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SAT.. MARCH 2t,19S1 A Weekly Digest of African Affairs i1 " ";!' UGANDA $ Clouded Prospects i For Stability jl With Tanzanian troops -hoping ta-'departjrithin the year, time Is running hut on Ugandan President Stilton Obote's efforts to tyring the security situation Under vontroi. mnca News looks-this yeek at Several of the major issues -facing the Obote ad ministration, with a file from Tony A virgan in Dar is Salaam and an inter view with author Cynthia knloe on ethnicity in Uganda's army- ANJ President Milton Obotc celebrated the 21st anniversary of his ruling Uganda People's Con gress (UPC) on March 9, everal months after his return to office, in an at mosdphere of relative alm. But the prospects for his administration are Still plagued by unresolved problems of security, Which threaten the con- fidence both of, outside funding agencies and of Che ordinary Ugandan. Among the recent developments: f Over the weekend of February 6, armed attacks on police posts and rnilitary training schools m western Uganda, in the Mubende area, were followed that Monday by i&n assault on the Luzira iprison only five miles ifrnm kTamnala the. llean- ?dan capital. A previously liinknown organization galled the Uganda jFreedom Movement j(UFM) claimed respon sibility and called for the ioverthrow of Obote's ? government. ' Subsequent reports from Nairobi said the UFM was principally a Conservative Baganda Movement, with leader-: ship from remnants of a Which had fought against Amin.. '? The Democratic Party, Which won 5 1 seats against the UPC's 72 in the December election, Is the largest opposition party, with considerable strength among the Baganda, and H has not associated itself with the violent opposi tion to Obote. f DP leader Paul Ssemogerere met with President Obote on February 24, and he sought assurances that security forces would follow discipline and not harass DP followers in discriminately. President Obote said that strong in structions 'had been given' to this effect, and both, sides, according to Radio Kampala, "expressed their strong condemnation bf the raids and agreed ' that they were not a reflec tion of anything near a popular uprising, but were the work of lawless elements." I More uncertain was the role of Yoweri Museveni,, and his Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), which Won only one seat in pecember. Government statements have blamed the attacks on Museveni, Who has the following of up to 5,000 soldiers whom :ie had led in the struggle against Amin. Several 'UPM party officials have been detained, and the jfaarty offices ransacked, iiwhile Museveni evidently disappeared from Kam pala several weeks before It he raids. C . According to reports leaching Nairobi, Museveni himself led the fettacjc on the military ft raining v school at iMubende. In addition, a jself-described Museveni Emissary later confirmed fthe UPM leader's involve ment to journalists in Kampala, but the (spokesman named the Jferoup responsible as the Movement for the Strug gle for Political Rights. vThe connection of this fcroup to the previously earned Uganda Freedom Movement or to the UPM fremains obscure, I Museveni has a reputa tion as one of the more leftist ' of Uganda's political leaders, and his I apparent alliance with conservative Baganda, if genuine, is unlikely to last. The government drive against corruption and smugglingjivith its acconv panying perenial shortage of essential supplies for both troops and civilians, is continuing, though no one is yet claiming victory. Internal Affairs Minister William Ogaria, however, said in late February that in the operation numerous multimillionaires, seven district commissioners, five UPC chairmen, three magistrates and two doc tors have been detained. Ogaria pledged that the campaign against magen do (corruption) would continue. N Northern Uganda, both Karamoja in the east and West Nile in the nor thwest, have continued in desperate straits due to drought and violence. Karamoja, long beset by famine, has been sup plied with food by several agencies, including private groups such as the Save the Children Fund and Oxfam, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which has held responsibility for coordination. In an early February news con ference, the two private agencies strongly criticized the UNDP's planning as inadequate, and they urg ed that its responsibilities be handed over to UNICEF. A key problem has been transport for the foodstuffs, With fuel shor tages a recurrent problem. The UNDP's local representative had defend ed the program, and some reports said the critique simply reflected 'bickering in the family." New aid from the Euro pean Economic Com munity, Britain and the -.Lutheran .World .Federa tion, rhean while, appear! -fcr'hive i&enm$i(iS 'W mediate crisis in Karamo ja. More serious is the situation in West Nile, which was, characterized by the official Uganda Times as "hell on earth."l The Times agrees wiuv most ' other sources in charging the government's' own security forces with indiscriminate violence against civilians in their effort to combat guerrillas loyal to deposed dictator Idi Amin. Government troops are alleged to have carried out acts of vengence on the ethnic groups they blame for the massacres that took place When Amin was in power. In the villages of Ad- jumani and Pakelle in mid-February, for exam ple, thousands of villagers of the Madi ethnic group were reported expelled and some 25 killed by soldiers. In October of last year, an estimated 250,000 peo ole fled across the border into Zaire and Sudan after confrontations between the Ugandan army and guerrillas loyal to Idi Amin, and though perhaps 180,000 have now returned to their homes, the harvest is likely to be only some thirty per cent of normal. Movement continues back and forth across the border, in response to the insecure situation, and there are some 75,000 Ugandan refugees reported still in southern Sudan, also in need Of aid. Washington Post cor respondent Jay Ross, who reported on a five-day trip to the area in a Post series February 5, 6 and 7, por trayed the area as extreme ly unstable, and he cited the role of the Verona Catholic missions as pro viding what buffer there is between the army, the guerrillas, and the civilian population. The UNDP early this month