Stumbling Onto The Truth About Museveni

Yoweri Museveni Leads Child Soldiers In The 1980's

A crumbling black and white photograph shows a young militia commander (and there are more photographs here) leading a revolution against a retrenched and brutal dictator. As a frontline leader, he is "hands on" in the indoctrination of troops. The problem is, these are soldiers that should instead be in middle school. I have heard the stories, many times, about how Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ran childrens brigades in his uprising against the Obote regime.

Its embarassing, hearing from so many African voices - but not waking up to the truth - until seeing evidence firsthand. Shameful, more like it - not to have listened sooner. And emblematic of the equally shameful treatement by the West - of brave Africans working for democracy - and how they must cope with Western donor entropy and intransigence. Take the many times I have heard how the whole Joseph Kony LRA "crisis" is maintained by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to obscure external focus on the way he operates "Uganda Ltd." for his family/inner circle/tribal benefit.

The child soldier situation is something about which Uganda's president knows a great deal. He operated a guerilla army using child soldiers twenty five years ago. And now former child soldiers are telling about their treatment while under the control of Museveni's army.

To understand, you only need to read this story from the Harvard Friends of Amnesty International - the story of China Keitetsi, which I commend to you in full.

China's story is also told here by RaceMatters.org and Amnesty International - based on her memoir about serving as a child soldier under Museveni:

China Keitetsi's autobiography is currently (in 1992 - ed.) number two on Germany's best-seller list. Its title is "They Took Away My Mother and Gave Me a Gun," and that is literally what happened to her. At the age of 8, Keitetsi wandered away from her village in rural Uganda and became lost in the bush. She was found by two men who were soldiers in the rebel army of General Yoweri Museveni, then fighting against the government forces of President Milton Obote. The men recruited her as one of Museveni's child soldiers. Since that time, Keitetsi's life has been a harrowing odyssey, which, miraculously, she has managed to survive. Now 26, she lives in Denmark and has devoted her life to ending the use of children as soldiers, a practice that is alarmingly common worldwide.

It is not too much to ask - that there should be an international treaty, along the lines of work done against landmines, establishing a clear moral as well as international legal holding that use of children as soldiers is illegal, immoral and unacceptable in any context. Hopefully China Keitetsi will receive the thanks she deserves for moving this issue forward.

There are other stories as well, told here - and additionally that of Okwir Rabwoni - a former Member of Parliament in Uganda, he also worked as an aide to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Today Rabwoni lives in exile in London - and as a human rights advocate with impeccable credibility, recounts a tale of life as a child soldier under the command of Museveni:

It was the mid-1980s, and we were attacking a fortified garrison in western Uganda. I was 15 years old and part of a movement that aimed to rid my country of the corrupt regime of Milton Obote, who had succeeded the murderous Idi Amin.

My leader was an inspiring, brave and talented man, Yoweri Museveni, now Uganda's President. Museveni believed that young fighters not only needed martial skills but also a political awareness of the cause for which they fought - an end to the greed and self-delusion of Africa's post-independence leadership. While still a teenager, I learned that the goal of war was social and political transformation. In battle, I came to pity enemy prisoners because I had a cause to fight for and they did not. Motivated by a political agenda - renovation of my battered country - I rose through the ranks to become a trusted aide in the circle around Museveni. In 1986, not long after my 16th birthday, Museveni ousted Obote. The war was over. But not for me. No longer a rebel but now a leader in the Ugandan army, I was sent for military training to Cuba, Libya and North Korea.

Museveni was trained in Tanzania, then a Marxist country - to this day his rhetoric belies that background. But to be fair, one can visit just about any public university in Africa and have a "flashback" to the old Soviet mindset.

Okwir Rabwoni's story is fascinating, and chilling - as he recounts:

Tired of war, the following year I turned politician,winning a seat in parliament as a member of Museveni’s “Movement” group,the only legal party in Uganda. Last year, I began to fear that Museveni had become yet another African dictator, more concerned with power than principle. Part of my quarrel with him concerned his failure to establish a genuine multi-party democracy; also, I objected to mounting corruption. The World Bank and other foreign donors supply half of the Ugandan government’s budget, but a third of the money is wasted on senseless military actions such as Uganda’s invasion of the Congo. Museveni holds ultimate responsibility for this corruption. I defected to a new opposition party and campaigned on behalf of Museveni’s opponent in last year’s presidential election. Even though Museveni faced no risk of losing, he took no chances, arresting his opponent’s aids and supporters. Though I had fought faithfully in Museveni’s army as a child, I was now an adult and a critic, so he arrested me too. Tortured by my own brother (Museveni’s chief of internal security), I was released after local and international pressure, and I left Uganda for Britain.

This is a situation crying for broad-based, multi-governmental investigation. It is horribly reminiscent of Iraq under Saddamm Hussein.

The situation in northern Uganda has been allowed to fester over many years. This post on the blog Discarded Lies provides a timeline of recent events in the north of Uganda:

"Why didn't the government use all its clout [to stop the killing] for all those years? To isolate the north," said Ronald Reagan Okumu, an outspoken opposition legislator from Gulu. (Born in 1969, he was named after an American screen idol whom his parents admired.)

Ugandan officials have insisted repeatedly that negotiations with the LRA are hampered by the group's inability to set a clear agenda, a view shared by Western donors.

"Until three years ago, there was a conspiracy of silence in the international community," a European diplomat in Kampala said. "The donors supported Museveni economically and politically, and this allowed the cancer of the north to develop."

Things began to change after the LRA was designated as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration in late 2001. Shortly afterward, Sudan allowed Ugandan troops to cross the border to attack LRA bases. Washington gave the Ugandans some nonlethal military assistance.

But the biggest Ugandan operation, Iron Fist, which took place in March 2002, backfired. It pushed the rebels back into northern Uganda, provoking a major humanitarian crisis as villagers fled to camps. "The situation changed from a low-level local conflict into an international embarrassment for Museveni," a Western diplomat said.

At that point, the donor community pressed Museveni to launch a genuine peace initiative. Betty Bigombe, a respected former minister then working at the World Bank, was brought in to mediate.

Urbane Analysis: Which leads us to where things stand today - a situation that for years could have been "turned around" quickly, if Museveni had the will to make it so. Now it is breaking out into one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet - and the Joseph Kony-LRA cult child army is a major linchpin in explaining why the Sudan-Congo-Uganda border area situation is a morass of horrible conditions. Unfortunately, the Western donor community of governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are reluctant to even conference, much less present a unified manifesto (and plans) to force Museveni's hand regarding his regime's role in this crisis.

And that's why, come the first week of July, regular citizens will start a month's campaign to change that paradigm. Live8 is coming - and though it is all about the G8 summit - the timing is right to focus on Museveni as well. Museveni is a poster boy for how things have gone wrong in Africa.