Predators or Protectors? Military Corruption as a Pillar of Regime Survival in Uganda

ABSTRACT

When he came to power in 1986, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni promised to establish a professional, disciplined and all-inclusive national army. More than three decades later, the Ugandan army under his leadership has constantly been entangled in record corruption scandals. Based on extensive field research, this article explores the nature of corruption in Uganda’s defence sector and shows how corruption is tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the regime leader because it serves as an instrument of political control. The article highlights pervasive corruption in the Ugandan army, the political use of corruption by the regime and the impact it has had more generally.

Introduction

After capturing power in 1986, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni inherited a country that was in total ruin (Muhumuza 2009). A decade of political turmoil and gross economic mismanagement had plunged Uganda’s economy into prolonged decay. Many of the best-trained personnel had fled the country as industries and government parastatals collapsed (Karugire 1988). Although Idi Amin argued that his decision to expel Asian merchants was intended to put ‘the economy in the hands of Africans’ and to create a new class of ‘black millionaires’, it instead forced the country into a downward spiral of economic decline (Amin’s statement 9 August 1972, Hansen and Twaddle 1988).

In the pursuit of economic growth and microeconomic stability, the Museveni regime launched an ambitious neoliberal economic reform programme in May 1987 (GoU Policy Framework Paper 1988). These reforms were meant to achieve three objectives: restore price stability, address the balance of payments problem, improve the efficiency of the public sector and stimulate economic growth (World Bank Report 1988). Museveni then argued that, in the new economy, the military would not be simply restricted to fighting wars but would also engage in the implementation of investment projects to generate rapid economic growth (Museveni 2000, p. 111–130). However, more than three decades later, the Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF)’s involvement in Uganda’s economy remains peripheral. The privatisation of government parastatals in the 1990s and the early 2000s further diminished the direct influence of the military in the economy while creating underhand opportunities for corruption and illicit dealings between the political class, private businesspersons and military elites. Consequently, cases of corruption and illicit trade in the procurement of military equipment and defence supplies became widespread and a source of concern for parliament, the auditor general and the donor community (Tangiri and Mwenda 2003).

Based on original qualitative data collected in Uganda between 2016 and 2017, this article advances two key arguments: first, although President Museveni promised to end military corruption that had led to economic crises under previous regimes, systemic corruption inside the UPDF remains a deeply entrenched problem. I show how the Museveni regime has facilitated military corruption by allowing army officers to engage in corrupt practices without facing consequences and the ways in which corrupt actions of armed personnel are tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the regime leader because it serves as an instrument of political control and regime survival. He allows military officers to engage in fraudulent business practices, which in turn helps him to collect and store incriminating evidence against potential threats and rivals. Such evidence is not used to prosecute army officers who are loyal to the regime but rather to indict and intimidate those officers who seek to challenge his rule. As a result, army generals end up in political oblivion when they retire—that is, they cannot cross over to the opposition or become vocal against Museveni’s rule because they fear reprisals from the regime leader. Those who defy this norm and turn critical of the regime end up in courts charged with corruption offences ostensibly committed while serving in the army. Second, although Museveni initially promised to position the army at the forefront of Uganda’s economic reconstruction, the military’s role in the economy is still marginal. Instead, the regime tolerates and sometimes encourages practices that allow senior army officers to gain wealth through fraudulent procurement deals, illicit trade and pillage. By overlooking these illegitimate practices, the regime leader has effectively created a group of corrupt armed elites with vested economic interest in regime durability.

The article is divided into two sections: the first is comprised of this introduction and a segment that introduces the conceptual framework for analysing military corruption. It highlights various forms of corruption and considers military corruption to be a subset of political corruption with ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ features. In the second section, I provide a historical account of military corruption in Uganda under the Museveni regime. I divide his rule into two phases: the first covers early cases of corruption in Uganda (from the 1990s to the early 2000s) and the second considers more recent cases.

Conceptualising Military Corruption

This article adopts Joseph Nye’s definition of corruption as ‘behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role (elective or appointive) because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) wealth or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding influence’ (Nye 1967, p. 419). As a practice, corruption entails a broad range of complex behaviours, which explains the lack of consensus over the correct definition of corruption.

Corruption has been categorised differently by different scholars. There are those who look at corruption from the demand (e.g., accepting a bribe) versus supply (e.g., giving a bribe) perspective, while others look at it in terms of grand (large) versus petty (small) acts of corruption (Beets 2005, Stevulak and Campbell 2008). Political scientists also talk of systemic versus individual corruption, and corruption by omission versus commission (Khan 2008, Marquette and Peiffer 2018). Likewise, there is a tendency to see corruption in conventional versus unconventional terms (Yingling 2013). Most recently, scholars have re-classified corruption as either bureaucratic/administrative or political corruption (Asea 2018, Amundsen 2019).

