Could Uganda end up in Sudan-like crisis?

For weeks now, there has been a bloody standoff between two Sudan leaders, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese regular army, and the country’s deputy leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti, or little Mohamad, the head of a paramilitary organisation called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Al-Burhan and Hemedti have been sharing power since late 2021 when they mutually carried out a coup that expelled civilians from a transitional government. This government had been put in place after the 2019 Sudanese revolution which ejected president Omar al-Bashir, a military dictator who ruled for 26 years. 

The coalition between the two Generals soon unravelled, leading to clashes between the army and RSF.

This conflict has led to the death of about 512 people, while nearly 4,200 have been wounded since the fighting began on April 15.

The after-effects have been felt not only in the Horn of Africa, but also in the Great Lakes region, with some people in Kampala thinking that what has befallen Sudan could happen in Uganda.

Some politicians and analysts are worried that Uganda’s Special Forces Command (SFC), which is charged with protecting the First Family and other key installations, could sooner or later face off with Uganda‘s regular army, just like the RSF has done in Sudan.

“Al-Bashir stayed in power and sought to become a life president,” says Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the Kira Municipality Member of Parliament (MP), adding that with President Museveni now looking to be in power beyond 2026, having used the power of the gun to gain it in 1986, the Sudanese situation exists here.

“Al-Bashir created that Rapid Support Forces illegally the same way SFC was illegally created here [Uganda]. And I remember a Brigadier from Bunyoro who was in charge of professionalisation of the army warning President Museveni not to create special forces the way you see Republican Guards in Iraq because you are creating an army within an army,” says Ssemujju, who is also the spokesperson of the Forum for Democratic Change, an Opposition political party.

For Sudan, before the 2019 revolution Hemedti was a mysterious background militiaman who worked behind the curtains by ensuring his Janjaweed paramilitary outfit did the bidding of al- Bashir, including violently stamping out rebellions in Darfur, the volatile western part of Sudan, killing an estimated 300,000 people.

Though prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused some militia commanders of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, his militia expanded to about 100, 000 forces and in 2015 the RSF was granted the status of a “regular force” and has been deployed to fight in the Yemeni war beside forces from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Just like Sudan’s RSF, Uganda’s SFC isn’t recognised under the UPDF Act, but the UPDF’s organogram puts it at the same level as the Air and Land Forces.

“They have put the commanders of SFC, Air and Land at the same level. Yet under the Constitution that force [SFC] can only be created by Parliament through an Act,” Ssemujju says, explaining that the Constitution stipulates that Parliament shall make laws regulating the UPDF, and in particular, provide for the organs and structures of the UPDF.

And in fulfilment of this duty, Parliament enacted the UPDF Act 2005 and provided under Clause 3 that the UPDF shall comprise (a) Land Force, (b) the Air Force and (c) any other service prescribed by Parliament yet Parliament has, Ssemujju says, never prescribed for the SFC as a service, but it exists as one.

“When you ask the military leadership, they want to regularise it because they know it wasn’t created through a statutory arrangement. When you look at those who have been recruited [in SFC] they have been entered thereby Museveni and his son.”

Museveni’s son whom Ssemujju is referring to is Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba who has twice led the SFC.   

In 1997, then Bufumbira East MP Eddie Kwizera dramatically recommended on the floor of the House that Muhoozi be put in jail.

“If Muhoozi is recruiting and training the army, then he is violating the Constitution. He should be arrested and charged,” Kwizera said, adding: “To raise an army, you must be authorised. Who authorised Muhoozi? If it is the President, he violated the Constitution.” 

Reports that incensed Kwizera had emerged that Muhoozi, who had just finalised his studies at Nottingham University in the United Kingdom and had no military background, was recruiting fresh graduates from Makerere University to join the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).  

The recruits, about 100 in number, it was reported, trained at Kasenyi on the shores of Lake Victoria and would later “morph into an elite presidential guard”. 

Within years, the Presidential Guard Brigade (PGB), which was later altered into SFC, was in fact formed while Muhoozi’s role in it was cited in undertones and grapevine.

In 2013, Dr Kizza Besigye, who was Museveni’s personal physician during the Luweero Bush War, claimed in an interview that the “Special Forces was created for Muhoozi”.

SFC recruits Maj Gen Sabiiti Muzeyi, the general manager of Luweero Industries Ltd; Brig Felix Buzisoori, former acting commander of SFC; Brig Charity Bainababo, the deputy commander of SFC; Brig Daniel Kakono, the commander of Field Artillery Division; and Don Nabaasa who previously commanded the SFC but now heads the Military Police, are the new face of the army.

Response
Mr Museveni wasn’t happy with what Besigye had said, and his reaction was to pen a dossier which claimed that SFC was founded in May 1981, at Kyererezi, in Kapeeka, before Besigye joined the struggle and when Muhoozi was just seven years old. 

