The Making of Idi Amin
By Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch, New African, February 2001
[Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch's account originally published by Peoples News
Service in 1979 was adapted for Zed Press in May 1979 and published in 1980 as
part of the book, Dirty Work 2-The CIA in Africa. New African reproduces it
here by kind permission of the publishers.]
British government documents, recently declassified under the 30-year rule,
have supported earlier accounts by the journalists Pat Hutton and Jonathan
Bloch which said the rise of Idi Amin was engineered by outside interests to
stop President Milton Obote's nationalisation drive in which the state had
taken 60% interest in all foreign and Ugandan-Asian-owned businesses. Sky News,
the London-based satellite TV channel, recently quoted from one of the British
documents in which the Foreign Office in London had said Amin was reliable.
That Idi Amin was a brutal dictator of extraordinary cruelty is well-known and
becomes more so as the tally of his victims, according to conventional
accounts, topped over 100,000 between 1971-75. What is less known is the role
of the British government and its allies not only in maintaining Amin's
machinery of repression but in actually establishing him in power. Although
Amin later became alienated from his Western friends, we can show here that the
break between him and Britain became complete only when his fall (on 10 April
1979) was imminent, and that regarding him as the least evil option from the
point of view of British interests, London actively helped keep him in power.
The tale of how the Western powers took measures to reverse the decline of
their fortunes in Africa during the 1960s is complex in detail but simple in
principle. In Uganda, once dubbed the Pearl of Africa by Winston Churchill,
huge British financial, industrial and agricultural interests were under threat
from the Obote government.
Unease about Obote's intentions was combined with attempts by outside interests
to ingratiate themselves. Obote accepted aid from the Israeli government, which
was desperately trying to avoid total diplomatic isolation while being used as
a proxy by America in countries where its own reputation was tarnished.
The Americans and Israelis worked in very close co-operation in Uganda,
particularly through their respective intelligence agencies, the CIA and
Mossad. America provided some development aid while Israeli troops trained the
Ugandan army and airforce. The British economic and political presence was
always predominant and this was one of the situations that Obote hoped to
change.
Throughout the late 1960s, Obote was consolidating his personal power and
introducing legislation that was to shake the colonial interests. Although
Obote was no Castro or Nyerere, his Common Man's Charter and the
nationalisation of 80 British companies were not welcome in London.
As one prominent commentator put it: The Obote government was on the point of
changing not only the constitution but the whole political system when [Amin's]
coup occurred. A vital source of raw materials, Uganda was not about to be
permitted to determine its own political development at the expense of the
entrenched interests. Soon, plans were being laid by Britain in combination
with Israel and America to remedy this situation.
The grand plan
The first task was to choose Obote's possible successor, and Idi Amin proved an
obvious choice. Known by the British as a little short on the gray matter
though intensely loyal to Britain, his qualifications were superb. He had
started his career as a non-commissioned officer in the British colonial
regiment, the King's African Rifles, and later served in the British
suppression of Kenyan nationalists in the late 1950s (mistakenly known as the
Mau Mau rebellion).
In Uganda itself, Amin had helped form the General Service Units (the political
police) and had even chosen the presidential bodyguard. Some have said Amin was
being groomed for power as early as 1966 (four years after Ugandan independence
on 9 October 1962), but the plotting by the British and others began in earnest
in 1969 when Obote started his nationalisation programme.
The plotting was based in southern Sudan, in the midst of a tribe that counted
Amin among its members. Here, the Israeli government had been supporting a
secessionist movement called the Anya-Nya against the Arab-leaning Sudanese
government, in an effort to divert Arab military forces from Israeli's western
front with Egypt during the no peace, no war period of the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
One of those helping the Anya-Nya was Rolf Steiner, a German mercenary veteran
of several wars, who told of his time there in a book published in 1978, The
Last Adventurer.