allocated $350,000 in emergency relief for- West Nile, described as only a first step in " response to a Ugandan government ap peal. . . : v : Any permanent solu tion, however, clearly depends on the Ugandan government's capacity to establish a military force responsive to discipline, and a civilian governmen tal structure which can alleviate the mistrust of the West Nile population. Tanzanians Want Out DAR ES SALAAM AN Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere wants and needs desperately to withdraw his 10,000 troops from Uganda, but he will have to go against the wishes of his friend Ugandan President Milton Obote in order to do so. A two-year defense pact, under which Tan zania is obliged to provide security for Uganda, ex pires in June, and Presi dent Nyerere has made it clear that he wants to br ing his troops home at that time. Df. Nyerere told a news conference in mid February that Tanzanian troops will withdraw from Uganda in June. "Even if they the Ugandans ask us to stay on, it doesn't mean that we have to say yes," the Tanzanian presi dent remarked. President Obote, on the other hand, has made it equally clear that he feels . there is a need for the Tan zanian army to remain in his country. He told a re cent news conference in Entebbe that Tanzanian forces continue to play a vital role in Uganda. He gave as an example the early February operation mounted when dissident forces attacked police sta tions around Kampala and other cities. "The Ugandan soldiers were very angry," Presi dent Obote said. "They would have killed everyone who was caught. But the Tanzanians are much more experienced at this kind of thing and they 'qu&'iiirr that people - were .jttjejtfjdtf-rp killed "The one thing about which everyone agrees is the fact that the Ugandan army is not up to the task of providing security for the country. Tanzanian officers assigned to train the Ugandans are totally frustrated and demoraliz ed. One officer complain ed that, despite the in sistence of the Tanza nians, Ugandan com manders have refused to create a register of who is in the army: y "The only way to tell a Ugandan soldier is that he has a "uniform and an identity card," the officer said. "So we give a young man basic training and after several months think we have a soldier. Then he gets a month's leave and goes home to his village where he decides he doesn't like the army. So he gives the uniform and the I.D.' card to his brother, and we get back someone with no training at all." The lack of records has also made a shambles of attempts to 'detribalize' the army Tanzania has worked to create after crushing Idi Amin's forces ' two years ago. Ugandan soldiers, instead of staying with the units to which they art assigned, often hear of a kindly comman ding ' officer (invariably from the same ethnic group as the soldier) in another part of the coun try, so they go there. The result is basically Acholi units in the Achou area of northern Uganda, v Ankole units in the west, and so on. The danger of such a development was tragically illustrated late last year when Acholi troops were sent into the West Nile district to put down a rebellion by rem nants of Amin's- forces. The Acholis proceeded to massacre any civilian not prudent enough to flee in to neighboring Zaire or the Sudan. Attemps by Tanzanians ' to gradually turn over responsibility for security on the borders to the Ugandans have, for the most part, come to naught. "We nave them respon sibility for certain areas of the Sudanese border where there are occasional ambushes by small, poorly-armed bands of Amin soldiers," com plained one high-ranking Tanzanian officer. "But the Ugandans refuse to fight. Every time a shot is fired they run back to us. We ask them, 'Why did you run?' and you know what they say? they say, 'We hired Tanzania to take care of this kind of thing. " The 'hiring of Tanza nian army is one of the major reasons the Tanza nians want to get out. Under the defense agree ment, Tanzanian military aid to Uganda consisted of ten Tanzanian officers assigned to work at Ugan dan army headquarters. The Ugandan government agreed to pay all the ex- , penses incurred in keeping 1 0,000 or more Tanzanian troops in Uganda.X However, to date, the Kampala government has not paid Tanzania a single J. A I : ,:.i h'u i THE CAZ3UXA TiMES -13 1." 1;; n 8 1 ADMINISTERS OATH OF OFFICE TRENTON. N.J. - While former Judae Arthur Lane holds the Bible (far riatit). U. S. District Judae Anne Thompson ad ministers the oath of office to former U. S. Attorney Robert Del Tufo (c) as he is sworn as a new member of the State Commission of Investigation at the Court House. Judge Lane is chairman of the SCi. shilling under the agree ment. -Estimates of the cost of keeping the Tanzanians in Uganda range between $1 million and $4 million per month, in either case an amount that financially hard-pressed Tanzania can ill afford. Among Tanzanian soldiers and among the Tanzanian civilian population there is strong sentiment for withdrawal. From brigadiers to top government officials to peasants, there is a feeling ; that Tanzania has sacrific ed more than enough for Uganda and the time to ' turn attention and resources to domestic mat ters is at hand. The popular theory among Tanzanian of ficials and officers at the UP1 PHOTO moment, a theory that conveniently justifies their desire for withdrawal, is that it is the very presence of the Tanzanian army in Uganda which is keeping the Ugandans from being serious about organizing a viable army of their own. . ajar Jjw'hJ,). i 5'l,'", v .- v v x- hi ml Ph rA1 v - - -si h"A - k - I - f$ : t ; " i !,"" vv r;;'..i L"'i M ; X ( j d Save hundreds of dollars now on specially equipped Oldsmobiles during Gold lag Days Right now you can save hundreds of dollars off the manufacturer's suggested retail price on Oldsmo- bile s Popular Option of Oldsniobiles best selling cars. Compact Omega. Mid-size Cutlass. Family-size Delta 88. Cruiser Wagons. But hurry! You must Package compared to the same options bought sep- buy from stock while arately. supplies last. That's six popular op- Think of it. 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The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
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March 28, 1981, edition 1
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