Understanding the Uganda-Rwanda dispute – An opinion

“We don’t agree that the Tutsi should monopolize power under the banner of Tutsi security, at the same time we don’t agree that the Hutu should terminate Tutsi as had been the ideology”. Yoweri Museveni ( Interview to IRIN News)

“We in Rwanda have rejected some leaders who take themselves to be head prefects of the region. We totally reject this and are ready to resist it at whatever cost” Paul Kagame

“We have capacity to arm every Rwandan to take war to any country that attempts to destabilise Rwanda. For us fighting means fighting – not going back even if it means fighting a war in which all of us will die”. Paul Kagame

“What is the problem in Rwanda? What is the problem in Burundi? What was the problem of Uganda? It is just the bankruptcy of the leaders. The moment you sort out the problem, you need cadres, because tribalism is still so strong. You need a clear Mututsi to mobilise Batutsi; you need a clear Muhutu to mobilise Bahutu; a clear Mutwa to mobilise the Batwa. Initially, tribalism is very strong because of the confusion – the opium of tribalism – somebody who has drunk the opium of confusion is very strong. To liberate him from the drunken state, you must get somebody near him to bring him around. That is what we have been doing in Uganda – getting good cadres from the West, Centre, North, South and East to combat tribalism. That is why you need a broad based system. You need a broad based cadreship so that when they try to use tribalism or religion, the cadre of that tribe or religion being used will say that it is rubbish. You need to broaden your cadre representation so that you keep the groups together politically. In the end, tribalism is nosense and it is out of date”. YKM Museveni speech to the Rwandan Parliament.

At the time of writing this there were unconfirmed reports of military operations by Uganda and Rwanda inside the poorly governed border areas within the Democratic Republic of Congo. The breakdown of relations that manifested in the border closure in March is a war that had been going on by other means less public. Today’s battles themselves are a continuation of a well-established rift between the current leaders of Uganda and Rwanda.

The current wave has so far famously claimed the career of longest serving and highest ranked police officer in Uganda’s history General Kale Kayihura and the lives of other Rwandan dissidents farther afield – going by what has been reported.

The Kale affair was just one of those events where working with the same set of facts – Uganda and Rwanda managed to arrive at different conclusions.

It typifies a pattern of misreading of each other’s intentions. On the face of it a close security relationship between the two allowed Rwanda to conduct renditions of citizens it considered a threat to its national security. However, the latitude it enjoyed in conducting these operations – while embedded within the Uganda police ( and with official sanction) simultaneously meant it had penetrated deep into Kampala’s security establishment. The relationship flourished for a while but other internal security issues in Uganda – with little to do with Rwanda’s core goal worked to undo this relationship. They included embarrassingly high levels of violent crime that shamed the police establishment and was politically dangerous to President Yoweri Museveni. It also did not sit well in Uganda’s fragile transitional politics making Gen. Kayihura’s status as a centerpiece of security decision making untenable.

Moreover, the Rwandan renditions themselves played badly with Uganda’s own post 2016 foreign policy goals. As the country recovered from a disastrous military campaign alongside the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) it had few allies abroad to speak of. The war in Sudan had however caused a massive refugee problem. This coupled with Uganda’s progressive refugee policy had brought new, potentially influential allies to Uganda like United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gueterres. These new diplomatic assets were threatened by the rendition program of Rwanda because the new foreign policy proposition argued Uganda as a model refugees in contrast with the rest of the world.

It must also be understood that at this point Uganda had few other diplomatic assets to leverage in a fast-changing region in which in western allies were increasingly looking inward. The campaign against the Lords Resistance Army together with US forces had ended and there was pressure on the UPDF in Somalia, a key aspect of the Uganda- West relationship. In Mogadishu troop drawdowns were being pushed by the European Union while the United States had adopted a less personal approach – going it alone against Al Shabaab with increased drone strikes.

There was however interest in refugees whose treatment in Uganda contrasted starkly with the pushback against migrants in Europe and anti-immigration policies in the United States.

As a purely Ugandan question the timing of the subsequent re-organisation of the police, the wider military intelligence sector was perfectly understandable. It was targeted at helping re-balance the foreign policy position and take control of spiraling violent crimes.

But this calculus seen from the Rwandan angle was an act of war in the context of the high stakes of its own national security. As we understand it now it implied, from their point of view, that the door was being shut to Kigali’s legitimate interests and matters deteriorated from there because Uganda rejected a zero-sum interpretation of its own freedom to reorganize its affairs.

