Amin's military experience, which was virtually his only experience, determined the character of his rule. He renamed Government House "the
Command Post", instituted an advisory defence council composed of military commanders, placed military tribunals above the system of
civil law, appointed soldiers to top government posts and
parastatal agencies, and even informed the newly inducted civilian cabinet ministers that they would be subject to military discipline. Uganda then became a military dictatorship which was, in effect, governed from a collection of military barracks scattered across the country, where battalion commanders, acting like local warlords, represented the coercive arm of the government. The Ugandan General Service Unit (GSU), an intelligence agency created by the previous government, was disbanded and replaced by the Ugandan
State Research Bureau (SRB). SRB headquarters at
Nakasero became the scene of torture and executions over the next couple of years. Martin Ewans, the chief of the British Foreign Office's East Africa Desk wrote in 1977 that Amin's rule reflected his background in the
King's African Rifles, writing: "All this, however, is qualified by Amin's training as a British "other rank". As the British army says, ‘if you see something, whitewash it; if it moves, salute it’. To some extent, Amin rules Uganda like an army barracks. First, the whitewash. Kampala, for example, is-or was when I last saw it-a well-run city. The hedges are cut, the verges trimmed, the road signs painted. Amin himself dresses immaculately, if bizarrely. Appearances are important...Not only in good order, however, but also military discipline. Ministers obey instructions, the Commanding Officer gives and receives "briefings". Affairs are run from a "command post". Wrong-doers are, so to speak, put on a charge and shot for desertion; if you need some serious law-enforcement, you have a court martial. The concept of hierarchy prevails over that of persuasion or consultation." The British anthropologist Mark Leopold noted that Amin had served in the King's African Rifles during the Kenya Emergency in the 1950s, during which he and others had engaged in "unrestrained violence" against the Kenyans, and that much of Amin's leadership style reflected his formative years. Despite its outward display of a military chain of command, Amin's government was arguably more consumed with rivalries, regional divisions, and ethnic politics than the
Uganda People's Congress (UPC) coalition that it had replaced. The army itself was an arena of lethal competition, in which losers were usually eliminated. Within the officer corps, those trained in Britain opposed those trained in Israel, and both stood against the untrained, who soon eliminated many of the army's most experienced officers. In 1966, well before the Amin era, northerners in the army had assaulted and harassed soldiers from the south. In 1971 and 1972, the
Lugbara and
Kakwa (Amin's ethnic group) from the West Nile were slaughtering northern
Acholi and
Langi, who were identified with Obote. Then the Kakwa fought the Lugbara. Amin came to rely on
Nubians and on former
Anyanya rebels from southern
Sudan. Starting in March 1971, Amin embarked a policy of systematically disarming and massacring Acholi and Langi soldiers, whom he viewed as potentially disloyal to his regime. The pace of the purge was greatly increased following several mutinies in July 1971. Amin recruited his followers from his own tribe, the Kakwas, along with Sudanese and Nubians. By 1977, these three groups formed 60% of the 22 top generals and 75% of the cabinet. Similarly, Muslims formed 80% and 87.5% of these groups even though they were only 5% of the population. This helps explain why Amin survived eight attempted coups. By 1972, the Ugandan Army was largely made of men from the West Nile Province (Amin's home province) along men from the provinces in the Congo and the Sudan that bordered the West Nile Province. The Ugandan army grew from 10,000 to over 25,000 by 1978. Amin's army was largely a mercenary force. Half the soldiers were Sudanese, 26% Congolese, only 24% were Ugandan, mostly Muslim and Kakwa. The new Ugandan Army formed by Amin was largely undisciplined and came to support themselves by looting and stealing, which gave the new Amin regime a narrow, but real base of support while alienating the rest of the Ugandan population. On 7 August 1973, Idi Amin decreed Swahili was to be Uganda's official language. Twelve out of the twenty districts had chosen this, the other eight wanted Luganda. The army, which had been progressively expanded under Obote, was further doubled and redoubled under Amin. Recruitment was largely, but not entirely, in the north. There were periodic
purges, when various battalion commanders were viewed as potential problems or became real threats. Each purge provided new opportunities for promotions from the ranks. The commander of the Uganda Air Force, Smuts Guweddeko, had previously worked as a telephone operator; the unofficial executioner for the regime, Major
Isaac Maliyamungu, had formerly been a nightwatch officer. By the mid-1970s, only the most trustworthy military units were allowed ammunition, although this prohibition did not prevent a series of mutinies and murders. An attempt by an American
journalist, Nicholas Stroh, and his colleague, Robert Siedle, to investigate one of these barracks outbreaks in 1971 at the Simba battalion in
Mbarara led to their disappearances and, later, deaths. Several army officers who were suspected of having been involved in the murder of Stroh and Siedle were later appointed to high-ranking positions: Among these were Military Tribunal chairman
Juma Butabika, chief technical officer of the airforce Captain Taban, Minister of Transport Juma Sabuni, and Minister for Provincial Administration
Ali Fadhul.
