Uganda: Punching Above Their Weight

Interesting things happen when bombs explode. Not only do you have general carnage but you also tend to register some altered motivations. Back in July the entire world, give or take a few billion, was watching the FIFA World Cup. So were a few hundred Ugandan Joe Sixpacks when bombs went off in their pubs and killed 76 of them. Then your not-so-friendly neighborhood terrorist group Al Shabaab claims responsibility and things get a little more dicey in East Africa. I mentioned before what a walking disaster Somalia is. That's mainly because of Al Shabaab.

So then you get Uganda ramping up the rhetoric as well as offering more 'peacekeeping troops' to 'assist with stability operations' within Somalia. Not only does 'stability operations' sound so much nicer than 'bloodthirsty revenge', it's also more likely to get you special funding from the United States. Now while the U.S. is plenty willing to give money and guns to whoever lines up to fight terrorists, Uganda has a bit of an image problem. Sure, they go after the gang of murdering thugs known as the Lord's Resistance Army and they've offered their courts for trying captured pirates (Who are mostly Somali. Hmmmm...), but when you've got a leader with a less-than-stellar human rights record and who likes to wipe out opposition parties and ignore his own constitution so he can run for office again and again, getting assistance from Uncle Sam is difficult at best.

In fact, in my completely unofficial and nowhere near expert opinion, Uganda, small as they are, encapsulates most of the problems with U.S. policy towards African states. (Ed. Note: I was going to call this post The Mouse That Roared but decided to be polite.) We want terrorists to die (sorry, 'come to justice') but we know we need to operate through other nations because we just can't be everywhere at once. We look around the world chess board and the only people we see with the capacity to kill bad guys are not all that good themselves. That, as we say in the English speaking world, is a bit of a pickle.