Now everyday stories of the difficult adjustment by civilians, businesses, and families with ties across the border continue to trickle in.

Rwanda and Uganda have been here many times.

The failure of a foreign policy solution of separate but equal to take effect at such difficult times, at least as far as I can see, is complicated by bitter personal histories, blood spilt in multiple wars and a negative culture of competition where cooperation would be the most meaningful path. In some ways the separation reminds one of the 38th parallel – the demarcation that has long represented this kind of rigid division between people who have a common background and even ancestry, speak similar languages and share customs but have to live apart because of the contemporary political choices of their leaders.

The division of the Korean peninsula was the result of major global conflict. In the case of Uganda and Rwanda – friction between comrades turned violent in the late 90s inside Congo in the now infamous Kisangani clashes. It is this arena of Africa’s so-called “World War” in the DRC that is the setting of a deep inquiry into the recurrent violence between the two sides done by the academic and NRM intellectual Twebaze Stephen Hippo for his master’s thesis in 2011.

Mr Twebaze’s unpublished text offers through historical evidence and some decent access some insights into the bloodlust that haunts the Uganda-Rwanda relations. I don’t agree with some of the theoretical framing of his analysis, but his conclusions are solid. Essentially Twebaze concludes that the Ugandan leadership has long held a different view about state building hewn from the National Resistance Movement’s experience in the bush war.

Elements of this include a protracted “peoples war” and upon victory an inclusive post-war political process of inclusion ( working with former enemies) described as a “broad base”. Uganda’s “ideological” commitment to these forms of managed “democracy” that is salutary to bringing fighting groups together is something Twebaze finds the Rwandan establishment resented as a basis for their partnership and then violently rejected in Kisangani.

In the dissertation he shows that just weeks after the Rwandan Patriotic Front invasion in 1990 it was clear that the army, led by former Ugandan soldiers of Rwandan extraction like Paul Kagame, would take a different direction. RPA had a different vision on how to conduct the war not consistent with the strategy encouraged by Uganda – of winning “hearts and minds’ but rather based on unilateralism, superior organization, internal ethics and discipline of its forces.

This unilateral devotion would clash constantly with Uganda’s own vision of accommodative politics especially since the two armies were working as tactical and strategic partners. The highlight was when the two armies became involved in DRC and fought on several occasions in the Congolese town of Kisangani. Later this very gene of disagreement over “direct rule” versus “accommodation” would transfer to how Rwanda’s new leaders sought to govern themselves and how Uganda – its supportive bigger neighbor continued to insist it “opened up”.

In Kisangani – Rwanda’s laser focus on eliminating the conditions under which former Hutu nationalist forces were operating came into violent competition with attempts by Uganda – under Yoweri Museveni’s own personal commitment to exporting that formula of NRA revolution.

In operational terms Uganda’s approach included organizing an inclusive military vanguard of Congolese forces into a coherent political force which, as far as Rwanda was concerned, was an unwelcome distraction to its own military program, did not prioritize the focus on genocidaires and was an imposition by Uganda.

Here in lies the redline in understanding the present hostilities.

Rwanda’s position continues to be that those elements, internal or external, who would like to diverge from the way things are run – especially to disrupt the new post war nationalism of a single Rwandan identity constitute not just a clear and present danger but an existential threat.

Seen this way those individuals or groups who wish to seek reconciliation or democratic participation including the Rwanda National Congress ( whose members Kigali says are welcome in Kampala) are viewed as hostile and destabilizing forces.

However, for Uganda, internal politics is always about bargaining and different political actors co-mingle every day in a manner that undergirds the legitimacy of the political system itself. This position is almost doctrinaire in Uganda and as one official involved with the Rwanda crisis put it Kigali cannot – or rather would not be allowed to dictate Uganda’s friends or enemies.

These are radically different political systems and Twebaze does a good job of showing how they diverged even if during the bush war it was YK Museveni who was the leader of both streams.

It is also a very personal history for those involved, full of emotional resentment and almost Freudian animus. I learnt through Twebaze for example that while Rwandan soldiers were an essential – if not critical fighting force within the NRA – they were never truly accepted. So even if the leader of their invasion force was Fred Rwigyema, one-time army commander in Uganda and also a minister of state for defense, he had been treated as a usurper in Uganda despite his close relationship with Yoweri Museveni and Salim Saleh.

The personal relationships were further complicated by tribal and clan grudges. Some recruits, Twebaze reports, within the NRA in the bush considered themselves as natural born leaders because of their royal birth. These elements were present amongst the Ugandan contingent and within members of the Rwanda National Alliance – the self-organizing group of Banyarwanda officers.

