{UAH} Can Uganda afford to police the region?
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7:39 PM |
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President Museveni's recent ultimatum to the rebelling SPLA soldiers was laughable but not funny.
To many, it was an utterance by someone consumed by self-importance and one that never ceases to poke his nose in other people's affairs believing that it is his God-given duty.
What, therefore, informs Museveni's foreign policy positions?
Our engagements in foreign lands have been clothed in high-sounding motives like Pan- Africanism (SPLA), war on terror (Somalia), protecting our borders (Congo and Central African Republic), helping our 'brothers' to return home (Rwanda) or African solutions to African problems (Mali and Libya though in this case forces were never deployed).
A microscopic examination is, therefore, required to establish the truth behind the stated motives and resolve whether such an aggressive foreign policy is in the interest
of our country and whether it should be done in our name.
Uganda has made it its business to seek to topple governments in the region or to militarily protect those in its good books.
The motive behind all this is Museveni's personal glory as the region's kingmaker and serving Western imperial objectives with a view of driving Western powers into a conspiracy of silence about his tyrannical record.
Thus, when the West (America) wants to kick out a 'bad guy', they have ready boots on the ground–UPDF. That is why he can afford to invade, topple regimes, loot and kill (DR Congo) without provoking retaliation from the international community.
When Charles Taylor did in Sierra Leone exactly what we continue to do in DR Congo, he was hounded out of office, tried and convicted by the ICC. On the other hand, our president, the 'beacon of hope' is always selected to lead mediation efforts even when his fingerprints are all over the crime scene or when he is clearly partisan and fuelling conflict with unhelpful ultimatums.
He does all this, not because he is the regional military giant, but because he has the strongest global power behind him. He has identified his role in the perpetuation of the global American hegemony and is more than willing to play the lackey's part.
He sometimes pretends to be promoting African interests by using Pan-African slogans to hoodwink his peers so as to deliver them to his masters without much ado. His reward is an assurance that he will get away with his crimes as long as he plays succor to Western imperial designs. His benefactors will conveniently argue that whereas he is bad, they do not see a credible alternative to run the country.
What they actually mean is that they do not see someone willing to do their bidding as faithfully as President Museveni has done. Pursuing imperial designs or being an agent of imperialism has a cost. It breeds hostility from the dominated. There is no doubt that Ugandans are hated because of meddling in other people's domestic affairs.
Our traders in South Sudan have been singled out for harassment and murder by our 'pan-African' brothers whom we supported during their war of independence. Our railway line was uprooted in Kenya because we were perceived to have meddled in their elections in 2007.
Our citizens were brutally killed in Kampala because of our involvement in Somalia and our citizens were sent packing in Tanzania because we are considered 'the neighbour from hell'. Uganda is supposed to pay war reparations to the tune of $10 billion for the looting, killing and rape that we occasioned in Congo.
While there, we have fomented trouble and armed rebels but today we condemn a section of SPLA for trying to use 'unconstitutional' methods to acquire power. What a contradiction! Whereas Museveni uses foreign wars to maintain internal stability in the UPDF by having soldiers busy all the time thus entrenching himself more in power, the ordinary citizens bear the burden of his 'community policing' programmes.
Ugandans must, therefore, oppose these designs after all when we had the LRA, no neighbour found reason to intervene. If we treated ours as a domestic problem that did not call for external intervention, there is no reason for us to seek to regionalize other people's problems to rationalize our intervention. It is not our duty to police the region and besides, tyranny, which is the cause of strife in this region, is very much alive here.
If we have failed to resolve it at home, how can we purport to exorcise it abroad?
We have neither the reason nor the resources to police the region. Let the Sudanese, Somalis, Congolese, etc. strive to solve their own problems as we have been struggling to solve ours without their direct military intervention.
The author is a political activist.
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*A positive mind is a courageous mind, without doubts and fears, using the experience and wisdom to give the best of him/herself.
We must dare invent the future!
The only way of limiting the usurpation of power by
individuals, the military or otherwise, is to put the people in charge - Capt. Thomas. Sankara {RIP} '1949-1987
*"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable"**… *J.F Kennedy
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