Muammar Gaddafi and the Soviet Union During his eight years as Uganda's ruler, Amin never forgot the source of his power. He spent much of his time rewarding, promoting, and manipulating the officers and soldiers of the Ugandan army. Financing his ever-increasing military expenditures was a continuing concern. Early in 1972, he reversed
foreign policy — never a major issue for Amin — to secure financial and military aid from
Muammar Gaddafi of
Libya. Amin expelled the remaining Israeli advisers, to whom he was much indebted, and became
anti-Israel. To induce foreign aid from
Saudi Arabia, he rediscovered his previously neglected
Islamic heritage. Amin was very close to King
Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who won his favor in 1972 by giving him a lavish private jet to travel in, which was considerably more luxurious than the private jet he had received from Israel the previous year. He also commissioned the construction of a great
mosque on
Kampala Hill in the capital city, but it was never completed during his rule because much of the money intended for it was
embezzled. In 2008 Amin's dream of building one of Africa's largest mosques came true, and construction was finally completed more than 30 years after it initially began. Following his foreign policy reversal in 1972, the
Soviet Union became Amin's largest arms supplier.
East Germany helped to build Amin's secret police. During the Tanzanian invasion in 1979, East Germany attempted to remove evidence about its involvement.
Expulsion of Asians and nationalisations In August 1972, Amin gave most of Uganda's 80,000 Asians, most of whom were the descendants of indentured servants and other laborers from India, 90 days to leave the country, and seized their property, homes and businesses. At the time of the expulsion, there were approximately 80,000 individuals of South Asian descent in Uganda, of whom 23,000 had had their applications for citizenship both processed and accepted. Amin defended the expulsion by arguing that he was giving Uganda back to the ethnic Ugandan. Soldiers frequently engaged in poaching in national parks and game reserves. In course of the Uganda–Tanzania War, Uganda Army troops and Tanzanian soldiers hunted for food and profit across Uganda, causing further
environmental damage.
Government Amin's government, conducted by often erratic personal proclamation, continued on. Because he was illiterate his entire life — a disability shared with most of his fellow military officers and soldiers — Amin relayed orders and policy decisions orally by telephone, over the radio, and in long rambling speeches to which civil servants were told to pay close attention. The bureaucracy soon became paralysed as government administrators feared to make what might prove to be a wrong decision that would displease or anger Amin in the slightest which would result in their immediate arrest and imprisonment or
summary execution. Shortly after Amin seized power, the Minister of Defence demanded, and was given, command of the Ministry of Education office building, but then the decision was reversed by Amin for no clear reason. Important education files were lost during their transfer back and forth by wheelbarrow. In many respects, Amin's government in the 1970s resembled the governments of nineteenth-century African monarchs, with the same problems of enforcing orders at a distance, controlling rival factions at court, and rewarding loyal followers with plunder. Indeed, Amin's regime was possibly less efficient than those of the pre-colonial monarchs. Religious conflict was another characteristic of the Amin regime that had its origins in the nineteenth century. After rediscovering his Islamic allegiance in the effort to gain foreign aid from
Libya and
Saudi Arabia, Amin began to pay more attention to the formerly deprived Muslims in Uganda, a move which turned out to be a mixed blessing for them. Muslims began to do well in what economic opportunities yet remained, the more so if they had relatives in the army. Construction work began on Kibuli Hill, the site of Kampala's most prominent mosque. Many Ugandan Muslims with a sense of history believed that the Muslim defeat by Christians in 1889 was finally being redressed. Christians, in turn, perceived that they were under siege as a religious group; it was clear that Amin viewed the churches as potential centres of opposition. A number of priests and ministers disappeared in the course of the 1970s, but the matter reached a climax with the formal protest against army terrorism in 1977 by
Church of Uganda ministers, led by Archbishop
Janani Luwum. Although Luwum's body was subsequently recovered from a clumsily contrived "car accident", subsequent investigations revealed that Luwum had been shot dead. This latest in a long line of atrocities was greeted with international condemnation, but apart from the continued trade
boycott initiated by the United States in July 1978, verbal condemnation was not accompanied by action. In September 1978, Amin banned nearly all Christian Church activities for their subversiveness. By early 1978 Amin's circle of close associates had shrunk significantly — the result of defections and executions. Because of his violent temper as well as his erratic and unpredictable behaviour, it was increasingly risky to be too close to Amin, as his vice president and formerly trusted associate, General
Mustafa Adrisi, discovered. When Adrisi was injured in a suspicious auto accident, troops loyal to him became restive. The once reliable Malire Mechanized Regiment mutinied, as did other units. In October 1978, Amin sent troops still loyal to him against the mutineers, some of whom fled across the Tanzanian border. Amin then claimed that Tanzanian President Nyerere, his perennial enemy, had been at the root of his troubles. Amin accused Nyerere of waging war against Uganda, and, hoping to divert attention from his internal troubles and rally Uganda against the foreign adversary, Amin
invaded Tanzanian territory and formally annexed a section across the Kagera River boundary on 1 November 1978.
Uganda–Tanzania War Declaring a formal state of war against Uganda, Nyerere mobilized his citizen army reserves and counter-attacked, joined by Ugandan exiles united as the
Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). The Ugandan Army retreated steadily, expending much of its energy by looting along the way. Libya's
Gaddafi sent 3,000 troops to aid Amin, but the Libyans soon found themselves on the front line, while behind them Ugandan Army units were using supply trucks to carry their newly plundered wealth in the opposite direction. Tanzania and the UNLA
took Kampala on 11 April 1979, and Amin fled by air, first to Libya and later to a permanent exile at
Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia. Though pro-Amin forces were left scattered and disjointed by the seizure of the capital, combat operations in the country continued until 3 June, when Tanzanian forces reached the Sudanese border and eliminated the last resistance. ==See also==