ADF leader sanctioned over Kasese, DRC attacks

The Ugandan military yesterday welcomed the European Union’s decision on Friday to sanction top Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) commander Ahmad Mahmood Hassan named by Ugandan intelligence as the mastermind of last month’s attack on Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Secondary School.

Forty-four people, majority of them students, were killed in the attack that Uganda blamed on ADF, a self-proclaimed affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) in the Great Lakes region.

The EU sanctioned Tanzanian national Hassan, also known by the aliases Abu Waqas, Jundi and Muwarabu, on Friday, accusing him of masterminding recent spate of raids in Beni and North Kivu territories of DRC.

Brig Felix Kulayigye, the UPDF and Defence spokesman, said whereas ADF as a terrorist group is internationally-sanctioned, targeting some of its top commanders such as Hassan for punishment would limit their mobility and likely choke financial flows to the outfit.

“[The impact of the sanctions] would depend on whether he (Hassan) is the funder of the organisation or not,” Brig Kulayigye said of the Tanzanian national that the EU accuses of training suicide bombers and directing recent ADF terrorist attacks, most notably in Beni and North Kivu provinces.

The man at the centre of directing the bombings, according to the EU, is Tanzanian national Hassan whose particulars it added to its list of sanctioned entities and individuals pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1183/2005.

“Ahmad Mahmood Hassan is a senior leader of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a non-governmental armed group operating in Uganda and the Eastern DRC,” the EU noted, “He has been identified as holding key responsibilities in the ADF, including command of a camp, training of recruits, production of bombs, online outreach and rapprochement with ISIL (Da’esh).”

Legal framework

The continental bloc adopted Council Regulation (EC) No 1183/2005 on July 18, 2005 to prevent violence in DRC and its sanctions impose restrictive measures on persons and entities acting in violation of the DRC arms embargo.

The Islamist group, ADF, is under the overall of Musa Seka Baluku who took over following the 2015 arrest by Tanzania of his predecessor Jamil Mukulu who was transferred to a Ugandan prison pending trial.

Despite Mukulu’s incarceration and an ongoing joint counter-offensive by UPDF and Congolese military code-named Operation Shujaa launched in December 2021 to annihilate ADF, Kampala and Kinshasa continue to blame the group for morbid raids in both countries.

The latest being the June 2023 onslaught on Kasese District’s Mpondwe-Lhubiriha SS where attackers killed 44 people, majority of them students.

In a televised address on security this month, President Museveni blamed the ADF incursion on intelligence lapses but said the attack showed a weak, not resurging, group.

According to the EU, Hassan was “involved in planning, directing or committing acts that constitute serious human rights violations or abuses in the DRC. He is also responsible for sustaining the armed conflict, instability and insecurity in the DRC.”

Some of the attacks in DRC happened in January and April in Kasindi and Goma, respectively.

Background
The ADF started out in 1989 as a Ugandan rebel group based in the western part of the country from where the UPDF dislodged it into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The group is accused of conscripting and indiscriminately killing civilians and conducting a string of attacks inside the DRC and Uganda using Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) while spreading terror.