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The Daily Monitor
June 22-28/2005
How NRA plotted death of Maj. Katabarwa
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With Andrew M.
Mwenda
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It is
mid-1999 and a friend from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence
(CMI) has come to me with a strange document dug up from the
archives of army headquarters at Lubiri in the late 1980s.
It is a confession that the Uganda National Liberation Army
(UNLA) extracted from Maj. Sam Katabarwa, one of the leading
commanders of rebel National Resistance Army (NRA), in early
1985.
According to Katabarwa, he had come to Kampala on a
peace mission to meet Vice President and Minister of Defence, Paulo
Muwanga through a one Capt. Gata Namiti.
However, Katabarwa
confessed, there was no agreement among the leadership of the rebel
NRA on seeking a peaceful end to the conflict.
Katabarwa
confessed that the late 1984 UNLA offensive in Luweero led by a one
Col. Ogole had wrecked havoc on the morale and capacity of the rebel
group, and a significant faction within NRA wanted to negotiate a
peace.
However, the possibility of negotiated settlement
sparked off an ethnically biased confrontation within the ranks of
the NRA, Katabarwa confessed. The Hima and Tutsi officers totally
opposed negotiating with Milton Obote's government while the Baganda
and Bairu from Ankole favoured peace. The debate was bitter and
divisive, Katabarwa told UNLA, but at the end of it, it was agreed
that peace be given a chance.
Rebel leader, Museveni seemed
to favour the hard line position against negotiations, while at the
same time giving a go-ahead to the attempt to establish contact with
the Obote government - but only grudgingly, Katabarwa confessed. As
leader of the pro-peace argument, Katabarwa was tasked to travel to
Kampala where he would contact his former classmate, Namiti, and
establish contact with Paul Muwanga, the centre pin of this
scheme.
Katabarwa told his tormentors that as he left the
bush to come to Kampala, the sufferings of the civilian population
that was the major victim of the war hang on his head. Katabarwa was
later killed; because apparently, someone inside NRA wanted him
dead.
The purpose and effect of his death was to foil the
peace plan. How?
I was later to learn that Katabarwa was killed
through a collusion of some key NRA leaders with Paulo Muwanga.
Reason?
The hard line elements within NRA wanted to discredit
the argument for peace by projecting it as unworkable.
The
only way to do this was to "cause" Muwanga and the UNLA to kill the
peace envoy, a factor that would strengthen the case for continued
war and weaken the one for a negotiated settlement. |
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