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Uncovering the ghosts in UPDF
By Andrew M. Mwenda
Dec 7 - 13, 2003
The story behind Museveni's army reshuffle and the unending northern war
The recent reshuffle of the military command centred around the issue of ghost soldiers. The actual depth of the problem is yet to be determined, but current indications from the 1,600 pages report submitted to the president estimate that ghost soldiers could account for nearly up to one third of the army.
In a December 2, 2003 message from President Yoweri Museveni to the army commander, a copy of which the present writer has seen, the commander in chief even lamented that "I am told the Banyarwanda soldiers who deserted the NRA [National Resistance Army] are still being paid. How could this still be possible?"
Col. Benon Biraaro
The presence of so many ghosts on the army register has been a major source of money and power in the UPDF, as commanders and their auxiliaries used the system for self enrichment. But how could this have been possible? Who were its principle architects? When did it begin? How has it been sustained? What has been the effect of ghost soldiers on the institution of the army, on professionalism in our military and on its combat effectiveness?How does this relate to Uganda's broader but twisted political landscape? What purpose does this problem serve?
According to the 1,600 pages report of the commission of inquiry, the ghost soldiers fraud took place at three levels: first at the level of field commanders in operational/combat areas inflating the number of auxiliary forces under their command; second, at the level of commanders in the field, colluding with other officers at headquarters to retain dead and missing soldiers on strength; and third and most insidious, collusion between key people at the Ministry of Defence headquarters with others at the treasury not to change the amount of monies released as salaries in spite of clearly declared reduction in numbers by the army.
Col. Fred Tolit The existence of a large number of ghost soldiers on the army register is not an isolated problem but part of the wider political dilemma of the state in Uganda. It has a direct link with Uganda's wider crisis: the consolidation of "the movement political system" otherwise a one party system, ever-increasing military spending in the context of ever-expanding theatres of war inside and outside of Uganda, lack of professionalism in the army and the calls to amend the constitution in order to remove term limits on the president, - because all these add up to one thing: consolidation of the power of President Museveni.
Army strength is an important aspect in the management of the military because it is the basis for military costs and combat effectiveness. In 1992 when the armed rebellion in northern Uganda was almost ended, official army strength was 120,000; the defence budget was US$ 44m. In 1996 when the rebellion began to resurge, army strength was slightly above 40,000 while defence expenditure had increased to US$ 88m, more than double its 1992 size. President Museveni has consistently used the rebellion to ask for an ever increasing defence budget.
When Operation Iron Fist kicked off in March 2002, there were only 350,000 people in internally displaced camps and the defence budget was US$ 120m (Shs 240 billion). In September 2002, 30 percent of the budgets of other ministries was cut, and the defence budget was increased to US$ 150m (Shs 296 billion).
This financial year (2003/04), the defence budget is US$ 160m (Shs 330 billion), army strength is 57,000 soldiers, supported by an assortment of auxiliary forces like Local Defence Units, vigilantes, home-guards, arrow groups etc.
Col. Benon Biraaro and his boss Brig. Joshua Masaba have a one on one at Bombo (Defence Press Unit photos).
Yet, the LRA has spread from its traditional home districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader to the districts of Lira, Apac, Katakwi Kaberamaido and Soroti and people in camps have increased to 1.8 million.The president justifies ever increasing defence spending arguing that it will improve combat effectiveness. So why is there almost a direct correlation between increased defence spending and the escalation of armed conflict, instead of a reverse trend?
The answer is deceptively simple: the military budget is used for purposes other than ending the insurgency. Increasing defence spending creates opportunities for army officers to profit from the war through many insidious ways: by inflating the number of auxiliary forces under their command; by not declaring the dead or missing, and therefore retaining them on strength as ghost soldiers; taking tenders to supply food and other supplies to the army in combat zones; getting commissions in the process of procuring military equipment etc.
Ghost soldiers have been an endemic problem in the UPDF, the first attempt to address the issue as early as 1989 resulted into the burning down of the entire army headquarters then at Republic House (Bulange, Mengo).
Military corruption has equally become more entrenched, as the case of junk helicopters, expired food rations, under size uniforms, mal-functional 100mm anti aircraft guns, obsolete MiG21 jet fighters etc demonstrate. The army's own National Enterprises Corporation (NEC), which was supposed to be the productive arm of the UPDF was cannibalised and its assets openly looted, now it is a pale shadow of what its aim was.
As seen above, from a president who came talking of building a productive, self-reliant army, UPDF overtime became a springboard for private profiteers.
Just compare this to Gen. Suharto's Indonesia [he has since quit power -ed], a regime renowned for its penchant for corruption: 75 percent of the defence budget is from profits by army parastatals. The questions therefore remains; how has this endemic rapacity been possible and why?
Military corruption (one of whose faces is ghost soldiering), has been a product of a deliberate effort to undermine professionalism in the army in order to personalise it. The aim of this was to make the military an instrument of personal survival rather than serve as an instrument for national defence.
Brig. Nakibus Lakara Sources in the UPDF and at State House say the president has been severally briefed about the extent of ghosts and the officers responsible for placing ghosts on the register. The commander in chief has been reluctant to address the problem of ghost soldiers precisely because it served his purpose of regime maintenance, although not every single act of every commander amounted to that.
So why is the president waking up to it now, in view of the raging debate on the third term?
Sources say the British, who are financing defence reform, have been putting pressure on the military to clean its registers. That is why the army reshuffle was announced on December 2, and the new defence policy paper was presented before and adopted by cabinet the next day, December 3.
Sources inside UPDF have spoken severally about ghosts. They say whenever clean officers in command of units tried to establish the number of officers and men and women under their command, and insisted that official strength be consistent with actual strength, they were transferred from their units, placed on katebe or given a non effective deployment.
Consistently, the NRA, now UPDF, which came from the bush in 1986 with a large and fine crop of well educated officers, and has over the years been joined by many more, is still almost entirely controlled by lowly educated soldiers.
The 'intellectuals' were sidelined, we are told, because they were "not fighters". Soldiers know, however, that they were rarely given command positions.
Lack of professionalism in the military has not been a residual outcome of our society's incompetence, but an actively created and promoted condition.
Professional soldiers were feared because their independence did not serve the role of supporting the interests of an individual but those of the nation. Except for a few, many of the fine intellectual officers could not be relied upon to terrorise the citizenry, and whip the electorate into submission to vote for Museveni or his political sweethearts.
Brig. Ivan Koreta
The less educated who came to dominate the army were actively promoted and indulged by the commander in chief. This is where politics, military mismanagement and armed conflict interface. By having many ghosts on the register, the army was over stating its effective combat capacity, and preparing itself for poor performance in battle as the three battles against the Rwandan army in Kisangani amply demonstrated.Yet a weak, fragmented and unprofessional army, built around personal loyalty was actually functional for regime maintenance in Uganda, and is still needed to help promote the narrow interests like a search for a third term.
In the final analysis, the current purges do not look like an attempt to professionalize the army or eliminate endemic corruption. Rather, it looks like a political gesture aimed at bringing the army ever more under the direct control of the person of the president, and use it even more to service his personal agenda.
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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