Steiner said that he had been introduced to representatives of the giant Roman
Catholic charity, Caritas International, and referred by them to two British
men who would help him provide assistance to the Anya-Nya. They also suggested
that Steiner keep in touch with a British mercenary called Alexander Gay.
Steiner had made Gay's acquaintance when they were both serving as mercenaries
on the Biafran side during the Nigerian civil war. A former bank clerk, Gay had
fought in the Congo from 1965 to 1968 and then in Nigeria, where he met the
famous novelist Frederic Forsyth, then a war correspondent.
Forsyth had stood bail and given character references for Gay in November 1973
when Gay was tried for making a false statement to obtain a passport and for
possession of a pistol, ammunition and gelignite (a type of dynamite).
On conviction, Gay was sentenced only to a fine and a suspended sentence. One
of the factors leading to this leniency may have been that the British Special
Branch had praised him in court and testified that he had provided information
which was great and considerable help to Western powers.
However, back in East Africa, Gay, Steiner and their British mercenary friends
established themselves in southern Sudan with a radio link to their other base
in the Apollo Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. But Steiner said he did not know of the
real intentions of his British colleagues until he heard Gay had been casting
aspersions on him to the Anya-Nya leadership.
In a confrontation over this, Steiner forced Gay to tell him what his real task
was-to overthrow or assassinate Obote. The British government had no interest
in supporting a southern Sudanese secession and was only using the Anya-Nya as
cover for its plans for the future of Uganda.
Steiner said that he wanted to know more, so he made Gay come with him to
Kampala to search the room of one of their British colleagues at the Apollo
Hotel, Blunden (a pseudonym Steiner uses for this former British diplomat now
turned mercenary). They came away with a mass of coded documents detailing the
British plot that had been transmitted to London by the British Embassy.
Steiner says in his book that Gay explained to him why Obote's successor had
been chosen, saying: Blunden told me that the British knew Idi Amin well and he
was their first choice because he was the stupidest and the easiest to
manipulate. As Steiner remarks: Events were later to prove who was the most
stupid.
Little more is known about this episode except that Steiner claims that Blunden
was operating an airline called Southern Air Motive, and had planned the 18
December 1969 assassination attempt on Obote. It has since been independently
confirmed that Gay and Blunden were working for British intelligence, and also
that Steiner found British intelligence code books at the Apollo Hotel.
The Israeli connection
That it was the Israelis who were providing so much help to the Anya-Nya while
the Britons plotted against Obote lends support to the allegations of a former
CIA official in March 1978 that Amin's coup was planned by British intelligence
in cooperation with Israeli intelligence. Amin was known to have visited
southern Sudan at least twice in 1970, once in disguise, and was in constant
touch with the Anya-Nya rebels.
One of Amin's Israeli friends has spoken of his role in the coup and how he
helped Amin. The friend who was a colonel in the Israeli army, said that Amin
approached him, saying he feared that people loyal to Obote would be able to
arrest and kill him before he could secure Kampala. The friend said he told
Amin that troops from Amin's own tribe in southern Sudan should be on hand, as
well as paratroopers, tanks and jeeps.
Bolstered by the Israeli assistance and the greater power of the Ugandan tank
corps, Amin was able to overwhelm the majority of the armed forces loyal to
Obote on 24 and 25 January 1971. The Anya-Nya troops were a core of the forces
in the Amin coup, and thousands of them later joined the Ugandan army and
carried out many of Amin's early bloody purges which saw more than 100,000
Ugandans killed between 1971-75.
The Israelis had clearly been cultivating Amin for some time through their
military presence in a manner consistent with their role as American proxies.
These times were the heyday of the CIA's worldwide efforts to subvert radical
regimes and in Africa to assert the predominance of America as far as possible.
Active in Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Nigeria, the United States was
also seeking to gain influence in Uganda, especially by means of intelligence
officers of the navy and airforce based in Kampala, together with the CIA
agents working under the cover of USAID.