For example officers the likes of “Tadeo Kanyankole, Pecos Kutesa, David Tinyefuza and Julius Chihanda” apparently never accepted Rwigyema and undermined him at every turn causing fury in the RNA.

The division between “loyalists and royalists” is worth a small digression because it appears of grave importance to both Museveni and later Kagame. Royalist upstarts like senior NRA commander Sam Magara, whose claim to high status was because of his links to the Bahinda dynasty of the Bahima ruling elite made various unsuccessful attempts to undermine the authority of Museveni who they considered from a lower “caste”.

According to Twebaze the royalist insurgents pushed Museveni towards Banywarwanda officers and other sub-ethnicities in the west like Bahororo officers such as Jim Muhwezi and Kiiza Besigye. These officers became his confidants who he relied on for his security and were later promoted to key positions in the post-liberation army and government.

However, this relationship would later be fraught with tension. The post war consensus was rife with charges about the NRA being dominated by “foreigners” including from now senior officers including some royalists like David Tinyefuza.

Twebaze quotes for example that Col Pecos Kutesa in 1988 had said “he felt like vomiting” when he saluted Rwigyema while Tinyefuza declined to do so because “army regulations” did not permit saluting a foreigner. These sentiments may have contributed to the plans already underway by Rwandan officers to independently pursue a political and military goal of bringing changes to Rwanda. Discrimination within the Uganda body politic and military appears to have had a stronger impact on the “royalists” amongst the Banyarwanda officers.

Their leaders like Peter Baingana and Chris Bunyenyenzi pushed the RPA to invade Rwanda creating a rift between Museveni and Fred Rwigyema – a loyalist. Fred Rwigyema died in the initial wave of the invasion. His death Twebaze argues is likely an assassination by the royalists – Baingana and Bunyenyenzi ( they both died soon afterwards) Rwigyema was not only close to YK Museveni and his brother Gen Saleh but was considered the model political cadre who would have likely pursued a different military and political strategy in Rwanda more in keeping with Museveni’s vision of popular military movements.

In his absence Paul Kagame, a more complex character would take and retain center stage. He would also bring through his force of personality a radical dedication to independent decision-making. Kagame’s self-reliance, conviction above tactics would come to characterize the notion within the RPA that the stakes were highest only for themselves. The experience in Uganda would color two views traded often between Rwandan and Ugandan military elite about their relations.

On the one hand some Rwandan officers viewed their time in Uganda has instrumental in bringing Museveni to power. These feel they have paid their debt in full and should be left alone to pursue their own path. On the other hand there are Ugandan officers who see the involvement of Uganda in Rwanda as responsible for its overall survival and view this as a debt that can be called upon.

Obviously these ties are only a sliver of the complex layers of events that led to the border closure but represent the emotional and personal baggage that charges the relationship between the two countries and their ruling establishment.

One finds that in the history of Rwanda-Uganda “misunderstandings” the same animus contributes in no small way to problems of coordination, where formal channels for resolving problems are abandoned, institutional mechanisms are tossed aside and foreign policy of nominal nation-states is reduced to the emotional fever of few elites operating in only one reality – that of their never-ending feud.

Take one simple example that was relayed to me by a government official. At one point the Rwandan establishment was convinced that a state-to-state deal for the purchase of electricity from Uganda was being frustrated by the politics of hostility in Kampala. President Kagame apparently raised this issue at a highest level and there was a brewing cold current on other aspects of the Uganda-Rwanda relationship. When YK Museveni however inquired from the energy authorities why power lies across Mirama Hills were delaying he was informed that the cause was a land acquisition hiccup. He was also informed that even if the Ugandan transmission lines were ready at that particular moment – Rwanda would not be ready to take the same power. Perplexed YK Museveni relayed what he had been told to President Kagame including the fact that despite the pressure Uganda was facing Rwanda had not built the sub-stations to take the power. It happens ( as Kagame found out) that the Rwandan Presidency itself had not been told his side was not ready and what was a brittle political situation was no more than the normal inertia of energy projects.

It was a coordination problem which, like the other grave errors in judgement is hostage to the inability, because of the bad blood, of a stable policy of “separate but equal” to take root in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

And so, unlike the maritime dispute between Somalia and Kenya, neighbors with a long and troubled history, the interests playing out at the border feud between Uganda and Rwanda will not be clear to many outsiders. Sure, there are shared resources, mostly in trade, and deep social, historical, military and political links going back a few decades. But unlike Kenya/Somalia where the arm wrestling at present is about potential oil resources on the common seaboard – one cannot say immediately why it is that Uganda and Rwanda should be teetering on the brink of hostilities.

