A Tyrant in Trouble

This time, Big Daddy may really be on the ropes

"Kampala by March!"

That is the rallying cry of a determined armed force that entered southern Uganda a few weeks ago from northern Tanzania. The invaders, composed of recently organized bands of Ugandan exiles, slipped into Uganda amid heavy fighting between regular Tanzanian and Ugandan forces on the border. By last week they had advanced 50 miles and had fought their way to Masaka, a city just 80 miles from Kampala, Uganda's capital. Their goal: to overthrow Idi Amin Dada, 55, the self-styled President-for-Life whose tyrannical regime is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 Ugandans in the past eight years.

A similar force was quickly defeated by the Ugandan army in 1972, a year after Amin seized power. But this time the invaders seem to have the upper hand.

Since October, the Tanzanians have shot down 18 of Amin's 26 combat aircraft, and in one recent week captured a Soviet T-55 tank, seven armored cars and other equipment. Some Ugandan army units based at Masaka and nearby Mbarara are reported to be in rebellion. Says a Western diplomat in Nairobi, capital of neighboring Kenya: "It looks as if Amin has abandoned all of southern Uganda."

Amin's problems have been further complicated by a wave of sabotage. On Feb. 3, a fuel depot and two electrical substations were blown up in Kampala, knocking out power and water supplies in the area for three days. The Save Uganda Movement, one of several guerrilla groups operating inside the country, claimed responsibility for the attack. The State Research Bureau, Amin's notorious secret police agency, has arrested hundreds of "suspects," but has failed to crush the guerrillas. With pride, the leader of one anti-Amin group declared in Nairobi: "Our office in Kampala was searched and four of our boys were taken away. But I know they died bravely, because the rest of our organization is still intact."

The current fighting dates from October, when Amin's forces invaded northern Tanzania, hoping to annex a section of territory that Amin had long coveted. The action caused some 4,000 Ugandans who had previously escaped from their country to gather in Tanzania near the fighting area. There they received rudimentary military training, then crossed the border and began to link up with dissidents inside Uganda.

After years of living in silence in Tanzania, the man whom Amin overthrew as Uganda's President, Milton Obote, called on the Ugandan army to rebel against "this regime of terror."

Finally, in early February, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, fed up with repeated territorial squabbles with Amin, announced that he had ordered his forces "to cross the border and fight inside Uganda if Amin tries to invade Tanzania again." Says a Ugandan exile leader: "That was taken by us to be the signal that the onslaught is on."

This time, no one seems to want to lend even rhetorical assistance to Amin. Neither the United Nations nor the Organization of African Unity has condemned the invasion, despite his appeals. Amin may have managed to buy a few weapons from Iraq, but his traditional arms suppliers, Libya and the Soviet Union, apparently have cut off his credit. At least a third of Amin's 21,000-man army is now composed of Nubian mercenaries from southern Sudan, a group he trusts more than his own countrymen, and morale is at an all time low.

TIME Reporter Tony Avirgan interviewed one Ugandan guerrilla, a tall, sturdily built man who calls himself Faki Kuli, in Tanzania. Kuli, 25, recalls that his father, a sergeant-major in the Ugandan army, his mother and two brothers were killed by Amin's soldiers during a barracks purge in 1974. Kuli escaped to Kenya and joined a dissident group. Eventually he re-entered Uganda and began to take part in sabotage activities; he helped blow up the fuel depot in Kampala. Says Kuli: "I cannot say to the day when Amin will go, but it will be within six months. I am perfectly willing to die. I have nothing to live for but to kill Amin." This time, many others appear to share the view that Big Daddy's swaggering days may indeed be numbered.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.