[UAH] 3,000 soldiers have died in Somalia - UN
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The price paid by Uganda and other countries trying to pacify Somalia came into focus again last week, as the United Nations said that up to 3,000 peacekeepers had been killed in six years.
U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told a news conference in New York that countries like Uganda, which has the largest contingent of soldiers, and Burundi, had paid heavily trying to control a country largely in the hands of Islamist al-Shabab terrorists. Uganda has about 7,000 troops in the Horn of Africa country.
"You would be shocked to learn that maybe it is up to 3,000 Amisom [African Union Mission in Somalia] soldiers that have been killed during these years that Amisom has been there," Eliasson said.
It was not immediately clear how many of this huge number are Ugandans, but there have always been strong suggestions that the government was not telling Ugandans the whole truth. Last May, The Observer reported that although the government had been reporting 80 UPDF deaths in Somalia, military intelligence documents showed that the figure was at least 150. Later, a Kenyan minister claimed that the army had lost 2,700 troops – a figure that, although it sounded incredulous, suggested that some bitter truth may have been concealed.
Efforts to get a comment from the UPDF spokesperson, Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, were futile as he had not returned our calls by press time. Neither could Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga be reached by telephone.
Although Uganda has been hailed for its gallantry in Somalia, the UN should know too well the price we are paying, not least because there is a fee paid by the organization for every soldier who dies on duty. Suspicion is further heightened by institutionalized secrecy, with policy appearing to be: talk up every gain, be careful with the price paid.
When the Voice of America asked the Amisom spokesman, Ali Aden Hamoud, about the death, he could neither confirm nor deny the death toll.
"That responsibility belongs to each one of those contingents, or troop-contributing countries," he said.
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