. While not all Muslims are fundamentalists
and not all fundamentalists terrorists (there was Christian fundamentalism once
in history), it is true that terrorism as we know it today is a derivative of
Islamic extremism which has most times bred violence.
History reveals
that during Europe’s Dark Ages, Islam flourished. Towards the beginning of the Middle
Ages, Islam had made impressive achievements in culture, philosophy, literature,
art, education medicine, technology and politics. It was a civilization that
spanned a period of over 800 years.
Then, Islam
started declining. Islamic popularization crusades died away. The western world
made their presence in the Middle East which was Islam’s strong-hold, felt. By
the 19th and 20th centuries, the west had planted seeds
that sprouted into colonialism which with it was the spread of their culture.
Arab Muslims attempted to create Pan-Arabism whose purpose was to reject
imperialism. It failed.
Even through the
cold war days, the west led by America entrenched its presence in the Middle
East. They supported rogue regimes if they helped the West’s interests especially
acquisition of oil. They supported the formation of the state of Israel in
1948, a thing that the Arab Muslim world in semi-official lingua still calls ‘The
Catastrophe.’ The stage for hostility had been set.
It has thus been
a competitive bid for dominance, like our village tussle, lost on part of the
Muslim world. They have ever since suffered in anguish over lost leadership of
a civilization they had taken bliss in. Presently,
many Muslim countries are impoverished and war-torn. Afghanistan is the nearest example.
It has the highest child and maternal mortality rates and also the lowest
literacy and life expectancy in the world. Their per capita income is bout $200
while that for the US is about $24,000.
Again, like the
loosing side in the village fight might do, a chunk of the Muslim world
resorted to fundamentalism and with it, terrorism. To them, America is a ‘Great
Satan.’ America’s allies, wherever they are in the eyes of the same fundamentalist
terrorists, are smaller satans which, like their master, must be dealt with.
They have issued many threats and delivered on numerous. America alone has
suffered more than five full-size terrorist attacks since 1993, the worst being
the bombing of the twin towers in 2001 which housed the World Trade Center in
New York.
Uganda, more
than ever before, is in this tough mix. We are a terrorist target (especially
after we sent our soldiers to Somalia in an African Union arrangement.) Reason?
We are a friend of America.
We are also a buffer against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism
in the Great Lakes Region. Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based terror group in terms of
possible revenge knows no African Union or Amison, the umbrella AU force in Somalia. They
know Uganda and Burundi, countries that answered a deployment
call to Mogadishu
at the earliest.
They, and a few
other voices argue we are fighting America’s war there especially with the
background that America tried in 1993 to get to Somalia directly but failed.
Three of their helicopters were downed. Uganda
was to be a joint target with Kenya
and Tanzania
when American embassies were hit in 1998. We survived because our security
services were proactively alert.
The fates were
against us on Sunday July 11, 2010 when
Kampala was hit by twin bomb blasts that left 76 people dead and many other
injured. It is essential that other African countries beef up Uganda and
Burundi in Somalia. To withdraw would be cowardly. It would swell Al-shabaab’s
pride and operations.
We hope that the
African Union summit presently sitting in Kampala acts aptly. In the meantime,
we have to do the proactive basics: Hurriedly fix CCTV cameras around town, be stringent
on immigrants, pace up the national identity card project and be heedful and
suspicious.
James Thembo is a Journalist
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