While each of the above categorisation is critical, this article is more concerned with two forms of corruption: bureaucratic and political corruption. The study contends that, to grasp the varying character of military corruption and the ways in which it facilitates regime survival, we need first to put bureaucratic and political corruption in the right context. Hence, I start by explaining the two forms of corruption (bureaucratic and political corruption). I further disaggregate political corruption into ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ categories. I consider military corruption to be a subset of political corruption as it exhibits both ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ features. Finally, I show how classifying political corruption as 'extractive' and ‘power-preserving’ is more relevant for our understandings of military corruption in Uganda.

Bureaucratic and Political Corruption

Bureaucratic corruption refers to ‘corrupt acts of appointed bureaucrats in their dealings with either their superiors (the political elites) or with the public’ (Rose-Ackerman 2004, p. 37). The main actors are lower and middle-level public administrators responsible for implementing government policies. Essentially, bureaucratic corruption takes place at policy implementation echelons of the government (Transparency international 2004, Loftis 2014). This form of corruption is dominant in government agencies such as public transportation, health-care systems, education, public utilities, security organs, government parastatals, etc. In contrast to bureaucratic corruption, however, political corruption occurs when ‘political decision-makers use the political power they are armed with, to sustain their power, status and wealth’ (Amundsen 1999, p. 6). It is a form of grand corruption that occurs at the topmost levels of the political system and is perpetuated by senior government officials (elected or appointed) responsible for making important policy decisions of the country.

It is apparent that despite many practical and theoretical overlaps between politics and administration, bureaucratic and political corruption differs in important ways: first, a corrupt head-of-state or a corrupt government minister presents a different problem and his actions produce different ramifications compared to a corrupt headteacher. The main difference here is that, unlike lower-level bureaucratic corruption, political corruption comes with a much higher cost to the country. In addition, while public sector employees engage in corrupt acts essentially for personal enrichment, political corruption serves interests that go beyond personal economic benefits to include preserving the regime in power.

Political corruption is sometimes called ‘elite corruption’ because it is spearheaded by individuals with the power to influence laws and policies (Amundsen 2019). These are elected or appointed public officers who have been vested with public authority and with a duty to serve in public interest. They consciously choose to misuse their power for illegitimate private benefits. These may include; the president, his team of cabinet and political aides, heads of government agencies, party officials, members of security agencies and high-level bureaucrats. Moody-Stuart (1997) has, for instance, shown how this kind of corruption is concentrated in top government officers where major decisions about projects, programmes and procurements are taken.

Political corruption can be divided into two interrelated processes, namely ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ (Amundsen 2019, p. 10). It is ‘extractive’ when the aim of those involved is to enhance their personal wealth, power and status or when public officials illegally and illegitimately use their position for the benefit of their families, relatives, friends and allies. Likewise, it is ‘power-preserving’ when the regime uses corruption as a means to strengthen and consolidate its grip on power. The regime leader may grant access to corruption rents or may tolerate corrupt acts of his trusted loyalists while punishing those who engage in corruption at the lower levels of government.

I apply the aforementioned conceptualisation to cases of military corruption in the Ugandan army to generate the following insights:

Military Corruption for Extractive Purposes

Military corruption can be ‘extractive’ when an elite group—i.e., ‘a selected small group of citizen/organisations that controls a large amount of power’ (Garrido 2013, p. 32), engages in shoddy deals involving arms procurement, embezzlement of government funds, bribery, kickbacks and falsifying military supplies. This elite group is constituted by top military officers, politicians and businessmen with ties to the regime. The overriding aim of this group is to extract resources for personal benefit. They tend to exploit the peculiarity of military transactions which normally involve large sums of money to divert public resources. For instance, their actions are sustained by military dealings which are normally carried out in secrecy due to sensitivities associated with national security. More so, their corrupt actions are enabled by the single-source procurement contract system which lacks transparency and value for money (Pyman et al. 2008, 2009).

Military Corruption as a Mechanism for Preserving Power

Military corruption can be a tool for regime durability, especially when the ruling regime relies on it to strengthen its hold on power. The experience of Museveni’s regime in Uganda shows that corruption can be an effective means for providing pecuniary benefits to those carrying out the regime leader’s will. The regime leader deliberately refuses to establish credible anti-corruption institutions, which would tie his loyalists’ hands and prevent him from manipulating corruption rents. He uses resources at his disposal to intimidate or to buy off some opposition figures with material concessions. He allows army officers to accumulate wealth through access to corruption rents as a way of generating support for the regime from those corrupt officers. He uses corruption as a tool for encouraging competition among government and military officers for loyalty to him (the superior). In the long run, this contributes to regime durability because it allows the regime leader to create a group of loyal officials with a vested interest in defending the status quo. In Uganda, the regime leader encourages officials to engage in corrupt practices and selectively prosecutes those who fail to show sufficient devotion towards his rule. This imposes a heavy cost on those who may seek to challenge his rule while rewarding those who remain loyal to him. The regime leader can certainly manipulate access to corruption rents without incurring significant cost in terms of public support. As corrupt regimes constrain freedom of speech and media, they are able to escape public scrutiny due to the absence of checks and balances (Fuller 2018). Corrupt but loyal officers escape prosecution regardless of the nature of their crimes. Likewise, corrupt officers expect the regime leader to assign them to lucrative positions based on their allegiance to his rule.

