As the focus of national emotion and mobilization for the 2011 general election continues in high gear, various candidates are crisscrossing the country, making appearances before prospective voters and using the various TV and radio stations to explain their campaign platforms.

Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia, the real issues of 2011 in Uganda continue to unfold and many political actors in Uganda cannot seem to make the connection.

A radical Islamist group called the Al-Shabab Mujahedeen sits on the outskirts of the Somali capital Mogadishu, fighting a war of attrition, bidding its time, with the ful confidence that time is on their side and at some point, Somalia must fall to them.

Al-Shabab intends, should they seize power, to continue from where their predecessors, the Union of Islamic Courts stopped in Dec. 2006: create an Islamic state of Somalia, based on the tenets of Islam's holy scriptures, the Qur'an.

It is a nightmare scenario the Western world faces and so far seems unable to do much about.

Somalia has been without a government for 19 years now and the instability has not only created a situation of instability in East and the Horn of Africa but the activities of Somali pirates off the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa and near the Red Sea threaten much of the world's seaborne mercantile and crude oil trade.

Vital international interests are at stake in Somalia.

The latest news from Somalia, according to the Mogadishu-based station Radio Shabeelle is that the militant Al-Shabab Mujahedeen group this morning, Wednesday March 10, attacked government forces in Mogadishu.

What President George W. Bush found himself thrown into after the Sept. 2001 terrorist attacks on America, against his wish and with very little choice, was two major wars on complicated battle fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq.

What President Barack H. Obama inherited in Jan. 2009 was, for all intents and purposes, two Vietmans and, like Bush, with few options but keep trudging along, fighting wars where decisive victory is elusive and from which there is no easy withdrawal.

These two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have sapped the morale of America and partly explain the steep fall in Obama's popularity ratings.

He dare not send a single U.S. soldier to that third Vietnam, Somalia. Somebody has to taken on the sub-contract and for the last two years and a half, it has been Uganda.

This has increased greatly Uganda's value to Washington and London, the two determining forces in Uganda's politics and foreign standing.

The default home page, to use Internet language, is now set in favour of Museveni. Whoever is to hope to take on Museveni in 2011 has the burden of proof to present to the West, to demonstrate to them that he can maintain Uganda's position as the main sub-contractor in Somalia and even improve on and cement this troop commitment.

Only UPC's Olara Otunnu, of all the candidates so far, seems to understand that the 2011 Ugandan general election will not really be a national election but some kind of national audition by leading political candidates before a panel of western judges.

He is the only one who has understood the importance of engaging with the same western powers and centres of legislation like the U.S. Congress from where Museveni himself draws his real power.

The only other candidate who understands that what is at stake is a question of renewing Museveni's visa as far as the West is concerned, is Museveni.

So far, Kiiza Besigye, Mugisha Muntu, Bidandi Ssali, and Norbert Mao are acting as though the 2011 election is about candidates presenting their proposals to millions of Ugandan voters.

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