When Amin sent Israelis packing

Yesterday (March 23, 1972) 52 years ago, Radio Uganda aired an announcement in which president Idi Amin gave David Loar, Israel’s ambassador to Uganda, and all Israel personnel in the army and paratrooper school, “together with all agents of Mossad” four days to leave Uganda.

They were required to have left Uganda by March 27. They obliged.

Three days later, the president ordered the closure of the embassy buildings and also announced the expulsion of all Israeli nationals, some of whom had until then been considered his good friends. Some of those Israeli officers had named Amin Hagai Ne’eman, which in Hebrew means “reliable helmsman”. It is also what it comes down to in Hebrew when one translates the Swahili names, Idi Amin.

Israel shocked
Writing in the article ‘Israeli-Ugandan relations in the times of Idi Amin’, which was published on the website of the independent research institute, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, on October 1, 2006, Dr Arye Oded notes that Amin’s decision greatly “shocked the Israeli government and public”.

“This was the first severance of relations with an African country in the 1970s. Israel had already experienced hostile measures by Amin but did not expect relations to be cut off completely,” he wrote.

At the time, Uganda owed Israel $20m (about Shs600b today). That debt was only resolved after the NRM shot its way into power.

Inside Israel, which was one of the first countries to open an embassy in independent Uganda, debates around the country’s “excessive involvement” in Uganda raged.

Israel had been heavily involved in military and economic activity in Uganda since about September 1962 when Milton Obote, then prime minister, had visited the country. Discussions during that visit centred around cooperation in the areas of the military, security and agriculture.

Yigal Allon, Israel’s labour minister at the time, was one of the guests at Kololo when Uganda became independent. Allon announced the award of 150 scholarships for Ugandan students to study medicine, engineering and agriculture in universities in Israel.

In February 1963, foreign affairs minister and later Israeli premier Golda Meir visited Uganda, which resulted in the signing of several agreements on technical cooperation.

Involvements
The Department of International Cooperation at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dispatched experts in cooperatives enterprises, medicine, irrigation and agriculture to train Ugandans, especially the youth. Israeli trainers from the Carmel Institute in Haifa also turned up to train office administrators and secretaries.

Israeli firms were contracted to construct, among others, the Bugolobi flats, the Kabale-Ntungamo Road, the Kampala-Gulu highway, Arua airfield and a few roads in Arua.

Another Israel firm had entered discussions with government to commence work on an irrigation project that would have seen water pumped from the River Nile to the Karamoja sub-region.

Defence cooperation
Israel’s presence in the areas of defence was also quite heavy. Several Israeli military officers were at hand to train Uganda’s air force, paratroopers, armoured corps and infantry units. Amin was ironically one of those who attended a paratrooper training session conducted by the Israelis.

Israel posted a defence attaché to Kampala and Ugandan infantry officers underwent training in Israeli in July 1963 and the air force’s first pilots underwent training in Israel on Fouga jets procured from Israel.

Israeli’s objectives
“Israel wanted to break through the encirclement of hostile Arab countries and open a way to a nearby continent, and especially East Africa.

Moreover, as the number of independent African countries steadily increased during that decade, Israel wanted to gain their support at the United Nations and in international conferences. Israel also had commercial, economic, and strategic interests in Africa, as well as a humanitarian goal of helping developing countries, especially in training manpower,” Oded noted.

Uganda was also considered “special” because of its “strategic importance” because it bordered Sudan and was a link to in a chain of countries surrounding countries such as Sudan and Egypt which were considered “hostile” to the Jewish state.

Christian and animist Black Africans, including Acholi’s who lived on either side of the Uganda-Sudan border, were often targets of attacks from forces of the Arab-Muslim north who used to make forays into northern Uganda, but Uganda could not do anything to defend itself or those in South Sudan.

In Uganda, Israel saw an opportunity to build a force that would counter Sudan and even Egypt.

Obote’s interests
Obote welcomed Israel’s overtures because he was keen on freeing Ugandan from dependency on the former colonial masters, Britain, who he had now come to have reservations about over its support for and policies in regard to Apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Mozambique.

Arab discomfort
Israel’s activities in Uganda did not go down well in most of the Arab world where it was rumoured that the Jewish state was building a base in northern Uganda from which to spring attacks on both Sudan and Egypt.

It was also claimed that Israel intended to use Uganda to equip and train the Anyanya, the South Sudanese rebel army.

Several countries in the Arab World, including Egypt and Libya, increased their own activities in Uganda and brought considerable pressure to bear on Uganda to cease cooperating with Israel.

Between June 12 and June 15, 1966, Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol visited Uganda where Obote recognised Israel’s role, saying it had “played an important role in helping Uganda. Uganda remained supportive of Israel and its voting in the UN and other bodies remained pro Jewish state, but that was only until the Six Day War of 1967.

After the war, his relations with Israel began thawing. He moved closer to the Arab world. It is partly for that reason that Israel was believed to have helped Amin topple Obote on January 25, 1971. Whether Israel did help him remains the subject of debate.

Warming to Israel
Amin initially warmed up to the Israelis and was even willing to allow to aid rebels fighting the Arab-Muslim north of Sudan. Israel felt that with an independent South Sudan serving as a buffer between Uganda and the Arab world, it would be able to indirectly control the source of the Nile.

That set the stage for increased economic and military assistance to Uganda. Amin promised to make Uganda’s voting at the UN and OAU pro-Israel.

Relations thaw
Amin soon started making demands that the Israeli’s could not meet. On the long list was a request for a £10 million loan, which they did not give and a request for Phantom jets, which he claimed he needed to bomb Tanzania.

“Phantoms?’ I asked him. We buy them from the United States for our own use and not to sell. What do you need Phantoms for? He replied that he needed them to use against Tanzania. I did not agree. From here he went to London to obtain bombers to use against Tanzania and he did not get them,” prime minister Meir told journalists in Tel Aviv, while explaining the breakdown in relations between the two countries.

His request that Israel either cancels Uganda’s debt or reschedules the payments was also turned down. In February Amin visited Libya where Col Muammar Gaddafi berated him for hobnobbing with the “Zionists”. That meeting was followed by signing of cooperation agreement.

On March 22, he declined to renew military cooperation agreements with Israel before issuing an order the following day that they leave Uganda.