Faking War on Corruption

Despite the lack of interest in fighting corruption, the regime leader understands that it is useful for him to appear to be against corruption. He thus engages in various anti-corruption campaigns and occasionally puts to trial some corrupt officials, yet such efforts have nothing to do with the actual fight against corruption or improving governance. In Uganda, for example, President Museveni has employed charges of corruption to intimidate and persecute officers who seek to challenge his hold on power while tolerating the corruption of officials who are loyal to his rule. His actions are not aimed at fighting corruption. They are instead aimed at consolidating power and managing domestic and foreign perceptions.

Drawing insights from the above discussion, this article emphases that both ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ arguments on political corruption are relevant for our understanding of military corruption that is rampant at the higher levels of the Ugandan military and political establishments. In what follows, I start by providing an overview of military corruption in the Ugandan army under Museveni’s regime.

Military Corruption under Museveni’s Regime (1986–to Date)

When Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) came to power in 1986, Ugandans had already been exposed to predatory and partisan armies. Not only did Museveni promise to create a professional, disciplined and multiethnic national army, he also vowed to reorient the military’s role in Uganda’s social, economic and political spheres (Museveni 2000). In his first decade in power, Museveni was successful at changing the attitude of individual soldiers, especially with regards to wealth accumulation. Unlike Amin’s army, which captured the state through a coup, the NRA fighters had spent five years in the bush as guerrillas. Many of the NRA fighters joined the rebellion voluntarily and at a young age, which made it easier for Museveni to inculcate in them the values of sacrifice, perseverance and pursuit for a greater good. Right from the start of the guerrilla war, NRA recruits were taught that self-aggrandisement was dangerous for their cause. As a result, NRA soldiers did not impose a financial burden on the young administration with demands of higher salaries in the civil war aftermath. In fact, during the first two years of Museveni’s rule, soldiers were never paid real salaries but rather received modest allowances to enable them to afford basic necessities. It was not until 1988 that many rank-and-file soldiers got their first paycheck (though some NRA commanders were alleged to have engaged in looting using their guns). NRA military leaders attribute this achievement to the political education that all NRA fighters were mandated to undertake during the bush war.¹ They were taught about their position in society, studied the country’s political history and appreciated the financial burden the government inherited. As Brigadier General Felix Kulayigye puts it:

… . Soldiers were only given beans and posho (maize flour) and that’s it. Why was this possible? The purpose of education is not to indoctrinate, it’s to educate. It was to help soldiers understand where he/she is coming from. Why have you been fighting in the first place? Where do you want to go? A soldier can live without pay, live in poor condition but with hope. We had a slogan that Chama kinapanga [the ruling party is planning for us]. We were able to live with shortages, without pay, but with confidence that the Movement [regime] is planning for. … We were contented with the scarcities that existed.²

Impressed by the army’s selfless attitude, Museveni argued that, under his leadership, the army would form the foundation of the country’s socio-economic development (Museveni 2000). Henceforth, his vision was not simply to create a professional and disciplined national army, but also to establish an army that engaged in programs and projects that have a positive impact on Uganda’s socioeconomic development.

It would seem that the willingness of NRA soldiers to serve without pay in the first years of Museveni’s rule led the new NRA administration to believe that they had successfully changed the old attitudes of the army regarding material wealth and that the ‘new’ national army would be less corrupt and more committed to national development than previous armies. If that was the case, then it was a temporary achievement. Indeed, facts show that Museveni’s enthusiasm and belief in the military as a pillar for socioeconomic transformation were based on a false premise. There is enough evidence to show that the Ugandan army under Museveni’s rule is as corrupt as the old armies it replaced. In what follows, I examine the case of military corruption under Museveni’s regime, starting with a case that took place in the early years of his rule and thereafter move to analyse more recent ones.

Early Cases of Military Corruption under Museveni’s Regime

Concerns about ‘extractive’ corruption in the Ugandan army started to attract the attention of the Ugandan parliament, the press and the donor community in the early 1990s when the army engaged in questionable military expenditure. Concerns were raised when the government started purchasing expensive military hardware to fight the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in northern Uganda. One of the first cases of corruption involved the award of a tender to supply Russian-made helicopter gunships. Considering the amounts of money involved, unscrupulous politicians and businessmen with connections to the regime began jostling to win this lucrative transaction. Among those vying for the contract was Emmanuel Katto, a Kampala businessman and one of the regime’s chief financiers, whose wife is a sister to then-army Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. James Kazini. Mr. Katto was a promoter of Consolidated Sales Corporation (CSC), a company he claimed was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. To increase his chances of getting the contract, Kato submitted a joint bid with Kwame Ruyondo, a foster child of Museveni who was employed at Caleb International, a company owned by Museveni’s younger brother, Gen. Salim Saleh. At the same time, Saleh was the commander of the counterinsurgency operations against the LRA in the north. Museveni, who also held the portfolio of defence minister at the time, is reported to have personally offered the contract to CSC in disregard of the rules regulating the procurement of public assets (Tripp 2010 p. 149). When the helicopters were finally delivered to Uganda, they were in bad shape, and not combat-worthy. Some concerned defence officials leaked information to members of parliament and the media, sparking criticism and calls for an inquiry into the transaction. Museveni agreed to constitute a judicial inquiry to investigate the transaction. The inquiry concluded that several illegalities were committed in the procurement process. For example, the company which had been awarded the tender (CSC) never actually existed at the time it signed a contract with the Ministry of Defence. It was registered months after the contract had been signed.³

