Military history of Uganda
[2] Bagandan governance was based on a stable succession arrangement, allowing the kingdom to more than double in size by the mid-nineteenth century through a series of wars of expansion, becoming the dominant power in the region.
Henry Morton Stanley visited in 1875 and reported viewing a military expedition of 125,000 troops marching east, where they were to join an auxiliary naval force of 230 canoes.
[2] Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Uganda began to lose its isolated status, mainly due to traders seeking new sources of ivory after the decimation of elephant herds along the coast.
With the support of Protestant Buganda chiefs secured, the British declared a protectorate in 1894 and began expanding its borders with the help of Nubian mercenaries formerly in the employ of the Egyptian khedive.
The British and their Buganda ally engaged in a bloody five-year conflict with Bunyoro, which boasted several regiments of rifle infantry under the firm rule of Kabarega.
Elsewhere, the Ankole kingdom and chiefdoms of Busoga signed treaties with the British, but the loosely associated kinship groups of the east and northeast resisted until they were finally conquered.
[2] However, in 1897 the Nubian mercenaries rebelled, resulting in a two-year conflict before they were put down with the help of units of the British Indian Army, transported to Uganda at great cost.
This began to change with the British decision to divest itself of its colonial properties and prepare Uganda for independence, embodied in the arrival of Andrew Cohen in 1952 to assume the post of governor.
Various groups began to organize themselves in preparation for planned elections, which was given urgency by the announcement that London was considering joining Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika into an East African federation.
After much political manoeuvering, Uganda entered independence in October 1962 under an alliance of convenience between the UPC and Kabaka Yekka (KY), a Buganda separatist party, against the DP.
Civil war was avoided when the kabaka backed down, allowing the referendum in which the populations of the "lost counties" overwhelmingly expressed a desire to return to the Bunyoro kingdom.
[2] The UPC itself fell into disarray in 1966 after it was revealed that Obote and his associates, including Amin, were smuggling arms to a secessionist group in neighboring Congo in return for ivory and gold.
With his opponents arrested, in flight, or co-opted, Obote secured his position with the creation of the General Service Unit, a system of secret police staffed mostly with ethnic kinspeople from the Lango region.
[2] When Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations and German Revolutionary Cells (RZ) terrorists hijacked a plane in 1976 and landed it at Entebbe International Airport, Israeli commandos carried out a raid that successfully freed most of the hostages.
In late 1972, a small rebel force crossed the border with the apparent intention of capturing the army outpost at Masaka, but stopped short and instead waited in expectation of a popular uprising to overthrow Amin.
In 1978, General Mustafa Adrisi, an Amin supporter, was injured in a suspicious automobile accident and units loyal to him, including the once-loyal Malire Mechanized Regiment, mutinied.
The UNLF was composed of the Obote-led Kikosi Maalum and the Front for National Salvation, led by political newcomer Yoweri Museveni, as well as several smaller anti-Amin groups.
[11] The lack of cohesion between the various Ugandan groups that formed the UNLF quickly became apparent as president Yusuf Lule was replaced by Godfrey Binaisa, a former minister in the UPC.
While the UNLF force that helped overthrow Amin numbered only 1000, in 1979, Museveni and David Oyite-Ojok, a Langi like Obote, began a massive recruitment of soldiers into what were in-effect their personal armies.
[13] Fighting was particularly intense in the Luwero triangle of Buganda, where the bitter memory of the counterinsurgency efforts of the UNLF's Langi and Acholi soldiers against the populace would prove an enduring legacy.
After an Okello-Museveni peace agreement broke down, the NRA began a final offensive and entered Kampala in January 1986 as the Acholi troops fled north to their homeland.
Estimates for the death toll for the 1981-5 period, which includes the Bush War, conflict in West Nile and internecine UNLF purges and fighting, range as high as 500,000.
However, some rebels instead formed the Uganda National Rescue Front II, which operated with Sudanese support in Aringa County, Arua District, until it signed a formal ceasefire in 2002.
In contrast to the endemic insecurity in West Nile and northern Uganda that continued well past the NRA's rise to power, much of the rest of the country remained stable and relatively peaceful.
In December 2005, the Congolese government and United Nations mission carried out a military operation to finally destroy ADF bases in the DRC's Ituri Province.
Roméo Dallaire, the head of United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (1993–1994), would later complain of the substantial restrictions the Ugandan government put on his efforts to discover military supplies surreptitiously transported to RPF-held areas in northern Rwanda.
Kabila attempted to sever his connections with his Rwandan backers in 1998, resulting in the deadliest conflict since World War II, which drew in eight nations and many more armed groups.
"We felt that the Rwandese started the war and it was their duty to go ahead and finish the job, but our President took time and convinced us that we had a stake in what is going on in Congo", one senior officer is reported as saying.
The lack of Ugandan security forces in the border region allowed the ADF to successfully attack Fort Portal, a large western town, and capture a prison.
The current leader of the African Union Mission to Somalia, established on January 19, 2007 to provide security and peacekeeping in the region during the Somali Civil War, is General Levi Karuhanga from Uganda.
