During his years in power, Amin shifted from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable support from Israel to being backed by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East Germany.

[11] Amin's rule was characterized by rampant human rights abuses, including political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, as well as nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement.

In a book published in 1977 by Little, Brown and written by a British advisor in Uganda using the pseudonym David Gwyn, Amin was born in Buganda with his age given as forty-eight, placing his birth year in 1928.

Idi was reportedly chosen to take a 'paternity test' as an infant by tribal elders, which involved abandoning him for four days in a forest near Mount Liru in Koboko where they returned to find Amin still alive.

[17] Amin's parents divorced when he was four, and most accounts suggest that he moved in with his mother's family in 1944 in the rural farming town of Mawale Parish, Luweero District, in north-western Uganda.

[16] Despite this, his family insists that he moved with his father per Muslim tradition in Tanganyika Parish, Arua District, while his mother continued to practice healing in Buganda.

[30] There is a frequently repeated urban myth that he was selected as a replacement by the East Africa rugby union team for their 1955 tour match against the British Lions.

He disbanded the General Service Unit (GSU), an intelligence agency created by the previous government, and replaced it with the State Research Bureau (SRB).

[46] Amin retaliated against the attempted invasion by Ugandan exiles in 1972 by purging the Uganda Army of Obote supporters, predominantly those from the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups.

[49] The victims soon came to include members of other ethnic groups, religious leaders, journalists, artists, senior bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, students and intellectuals, criminal suspects, and foreign nationals.

(Kyemba 109–10)[51] Among the most prominent people killed were Benedicto Kiwanuka, a former prime minister and chief justice; Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop; Joseph Mubiru, the former governor of the central bank of Uganda; Frank Kalimuzo, the vice-chancellor of Makerere University; Byron Kawadwa, a prominent playwright; and two of Amin's own cabinet ministers, Erinayo Wilson Oryema and Charles Oboth Ofumbi.

During the late 1960s, Obote's move to the left, which included his Common Man's Charter and the nationalisation of 80 British companies, had made the West worried that he would pose a threat to Western capitalist interests in Africa and make Uganda an ally of the Soviet Union.

Amin denounced Zionism, and in return Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi pledged Uganda an immediate $25 million loan to be followed by more lending from the Libyan–Ugandan Development Bank.

[67] Gaddafi also mediated a resolution to long-standing Ugandan–Sudanese tensions, with Amin agreeing to stop backing Anyanya rebels in southern Sudan and instead recruit the former guerilla fighters into his army.

[6] In December 1973, Amin launched a sarcastic 'Save Britain Fund' during the 1973–1975 recession to "save and assist our former colonial masters from economic catastrophe", while offering emergency food supplies and urging Ugandans to donate.

[72][73][74] In 1974, he offered to host and mediate negotiations to end the conflict in Northern Ireland, believing that Uganda's position as a former British colony made it apt to do so.

A fourth hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, an elderly Jewish Englishwoman who had been taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala before the rescue operation, was subsequently murdered in reprisal.

[78] Amin's relations with Rwanda were tense, and during his tenure he repeatedly jeopardized its economy by denying its commercial vehicles transit to Mombasa and made multiple threats to bomb Kigali.

[80][81] That year, a split in the Uganda Army developed between supporters of Amin and soldiers loyal to Adrisi, who held significant power in the government and wanted to purge foreigners, particularly Sudanese, from the military.

[84][85] By 1978, the number of Amin's supporters and close associates had shrunk significantly, and he faced increasing dissent from the populace within Uganda as the economy and infrastructure collapsed as a result of the years of neglect and abuse.

[95] In January 1979, Nyerere mobilized the Tanzania People's Defence Force and counterattacked, joined by several groups of Ugandan exiles who had united as the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).

[98] The President reportedly made several trips abroad to other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the war, attempting to enlist more foreign support.

[121][122] On 19 July 2003, Amin's fourth wife, Nalongo Madina, reported that he was in a coma and near death at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from kidney failure.

His full self-bestowed title ultimately became: "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular", in addition to his officially stated claim of being the uncrowned king of Scotland.

[156] The comedy-variety series Saturday Night Live aired four Amin sketches between 1976 and 1979, including one in which he was an ill-behaved houseguest in exile, and another in which he was a spokesman against venereal disease.

[159] The foreign media were often criticized by Ugandan exiles and defectors for emphasizing Amin's self-aggrandizing eccentricities and taste for excess while downplaying or excusing his murderous behavior.

[160] Other commentators even suggested that Amin had deliberately cultivated his eccentric reputation in the foreign media as an easily parodied buffoon in order to defuse international concern over his administration of Uganda.

[161] Ugandan soldier and rebel Patrick Kimumwe argued that Amin's "clowning conceal[ed] a ruthless extinction of human rights" in Uganda.

[162] Journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey wrote, "facile explanations of Amin's regime, as either a one-man show or a lawless and ruthless band of killers, do not get at the heart of the power structure.

[166] One of Amin's sons, Jaffar Remo, criticized the negative public perception of his father and called for a commission to investigate the veracity of the abuses committed under his rule.