Uganda's South Sudan adventure
Friday, 31 January 2014 13:09 By Andrew M. Mwenda

Why supporting Salva Kiir may turn out to be Museveni's most
ill-advised military intervention
The Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF) recent military adventure
into South Sudan follows a pattern that has made our country a
regional military hegemon and our president, one of Africa's most
influential presidents. Our armies (or their offshoots) now stand
guard from the Gulf of Eden (Somalia) on the Indian Ocean to Kinshasa
on the Atlantic Ocean. Museveni can now project power from Bor in
South Sudan to Eastern DRC. With Rwandan troops (an off-shoot of UPDF)
in Central Africa Republic and Joseph Kabila's army (an off-shoot of
Rwanda) in charge of all the Congo, President Yoweri Museveni has
overtaken Julius Nyerere as Africa's most militarily interventionist
president.
I used to oppose Uganda's military meddling in the internal political
affairs of neighbours purely on moral and short term fiscal
considerations. However, time has colluded with the law of unintended
consequences to give Museveni an upper hand in this debate – albeit by
default. Regardless of his short term subjective motivations in these
interventions, the objective outcome of Museveni's actions has
actually been good for Uganda and the region. Short term costs have
been loss lives of our soldiers and strains on our treasury. However,
the long term unintended consequence of Museveni's military
interventions abroad has been the integration of the economies of
those countries with Uganda's. Indeed, the greatest achievements of
statesmanship have historically resulted from this law of unintended
consequences.
For example, Museveni has spent the last 28 years of his presidency
arguing for the economic integration of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
One cannot count the number of summits, mini summits he has attended
and official or unofficial letters he has written to promote this
cause. Yet today Tanzania remains elusive while Kenya has always
enjoyed a degree of integration with Uganda. On the other hand, Rwanda
had been our neighbor forever with little trade and investment between
it and Uganda. Then Museveni supported the RPF to capture power in
Rwanda. Since then everything has grown rapidly – the density of
communication, exchange of technical skills, trade and investment,
flow of tourists and influx of Rwandan students to Uganda schools have
rendered the border almost meaningless – even without any summit or
protocol signed.
Museveni supported the SPLA against Khartoum and has made Uganda the
guarantor of South Sudan sovereignty. Since its independence, South
Sudan has become the largest destination of Ugandan exports – both
foods and manufactured goods. In 2012 it totaled $240m. On the streets
of Juba, its main markets, motor vehicle repair garages, boda boda and
taxi stages – everywhere Ugandans abound doing business. And I know
many Ugandan deal-makers who have used the influence of our government
in Juba to secure multimillion dollar contracts there. In the estate
where I live in Butabika, 40% of the houses are owned by South
Sudanese.
And so has been Uganda's military invasion of Congo from where our
soldiers returned with Congolese wives. In Kikubo today, you find
hundreds of lorry trucks from eastern DRC packing goods headed for
that country. With a large influx of Somalis into Uganda, soon trade
between Kampala and Mogadishu may become a major profit center for our
enterprises. The lesson here is simple but fundamental – that the
greatest achievements of statesmanship are not always those that were
intended.
The most insightful presentation of this argument is Charles Tilly's
elegant paper, War Making and State Making as Organised Crime and
Robert Bates book, Violence and Prosperity; the political economy of
development. They argue that European monarchs had to fight wars
abroad in order to ensure security at home. They made bargains based
purely on contingent military needs to increase tax revenues or
bolster their ability to borrow money to keep soldiers in the field.
These bargains led to the evolution of strong states that constructed
elaborate tax administration systems, democratic institutions like
parliaments and fostered growth enhancing policies and institutions.
Today, a section of the global intellectual elite (led by Prof.
Jeffrey Sachs) argue that building institutions and robust economies
is a moral imperative that can only be realised through kindness and
charity. This naïve and moralistic approach to development ignores the
lessons of history – that progress is a result of enlightened
self-interest driven by immediate necessity. It is possible that the
international community, by guaranteeing the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of weak African states may have achieved short
term humanitarian objectives at the price of disabling the incentives
that create effective states.
Yet even with this positive view of Uganda's military adventures
abroad, I am disinclined to support the recent foray into the South
Sudan conflict. This may be one of those ill-conceived military
interventions Museveni has initiated. First, the objective of
integrating Uganda with South Sudan had already been achieved, albeit
by circumstances rather than by design. Second, this is a war among
our allies. Uganda's role should have been to help them find political
accommodation with one another rather than take one side and offer our
army to help one side defeat its adversary.
For example, what is the overall political aim of Uganda's military
intervention in South Sudan? What are the military objectives UPDF has
and how do we measure their success? How long is this intervention
supposed to last and what is our exit strategy? Without answering
these questions, Uganda has deployed blindly into a troubled country,
a factor likely to turn this into an open ended commitment like
America's intervention in Vietnam (1965) Iraq (2003) and now in
Afghanistan (2001); and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In
all these cases, these super powers were humiliatingly defeated.
Previously we intervened in Rwanda, DRC and Sudan indirectly to help
an ally build their own capacity to fight and win. In all these cases
we have supported rebel movements with a legitimate cause against
incompetent, brutal and corrupt administrations. Now we have
intervened directly to help a corrupt, weak and intolerant government
hold unto power in circumstances where it has lost political
legitimacy and the internal military capacity to sustain itself. Why
should we support a president, Salva Kiir, incapable of holding power
against a motley crew of poorly armed, poorly trained and poorly
resourced insurgents? Any government that cannot defeat an insurgency
has no reason to exist; and Uganda should not be propping it.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/8653-ugandas-south-sudan-adventure
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