Terrorist attacks are intensifying in Uganda. The attacks raise questions about the links and tactics of jihadist groups in the region, as they increase their focus on Uganda and pose a wider threat.
Uganda is reeling in the wake of three bomb attacks within a week, and four in total in October 2021, as a spike in incidents of domestic terrorism grips the country. The region’s Islamic State groups, namely IS Central Africa Province and local affiliate Islamist militant group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have claimed responsibility for two of the attacks, while the other two incidents remain unclaimed.
On October 8, 2021, Islamic State militants detonated an IED at a police post in Kawempe, a neighbourhood of Uganda’s capital city Kampala.
Two weeks later, on October 23, three IS militants posing as customers planted an IED at a popular roadside restaurant in the same neighbourhood. The men detonated the device — an IED packed with nails and shrapnel — after they left the building, killing a 20-year old waitress and injuring three others. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on an affiliated Telegram channel, and Ugandan police and president Yoweri Museveni deemed the incident a terrorist act.
On October 25, 2021, an Islamic State suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest on a long-distance passenger bus near Kampala, killing himself and wounding three civilians. Police spokesman Fred Enanga said the bomber was “on the wanted list of members” of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have been linked to the incidents, raising concerns that the group is moving operations into Uganda from its historical base in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The ADF established a link with ISIS at the end of 2018 and began using its flag and extremist approach in its propaganda messages. In April 2019, ADF attacks began to be claimed by ISIL on social media and the group has presented itself as the regional IS branch – the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP). In March this year (2021), the United States officially linked the ADF to the Islamic State.
The ADF is an Ugandan insurgent group established in the 1990s in opposition to president Museveni and loyal to military strongman and former president Idi Amin. After it’s defeat in Uganda in 2001, Idi Amin accused the President, Yoweri Museveni, of marginalising Muslims.
The group moved into northern Congo and has operated as an Islamist militant group primarily in the Kivu region of the DRC. The group is known for the brutal massacre of civilians in North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri provinces, and has killed at least 739 civilians in the region since May 2021.
Over the last few decades, the ADF has killed thousands of mostly unarmed civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province. Attacks in Uganda have been less common. Despite existing for several decades, the ADF remains a rather obscure organisation.
ADF’s aim is to overthrow the Ugandan government, the group offered little early public detail about its broader political aims, earning them the label of a “rebellion without a cause.”
Many observers regard ADF as a gang of warlords plundering DRC communities and flying the sinister Islamic State flag as a justification. The ADF takeover in 2015 by Musa Baluku, a dedicated Salafist, set the group on a trajectory to become an Islamic State province. Baluku’s determination to join Islamic State split the ADF – one faction was focused on implementing Islamic governance in Uganda, the other (Baluku’s faction) on supporting Islamic State’s global ambitions. Probably, this split can explain that the group employs both Salafi-Jihadi and secular faces, with each different addressing audiences and serving other purposes.
Read also: Perspectives of Jihadism in Africa
Islamic State-affiliated group in sub-Saharan Africa is Jahba East Africa, also known as the Islamic State in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (ISISSKTU). Like the Islamic State in Somalia, ISISSKTU is a splinter group of al-Shabaab. Jahba East Africa was reportedly initiated by Mohamed Abdi Ali, a medical intern from Kenya who, along with his wife, was subsequently arrested in May 2016 for plotting to spread anthrax in Kenya. As the group’s name suggests, ISISSKTU counts among its ranks citizens from the aforementioned countries. Thus, given that the group is composed of East African citizens who had previously been part of al-Shabaab, ISISSKTU is thought to contain elements of al-Shabaab that were described as that group’s “foreign fighters.” Jahba East Africa emerged when fighters previously loyal to al-Shabaab sought to realign with the Islamic State. Jahba East Africa pledged bay`a to the Islamic State on April 8, 2016.
The ADF and al-Shabaab are ostensibly on opposite sides of the great jihadi divide because al-Shabaab is an al-Qaeda affiliate, so cooperation seems unlikely. However, The ADF and al-Shabaab are in fact working closely together in Uganda and possibly elsewhere. This is dangerous sign of decreasing contradictions between AQ and IS’s affiliates and acidization of their cooperation.
The ADF’s links also extend to Rwanda. In September, the Rwandan police arrested 13 persons allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in Kigali: ‘Captured with explosives and other material to produce bombs, the cell was, according to Rwandan police, cooperating with the Islamic State in DR Congo. The plans were assumedly in response to the Rwandan military campaign against the Islamic State in Mozambique.’ So, there are clear signs of coordinated attacks by IS affiliates on governments who provide peacekeeping missions against Islamic state insurgency in the region.
The casualty-causing incidents of explosive weapon use in October 2021 are the only record of explosive violence in the country this year. However, it’s hard to make statements who is responsible for attacks: ADF or IS. Or Islamic State just uses the ADF in their propaganda.
