Intelligence reports show Kampala created a media decoy by claiming that the security forces preempted a possible terror attack in the capital Kampala.
An analysis on the events preceding the operation to preempt the threat verify the decoy story, though from an intelligence perspective it works alright.
Terror cells don’t just pop up in a place overnight, it takes weeks, months, and even years of planning for a terror cell to be established and become operational besides active enough to facilitate or carry-out a terror attack, Director of Intelligence David James point’s out.
In Uganda, we had terror warning issued in a week, and then on the 7th day, we have the cell in police custody. This does not add up, rather draws out a picture of a criminal cell being busted but not a terror cell.
In most cases, when terror alerts are issued, and terrorist cells identify the alert/intelligence as accurate, they quickly withdraw or quickly deploy to avoid either preemption or failure to achieve the principal objective. David James further argues.
The Ugandan scenario does not have either of the two scenarios playing out. Worse, Al-Shabaab has denied there was an arrest of it’s cell in Kampala, a pointer of both intelligence failure or a counter-productive strategy to preempt the threat.
Of most interest is Al-Shabaab denying their operatives were arrested and the scanty details of the arrests by Ugandan police. By now we should be able to see the suspects and their arsenal of explosives.
What may happen is a scenario that puts Uganda in an awkward position. They may try to bring a suspect for mere public relations but the worst scenario is that Al-Shabaab will be quick to deny the created suspect as the cell and even bring the cell to talk with the view of embarrassing Kampala.
This is downright rubbish. A so-called intelligence analyst basing his judgement on what was divulged to the media. Only Kenyan intelligence, if they have any, would give details to the press. If this clown had dug deeper, he would get the real story. The media and this ‘analyst’ were given less than a fifth of the story and they ran with that.
We knew the terror threats were just a creation to increase my expenditure on intelligence gatherings so that those who are big in the intelligence circles can get their shares.