While the ‘extractive’ character of military corruption under Museveni’s rule is well documented, it is the emergence of the so-called ‘political untouchables’ group in the military and the ruling party that is of great concern (Asea 2018, p. 1). This group includes family members of the president, trusted party loyalists who fought alongside Museveni during the guerrilla war and businessmen with ties to the first family. This group became infamous because of the ‘extractive’ nature of their corrupt acts, especially during procurement processes. The actions of this group became more prominent during the period in which Uganda was involved in fighting two insurgencies—the LRA (in northern Uganda) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in western Uganda and later in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These wars led to a sharp increase in government spending and created more opportunities for this elite group to engage in corruption through falsifying procurement of military weapons, defence supplies and the creation of ‘ghost’ soldiers. For instance, under interrogation by the commission of inquiry, Mr. Kato admitted that he lobbied top military generals, including the president’s brother, who was paid $800,000 in commission fees for supporting the award of the contract to CSC. In its final report, the judicial inquiry recommended criminal prosecution of the President’s brother as well as businessman Katto, but Museveni insisted that the blame was with the business associates of his brother ‘who gave us bad helicopters’ (The East African 21 July 2000).

To date, some members of parliament from northern Uganda believe that most of the money allocated by parliament to buy equipment to fight the LRA insurgency ended up in the pockets of regime elites and top military officers. One consequence of this, according to one area MP, was the long duration of the war in the north:

When the UPDF was fighting (the) LRA we approved a lot of money in classified expenditure thinking that it was meant for buying weapons. When we visited the north, we could not see the weapons the money had bought. In fact, when we recently visited Mogadishu (Somalia) as a Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs, we were told by some soldiers that the only time they have gotten better arms and better uniform is when they have been deployed in Somalia because it is AMISOM supplying them to UPDF under the supervision of the EU and the US.⁴

In addition to this scandal, other procurements carried out at the peak of the LRA and ADF rebellions also shed light on ‘extractive corruption’ in war situations and how it benefited private businessmen, military officers and regime elites who, through influence peddling, offered contracts, guarantees and favours to companies in which they had a stake. For example, when government decided to acquire fighter jets to patrol its war-torn northern border region, the contract was awarded to an Israeli businessman without any tendering or bidding process (Mukasa and Ochieng 1999). The said businessman supplied outdated Soviet-model fighter jets that had a limited bomb carriage capacity and a non-functional radar guidance system. What was even more embarrassing to the Ugandan government was that two of the four jets supplied came with a single wing (Mukasa and Ochieng 1999). The Ministry of Defence spent a total of $50 million to acquire the jets but it was discovered that the jets had been grossly overvalued and the valuation was done after the supplier paid kickbacks to senior government and military officers (The East African, May 15, 2000).

Senior government officials, members of the first family, military officials and private businessmen with ties to the regime sought to profit financially through contracts to transport military supplies to Ugandan soldiers who, alongside Rwandan troops, had intervened in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998 (Clark 2001, Fahey 2009). Air Alexander, an airline owned by the President’s brother Salim Saleh profited greatly from transporting soldiers and military supplies from Entebbe to Kisangani (Vlassenroot et al. 2012). In September 1998, the Ministry of Defence awarded Rugasira a contract to transport supplies to Ugandan troops in Congo. In documents made public by the government in 2001, the inquiry found that the Ministry of Defence had ‘exorbitantly paid Rugasira $4,486,805’ in transport costs between October 1988 and March (Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry, 2001).

Some Ugandan military officers profited from the war in Congo through the phenomenon of ‘ghost’ soldiers (Vlassenroot et al. 2012, p. 2). In 1997 information was leaked to the media by a concerned member of the UPDF High Command, the highest decision-making body of the army, which showed how generals engaged in the creation of ‘ghost’ soldiers on the army’s payroll and pocketed over $1 million per month in salaries meant for these phantom soldiers (Aljazeera October 13, 2007). The president created an investigative committee headed by then-Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi to probe the matter. The committee found that senior military officers benefited from the war by padding the army’s payroll with names of dead soldiers (New Vision, October 20, 2009). Unsurprisingly, no action was taken by the president to punish military officers involved in this scandal. After some years had passed, a disagreement between Gen. Kazini (who commanded the war in Congo) and Museveni became public, setting off a media frenzy in which newspapers and radio talk shows speculated about the possible genesis of the dispute between the two comrades. Kazini enraged the President after he gave several media interviews accusing Museveni of having been previously aware of the existence of ‘ghost’ soldiers. He was later arrested and arraigned before a court martial on charges of fraud and financial misappropriation. However, the other top officers accused of a similar crime kept their support for Museveni and had charges against them dropped. Most of them have since been promoted to higher ranks and now occupy prominent positions in the army.

