Toward Ceaseless Chaos

Two years after Idi Amin, no peace for a divided land

When Uganda's newly elected President Milton Obote pledged his government to a policy of national reconciliation, he stirred hopes that his brutalized East Central African country might at last begin to heal its wounds. But in the four months since he resumed the office from which Dictator Idi Amin Dada ousted him a decade ago, there has been no peace between the country's bitterly divided political and tribal groups. Charging that the elections won by his Uganda People's Congress (U.P.C.) had been rigged, two rebel armies have launched an offensive aimed at toppling Obote's regime. In retaliation, scores of people have been murdered by both Obote's ragtag army and a sinister array of secret police organizations whose homicidal excesses begin to rival those of Amin's dreaded State Research Bureau. TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Jack White went to Kampala last week to assess the country's continuing travail. His report:

In the inflation-ridden capital, where an average worker's monthly wages will buy enough food for just three days, the only cheap commodity is life itself. In March, antigovernment guerrillas ambushed a succession of army convoys and police stations, slaying 120 soldiers and police. The army responded with a vengeance. In raids throughout the capital, soldiers slaughtered 65 Kampala residents, including a 16-year-old schoolgirl, and dumped the bodies in a forest outside the city that Amin's goon squad used to dispose of its victims.

Since then, the guerrillas have changed their tactics, attacking lone U.P.C. officials or small groups of government soldiers. Diplomats believe that the two main groups--the Uganda Freedom Movement, composed mainly of Obote-hating Baganda tribesmen, and the People's Revolutionary Army led by ex-Defense Minister Yoweri Museveni--are biding their time until June. That is when the 10,000 Tanzanian troops who remained in Uganda after they helped to overthrow Amin in 1979 are scheduled to be withdrawn. Their departure will leave a dangerous power vacuum. Speculates a Western diplomat: "Any of three things could happen. Obote might hang on. The guerrillas might overthrow him. Or he might be ousted by dissatisfied elements within his own party."

This temporizing forecast accurately reflects the uncertain political climate in Kampala. Though Obote was widely believed to be the only Ugandan politician able to unite the country's warring factions, it is now generally agreed that he is today little more than a figurehead. Whatever real power exists in Uganda's government, diplomats believe, is wielded by Vice President and Defense Minister Paulo Muwanga. Last May Muwanga orchestrated the fall of Uganda's second post-Amin head of state--Godfrey Binaisa--and installed himself as chairman of the six-man military commission that ruled the country until last December's elections. Muwanga presided over the ballot counting that gave Obote's U.P.C. a majority over the rival Democratic Party, which has since accused Muwanga of tampering with the results. Muwanga has flatly denied the charge. He told TIME last week: "If we had wanted to impose Milton on the country, we could have done it with impunity."

Muwanga is believed to coordinate the government's increasingly harsh effort to intimidate its enemies by force. As Defense Minister, he supervises Uganda's unruly 5,000-man army which, he admits, is used more for internal security than to defend the country against external threats. "This is a necessity because the police force was nearly wiped out by Amin." As if to punctuate his remarks, a burst of shots fired by a nervous soldier crackled outside Muwanga's suite in Kampala's Nile Mansions Hotel.

The Ugandan soldiers who man dozens of checkpoints in the capital are often indistinguishable from outlaws. Troops routinely rob and harass passersby. Two months ago, a Ugandan company commander, leading his men on a looting expedition, was fatally wounded when a bullet he fired into a door lock ricocheted into his chest. The next day, claiming that the officer had been killed by insurgents, soldiers swooped down on the neighborhood and robbed every home.

Two other menacing groups are operating in Uganda. One is the so-called Special Force, a motley conglomeration of young U.P.C. thugs authorized to arrest persons suspected of magendo--the Swahili word for black marketeering. Virtually everyone in Uganda must purchase essential commodities on the black market, which potentially makes the entire population guilty of magendo. More often than not, Special Force agents are willing to accept a bribe in lieu of an arrest; the going rate is 3,000 Uganda shillings, the equivalent of 400 U.S. dollars.

More deadly is the trained intelligence organization known as the National Security Service. Muwanga, declaring that "this government has no desire to set up any secret police," claims Obote would like to disband the N.S.S. But its breakup, he maintains, has been hampered because "to phase out people who have been trained in espionage and counterespionage, who know how to shoot to kill, is not easy." Meanwhile, the N.S.S. is growing so quickly that reportedly it has taken over the entire Park Hotel headquarters it once shared with a police investigative unit.

More violence seems unavoidable. Anti-Obote guerrillas make boasts of future victory. Muwanga says: "The government shall overcome." What is most likely is an inconclusive struggle in which Uganda--once known as the "pearl of Africa"--degenerates into ceaseless chaos.

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