| KAMPALA
The death of Sudanese First Vice President and President of southern Sudan, Lt. Gen. John Garang, in a Ugandan presidential helicopter last week has left many questions unanswered.
Matters have been made worse by the way the government of Uganda has handled (or should we say mishandled) the information surrounding the plane crash. This official information vacuum has generated a lot of speculation, and in the process allowed multiple versions of what happened to proliferate.
For starters, the government has not issued a clear and unequivocal statement stating the time Garang left President Yoweri Museveni's country home in Rwakitura, the time he spent at Entebbe Airport, the time he left Entebbe for New Site in southern Sudan and the time the control tower at Entebbe lost contact with the aircraft.
Incompetence
Although many observers think the government of Uganda has a lot to hide, I think the confusion surrounding this matter is a product of sheer government incompetence in the management of news over such an event.
What caused the crash? Although a team of experts from the United States, Kenya, Sudan, SPLA, Russia and Uganda is working to establish the cause, that is not the reason Kampala should be silent.
So far, the semi-official explanation given by the government of Uganda is the bad weather. However, Mr Museveni contradicted this position on Friday when he claimed there "could have been an external factor" - thus increasing speculation that there is more to Garang's death than meets the eye.
The helicopter in which Garang died crashed in the wilderness in southern Sudan, only 20 kilometres from the Uganda border.
The aircraft was returning to Uganda after failing to land at New Site due to bad weather. The
aircraft's pilot, Col. Peter Nyakairu, radioed the control tower in Entebbe seeking permission to re-enter Ugandan airspace to find safe landing. A few minutes after the radio communication, the control tower lost contact with the aircraft.
This narrative raises many questions. First, given that the aircraft crashed in the wilderness, could it have been shot down? The area where it crashed is roamed by different militia armies - the Sudanese Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) which was led by Garang, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan rebel group led by Joseph Kony, and a couple of southern Sudan militias some of which are hostile to the SPLA. Could one of these groups have shot down the helicopter?
When reports that Garang's plane had gone missing reached Kampala on Sunday afternoon, someone called Kotido and asked a contact to find out what was happening.
The contact claimed Garangs wife had told him that LRA rebels had attacked a village near th
e
border. Could LRA have shot the chopper?
Last year, the Minister of Defence, Amama Mbabazi, told Parliament that the government had stopped the use of helicopters to chase the LRA because the rebels had missile capability for example surface to air hand-held missiles capable of downing an armour-plated helicopter.
Apparently, the plane crashed in or near the Imatong Hills - the area that Kony has used as his base in southern Sudan for years.
UPDF comment
A highly placed Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF) source told Daily Monitor that over the last two years, the LRA has been so thoroughly crippled that the rebel group no longer has the military capability to down an aircraft like the amour-plated MI-172 helicopter in which Garang was travelling.
The only weapons at the disposal of the LRA are AK-47 assault rifles. This was repeated on Monday evening by the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Henry Okello Oryem, while appearing on KFM's Tonight with Andrew Mwenda Live talk show on Monday.
However, a presidential aircraft, the helicopter in which Garang was travelling was actually painted in military camouflage colours and was registered as a military aircraft.
This alone placed the passengers in danger while flying over the southern Sudan wilderness since even the SPLA alone could have shot it down mistaking it to be a Khartoum government spy plane.
Mutua
l
suspicion still exists between the SPLA/M and Khartoum in spite of the peace agreement. It would have been almost impossible for SPLA to inform all its scattered units in southern Sudan that Garang was travelling by helicopter through that area. If SPLA did not, then other militias could have shot the chopper.
Second, could bad weather have been the cause? Available information indicates that the weather in New Site that day was bad - it was raining heavily and the atmosphere was foggy. The pilot radioed Entebbe, saying they had encountered bad weather at New Site and wanted permission to re-enter Ugandan airspace which was granted.
The helicopter crashed only 20 kms from the Uganda border on its return journey. So how could bad weather have caused the crash when the plane had turned its back on New Site and was about to re-enter Uganda? Had the weather all of a sudden worsened in Kidepo National Park too?
In his press statement, President Museveni clai
med that
the aircraft had "a weather radar that shows you bad clouds ahead as well as mountain ranges up to 100kms away; Advanced Moving Map System that shows you where you are at a particular time and the terrain features such as mountains; a powerful flood lighting system to avoid hitting trees and other landing site obstacles; and audio warning in case you are approaching a mountain ahead. The helicopter was also wired against lightning strikes and could therefore fly both at night and during the day."
Although some aviation experts say these features are not unique but basic to helicopter technology, it still remains that they were sufficient to get the passengers to safety after encountering bad weather in New Site.
Effectively these features reduce the probability of a bad weather induced crash and therefore lead us to a third probable cause but which, when combined with bad weather would create a nightmare for the pilot - flying at night. Although President Mus
eveni
says the helicopter could fly at night, he admits that he has always avoided doing so. "It is always our policy not to fly in mountain areas at night or during low visibility weather conditions."
If night flying made a significant contribution to Garang's tragedy, that brings into question the time he left Rwakitura for Entebbe, and Entebbe for New Site. That government has not issued a clear and uncontested time-count of Garang's flight has left several red-inked question marks on the skull-insides of many.
State House sources claim Garang left Rwakitura at 4pm. It takes an hour to arrive, disembark and walk into the lounge at Entebbe. If Garang entered the VIP lounge at Entebbe at 5pm, when did he leave?
State House sources say he departed at 5pm. That is most unlikely because Garang disembarked from the aircraft and went to the VIP lounge where he had refreshments, and a chat with Agardi Didi, Uganda's State Minister for Entandikwa.
Secondly,
the
aircraft had to be refuelled first, undergo some minor service to be ready to fly to New Site. Some aviation experts say the earliest time Garang could therefore have left Entebbe was 5.30pm to 5.45pm. Also, it would have taken slightly more than an hour to fly from Entebbe to New Site.
Before take-off, pilots are required to establish the weather conditions at their destination. Did Nyakairu, a pilot with 30 years of experience, ignore this very basic requirement - especially so in this case when he was flying a vice president of a sovereign country and late in the evening?
We may never know, but it sounds least likely. How could the aircraft fly into bad weather while it was flying to a distance only one hour and twenty minutes away from take-off? So far, there is no evidence that pilots raised any objections to flying the plane.
On the contrary, Garang's wife Rebecca claims that she expressed concern to her husband about the dangers of flying late
in the
evening and the husband told her that the pilots had assured him that it was safe.
Did President Museveni delay his friend, and then allowed him to travel when it was already too late for his safety? This is most likely, but was done inadvertently.
Although those who know Museveni well credit him for his penchant for security to the point of mathematical detail, the president's understanding of security in this specific case could have been in form of protection against the threat of rebels or terrorists shooting down the aircraft but not in terms of late evening flying.
This would be particularly dangerous given Museveni's disregard for institutional and professional advice. Yet the testimony of Garang's wife above shows that if there was any misjudgment, it was done by the pilots.
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