Gen. Kazini’s situation sheds light on the ‘power-preserving’ nature of corruption under Museveni’s regime. Army officers who become critical of the regime must be willing to pay a heavy price, including house arrest, prosecution by the court martial, dismissal from the army, and perhaps even violent death while those who remain loyal get rewarded by the regime. Indeed, before the final court ruling on his case was delivered, Kazini died mysteriously in November 2009. The state claimed that he was killed by his mistress, Lydia Draru, but family members maintain that his death was a political hit (Wanabwa 2013). In his speech at Gen. Kazini’s requiem mass, President Museveni left mourners bewildered when he said that ‘Kazini had taken himself to God’ (Mwenda 2009, p. 1).

Recent Cases of Military Corruption under Museveni’s Regime

In addition to cases highlighted above, the UPDF’s attempt to establish a military-industrial complex has further exposed the ‘extractive’ nature of corruption involving the army’s top leadership. When Museveni came to power in 1986, he outlined a broad vision of building an integrated, self-sustaining national economy (Museveni 2000). In line with this vision, the government established the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC) to serve as an investment arm of the Ugandan army. However, like Amin’s army which failed to manage its investments, almost all of the UPDF’s investments under Museveni have equally failed to take off. Many companies owned by NEC are either in debt or went bankrupt and closed their operations.

Uganda’s military elites have continuously argued that the army spent over two decades preoccupied with fighting civil wars and that, in the process, lost focus on the initial promise to create a profitable military-industrial complex.⁵ To some extent, there is validity in this argument given the UPDF’s obvious lack of skills and experience in running business ventures. Yet still, the problem is not simply lack of investments but corruption. There is a lack of political will to fight corruption within the UPDF because fighting corruption creates unnecessary tension between the regime leader and corrupt armed elites. As a result, the army’s NEC conglomerate, which was created three decades ago, has never made a profit despite government injecting Shs40billion (10.5m USD) of taxpayers’ money into its investments over the years (Kyeyune 2017). The government’s own anti-corruption institutions such as the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Inspectorate of Government and the Auditor-General have questioned the disappearance of funds in NEC’s operations and the downright failure by the managers of NEC to provide any form of accountability. According to the 2014 and 2015 Auditor General’s (AG) reports, government auditors who scrutinised NEC’s books of account could not find traces of money the government had injected in NEC and complained of mismanagement and incompetence of its top managers, majority of whom are soldiers lacking skills and training in running a business venture of that magnitude (AG reports 2014, 2015). Another report issued by the AG in 2004 showed that NEC accumulated a loss of over Shs420 million (114,000 USD) when it engaged in the purchase of tractors for agriculture with an Iranian company called Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company–ITMCo (AG report 2004).

What is apparent is the lack of commitment by the regime to making the UPDF’s business ventures succeed. Yet, as the UPDF’s business companies struggle to survive, weapons-making and reconditioning factories, which are considered essential for the regime survival, have performed relatively well. For instance, Luwero Industries Limited, a bullet-making and rifle-repair factory in Nakasongola district, is booming and is now a top supplier of bullets for the army and private security companies in the region. The armoured vehicle-reconditioning factory in Nakasongola has also flourished and is now refurbishing armoured vehicles and manufacturing spare parts for military use. In total, the government has invested over Shs27 billion (27m USD) in Luwero Industries Limited and Uganda is now a hub for the reconditioning of military vehicles and tanks from neighbouring countries like South Sudan and Burundi (Kyeyune 2017).

The actions of Ugandan military officers deployed in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have further exposed the nature of ‘extractive’ corruption inside the UPDF. For instance, since 2007 when Uganda and Burundi became the first countries to deploy their soldiers in Somalia (as part of the peace mission), there have been many cases of corruption, sometimes leading to prosecution and suspension of peacekeepers. In 2013, twenty-five top Ugandan military officers were recalled from Somalia and detained for selling food supplies and fuel to local businessmen (BBC June 6, 2016.) A Ugandan court martial found them guilty and sentenced them to between one and three years in jail (AMISOM website, August 16, 2016). It later emerged that these peacekeepers belonged to a cartel network that connived with shady elements within the Somali National Army to engage in corruption for personal benefit (BBC August 16, 2016). Among those arrested included Brig. Michael Ondoga, the overall commander of the Ugandan contingent, who was accused of selling food meant for soldiers (Kasasira 2013).

