As the UPDF rapidly disintegrates into a regime maintenance militia at home, and a mercenary force for Western and other shadowy interests abroad, we need to unpack and cut through the hollow, high-sounding, pretentious, and ambiguous claim of “Pan Africanism” that is parroted every time questions are raised about our foreign military ventures.
Regional ambitions for peace and stability should not be pursued at the endless cost of Ugandan blood.
FULL ARGUMENT
Details are still sketchy, but reports and footage of last Friday’s deadly dawn raid on Ugandan soldiers deployed in Lower Shabelle, Somalia, as part of the renamed African Union Transition Mission in Somalia/ATMIS have stirred outrage and sent shockwaves throughout the vast majority of the Ugandan public.
But the story does not start there or then.
Uganda was the first East African country to deploy troops under the AMISOM banner in 2007. Recently renamed African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), our contingent was and remains the largest contribution in terms of men and materiel.
Initially cast as a support to transitional government structures, the mission was tasked with implementing a national security plan, train the Somali security forces, support efforts to combat the Al Shabaab insurgency, and assist with the creation of a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Now approaching two decades of presence, the mission has lost 3,500 soldiers, the majority of them being Ugandans and Burundians, according to Mohamed El-Amine Souef who serves as the special representative of the chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia. Hundreds more have been injured.
In an interview he gave to VOA Somali, Souef added that according to the force officers who served in the mission, the casualties, including those disabled, could be as high as over 5,000.
That we have suffered such major losses over the years, but are still staying put suggests that there are some geopolitical, economic objectives, perhaps, that are keeping us deployed there.
Reading through some relevant Uganda government institution websites for answers for the objectives of our combat missions abroad is a futile effort. Some websites carry obsolete content, have dysfunctional interfaces, and others are eyesores that you only interact with, purely because of the information you are looking for. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs website simply copied and pasted Objective 28 of the 1995 Constitution and said no more with respect to the particular question of use of military force.
Despite allusions to a preference for peaceful resolution of disputes, Uganda has been a major antagonist in the region’s rebel activities, cross-border incursions, trafficking, assassinations, cattle rustling, warlordism, inter- and intra-state conflicts.
The absence of written policy begs the question about what, if anything is the North Star of our foreign policy. In the absence of concrete documentation, I resorted to sifting through public pronouncements by the armed forces’ leadership and military command. From the UPDF mouthpiece Brig. Gen. Felix Kulayigye, to the Deputy Chief of Defence Forces, the sycophantic Gen. Peter Elwelu all the way to the Commander-in-Chief, “Pan Africanism” is the empty retort you hear.
In his statement about the most recent attack by Al Shabab, Museveni essentially heaped the blame on his troops and on corruption within the UPDF. As usual, he blamed everybody but himself. This demonstrates not just a lack of emotional attachment to our troops, but a leader who is not prepared to own up even when the young men he has sent into harm’s way pay the ultimate price.
This is notwithstanding the fact that in addition to successive media reports and studies about systemic corruption and maladministration within the armed forces, including a 2016 Special Report by the Daily Monitor’s Daniel Kalinaki, the same problems persist.
Left undefined, perhaps deliberately, Uganda’s foreign policy means any and everything. The whims and individual proclivities of the ruler, in this case Gen. Museveni, become the yardstick by which foreign policy is determined—be it for economic or military purposes. That is how we have spent billions of our hard-earned tax shillings propping up South Sudan’s Salva Kiir, for example, for reasons known to the ruler and his cronies, may be.
State of Nation addresses, which should be an avenue for providing such answers turn out to be tired, winding and repetitive lectures about the 80s bush war that brought the National Resistance Army to power. Thus far, we have established the absence of a defined, coherent, institutionalized foreign policy for Uganda.
The implications are dire. Whereas our Kenyan brothers and sisters cashed in on the opportunities that a fairly stabilized South Sudan came with, largely through Uganda’s significant contribution, there was no corresponding plan by Uganda.
The crude, but accurate joke is that Kenyans went in with financial services, telecoms and real estate whereas Ugandans—without a supporting investment framework from home—could only vend newspapers, grasshoppers, secondhand clothing, and take on menial jobs. Those Ugandans who were able to access lucrative business opportunities are a tiny percentile. They owe their fortunes to the connections they enjoy with organised crime syndicates and the vastly corrupt ruling elite back home. Ordinary Ugandan businesspeople were largely on their own.
Gulf States, the Americans, and several dozen multinational corporations from all over the world have also been able to secure their shipping lanes along the coastline of Somalia, in part due to AMISOM’s efforts at combating insurgency and piracy. It is not apparent or easily discernable what benefits Uganda has reaped from such sacrifices.
The third beneficiary of Uganda’s military adventurism has been Gen. Museveni and his partners in misrule like Salva Kiir and Theodore Obiang Nguema. These strongmen conduct joint training exercises, support each other’s autocracies directly and indirectly, and cast their penchant for violence as Pan Africanism. Washington, Berlin, Paris, and London have for long not known what to do every time they want to call out Museveni for his routine violations of human rights and international obligations because he quickly threatens to withdraw Ugandan troops in Somalia or wherever else they may be, in pursuit of the interests of the “international community”.
As of April 2023, Uganda has a staggering total of twelve thousand troops in no less than four theatres. For a country whose troop strength stands at forty-six thousand, this is a significant feat.
The fact that Uganda is a thoroughly mismanaged country, and scores dismally on governance indicators, which makes it difficult for it to be an exemplar of democratic values abroad, is conveniently ignored. Not even the abundant evidence of the routine use of the country’s military for partisan purposes, and criminal actions like the November 2020 massacre of Ugandans or the acts of aggression against the people of Rwenzururu, the continuing usurpation of judicial power by the military courts martial can shame the West into a rethink of their relationship with Museveni’s Uganda.
Western diplomats reading this article might perceive or interpret it as micro-nationalism on my part. Nothing could be further from the truth. The decades-old practice by the West of hedging their bets for a secure and stable Great Lakes Region on an aging autocrat, Yoweri Museveni, who has no transition plan is the equivalent of a proverb in my native Runyankore: “okwegama enjura omu rufunjo!” i.e., “the futility of seeking shelter from the rain under a papyrus plant!”
The Pentagon might find it easier to deal with a despot, but history shows that it is not sustainable long term. I do not have to cite examples to make this point. Americans know very well what has happened where dictators they have supported have suddenly lost power.
I am neither a soldier nor a military science expert to understand how military operations or peacekeeping missions should be conducted, but I deserve answers as a citizen, taxpayer, and voter.
We are a generous and hospitable people, but Ugandan blood is not infinite.
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