One of the features of Amin's coup was its similarity to the overthrow of Kwame
Nkrumah in Ghana in February 1966. Like Obote, Nkrumah had been putting forward
nationalisation measures and, when on a visit abroad (like Obote), was toppled
by a coup which had the hands of the CIA all over it. Former CIA officers have
since written books crediting the Agency with the Ghana coup. Interestingly,
Obote was a staunch supporter of Nkrumah who, during his exile in Guinea after
his overthrow, recorded in his letters the financial support he had received
from Obote's government for his upkeep in Guinea.
The Amin coup
Just a few days before the coup, 700 British troops arrived in neighbouring
Kenya. Although they were apparently scheduled to arrive long before, The
Sunday Express speculated that they would be used to put down anti-British
riots following the decision of the British Conservative government to sell
weapons to apartheid South Africa, remarking that the presence of the troops,
seemingly co-incidental-could prove providential. The paper added that the
British troops would be used if trouble for Britons and British interests
starts.
The report was followed two days later, still before the coup, by strenuous
denials.
When the coup took place, Obote was attending the Commonwealth Conference in
Singapore. He was aware that the internal situation in Uganda was not to his
advantage and went to the conference only because President Nyerere of Tanzania
had impressed on him the importance of being there to help present effective
opposition to the British government's arms sales to South Africa.
The African members of the Commonwealth were piling the pressure on the British
government. At a meeting with Presidents Kaunda, Nyerere and Obote, the British
prime minister, Edward Heath, was threatened with the withdrawal of those
countries from the Commonwealth should the South African arms decision go
through. During this tempestuous meeting, Heath is reported to say: I wonder
how many of you will be allowed to return to your own countries from this
conference.
When Amin finally struck, the British press claimed that a Ugandan
sergeant-major operating a telephone exchange had overheard a conversation
concerning plans by Obote supporters in the army to move against Amin. Upon
hearing the news, Amin moved into action, quickly seizing all strategic points
in Uganda. Apart from the fact that the army would not have attempted to remove
Amin in the absence of Obote, this version ignores the British and Israeli
plans.
On Amin's accession to power, all was sweetness and light between him and the
British establishment. Britain very quickly recognised Amin's regime, exactly
one week after the coup. And he was hailed as a conquering hero in the British
press. But even the US government considered the British recognition of Amin as
showing unseemly haste.
In London, The Times commented: The replacement of Dr Obote by General Amin was
received with ill-concealed relief in Whitehall. Other British press comments
included, Good luck to General Amin (The Daily Telegraph); Military men are
trained to act. Not for them the posturing of the Obotes and Kaundas who prefer
the glory of the international platform rather than the dull but necessary
tasks of running a smooth administration (The Daily Express); and more in the
same vein.
Not surprisingly, Amin supported Edward Heath's stand on selling arms to
apartheid South Africa, breaking the unified opposition of the states at the
Singapore Commonwealth Conference.
Amin also denationalised several of the British companies taken over under
Obote, and in July 1971 came to London where he had lunch with the Queen and
meetings with Heath's cabinet. But the seeds of discord between Britain and
Amin were being sown as he began to fail to live up to their expectations of
servility.
After the coup, Uganda was granted o10m in economic aid (to be administered by
Britain), in addition to 15 Ferret and 36 Saladin armoured cars, other military
equipment and a training team for the Ugandan army.
However, Amin resented the fact that Britain would not give him fighter
aircraft and other sophisticated equipment to help his expansionist ambitions.
In particular, Amin had plans for an invasion of Tanzania, so that he could
have a port on the east coast of his own.
For help in this project, which was becoming an obsession, Amin then turned to
Israel. He asked for Phantom jet fighters and other sophisticated weapons,
permission for which would have been required from the American government.
Saying that the request went beyond the requirements of legitimate
self-defence, Israel refused Amin, which probably was a factor in the expulsion
of the Israelis from Uganda in April 1972.
Although short of the hardware necessary, Amin was well supplied with strategic
advice. This came from another collaborator with British intelligence, a
British Major who lived on the Kagera River, on the border with Tanzania, where
Amin used to come to visit him frequently by helicopter.