The question of why Museveni was quick to order for the prosecution of corrupt UPDF soldiers in Somalia when he was reluctant to punish those who racketeered from the wars in Congo and northern Uganda can be answered by looking at how the regime uses corruption to preserve itself in power. First, apart from Odonga, the other 27 culprits in Somalia were junior officials who the regime was willing to turn into ‘sacrificial lambs’ simply to demonstrate to donors who fund Uganda’s operations in Somalia that the government is serious about fighting military corruption. The European Union is the largest funder of the AMISOM mission in Somalia. Already, EU officials had expressed frustration over the failure to stamp out corruption in the accounting systems of AMISOM and had withheld salary payment to Ugandan soldiers for six months (Byaruhanga 2016). Second, AMISOM is critical to Museveni’s political fortunes because it has allowed him to establish himself as a key ally in the US fight against international terrorism (Abrahamsen and Bareebe 2016). Through participating in AMISOM, Museveni has secured funding, military equipment and training for his soldiers from the US. Ugandan soldiers now carry hi-tech communications equipment, night-vision goggles, and small surveillance drones – all provided by the American government. Thus, it can be argued that Museveni was not willing to let such a lucrative mission be jeopardised by the corrupt actions of junior officers.

Although the UPDF ended its operations in Congo and effectively defeated the LRA and ADF insurgencies, cases of corruption in military procurements have continued to trouble the defence sector. For instance, recent reports have highlighted specific instances of collusion and outright plunder in contracts involving two companies––J2E Investment Corporation Limited and Roester Construction Corporation, owned by a Kampala businessman, Eria Mubiru. The army’s own investigations committee accused the two companies of causing a financial loss worth Uganda Shillings 72 billion (7m USD) to the Ministry of Defence (Okuda 2017a). In one revelation, the committee found that J2E Investment Corporation Limited was given a Shs2.2 billion Ugandan shillings contract in 2010 to upgrade infrastructure at Bihanga military Training School in western Uganda but instead the contractor chose to upgrade facilities at Kaweweta Recruit Training School in central Uganda. The investigative committee failed to establish who authorised the contractor to switch the projects (Okuda 2017a).

In addition, cases of corruption are widespread in the accounting and budgeting systems of the Ugandan defence sector. There is lack of independent financial audits, and poor monitoring and oversight. This means that many cases of corruption go undetected. According to the 2013/14 budget, Uganda’s defence spending stood at 1 trillion Ugandan shillings (approx. $270m), a third of which, according to some lawmakers, was hidden under suspicious classified expenditure to evade parliamentary scrutiny. Raising concerns was the fact that the amount allocated to classified expenditure for the 2013/2014 financial year had doubled from the previous year, all this while Uganda was experiencing relative peace following the end of civil wars in the north and western parts of the country. Furthermore, according to the 2015/2016 budget, Uganda increased its defence expenditure, again this time to Shs1.2 trillion shillings ($320m), overtaking Kenya and Tanzania to become East Africa’s highest military spender in that financial year (The Nation, April 14, 2014). In the 2016/2017 budget, defence spending rose steeply to Shs1.9 trillion ($500m). Later, lawmakers on the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee revealed that, while reviewing the non-classified part of the defence budget, they unearthed an unauthorised a transfer of Shs500 billion from the national treasury to the Ministry of Defence without the approval or knowledge of parliament. Questioned by lawmakers, the Ministry of Finance admitted that the money was ‘mistakenly’ allocated for defence spending, but lawmakers on the committee claimed that the money was clandestinely planned to be spent on ‘political things’ (Matsiko 2017, p. 6). Hon. Kaps Fungaroo, another MP who sits on this committee explains:

Whenever we scrutinize the defence budget every year, we find irregularities in the budgeting process. A few years back, the government used to tell us that classified expenditure is used for buying weapons to fight the war in the north, but now the war is over and the UPDF peacekeepers in Somalia are paid and equipped by donors but the budget for classified expenditure has doubled. We know the truth. Classified expenditure is a channel of money for ‘eating’ by the top executives.⁶

Faking War on Corruption

In all corruption cases, the government’s own anti-corruption watchdogs have been unable to hold defence officials accountable because perpetrators belong to the ‘untouchable’ elite group that is protected from prosecution by the regime. What is more worrying is that the UPDF Act (2005), which regulates the conduct of the national army, does not specify what constitutes corrupt conduct or how cases of corruption in the defence forces can be investigated and prosecuted. The government has resisted calls from anti-corruption campaigners and the auditor general to modify the UPDF act in order to address loopholes in the existing legal framework (Human Rights Watch 2013). Currently, the oversight role in defence expenditure is left to the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs, yet this committee is incapable of performing this duty because of the undue influence of the Executive and the fact that it is headed by regime insiders. These loopholes allow the regime leader to exploit military corrupt for ‘extractive’ and ‘power-preserving’ projects. As Hon. Muwanga Kivumbi, a member of the Parliamentary Defence Committee explains:

We have been demanding transparency and accountability in the defence sector, but we have not succeeded because the chair of our committee is not interested in us asking serious questions about how money is spent in the Ministry of Defence. We even offered to organize classified hearings on defence expenditures, but the committee chair shot us down. To be honest, no one knows how defence officials use all that money that is annually allocated to them⁷

In contrast to Obote and Amin’s regimes, Museveni has faced sustained external pressure from donors to tame corruption. He has responded by creating anti-corruption institutions, yet his regime has worked tirelessly to undermine the same institutions they have established. The regime essentially relies on two tactics to undermine the effort of its own anti-corruption bodies. The first is a seemingly deliberate attempt by the president and even parliament, which is dominated by ruling party members, to keep anti-corruption agencies financially incapacitated. This stymies the work of these agencies as they are rendered incapable of financing their own investigations. The second is the tendency by the regime leader to keep key positions in anti-graft agencies vacant for long periods of time which frustrates investigations targeting trusted allies. For instance, between 2009 and 2012, the position of the Inspector General of Government (IGG) was deliberately left vacant following the acrimonious resignation of Justice Faith Mwondha. The president did not explain why he kept this position vacant for three years, leaving political observers second-guessing his intentions. In some cases, anti-corruption institutions are subjected to public rebuke by the president angered by their investigations involving his political allies. For instance, in 2008 the president publicly defended Security Minister Amama Mbabazi and Local Government Minister General Kahinda Otafiire when they were under investigation over corruption. (Monitor, September 4, 2008). In defending his allies, Museveni argued that although they may have ‘made mistakes’, their mistakes are not grave enough to warrant prosecution (New Vision, 31 August 2009).

To Museveni’s critics, his reluctance to fight corruption appears counterintuitive, particularly given its impact on service delivery. However, what these critics fail to consider is how corruption sustains the regime. In Uganda’s case, corruption facilitates regime survival in three important ways: first, most individuals who have been implicated in corruption scandals are either top military elites or politicians with ties to the regime. These individuals constitute a strong political constituency for the regime. They are big financiers of the ruling party as they use their resources to campaign for the president and members of his party during elections. In other words, corruption offers opportunities for regime acolytes to gain wealth which is then disbursed for the benefit of the regime. Second, fighting military corruption generates internal opposition and discontent, which can destabilise the regime. Military and political elites in Museveni’s power circle who have faced corruption charges often turn to their constituencies and to their ethnicity for protection. They position themselves as representing the interests of their ethnic groups and rationalise their corrupt practices as a necessary evil that happens in the pursuit of a fair share of the national cake for their marginalised ethnic groups. Through this strategy, they are able to stir local resentment against any attempt by anti-corruption institutions to prosecute them in courts of law. For instance, when former Health Minister Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi was arraigned before a Kampala court on charges of mismanaging $200 million from GAVI and the Global Fund, he publicly described his trial as part of a sinister strategy by the government to persecute the Bahororo, a semi-ethnic group to which he belongs. Muhwezi later successfully mobilised Bahororo elders to meet and plead with the president to have criminal charges against him dropped (Mwenda 2012). In the words of one prominent local anti-corruption activist:

Museveni does not want to fight corruption in the army because he doesn’t want to create unnecessary bad blood between himself and his generals. He knows they are corrupt, but he goes soft on them because these are the same generals that he uses to fight his enemies. He cannot antagonize them because he has a fear that they can easily turn against him. But they cannot turn against him because they know that they are corrupt so he can easily prosecute them. So, the President and his generals find themselves in a situation in which they all fear each other’s actions but need each other to survive.⁸

In addition to the above-highlighted cases, a focus on the struggle for lucrative positions among top army officers further shows how Museveni’s regime uses corruption to preserve power. President Museveni regularly signals indifference to (and sometimes encourages) internal bickering among his top generals by letting them jostle for influential posts within the country’s security agencies. Ugandan military officers informally speak of ‘wet’ security organs and ‘dry’ security organs.⁹ ‘Wet’ security organs are those that are operationally independent, report directly to the President, and command a large budget. Army generals leading ‘wet’ security agencies receive lucrative financial allowances, and also enjoy the daily attention of the President. Examples of these organs include the Special Forces Command (SFC), the External Security Organisation (ESO), the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI), the Directorate of Command and Control (DCC), the Military Police (MP) and the Uganda Police Force (UPF). ‘Dry’ security organs, on the other hand, are perceived to be less significant in terms of financial benefits and political influence. They include, among others, the Anti-Rustling Force, the Special Wildlife Integrated Force, the Marine Force, the Directorate of Health Services and the Directorate of Military Research Centre. In the struggle to influence the President’s choices, army generals often manipulate the media to blackmail each other. Surprisingly, the President tends to let his generals engage in blackmail against each other so long as they do not end up looking smarter or more powerful than the principal. For instance, Gen. Kale Kayihura, formerly head of police, and Brig. Kasirye Gwanga, the presidential adviser on security in Buganda region, do not see eye-to-eye (Newspost, 2 April 2017). The latter consistently used the media to criticise the former’s failures in the police. Kayihura was also at loggerheads with Gen. David Sejusa, the former coordinator of intelligence agencies. The latter penned a bombshell letter in 2013 in which he accused Kayihura of hatching a plot to assassinate other generals opposed to the ‘Muhoozi Project’ – an alleged plot by Museveni to have his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba succeed him as president (Sejusa’s letter, 23 February 2013).