“Since the rebels had now created zonal units,” Museveni said, “Instead of having only one nomadic (roving) unit, it necessitated the chairman of the High Command to always travel to visit these units.” 

“Whenever I decided to walk to any point, we would move straight away without waiting to raise an escort force from the zonal forces. That is how what is now the Special Forces group started. Initially, it was like a Section (12 people), if my memory serves me right. By the end of the war (1986), it was a company size (120-140 people),” Museveni said.  

“Lack of written records because of the circumstances of that time forces me to rely on my memory. I think, by this time, it was being called “the High Command Unit”. When we captured power, it became the Presidential Protection Unit (PPU) equivalent to a battalion size (700-800 soldiers).”

From commencement, the NRA/UPDF, Anna Reuss, an expert on governance, conflict and security writes in her thesis entitled ‘Politicisation, Professionalisation, and Personalisation of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces’, featured an elite unit for the protection of its leadership, which has changed names after the war as it grew in size.

“In 2008, President Museveni tasked his son Lt Col Muhoozi Kainerugaba – 32 years of age, commander of the PGB’s motorised infantry, and freshly returned from Fort Leavenworth – with the creation of a dedicated Special Forces unit. Two years later, the Special Forces Group (SFG) absorbed the PGB and the First Commando battalion under the command of newly promoted Col Muhoozi Kainerugaba,” Reuss writes. 

“In 2012, the SFG was renamed Special Forces Command (SFC) – now consisting of two Special Forces Groups – and its commander Muhoozi Kainerugaba was promoted to Brigadier. Although nominally subordinate to the Land Forces Command, by 2012 the SFC was a de facto third service.”  
Reuss writes that military professionalisation usually causes problems for some leaders. 

“Military professionalisation hence presents a dilemma for authoritarian rulers; it can ‘become a double-edged sword and may significantly undermine the powers of the actors seeking to implement it. Military professionalisation for authoritarian leaders means walking a tightrope: acquiring the skills and capabilities of modern armed forces without growing independent military corporate identity and autonomy, which may impact broader civil-military relations, democratisation and regime stability,” Ruess says.

“Not only must they balance the needs for the most qualified and the most loyal officers, but military capability building, often significantly aided through foreign training in African armies, also tends to strengthen military ethos and corporate military interest that demands military autonomy and rejects political interference in military affairs.   

While in Sudan al-Bashir handed over the gold sector in Darfur and other gold-rich areas found in South Sudan to Hemedti, his family members and ultimately the RSF control, in Uganda Museveni has assigned the SFC to secure critical government installations such as Entebbe International Airport, the ports on all lakes and the oil fields in the Albertine Graben, hydroelectric power stations and other infrastructure in western Uganda.

While al-Bashir used the RSF to flush out pockets of resistance in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, Museveni used the SFC to crush resistance the Opposition MP had managed to put up during the debate that led to the lifting of presidential age limits that ensured that he rules as long as he wishes.

When Museveni reappointed Muhoozi as the commander of the SFC in 2020, just before the 2021 General Election, it was seen by some as a sign of preparing to quell any widespread post-election violence as both Robert Ssentamu Kyagulanyi, then a presidential candidate, and Besigye, a former presidential candidate, warned of a potential uprising if Museveni “steals the elections”.

With the Land Forces deemed not fit to engage in street-by-street battles with protesters, the role was given to SFC under Muhoozi with elite forces that trained in counterintelligence, artillery, and motorised infantry tactics. 

“It’s very dangerous to have a shadow army, a shadow state, shadow forces and a shadow government. In Africa, we have situations where we have the main state the formal state and the informal state. The informal state isn’t accountable. You can’t hold the shadow state or army accountable because it’s not formal and it’s not constitutional,” says Mwambstya Ndebesa, a senior lecturer at Makerere University College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

No wonder, before and after the 2021 general elections SFC commandos were accused of being the men in Toyota Hiace, commonly known in Uganda as drones, that gained notoriety in snatching hundreds of Opposition supporters from markets, taxi stops, petrol stations, roadsides and homes  and taking them to unknown destinations where they are either tortured or in worst case scenarios, killed.

Though the SFC vehemently denied the charges, it didn’t come as a surprise when in its compliance before the ICC the Opposition accused SFC of being the masterminds of the wave of abductions.

“And just like al-Bashir, Museveni has created an army within any army. It’s called the SFC,” Ssemujju says.

However, army spokesperson, Brig Felix Kulayigye, denies the claims. 
“The media is trying to divide the army, but we are working as a unit,” Brig Kulayigye says.

View...Claims  
"Al-Bashir created that Rapid Support Forces illegally the same way SFC was illegally created here [Uganda]. And I remember a Brigadier from Bunyoro who was in charge of profession-alisation of the army warning President Museveni not to create special forces the way you see Republican Guards in Iraq because you are creating an army within an army,’’ MP Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda