Issue No. 95

Museveni's Long Arm and Militarised Statecraft

Peacekeepers in Somalia, tackling the Daesh-linked Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), securing Juba from a supposed rebel threat-- the Ugandan military certainly has spread itself widely. But is it all as it seems? Kampala likes to cast itself as the 'big brother' of the Great Lakes region, a more stable and secure interlocutor for both the West and Middle Powers than its neighbours. Just in recent weeks, Ugandan forces have spearheaded military operations against Al-Shabaab in Lower Shabelle, Somalia, recapturing several bridge towns – although of dubious strategic value. But it also ruthlessly extracts lumber and minerals in neighbouring South Sudan and the DRC, verging on an irredentist security policy masked by the fragility of these unstable frontier economies. Fused with the government and today led by the mercurial Muhoozi Kainerugaba– the son of President Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) is more than the sum of its parts.

Since the mid-1980s, with the ascension of Museveni to the Ugandan presidency, the UPDF has been at the centre of his consolidation of power, both at home and in neighbouring countries, for the now 80-year-old former guerrilla leader. Excursions into Uganda's neighbours have generally followed a tried-and-tested method of securing a buffer zone against external threats coupled with mass resource extraction. In particular, amid years of conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, which sought to unseat Museveni, the UPDF deployed significant numbers of troops into the territory of then-southern Sudan, as well as the DRC. Amidst this conflict, the Ugandan military developed a well-founded reputation for expeditionary competence, but not always without controversy. In 2022, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Uganda was liable for reparations at a cost of USD 325 million to the DRC for its violations of international law during its occupation of particularly Ituri in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Human rights violations further accompanied several of the larger military campaigns led by the Ugandans in the hunt for the LRA.

The much-documented voracious and destructive exploitation of the DRC's vast natural wealth dates back centuries, particularly under the Belgian colonial rule of Leopold II. Fast forward to today, many of the same dynamics-- albeit with greater targeting of particular rare earth minerals-- continue to play out, with a host of actors operating violent proxies within eastern DRC. Perhaps the best-known and certainly what has generated the headlines of recent months are the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels, who seized the city of Goma and a string of towns earlier this year. M23 —and others —have relentlessly and violently mined the DRC for its natural wealth, before exporting it through Kigali and onto international markets for ample profits. And yet much overlooked, the Ugandan military carried out similar operations in the late 1990s, as well as under 'Operation Shujaa' today, in eastern DRC.

Following the series of ADF bombings in Kampala in 2021, Uganda launched the Shujaa campaign with the consent of Kinshasa. Intended to secure road corridors and dismantle ADF camps, there has been a notable lack of active engagement with the Islamist group-- which continues to adapt and develop new military capabilities. Though perhaps less ostentatious in their resource extraction and civilian violence than their Rwandan counterparts, Ugandan military deployments are similarly anchored in rent-seeking behaviours under the partial guise of security-driven peacekeeping. Seemingly legitimate counter-insurgency rationale, such as the threat of Daesh, is blended with Kampala's own irredentist, commercial, and political ambitions. 

Control of arable land and gold are pre-eminent in the Ugandan-formed resource extractive frontier economies, with the latter bountiful in Ituri and Kivu and often refined or traded through Uganda and exported onwards. It is not exclusively Ugandan forces carrying out the extraction, but they have helped forge the environment in which intermediary companies operate for Kampala's benefit. Though data on the scale of such murky extraction is difficult to ascertain, evidence such as the new Chinese-owned 'Wagagi plant' points to a burgeoning refinement sector that outstrips Uganda's own domestic gold production. And in 2022, the owner of the African Gold Refinery company in Uganda was sanctioned by the US for their involvement in illicit DRC gold networks. All the while, there remains minimal actual confrontation between the UPDF and the ADF itself. For why would they undermine the purpose for which they were first permitted to operate within the DRC?

South Sudan is another, far more controversial site of repeated Ugandan military intervention. In 2013, Ugandan special forces deployed to Juba amidst the outbreak of civil war between the Kiir regime and Riek Machar's forces, among others, on behalf of their South Sudanese allies. Eventually, under a peace accord, the UPDF withdrew, but the close partnership between Kampala and Juba has endured-- as has the Ugandan presence near and within South Sudan, economically developed. Under the Kiir government, Juba has been reduced to a criminal enterprise, a privatised state in the hands of a handful of individuals where access to the levers of power is tied to the levers of finance, with the licit and illicit economies entirely blurred. Ugandan elite happily operate in this milieu. South Sudan is one of the principal export markets for Uganda, which dispatches construction materials and foodstuffs to the neighbouring impoverished country. But Ugandan forces routinely cross over into South Sudan as well and operate with near-total impunity to collect resources and protect Ugandan farms within their neighbour's sovereign territory. In July, this triggered deadly clashes between South Sudanese and Ugandan forces, while opposition parliamentarians in Juba have repeatedly protested such infringements.

Then, earlier this year in March, the Salva Kiir regime launched yet another offensive against the supposed 'bases' of the White Army in Nasir County, the rudimentary coalition of Nuer self-defence militias that has long resisted Juba's reach. It was a poorly-disguised massacre, with incendiary bombs dropped on villages and towns without the barest of justifications and to reassert control over the profitable checkpoint economy. And the UPDF-- ever the trustworthy ally of the Kiir government-- were drafted in as well, with special forces deployed to and near the capital and warplanes strafing 'rebel' positions. However, another interesting story emerged alongside this in a July New Humanitarian article, detailing the collaboration between Fogbow, a deeply suspect US 'humanitarian' organisation, and BAR Aviation, a Ugandan company affiliated with the UPDF, which supplied planes used for aid drops into Nasir. The concerning, incestuous relationship developing between dubious humanitarian work, military offensives, and resource extraction points to a new world order that is anything but brave.

The final case study of Ugandan military interventions, which defies the stereotype of interventions in its neighbours, is the successive African Union peacekeeping operations in Somalia. One of the largest contingents under the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) and tasked with defending Sector 1 that incorporates Mogadishu, the UPDF have established itself as one of the more competent foreign forces in the unstable country today. Not only that, but Museveni has repeatedly intervened in the political context of Somalia, summoning both President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and his predecessor to Kampala to explain their calamitous military decision-making that has empowered Al-Shabaab in turn. Following the Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) summit in April, Kampala subsequently increased its bilateral forces serving in 'Operation Silent Storm' in Lower Shabelle, seemingly without international recompense. Such operations have not come without costs, with several notable bombings carried out by Al-Shabaab inflicting dozens of casualties on Ugandan soldiers. And in 2023, the overrunning of the Bulo Marer UPDF base by the jihadists triggered significant recriminations at home. Unlike Kenya and Ethiopia, Uganda has naturally far fewer vested interests within Somalia, and its involvement within the peacekeeping mission perhaps points to a broader concern of regional stability in the Horn of Africa. 

Marrying these different visions of Uganda's force projection is complex, but Kampala is more than a rapacious resource-extractor or destabilising presence. Many of the geopolitical roads of the region run through Kampala, which continues to wield considerable clout on the international stage despite sullied Western ties over LGBTQ+ and democratic repression. But what is clear is that Kampala appears content to ruthlessly pursue its own particular and distinct interests under various guises, routinely framed within a peacekeeping or stabilising rhetoric and operations. And in a region certain to continue wrestling with political upheaval and transitions for some time to come, Uganda's militarised statecraft and UPDF expeditions are likely to continue quietly playing a double-handed role.

The Horn Edition Team