Occasionally Uganda’s military generals try to outdo each another in the public show of loyalty to the President. Sometimes their disagreements spill out into the media and attract the attention of the public. For instance, in May 2017, an intelligence officer working with ISO filed a case against government in a Kampala High Court, alleging that he was tortured by police interrogators after they futilely tried to bribe him with Shs1billion (approx. $270m) to implicate Security Minister Lt. Gen. Henry Tumukunde in the murder of the Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi. Mr Kaweesi was regarded as one of the rising stars in the Uganda Police Force until 27 March 2017, when he was gruesomely murdered in broad daylight by unknown gunmen in the heart of Uganda’s capital, Kampala (Okuda 2017b). Gen. Tumukunde had appeared in the press questioning the police conduct and insinuating that the nature of Kaweesi’s murder points to well-trained assassins with high ‘levels of courage’ and ‘decisive execution of a task’ (Kalyegira 2017, p. 6). With such in-fighting spilling out into the public, one would expect the President to issue an ultimatum to his generals to bury the hatchet. But that is not Museveni’s way of doing things. Museveni often plays his generals against each other, encouraging competition among them, so long as everyone demonstrates overreaching loyalty to his rule.

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted a number of important issues: first, it has shown that conceptualising military corruption through 'extractive' and ‘power-preserving’ prisms helps us to better understand how President Museveni’s regime uses military corruption for the purposes of preserving power and how Museveni has skilfully manipulated access to corruption rents to generate political loyalty. This has granted regime loyalists opportunities to accumulate wealth which is in turn used to canvass support for the regime using illegal practices such as voter bribery and manipulation.

Second, the paper has shown that, although Museveni’s initial promise was to create a professional military force that would form a foundation for Uganda’s socio-economic reconstruction, this was based on a false promise that his NRA soldiers were inherently less corrupt than soldiers in the previous regimes. President Museveni’s failure to prosecute corrupt military generals demonstrates his use of corruption as an instrument for political control. Museveni understands that army officers who have been implicated in corrupt practices will remain loyal to his regime because it is the only way they can evade criminal prosecution. Officers who have fallen out with the regime, as in the case of Kazini, are quickly arraigned before court and charged with crimes they committed many years ago. As a result, retired army generals cannot dare criticise the regime leader because of the fear of vengeance.

The paper has also shed light on the nature of ‘extractive’ corruption involving senior UPDF commanders. Most of the UPDF deployments in war situations have generated opportunities for military officers to engage in corruption and economic plunder. These self-serving economic activities have been successful because they are intricately linked to state structure––that is, a network comprising senior military officers, political elites and businessmen who effectively run the state, with Museveni at its helm.

Finally, the use of the army for regime survival has had a negative impact on civil–military relations in Uganda. For example, frequent reports of torture, extortions, corruption and rape by soldiers in fisheries communities forced parliament to pass a resolution in December 2019 to suspend UPDF operations on lakes where they were deployed to curb illegal fishing (The New Vision, December 19, 2019). Using various media platforms, Ugandans have expressed their displeasure at the extent to which the military is deployed to disperse those protesting against the regime and the army’s violent crackdown on political dissents. Ugandan media frequently carry stories highlighting the UPDF’s involvements in acts of corruption, torture and other forms of violence against civilians, which have all affected the UPDF’s public image.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerald Bareebe

Gerald Bareebe is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.

Notes

1. Interview with Col. Ba-Hoku Barigye, the UPDF Deputy Political Commissar and former spokesman of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) (16 May 2017).

2. Interview with Brigadier General Felix Kulayigye, UPDF Chief Political Commissar and member of parliament representing the army (23 June 2017).

3. See more information about this scandal on the World Bank Stolen Assent Initiative (STAR) website. Available online: http://star.worldbank.org/corruption-cases/node/18871 (accessed 27 March 2019).

4. Interview with Hon Kaps Fungaroo, a shadow minister of defence and member of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs (12 June 2017).

5. Interview with Brigadier General Felix Kulayigye ibid.

6. Interview with Hon. Kaps Fungaroo. Ibid.

7. Interview with Hon. Muwanga Kivumbi, a former Shadow Minister of Internal Affairs and member of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs.

8. Interview with Dr. Livingstone Ssewanyana, the Executive Director, Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), a Kampala-based human rights organisation (25 July 2017).

9. Interview with a senior military leader who preferred to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter, Kampala-Uganda (18 July 2017).