General Katumba Wamala says that it is time the Somali government was allowed to develop its own capacity to deal with the various security threats posed by Al-Shabaab.
The Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Katumba Wamala has said that Uganda has set December 2017 as the date for UPDF troops to withdraw from from Somalia.
However, Ambassador Smail Chergui, the African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security says a resolution has been adopted by Chiefs of Defense Forces of all the troop-contributing countries, to start withdrawing in October 2018.
This was confirmed on Wednesday as chiefs of defence forces and other AMISOM stakeholders met in Kampala and resolved to withdraw from Somalia after training and equipping the Somali army.
Uganda was the first country to send a battalion of troops to war-torn Somalia to counter the Al-Shabab terrorist group in 2007.
For more than nine years, the African Union Mission In Somalia (AMISOM), made up of other troops from Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Sierra Leone have ensured that there is now a semblance of peace in the horn of Africa country, flushing the Al-Shabab from their strongholds and disabling their sleeper cells.
General Katumba Wamala says that it is time the Somali government was allowed to develop its own capacity to deal with the various security threats posed by Al-Shabaab.
Gen. Wamala added that the continued presence of an AMISOM force would not be helpful to Somalia in the long run.