This former officer in the Seaforth Highlanders had been a member of the
International Commission of Observers sent to the Nigeria civil war to
investigate charges of genocide, but he was sacked amid allegations that he had
offered his services to the Nigerian federal government as a mercenary.
But at a National Insurance Tribunal in England, where he was protesting his
dismissal and claiming compensation, the Major explained that his real role in
Nigeria was to collect intelligence for the British government and offer
strategic military advice to the Nigerian federal forces. In spite of strenuous
denials from the Foreign Office, the Tribunal accepted the Major's story and
described him as a frank and honest witness.
It is not known whether the Major's activities on behalf of Amin were
officially sanctioned by the British government, or parts of it, but his role
seems to have been similar to the part he played in Nigeria. At any rate, the
Major took Amin's invasion plan of Tanzania seriously, undertaking spying
missions to Tanzania to reconnoitre the defences and terrain in secret.
He supplied Amin with a strategic and logistical plan to the best of his
abilities, and although lack of hardware was an obstacle, evidence that Amin
never gave up the idea came in the fact that the invasion of Uganda by
Tanzanian and exiled Ugandan anti-Amin forces in late 1978 which eventually
brought his rule to an end on 10 April 1979, was immediately preceded by an
abortive invasion of Tanzania by Amin's army.
In the manner which characterised the Major's behaviour after the Nigerian
episode, he did not maintain discretion when back in England. He wanted to
publish his story of cooperation with Amin in The Daily Express, but this was
scotched by an interesting move by the British government - a D-Notice banning
the story on grounds of national security.
The American support
Beginning with his purges of the army, later extending them to those who had
carried out the purges, the ferocity and cruelty of Amin's rule increased
steadily-most of it performed by the dreaded Public Safety Unit, the State
Research Centre and various other bodies. These received training assistance
and supplies from Britain and America.
In July 1978, the American columnist Jack Anderson revealed that 10 of Amin's
henchmen from the Public Safety Unit were trained at the International Police
Academy in the exclusive Washington suburb of Georgetown. The CIA-run academy
was responsible for training police officers from all over the world until its
closure in 1975.
Three of the Ugandans continued their studies at a graduate school, also run by
the CIA, called the International Police Services Inc. Shortly after the Amin
coup, the CIA had one full-time police instructor stationed in Uganda.
Controversy raged in the United States in the use of equipment sold to Uganda.
Twelve of these were police helicopter pilots for American Bell helicopters
that had been delivered in 1973.
Security equipment of various types also found its way to Uganda from Britain,
and most of them came as a result of the groundwork done by another
collaborator of British intelligence, Bruce Mackenzie, an ex-RAF pilot and
long-serving adviser to President Kenyatta of Kenya.
Mackenzie also doubled as the East African agent for a giant British
electronics firm, based in London, dealing in telecommunications. Trade in
radio transmitters and other devices continued right up to Amin's fall from
power. Though Mackenzie had died when a bomb planted by Amin's police exploded
in his private plane, the trade with the electronics firm continued
nonetheless.
Several times a week, Ugandan Airlines' planes would touch down at Stansted
Airport in Essex, England, to unload quantities of tea and coffee and take on
board all the necessary supplies for Amin's survival.
In spite of all the revelations of the nature of Amin's dictatorship and his
dependency on the Stansted shuttle, it continued right up to February 1979,
when the British government ended it in an extraordinary piece of opportunism.
The chief advantage of the shuttle to Amin was that it obviated the need for
foreign exchange, for which Uganda had virtually none.
In June 1977, The Sunday Times revealed that the Ugandan planes to Stansted
were picking up Land Rovers (28 were delivered), one of them specially
converted and bristling with sophisticated electronic equipment for monitoring
broadcasts, jamming and other capabilities.