This is part of the problem of course – that we require on such grave occasions when lives are at stake that decisions should conform to some accessible rationality or better a greater public cause. Instead what we find is that the reality of state relations is mostly built on mistakes and bad judgement. Finding a void where commonsense should have prevailed, most of us then fly out like bats out of a dark cave into the blinding light of oblivion, fluttering here and there offering our own interpretation of what should have been. There are nearly 60 million people potentially affected by what is now not so silent war. A troop buildup on both sides of the border, hostile rhetoric and propaganda have taken their place on the hill tops like restless sentinels summoned from the bloody history in these parts where lives tend to be extinguished so easily in the pursuit of bad ideas.

The entrenched animosity of the two sides also cannot wish away structural factors around which none has any real control because the future is not a set of predictable facts. In an alternate history the NRA/M war in which a huge part of the fighting force was Rwandan would have failed to succeed and who knows – those forces may have been displaced inside Rwanda and succeeded there instead in a “protracted” struggle. In that alternative history – would YK Museveni now have been President of Rwanda? Will Mobutu have been displaced by a wave of assaults from that revolution? Will James Kabarebe – one-time Minister of Defense under the first Kabila regime have, in an alternative history become President of DRC?

We will never know because it did not happen.

It would be useful for the outside observer to keep this in mind that the “the ghost of” wars past and the localized and personal stories that bridge todays tensions with their historical interior are partly responsible for the willful blindfolds that leaders on both sides wear in trying to gauge each other’s commitment to win this round of conflict.

It is not uncommon for outsiders to undermine the agency of such currents as subjective nuances that are less important than the “objective” realities found in the exercise of actual power and the behavior of institutions. In fact, the social fiber of political conflict is ever present in the alliances between various societies. This is evident in the pact between the nascent Rwandan fighting force in the Ugandan bush war and their hosts within the western tribes that together were the vanguard of the push back against state violence in a Uganda led by “northerners”.

Twebaze signals to the closeness of these groups but also their friction. These native formations are primary building blocks and probably informed YK Museveni’s “broad base” philosophy that sought (borrowed expression) an ideology of “pragmatic inclusion” of other tribes and elites. A view that as observed run against the “principled exclusion” practiced by the Rwanda Patriotic Forces drawn partly from the total upending of the social order in Rwanda especially after the genocide of 1994.

Political ideologies, their practice and modification are often times no more than the expression of native power in competition. They are also, in the case of NRM’s broad base, an instrument to organize national independence on those default settings of nativity and tradition that have been left mostly unchanged since independence and present themselves as the political software of contemporary bargains in everything from administering social services to negotiating social by-ins through “sharing of the national cake”.

Even here, Rwanda differs with Uganda its more diverse neighbor. The new post liberation Rwandan identity emphasizes a practical nationalism, a single identity in which the state, which provides security for all Rwandans and is solidly committed to preventing another genocide, is the main celebrant through rigid discipline and high standards.

Some commentators including the libertarian intellectual, lobbyist and former journalist Andrew Mwenda, a confidant of both presidents have rightly warned that fighting between Uganda and Rwanda risks state collapse on either side of the border. Mwenda in a recent article did not however, in keeping with the practice of translating native fears through modern concepts, say how such a collapse will come about. However, what he probably meant by his warnings is that outright war would dismantle the formal logic of official politics while forcing the native questions are the heart of them to violently express themselves. On the Ugandan side of the border, a war would Rwanda, would likely raise the question of the dominance of western tribes much in the way the Luwero war did for the northerners – since many Ugandans outside the South West consider these tribes including the Banyarwanda amongst them as homogenous.

The nationalist argument about the defense of Ugandan dignity and borders would not last once hostilities commence.

It is more fragile for Rwanda for obvious reasons because outright conflict would have to depend on a strategy that can deliver swift victory outside of Rwanda’s borders or risk a long conflict in which the RPA would have to carry the population along – ironically being forced to fight a “protracted peoples” resistance in the way that YK Museveni insisted during the war between 1990-1994. In the absence of an outright war – the economic war underway today is disruptive on all sides will bite and destabilize the region.

This posits another question on both sides of the border of how all communities interested in changing this toxic relationship can participate in pushing their leaders towards a different path away from conflict. One answer will be to part of the conversation and let their voices be had.

A version of this article was published by the Daily Monitor here. View on monitor website