By Charles Ochen Okwir

26^th Nov 2012:

The furore that erupted when a UN Panel of Experts report accused Uganda and Rwanda of supporting Congo’s March 23^rd (M23) rebels took a new twist last week when M23 captured provincial town of Goma.

The UN report alleged that while Rwanda “co-ordinated the creation of the rebel movement” and its “major military operations”, Uganda offered more “subtle support” which enabled the M23’s political wing “to operate from…Kampala and boost its external relations.”

Both Uganda and Rwanda have repeatedly denied any involvement with the M23 rebels – with Uganda’s Army and Defence Spokesman Col. Felix Kulaigye dismissing the UN report as “hogwash…a mere rumour that is being taken as a report.”

There is no doubt that Uganda was shaken by the UN report.  The key questions then are: What are Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s next foreign policy moves?  What are things that make his foreign adventure muscles tick?

Calling the Bluff?

The world didn’t have to wait long to see Museveni cease the opportunity presented by the UN’s allegations.  As if to demonstrate its “deep displeasure”, Uganda threatened to pull out of international peace-keeping missions in Somalia, Central African Republic (CAR), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But the question is: was Uganda serious, or was it merely calling the international community’s bluff?  U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman seems to believe that Uganda was bluffing – and that she “fully expects” Uganda to continue playing “the leadership role it has” in both diplomatic and military terms.

Anyone who dismisses Sherman’s optimism does so at his or her own peril – because it is premised upon a strong history of cooperation between Kampala and Washington on security matters.

In fact, as we speak, there are silent whispers that the U.S. is building a military base in Uganda’s north-eastern region of Karamoja.  It is therefore unlikely that Uganda will risk upsetting the US-backed war on terror in Somalia by pulling out its troops.

Secondly, those who have studied Museveni over time will tell you that there is always more to his political moves than meets the eye.  In other words, he sings loud about the “noble aspects” of his foreign ventures but keeps the real motives close to his chest.

Political Survival

In the case of the Somalia venture, for example, Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa declared that Uganda’s “…primary intention…in going to Somalia was not to do business. It was our pan-African role in ensuring that Somalia ceases to be a failed state.”

However, if you scratch beneath the surface, a different picture emerges.  At the time of Uganda’s military incursion into Somalia, the international community was intensifying its calls for a “smooth political transition” in Uganda – which is in fact a clear diplomatic euphemism for a new Uganda without Museveni at the helm.

Museveni the “revolutionary leader” wasn’t going to have any of that – after all, the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi once told him that “revolutionaries don’t retire”. So he played the West’s game and quickly dispatched Ugandan troops to Somalia – a move that effectively established him as the West’s indispensible ally in the war on terror.

Regional Power Game

Apart from the need to deflect the world’s attention from his “life presidency” project, Museveni’s other key objective for going into Somalia was to secure an alternative sea Port (other than Kenya’s Mombasa) to export “his” newly discovered Ugandan oil.

Secondly, by establishing himself in Somalia, Museveni had hoped to ensure that any future Kenyan president would have to accept his hegemony for Kenya’s security concerns – especially in the critical northern corridor from Lamu Port where multi-billion dollar oil, rail, and road infrastructure projects are underway.

Therefore, when one considers the fact that Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga (who has a love-hate relation with Museveni) is currently odds-on favourite to become Kenya’s next president, then, as Nation Media’s Charles Onyango Obbo said, “…success in Somalia would have been Museveni’s biggest victory.”

And he was spot on – because that success would have enabled Museveni to gain overall strategic leverage over Kenya – a country that has shown signs of serious discomfort with Museveni’s grand ambition to become, and perhaps even retire as the first president of the proposed East African Community (EAC) federation.

Kenyan Fight-back

But Kenya isn’t, and has never been a docile observer of Museveni’s regional power games.  It saw what was coming and decided to follow him into Somalia under the AMISOM umbrella.  That move pulled an extremely important strategic rag from under Museveni’s feet.

First of all, no one needs reminding that Kenya has an Exclusive Economic Zone on the Indian Ocean that gives it easy access to the shipping routes.  Secondly, it has a sizeable white population, and has established itself as the regional headquarters for most of the Western-owned multinationals.

For the icing on the cake, Kenya also happens to be a more stable democracy than Museveni’s volatile Uganda.  It is therefore a country that the West can proudly “do business with in broad day light.”

What Next for Museveni?

Museveni is painfully aware of the full import of Kenya’s move.  So his threat (or bluff) to pull Ugandan troops out of Somalia and redeploy them on the Uganda-Congo border “to protect Uganda from its enemies” must be read within the broad context of his political instinct to remain relevant to both the West and Africa, especially the Great Lakes region.

The “security threat” from eastern Congo was always likely to be Museveni’s next foreign policy chess board.  Indeed, in his reaction to the UN report, Uganda’s International Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem told the BBC that “…the UN was seeking to blame others for the failure of its own peacekeeping force (MONUSCO) in the eastern Congo.”

This may explain why the Great Lakes leaders, led by Museveni and Kagame, decided to push ahead with the creation of the so-called Neutral Force to pacify the Great Lakes region – never mind that the UN had given the idea a rather lukewarm reception.

It is also clear that although the U.S. has been quick to show that it is critical of Rwanda’s alleged support for the M23 rebels, it has also, in the same breath, shown signs of sympathy for the foreign policy positions being pursued by Museveni and Kagame.  So what exactly are these foreign policy positions that the U.S is sympathetic to?

First of all, both Kampala and Kigali believe that one of the first things that Congo’s own President Joseph Kabila could do to calm ethnic tensions is to stop to what Museveni and Kagame see as the “persecution” of the Banyamulenge people who have strong ancestral ties to the Tutsis in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

The second unspoken foreign policy objective around which Obama, Museveni, and Kagame might agree would be to use the legitimacy of the Neutral Force to impose a Somali-like federal state system in Congo – something like “The Federal Republic of Congo”.

The third option – one that many Congolese would shudder to imagine, is that if President Joseph Kabila were to resist the federal state option, then Museveni and Kagame (with U.S. support) could try to break up the vast DRC into many independent nation states.

Guided by its burning desire to limit China’s growing influence in the Great Lakes region, and by implication at the UN, the U.S. may well find that nearly all the likely (Museveni-Kagame) foreign policy options mentioned above would be well worth their taxpayers’ dollars.

And they would be right – because in a recent interview, Uganda’s Foreign Minister declared that Uganda will now be “…looking at countries like China, Brazil and India” and reposition itself “…because there is a shift in the economies of the world and we must position ourselves to take advantage of all this.”

All in all, it is not difficult to agree with those who think Museveni actually sees himself as an African “political architect”.  As one analyst ably put it, the foreign policy chess game “…motivates him like hell.” END: Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates

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