The cargo spotlighted by The Sunday Times also included a mobile radio studio,
which is almost certainly whence Amin was continuing to assert over the
airwaves that he was in control long after he had been ousted from Kampala.
At the same time, an extensive relationship between Uganda and the Crown
Agents, the trading agency with strong links in Britain's former colonies, was
exposed. Crown Agents had arranged a deal for Amin to buy 120 three-ton trucks
made in Luton. The trucks were thought to have been converted for military
purposes before being shipped out. The British firm that supplied the
electronic equipment and another firm in the same field had also supplied
Amin's State Research Centre with telephone-tapping equipment, night-vision
devices, burglar alarms and anti-bomb blankets.
When the Liberal MP, David Steel (now Sir David), questioned Prime Minister
Callaghan about this, all that the prime minister had to say was that the
devices were intended to track down television licence dodgers. To add to this,
it was said that after the Entebbe raid by Israeli troops, the radar damaged
there was sent to England for repair.
The principal value of the Stansted shuttle was to maintain Amin's system of
privileges, vital for retaining the allegiance of the Ugandan army. His power
elite, consisting of army officers not subject to the stringent rationing
imposed on the rest of the population, depended on the goods brought in on the
Stansted shuttle.
During times of the frequent and widespread shortages of basic commodities
linked to inflation of around 150%, the officers could use the British goods to
make their fortunes on the black market.
A further aspect of the Stansted shuttle involved British, American and Israeli
intelligence: this was in the provision of the planes. According to the
Washington Post's Bernard Nossiter, Pan Am was instructed by the CIA to sell
several Boeing 707s to a New York-based Israeli company with former US Defence
Department connections. The company was owned by an Israeli multimillionaire
with a vast commercial empire.
The company sold one of the Boeings to a small firm based in Switzerland, which
passed the plane on to Amin in May 1976. The function of the Swiss-based
company was to act as a laundry for the financing of projects backed by Israeli
intelligence.
In 1977, the Israeli company which had originally bought the plane from Pan Am,
wanted to sell another Boeing to Uganda Airlines, but with the notoriety of
Amin's regime getting worse, the company feared losing the US State Department
approval it had won for the first deal.
The plane was thus sold to another company housed in the same building in New
York as the Israeli company, which then leased the plane to Uganda Airlines.
The two companies had close ties, and the purpose of this extraordinary
generosity was to spy on the Libyan military airfield in Benghazi, where the
planes always refuelled before going on to Stansted.
Both Israeli and American intelligence provided navigators for the planes to
spy on the airfield and make reports which were shared out among Israeli,
American and British intelligence. The information was probably of very little
use, since the Libyans almost certainly knew of the presence of the navigators
on the planes. But Amin was getting a very cheap service for the coffee and tea
bound for London and the other goods that returned. The Americans also provided
pilots for the planes. A California-based company supplied the pilots acting as
a subcontractor.
Britain, a friend to the last
In general, the British government's attitude to Amin's regime was neatly
summed up by The Times when Amin had just expelled the Ugandan Asians on 9
August 1972: The irony is that if President Amin were to disappear, worse might
ensue, The Times said.
In a similar comment, exemplifying the relationship with Amin as being the
devil you know, The Economist stated: The last government to want to be rid of
Amin is the British one.
This attitude persisted even beyond the break in Ugandan-British diplomatic
relations in July 1976, as shown by the fact that the Stansted shuttle
continued. Important political commentators in the British press believed that
London would not impose sanctions on Uganda under Amin, since this might set a
precedent for sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Britain plainly
considered the bad image consequent on maintaining links with Amin not as
serious as the consequences of breaking links with South Africa.
Nonetheless, as the body count of Amin's victims-former friends, members of the
clergy, soldiers and mostly ordinary people-mounted daily, stock should have
been taken of those who helped Amin stay where he was and turned a blind eye to
the amply documented brutality of his regime.
Thirty years on, no such stock has been taken and Amin continues to be cast as
the demented dictator who had no friends.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Moderator
Abuja Nigeria.
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