The Ugandan Bush War was a civil war fought in Uganda by the official Ugandan government and its armed wing, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), against a number of rebel groups, most importantly the National Resistance Army (NRA), from 1980 to 1986.
The unpopular President Milton Obote was overthrown in a coup d'état in 1971 by General Idi Amin, who established a military dictatorship. Amin was overthrown in 1979 following the Uganda-Tanzania War, but his loyalists started the Bush War by launching an insurgency in the West Nile region in 1980. Subsequent elections saw Obote return to power in a UNLA-ruled government. Several opposition groups claimed the elections were rigged, and united as the NRA under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni to start an armed uprising against Obote's government on 6 February 1981. Obote was overthrown and replaced as president by his general Tito Okello in 1985 during the closing months of the conflict. Okello formed a coalition government consisting of his followers and several armed opposition groups, which agreed to a peace deal. In contrast, the NRA refused to compromise with the government, and conquered much of western and southern Uganda in a number of offensives from August to December 1985.
The NRA captured Kampala, Uganda's capital, in January 1986. It subsequently established a new government with Museveni as president, while the UNLA fully disintegrated in March 1986. Obote and Okello went into exile. Despite the nominal end of the civil war, numerous anti-NRA rebel factions and militias remained active, and would continue to fight Museveni's government in the next decades.
Names
The Ugandan Bush War is also known by a variety of other names. For instance, Ugandan Civil War has also been used, though this title has also been employed for other military conflicts such as the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency. As a result of the eventual victory of the NRM, several alternate titles for the 1980–1986 conflict reference the rebel group and its main theater of operations, the Luwero Triangle: These include Luwero War, National Resistance Movement revolution, or Resistance War.
Background
In 1971, the President of Uganda Milton Obote was overthrown in a coup d'état by parts of the Uganda Army which put Idi Amin in power. Obote had been president since Uganda's independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, and his regime saw a general decline in living standards in the country, with growing corruption, factional violence, and persecution of ethnic groups. Obote's increasing unpopularity led him to believe rivals were beginning to plot against him, particularly Amin and arranged a purge to occur while he was outside of the country. As Amin was popular in sections of the military, his loyalists responded by acting first and overthrowing the government, forcing Obote into exile in Tanzania. Despite initial popularity, Amin quickly turned to despotism and established a military dictatorship which accelerated the decline of Obote's regime, destroying the country's economy and political system.
As time went on, Amin's regime was increasingly destabilized by factionalism and economic decline, while opposition groups as well as dissatisfied elements of the Uganda Army repeatedly attempted to organize uprisings or to overthrow his regime by other means. Several opposition factions, including Obote's loyalists, were supported by Tanzania under President Julius Nyerere. In 1978, parts of the Uganda Army launched an invasion of Tanzania under unclear circumstances, resulting in open war with the neighboring country. Tanzania halted the assault, mobilised anti-Amin opposition groups, and launched a counter-offensive. Amin's forces and his Libyan allies were defeated by Tanzanian troops and the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), a political coalition formed by exiled anti-Amin Ugandans under the leadership of Obote, whose armed wing was known as Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). Amin was overthrown during the fall of Kampala and then fled the country, and UNLF was installed by Tanzania to replace him. The unstable UNLF government ruled the country provisionally from April 1979 until December 1980. Meanwhile, the ousted Amin loyalists who had fled into Zaire and Sudan reorganised, and prepared to renew war in order to regain control of Uganda. Obote planned to regain power, even though he remained widely unpopular in Uganda. War correspondent Al J Venter stated that in case of Obote's return to the presidency "Uganda will be assured of another war, many times as intense as the current struggle [i.e. the Uganda–Tanzania War]. Only, the next one will be a guerrilla conflict".
Meanwhile, Uganda's northeast was destabilized by large-scale banditry and communal violence. Karamojong groups, Uganda Army remnants, and foreign raiders used the political instability to raid cattle and other foodstock. These events caused a famine in Karamojong Province which killed 50,000 out of the 360,000 inhabintants of the northeastern highlands.
Bush War
West Nile rebellion
The first group to initiate hostilities were the Amin loyalists who launched a rebellion against the UNLF government in the autumn of 1980. Their 7,100-strong force never adopted an official name, but is generally called "Uganda Army" as it consisted for the most part of old troops of Amin's Uganda Army (it was also known as "West Front" or "Western Nile Front"). The rebels were not truly unified but split into several bands that were loyal to numerous officers who had previously served under Amin such as Emilio Mondo, Isaac Lumago, Isaac Maliyamungu, Elly Hassan, Christopher Mawadri, and Moses Ali. Amin arranged for the group to receive money from Saudi Arabia in preparation for a large-scale attack across the border against the West Nile sub-region. On 6 October, one week before the offensive was to commence, about 500 rebels crossed the border and attacked the town of Koboko. The 200-strong UNLA garrison was on parade at the time and was unarmed; the rebels massacred the soldiers. Word of the attack spread to other UNLA garrisons in West Nile, who quickly fled to the Nile River, leaving the Uganda Army's advance unopposed. They were welcomed by the local population, which had tense relations with the UNLA. As the rebels knew that they could not hold the captured territory against a full UNLA counter-offensive, they mostly retreated back into Sudan after a few days with a large amount of loot. The UNLA began its counterattack on 12 October accompanied by Tanzanian forces. The only significant resistance they encountered was in Bondo, where six Tanzanians were killed. The UNLA forces, considering the local population hostile, engaged in a campaign of destruction and looting across the West Nile, as Tanzanian officers tried in vain to restrain them. They leveled the town of Arua, killed over 1,000 civilians, and provoked the flight of over 250,000 refugees to Sudan and Zaire. The brutality of the UNLA inspired further unrest, as peasants and ex-soldiers took up arms to defend their lands from the government forces.
