NAIROBI (AFP) — United Nations monitors have accused Ugandan peacekeepers of selling arms to Islamist rebels fighting the government and Ethiopian Woyanne troops in Somalia.
Amid a row over the acquisition of military hardware by bickering factions in Somalia’s transitional government, the UN panel charged with monitoring the situation there said it was alarmed by “continued militarisation and an increase of armed action” between the rival camps.
“The fact that members of the transitional federal government are buying arms at the market in Mogadishu is not new to the monitoring group,” it said.
“But during this mandate period, the monitoring group received information on sales of arms by prominent officials of the security sectors of government, Ethiopian Woyanne officers and Ugandan officers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).”
The report, seen by AFP on Friday, was sent to the UN Security Council on Thursday by the panel which is charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy a year earlier with the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.
In it, the experts said arms on sale originate from army stocks or are seized following battles with Islamist insurgents.
“According to arms traders, the biggest supplier of ammunition to the market are Ethiopian Woyanne and transitional federal government commanders, who divert boxes officially declared ‘used during combat’,” the report said.
Since Barre’s ouster, several well-armed clan-based factions have been in an almost constant state of low-level war, hindering effective monitoring of the UN arms embargo.
The UN Security Council has rejected several pleas by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to ease the arms ban, warning that such a move would exacerbate fighting in the lawless nation.
The experts accused neighbouring Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea of continuously violating the embargo by sending weapons shipments to the increasingly hostile factions within Somalia.
Somalia’s breakaway northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland are other entry points for weapons.
“The routes are more covert, and the weapons reach Somalia either by a large number of small vessels, or through remote locations along the land borders,” the report said.
“The Somali police force no longer differs from other actors in the armed conflict, despite the fact that many of its members have received training in accordance to international standards,” it added.
The panel lamented that the Somali government’s budget, heavily supported by international donors, lacks even the most minimal standards of transparency.
“Some donors expressed discontent that some of the funding provided, despite being earmarked for civilian and peace-building activities, may have been used for military activities and purchase of military materials.”
Somali troops, their Ethiopian Woyanne allies and AU peacekeepers have been routinely targeted by Islamist insurgents over the past year, worsening security and choking humanitarian operations in the country.
5 thoughts on “UN accuses Uganda and Woyanne officers of arming rebels”
Selling arms to insurgents? It is self-destruction.This simply shows that the invading Woyane army is in low morale,frustration!
Ethiopians, we Eritreans openly support the Somalian opposion but not profit from peoples misery by waging war and supplying guns. Not an Eritrean thing. We are striaght shooters. Take it or leave it., i didnt think it will be in Ethiopian moral reach either until recently. Leave Eritrea alone now, These TPLF tugs dont have a single working brain cell or determined distroy you.
Bad judgment!
The world should have helped Mohamed Sia Barre from being ousted from power, and he could have kept Somalia together, and Woyanne would never have intervened in the internal affairs of Mogadishu. The same thing is true with Iraq that the United States should never have invaded it, and should have kept Suddam Husain in power, and all the blood sheds could have been avoided. American foreign policy has always been a failure, and those countries, such as Ethiopia and Somalia that fallow such policies, are headed to complete disaster.
UN should should talk about the illegal occupation of Somalia and Ogaden.
In somalia today anything is for sale. Arms are hot items.
what do you expect? It has been always like it whenever there are major interanational wars; the generals had great opportunities to make moeny for themselves while shedding the blood of innocet people.
You have to look at human Psychology and especially to marcineries who come to wars to kill, drink and have beautifufl women. Have you ever heard of the three WWW. War, Women, and Wine. When people get killed they forget morality and soldiers start doing anything; believe me selling arms wound not bother them a bit.
Have you ever heard of a war in Paris by soldiers of Bonoparte? What about the American soldiers fighting in Italy with facists army during the Second World War by Hemingway. It is just happening in Congo now. They Ugandan generals and other African generals who came to help out in the civilian wars had made tones of money by dealing with local diamond trades. Our African generals are as criminals as the rebells they are trying to chase away. Of course double dealing is common, and bribig is a money making means for the generals.