Salim Saleh named in Somali ‘mercenary’ deal
By John Stephen Katende
31st January 2011
Gen. Salim Saleh: Is he a suspect?
President Yoweri Museveni’s young brother Caleb Akandwanaho aka General Salim Saleh may be linked to possible involvement in mercenary activities in war-torn Somalia, Uganda Correspondent can exclusively reveal.
The details emerged after Saracen International; a company associated with Gen. Salim Saleh, lost a lucrative contract to undertake some work in Somalia. Our source in Mogadishu said the Transitional Federal Government [TFG] of Somalia declared last week, Thursday 27th January that it had severed its relationship with Saracen International.
The decision, we are told, came after a closed door cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed in the capital Mogadishu. Somalia’s Deputy Security Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow confirmed that cabinet had indeed cancelled the agreement that the TFG government had signed with Saracen International to train Somali troops and to revive social services including building health facilities in Mogadishu.
The decision, he said, was reached after Somalia’s TFG government landed on evidence which suggested that Saracen International may have been involved mercenary activities. “…The cabinet has today overwhelmingly voted against Saracen International on the basis of mercenary acts. So the cabinet has revoked the agreement with this company”, Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow said.
The Deputy Security Minister added that while there is no doubt that his government requires assistance, as government, he said, the TFG will only enter into contractual agreements with distinguished and clean companies. He also said the cabinet’s decision on Saracen International was “irrevocable”.
The TFG’s decision to revoke Saracen International’s contract follows widespread expression of concern by several foreign governments including the US. Philip J. Crowley, a US State Department Spokesman, said in December that the American government was “…concerned about the lack of transparency” of Saracen’s financing and plans.
According to a New York Times report of 20th January 2011, “…at least one of Saracen’s past forays into training militias drew an international rebuke. Saracen’s Uganda subsidiary was implicated in a 2002 United Nations Security Council report for training rebel paramilitary forces in Congo”.
Is war a lucrative source of business for powerful men?
Other than Burundi, Uganda is the only other country in Africa that has contributed thousands of soldiers to the AU’s AMISOM peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The same New York Times report identified one of Saracen Uganda’s owners as Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh, the retired half-brother of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
Salim Saleh’s possible conflict of interest also highlights some crucial things in this terribly complex story. One of the things is that the lines that separate government security officials and owners or leaders of private armies have become so fuzzy that you can never really be sure as to the motivations of any individual player.
As mercenary forces become more and more prominent in armed conflicts around the world, the profit motive becomes almost impossible to rule out. In other words, it’s almost impossible to know the real reasons that fuel the conflicts in which mercenaries play a role. UPC party President Dr. Olara Otunnu for example, has accused some UPDF soldiers of having had vested interests in prolonging the Kony war in northern Uganda.
The UPDF of course denied Otunnu’s claims. But the New York Times report also accused General Saleh and other top Ugandan army officers of using their ties to paramilitaries to plunder Congolese diamonds, gold and timber. But what exactly is Saracen International? Who really owns it? Our efforts to get a comment from Saracen International were futile by press time.
So for the time being, it may be fair to say that no one really knows for sure what Saracen International is, and who owns it. What one can say however is that Saracen International is definitely a murky trade name that is shared by a number of private security companies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Whether that is a coincidence or not, no one really knows.
What we can confirm without fear of contradiction is that Saracen International is fully established in Uganda; see http://saracen.co.ug/index.php. Most of the other companies however deny or downplay any financial or managerial relationships between them. A few have however been linked to the infamous South African mercenary firm called Executive Outcomes; the same company that allegedly tried to send mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in order to tap into the country’s oil and mineral wealth.
Saracen International has also been linked to a certain Erik Prince; the man whose company Blackwater is allegedly financing a “Counter-Piracy” mercenary squad in Somalia. Both the New York Times and Associated Press have carried similar allegations against Saracen International on the strength of “confidential” reports leaked from the African Union.
Somalia has been without a proper central government since 1991 when President Siad Barre was overthrown by armed warlords. That incident effectively condemned Somalia to decades of civil war. END. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
