[wanabidii] Amin’s true colour begins to show – and it’s blood red

One of the main agenda items that Idi Amin's new cabinet discussed was the release of political prisoners who had been jailed under Obote's regime. Those eventually released included former ministers Grace Ibingira, Balaki Kirya, George Magezi, Mathias Ngobi and Emmanuel Lumu. Also released were Benedicto Kiwanuka, Sheikh Kulumba and Prince Kakungulu, among others. However, while Amin was offering peace with one hand, he was waging a hidden purge with the other. As earlier noted, Amin had gone onto a recruiting spree, raising 10,000 new men, mostly from his tribe and region, within three months. This recruitment drive was informed by Amin's need to create a loyal faction within the army, which was dominated by Obote's Langi kinsmen and Acholi fighters. Amin was also confronted by existential regional threats. There was Obote and his fighters (as well as a small group of fighters led by a one Yoweri Museveni) that had assembled in Tanzania and were plotting an invasion to recapture power. In February 1971, Obote reportedly visited Sudan and successfully lobbied for support to set up a camp for his fighters, estimated at close to a thousand, at Owiny-Kibul, in present-day South Sudan. In addition, Amin was facing regional and international pressure. President Julius Nyerere and his Tanzanian government had refused to recognise the new regime in Uganda and had offered sanctuary to the former regime members. he Organisation of African Unity was, similarly, reluctant to recognise the new regime. When Foreign Minister Wanume Kibedi and his delegation turned up in Addis Ababa, the headquarters of the OAU, for a council of ministers meeting in February 1971, they were blocked from participating. "The non-recognition of the delegation was an affront and a blow to Amin's prestige, and was pregnant with repercussions at home," notes Prof. Phares Mutibwa. He adds: "Amin had a strong sense of insecurity, and the predominance of the Acholi in the army worried him especially, for at the time of the coup one-third of the army were Acholi and Amin was not sure of their loyalty to him. The activities of Obote and his supporters to oust him from power only increased his killer instinct and his determination to strike a blow against the Acholi and Langi soldiers as well as civilian leaders." Would Amin have been less violent if his regime did not face the existential threats from the troops massing in neighbouring countries? We might never have an answer to what is a hypothetical question – and critics will point out, with justification, that Amin had already demonstrated his proclivity to violence during his expedition to the Turkana area in the late 1950s, and his subsequent acts of violence under the Obote regime. Faced with these threats, and having assembled his own fighters to join the army, Amin then proceeded to consolidate his grip on the military by targeting the Acholi and Langi soldiers who had previously made up the bulk of the Uganda Army. "Amin then set about methodically resolving the factional split within the army through the physical elimination of the opposing faction," writes Prof. Mahmood Mamdani. The killings appear to have kicked off in earnest around July 1971 when a coup attempt against the new regime was uncovered, leading to widespread massacres of Acholi and Langi soldiers in Jinja, Moroto and Mbarara barracks. Other historians note that the killings began much earlier, within weeks of the coup. "In the first few weeks after the coup d'etat, Amin had set about eliminating his opponents in the army," Kasozi noted in his book, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda. "While Obote used the 1967 Detention Act to lock his opponents in prisons where they were 'well treated', Amin killed them. "Such was the fate of various high-ranking officers known or perceived to be his opponents. There were mass killings of members of the [General Service Unit], the Special Force, police, prisoners and civilians." Kasozi notes that in March 1971, more than 30 Acholi and Langi soldiers were dynamited at Makindye barracks. "On 22 July 1971 about 150 to 500 Acholis and Langis from Simba Battalion, Mbarara, were herded into trucks, taken to an isolated ranch and gunned down." In his book Kasozi documents further killings: "On going to Israel and Europe in July 1971, Amin gave orders for the elimination of the Langi and Acholi soldiers, fearing they might organise a coup. At Mbarara, soldiers from these ethnic groups were separated from the rest and taken to their deaths." On July 9, 1971, about 20 new Acholi/Langi recruits were killed while some 50 Acholi and Langi soldiers were killed at Magamaga Ordnance Depot between 10 and 14 July 1971. More killings were reported in Masindi, Soroti and Kitgum military barracks while on 2 February 1972 "about 117 soldiers and other security men of the Obote regime were mowed down as they tried to escape". When Robert Siedle, a sociology lecturer at Makerere University and journalist Nicholas Stroh, both Americans, attempted to investigate some of the massacres at Simba Barracks in Mbarara, they were both shot dead by some of Amin's soldiers. Kasozi notes, chillingly, that many people looked the other way in the early days of the Amin's regime despite the rising body count. "What is upsetting about Ugandans is that while the Langi and the Acholi suffered, many laughed, thinking their turn would never come, just as they had laughed at the Baganda in 1966. But wherever violence occurs in the state, it eventually overflows to everyone. By 1971, the fires of political violence that had been lit at Nakulabye were spreading into the rural areas of Apac, Lira and Gulu. Soon they would scorch all the land." editorial@ug.nationmedia.com http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Amin+s+true+colour+begins+to+show+++and+it+s+blood+red/-/688334/1504584/-/item/1/-/2id3lyz/-/index.html

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