UGANDA: @MugishaMuntu as army chief and Museveni's ghost soldiers

GEN. MUNTU AS ARMY CHIEF AND MUSEVENI'S GHOST SOLDIERS

CHANGE OF GUARDS - Since his Bush War days, Museveni sought to build an army whose top command owed personal loyalty to himself through patronage and a sense of entitlement.  In a March 2010 interview with the Daily Monitor, Gen. Muntu gave a firsthand account thus;

      "That sense of entitlement that first emerged in the bush, which still lingered and later emerged to derail the objectives for which we went to the bush.  It was so stark as the war progressed and we were sure we would take over power people started talking about what they were planning, where they wanted to live, or saying ‘I will be this, I will live in this neighbourhood.’ It became intense when we took over power. After taking over our intentions were to all go into barracks but that was heavily resisted as soon as we arrived here. People started running to live in Kololo, Nakasero and I think that is where we lost it................The moment officers went into houses in Kololo, Nakasero etc, that was it.

I think that started promoting the sense of acquisition and that went into business and the feeling of everyone getting in to get something for himself. It has now gone into what we see today.  We discussed it several times but it soon became a status symbol and part of the status quo. Nobody wanted to reverse that and I don’t know why. There used to be an argument between traditional careerists officers (and those who thought different of the purpose of the struggle). A kind of warlord mentality emerged—that you fight to take power you must be recognised for it. That sense of entitlement.

As we moved on, President Museveni’s long term plans and the warlord mentality found a meeting point. He found it difficult to deal with or punish those that participated. Eventually he became a key representative of that very mentality. He says he killed his animal, there are those who said “hii ni size ya commander” which he said he opposed. I ask myself, were those the ideals that motivated our struggle?"

Most commanders who had been restrained from stealing by the presence of Rwandese and other committed cadres found their way around in the early 1990s.  The incorruptible departing Rwandese who had dominated vital departments like intelligence, supplies and Finance left in 1990.  The equally incorruptible new Army Chief, Gen. Muntu who had assumed office in 1989 was at a loss of allies with whom to fight the vice.  Around 1994 he attempted to fight the vice but was let down by Museveni.  In the same interview with the Daily Monitor of 2010 he had this to say;

        "On ghost soldiers, we tried to manage the situation but we were failed. I had appointed a unit led by the Late Col. Sserwanga Lwanga deputized by Col. Bogere but when I wanted to start arrests a debate emerged that the same commanders we were going to arrest were the same who were fighting the war against Kony. The Army Council said don’t arrest. At one time “they” tried to establish a unit from outside to do a head count but it did not do much."

Col (Rtd) Fred Bogere in his February 2018 interview with The Observer sums it up thus;

       "After that, I moved on to tackle the problem of ghost soldiers. I worked out a concept which I shared with the army commander. He asked me to write a work plan which he said he needed to discuss with me, Koreta and my director Odongo. My operation plan was passed and we got service support from the airforce that gave us helicopters; we needed machine guns to protect us.

It was left to the army commander to appoint somebody to head it. He sent a message appointing Col Sserwanga Lwanga (deceased) deputised by me. That was around 1994. We started in Mbale because of the information about ghosts in that area. We would move with money and pay soldiers ourselves. We recovered a lot of money; about Shs 186 million.  We found a discrepancy of about 34 percent on average. We moved on to the second division.

The commander there in Lira, Brigadier Peter Kerim, knew how Muntu and Sserwanga worked. He surrendered all those that were regarded as ghosts. He made our work simpler.  Other units followed suit; by the time we moved there, they had almost clean payrolls. This army best knows me for this. How I wish we had pushed on with it because it had made good strides.
Politics came in; they claimed that we had not done well despite what we had recovered. The commanders started saying that they were using the money to pay vigilantes and Local Defence Units. But these people were not supposed to be paid but, rather, given food when they moved with troops.

They somehow convinced the president and continued sending these monies we had discovered were for ghosts. What I think the commanders did was to relax their pursuit of the enemy and instability increased. When they were called, they said, ‘the people who used to help us are no longer paid.’

In the same interview, Col. Bogere goes ahead to describe Gen. Muntu's leadership credentials thus;
      "In terms of organising the army for the good political order of the country, an army that is answerable to the people, not an army of an individual, nobody rivals Muntu...........that is his way of doing things; he is a very systematic officer who handles things on principle. He has no people he carries with him wherever he goes. His nature is institutional-based. He comes into an institution and whoever he finds there is the one he works with.  He only called in the current Joint Chief of Staff [Joseph] Musanyufu to be one of his assistants to join me and present-day General Katumba Wamala as ADC because the army commander’s office had a lot of work by then."