The Uganda Army launched its next offensive just before the Ugandan national elections in December 1980. In one of their most daring actions, the rebels ambushed Obote as he was touring the West Nile region. They almost killed him and Tito Okello, a high-ranking UNLA commander. This time, the Uganda Army also held the areas it captured in West Nile, and set up a parallel government after retaking Koboko. After about one month of combat, the insurgents had captured most of West Nile, leaving only some towns under UNLA control. However, many rebels focused more on looting the area and taking the plunder back to Zaire and Sudan than on fighting the UNLA.
The West Nile rebellion was weakened by internal divisions as parts of the Uganda Army remained loyal to Idi Amin, whereas others wanted to distance themselves from the unpopular old dictator. The latter part of the insurgent army split off, forming the "Uganda National Rescue Front" (UNRF) under Moses Ali, whereas the remaining Amin loyalists were still called the "Ugandan Army" until becoming known as "Former Uganda National Army" (FUNA). The West Nile rebels soon started to fight each other.
Furthermore, southwestern Uganda experienced a resurgence of the Rwenzururu movement which wanted self-determination for the Konjo and Amba peoples. The movement had been largely dormant since the 1960s, but managed to take control of weapon stockpiles that had been left unguarded when Amin's government collapsed in 1979. They thus resumed their insurgency, and the security situation in the mountainous border areas of the southwest quickly deteriorated in 1980.
Meanwhile, the UNLF government experienced its own divisions. As the UNLA was being transformed from a loose alliance of various anti-Amin insurgent groups into a regular army, the different political factions attempted to ensure that their own loyalists would be present and dominant in the new military. Obote outmaneuvered his rivals, most importantly Yoweri Museveni, and made his 5,000-strong Kikosi Maalum group the core of the UNLA. In contrast, just 4,000 out of Museveni's 9,000 FRONASA fighters were allowed to join the new army, and these were distributed across several units. Furthermore, FRONASA was forced to give up its own weaponry. At the same time, the UNLA was rapidly expanded; most of the new recruits came from ethnic groups that supported Obote. As result, power shifted to pro-Obote elements in the government and the army.
1980 elections and outbreak of the southern rebellions
The elections of December 1980 were officially won by Milton Obote's Uganda People's Congress, effectively making him president of Uganda again. However, the results were strongly disputed by other candidates, resulting in increasing strife. Several political factions claimed electoral fraud, and believed themselves to be proven correct when Obote immediately launched a campaign of political repression. As the UNLA was dominated by pro-Obote forces, a coup was impossible, so the opposition instead launched armed rebellions against Obote's government: Museveni's followers created the Popular Resistance Army (PRA), Yusuf Lule formed the Uganda Freedom Fighters (UFF), Andrew Kayiira armed his Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), and the Communist "Gang of Four" organized an armed group known as the Uganda National Liberation Front – Anti-Dictatorship (UNLF-AD). The latter group was temporarily supported by Yugoslavia until Josip Broz Tito's death.
On 6 February 1981, hostilities began in the south with a PRA attack on the Kabamba Military Barracks in the central Mubende District. The attack aimed at capturing weaponry; although the operation failed to capture the armoury, Museveni's group of fighters managed to take a few guns and several vehicles before retreating. The PRA had more success during a series of attacks on police stations during the next days. Regardless, the small rebel group also came under pressure from UNLA and TPDF counter-insurgency operations, and still lacked a proper base. Museveni was familiar with guerrilla warfare, having fought with the Mozambican Liberation Front in Mozambique. He also had commanded his own Front for National Salvation to fight the Amin regime and had continued to campaign in rural areas hostile to Obote's government, especially central and western Buganda and in the western regions of Ankole and Bunyoro. As a result, he employed the tactics of a people's war to keep his small force active. In this regard, the PRA succeeded, as it won over many locals in the area around Kampala who considered Obote's government a regime which solely served the northerners. Without extensive support by sympathetic civilians during their early insurgency, Museveni's troops would have been easily crushed in 1981.
The PRA also enjoyed very limited foreign support. Some believed that Museveni was aided by his old Mozambican allies, resulting in tensions between Obote's government and Mozambique. Most attacks by Museveni's force involved small mobile units called "coys" under the command of Fred Rwigyema, and Museveni's brother, Salim Saleh, with "A" Coy led by Steven Kashaka, "B" Coy by Joram Mugume, and "C" Coy by Pecos Kuteesa. There were three small zonal forces: the Lutta Unit operating in Kapeeka, the Kabalega Unit operating near Kiwoko, and the Nkrumah Unit operating in the areas of Ssingo. Many of the early members of the PRA like Rwigyema and Paul Kagame were actually Rwandan refugees living in Uganda. They later organized the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
In contrast to Museveni's forces and the West Nile rebels, Andrew Kayira's UFM mostly consisted of relatively well-trained ex-soldiers and was focused on high-profile urban operations. The group hoped to destabilize Obote's government through direct attacks, a strategy which "doomed it to fail from the beginning" according to historians Tom Cooper and Adrien Fontanellaz. The UFM was not strong enough to challenge the UNLA head-on, suffered from leadership rivalries, lacked a firm organization, and was prone to being infiltrated by pro-government spies.