Uganda’s Longtime Strongman Faces a New Rival: His Restless Soldiers

On Jan. 25, 1986, rebel fighters overran the final hideouts of Uganda’s crumbling military government of Tito Okello after five years of bush war and tens of thousands of deaths. Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) concluded its Maoist-inspired insurgency with a promise to end 24 years of violent, corrupt and militarized post-independence politics. The 42-year-old Museveni became an American ally, economic liberalizer and, in the eyes of many Ugandans, a youthful visionary who would marry the leftist progressivism of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania with the realpolitik exigencies of post-Cold War politics and Western hegemony. Nearly 30 years on, an […]