That is how the scourge of corruption in the army and in particular creation of Ghost Soldiers found a fertile ground and ruined the army.  In 1998  Dr. Besigye authored a 12 page critique of the failing army leadership:

        "Right from 1986, NRA/UPDF Command has been ineffective – to varying degrees at different times. This situation, however, has been progressively getting worse, especially, over the last 9 years (1989-1998). Failure to establish the exact strength of the force may be cited as one of the signs of this.  Billions of shillings are lost in payment for non-existent strength, undermining provision of essential logistics and services…................Adequate authority is not conferred onto the Army Commander by H.E. The President/C-in-C.......after 1986, the CHC became President, an office that came with enormous tasks such as the economy, foreign relations and political work; but the President nevertheless maintained control of the Army.............even where the Army Commander attempted to assert his would-be authority, subordinates would still be inclined to seek the confirmation of the President."

Around 1996 Museveni ignored all the available institutions meant to fight corruption in the army and instead appointed a probe committee comprised of civilians under a certain Nakayenga and deputised by a one Kagina.  This was at the instigation of his close cofidant Gen. Kazini who at the time was the Commander of the northern Uganda based 4th Division.  The Nakayenga committee failed miserably and seven years later in 2003 Gen. Kazini told the Mbabazi-led probe committee on Ghost Soldiers thus;

     "You see we discovered there are ghosts, no army in 4 Division at the time. We made a report to the C-I-C (Commander-in-Chief) through the AC (Army Commander) at that time and he brought somebody called Nakayenga. They found ghosts in 1996, and you remember one paymaster (Lt. Osele) killed himself because he was cornered.

He was sending Shs 400m to the Director of Finance, Maj. Bright Rwamirama, at that time every month, even more.  We found that the army was not on ground and we scaled down. There was merging of units. It’s on record. Merged including Brigades, scaled down because the army was not on ground. 405 Bde was deleted from the books at that time under Lt. Col. Dradiga…At that time we didn’t know how many Bdes were supposed to be in UPDF and how many Bdes were cut off because by the time I became COS, by establishment we could see only Bde formations 501 and 503; the rest could appear as battalion formations without Bde.

They were there but few. The parade was supposed to be done at Chwero by Nakayenga. They went there, they didn’t find soldiers. Then when they were going to fly out, Dradiga threatened to shoot an RPG [at the] helicopter of Nakayenga. We had to intervene with mambas. He didn’t fire at it but threatened and when the woman (Nakayenga) came, she went to the C-I-C and said she has given up the work, can’t continue because she is going to lose her life."

The vice continued unabbetted until July 2003 when under pressure, Museveni appointed a probe committee to investigate the issue of ghost soldiers in the army.  Headed by then Minister of Defence, Amama Mbabazi, the committee was comprised of Gen. Saleh, Gen. Ssejusa and Brig. Kyamulesire.  The committee was mandated to establish how the scam had started and how it was affecting counter insurgency operations.  The committee concluded its work in three months.

It established that the vice had started around 1996 and had reached its climax around 1998 at the height of the northern Uganda insurgency.  That is the period when the army was randomly recruiting auxiliary forces to bolster its counter insurgency operations.  Kazini was the Division Commander in northern region while Gen. Saleh was the leading the Pacification of Northern Uganda.  Kazini had arrested most paymasters and given responsibility of handling payments to Battalion Commanders who embarked on inflating of payrolls.

Appearing before the same committee, Gen. Kazini had this to say;
COMMITTEE: So you are sure there are ghosts?
KAZINI: Yes. For sure there are ghosts in the army but controlled now.

COMMITTEE: Why are some people saying that you are the one who encouraged ghosts?

KAZINI: I don’t know. I don’t think I was encouraging ghosts. It’s me and it’s on record in message books [who] started this question of fighting ghosts. I am the third [fourth?] AC (Army Commander). There was Afande [Elly] Tumwine, [Salim] Saleh, Gen. [Mugisha] Muntu, and [Jeje] Odongo… all these things were there. Whether they were sleeping, who knows? So absurd to say it’s me. May be I got into people’s ways of …"

It is worthy noting that as earlier narrated above the issue of probing into Ghost Soldiers had been initiated by Gen. Muntu in 1994 during his tenure as Army Commander.  That is why despite the committee finding that the vice had been created around the time he was the Army Commander, he was not even called to testify before the committee. The committee found that a total of USD 324m had been lost during a period under review.

Consequently, Museveni suspended 28 senior officers that had been implicated.  Gen. Kazini, Tumukunde, Gutti, Poteri, Lakara and others.  Museveni ordered for their cosmetic trial before the Court Martial.  A few years later, they were all cleared, promotted and redeployed as they continued to enjoy their loot.

Therefore, endemic corruption by the Museveni regime started from the army with Museveni as the patron. While Gen. Muntu had sought to cure the problem of Ghost Soldiers in 1994, nine years later in 2003 Museveni only carried out a post mortem of the same which he used to purge his officers.

INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM