why i oppose sending ugandan troops to somalia

Last month, Josh at In an African Minute wrote about why he thinks those opposed to sending troops to Somalia are misguided. I don’t think anyone would contest the fact that a stable Somalia is in the best interests of everyone from Somali citizens to the American government. The question, then, is whether or not a Ugandan presence will actually contribute to stabilization.

Josh argues that Ugandan troops will be met with more support than Ethiopians, but so far they’ve been met with bombs and mortars that have already killed or injured almost 30 civilians and two soldiers. The peacekeeping mission is miserably underfunded and understaffed, and several human rights organizations have expressed serious concerns that the operation will be a repeat of Uganda’s intervention in the Congo, during which the UPDF was found to have tortured and killed civilians. An editorial in Friday’s Daily Monitor compared the American anti-terrorism fervor to the Cold War and accused Museveni of “playing this card against terrorism as a tool to help him in his quest for a life presidency.”

Perhaps most importantly, there is no real peace to keep. Though the Ethiopians dispelled the Islamic courts last year, making way for the Transitional Federal Government, insurgents have “vowed to kill the incoming peacekeepers” and have been launching almost daily attacks in Mogadishu, and Eritrea has warned that the presence of Ugandan forces could prompt a full-out war.

In the face of so many contra-indicators, I would argue that those who support Ugandan involvement are the misguided ones.

housekeeping

Check it out: my blogroll (which I always thought sounded more like an Austrian pastry than anything else) had so many links on it that it was getting a little unwieldy. I decided to change things up a bit and use the lovely, fantastic Google Reader to keep tabs on what everyone’s saying.

Instead of huge lists, the sidebar now shows the three most recent posts from five different categories — a better way, I think, of paying attention to the blogs I like. You can still see the lists if you click on the links below each category.

You can also read about the enigmatic jackfruit, if you’re so inclined.

In other news: voting for the 2006 Uganda Best of Blogs is over. We had 287 votes in five categories, with some pretty hotly contested races. Awards will be presented at this month’s Happy Hour: Thursday, March 15, 6:30 PM at Mateo’s.

too lazy to post

On Sunday I promised Josh I would “rake him over the coals” about Somalia. Am clearly a little behind. Here’s what’s been distracting me:

Scientists discover ‘natural barrier’ to HIV
(via Communist Socks & Boots)
Will the more medically-minded among you explain to me why no one but Yahoo and Web MD and some newspaper in China is talking about this? It seems like big, big news to me.

Jesus comes to Gulu
Best part of the article: “Reporters attending the scene sadly failed to confirm the sighting.” I can’t find anything online to verify this, but apparently there’s a pastor in Gulu who predicted a series of events for 2007, including the Jesus siting, an earthquake, a lunar eclipse and a plague of butterflies. He’s doing pretty good so far, I’d say.

Uganda’s courts closed down
Museveni’s Black Mambas pissed off the Judiciary when they tried to re-arrest several People’s Redemption Army suspects after they’d just been granted bail. The courts are on strike until they receive “an assurance from the government that there won’t be a re-occurrence of an armed invasion of courts.”

Somalia article coming soon.

th-th-throw your (…) hands up

Last week Reuters launched a new Africa-focused news site called (what else?) Reuters Africa. The site features pages for each country (check out Uganda’s) that, in addition to regular and business-focused news content, include this:


Yep. You know what that means? We just got ourselves an audience. Global Voices Online already gets 300,000 readers each month, but the new partnership will expose GVO content to about 7.6 million more.

A lot of you have already been featured on GVO — in the last month, Degstar, Inktus, Dennis Matanda, Baz, Pernille, Ivan, Mr. Magoo and Zack and Joshi have all been mentioned. The Uganda section, which Josh edits, follows the big stories and conversations coming out of our part of the blogosphere — our stories. And now, those stories are going to be shown to over 200,000 people each day.

I wrote earlier about the importance of blogging in Uganda and why I think UBHH and the awards are a good idea — it’s important that we talk and argue, laugh and listen. Not just among ourselves, but to the rest of the world.

Well, the world’s listening. What are we going to say?

Other intriguing articles about Reuters Africa:

Uganda Best of Blogs update

Josh at Global Voices just posted a mini-review of the eight blogs nominated for Uganda Blog of the Year, which is excellently written and serves as a neat little guide for those of you who haven’t voted for the Uganda Best of Blogs awards yet (or for those of you who are new to the Ugandan blogosphere and want to check out some of the best examples).

Some people have voiced concerns about the fairness of the voting process — specifically that you can vote once each day, which means that someone with unfettered internet access and the will to win could, theoretically, vote him or herself to the top.

I modelled our system after the South African Blog Awards, which allow voting each day. JKB pointed out that the Canadian Blog Awards do the same thing. So do the Asia Blog Awards, the Business Blog Awards, the Deaf Blog Awards and the Weblog Awards. The way I see it, if you’re dedicated enough to vote every day, then you must be a pretty serious blogger — well done, you.

There are only eleven days left to vote for the 2006 Uganda Best of Blog awards. Have at it.