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Uganda Kenya and Tanzania
A general climate of good neighborliness and
noninterference
in each others' affairs marked relations among the three
East
African states during the 1960s. But these ties became
strained
at the end of the decade, as Obote's tentative moves
toward more
radical domestic and foreign policies caused anxiety among
the
more conservative Kenyan leadership and drew praise from
the
socialist-minded Tanzanians. Amin's coup d'état in 1971
created a
sharp break in Uganda's ties to Tanzania and upset
relations with
Kenya. Immediately after the coup, the Kenyan authorities
forced
Obote to leave Nairobi, and Kenya recognized Amin's
government.
The Tanzanians welcomed Obote and continued to consider
him the
Ugandan head of state until shortly before the overthrow
of Amin
in 1979. Kenyan business people took sufficient advantage
of
shortages in Uganda during the Amin period that Kenya
eventually
replaced Britain as Uganda's main trading partner.
However, many
of Kenya's exports to Uganda were actually goods
transshipped
from Europe and the United States. Kenyan business people
were
frequently paid in Ugandan coffee, which they smuggled
across the
border and sold to the Kenyan government. These ties were
temporarily disrupted in 1976 when Amin suddenly claimed
for
Uganda all Kenyan territory west of Lake Naivasha on the
basis of
early colonial boundaries. A large number of Ugandan
refugees,
particularly the highly educated, found jobs in Kenya
during the
1970s.
Meanwhile, the Tanzanian government supported an
unsuccessful
invasion of Uganda organized by Obote in 1972
(see Military Rule under Amin
, ch. 1). In 1978 Amin sent the Ugandan army
into the
Kagera Salient in northwest Tanzania, where it plundered
the
area. The Tanzanian authorities sent their army to oust
the
Ugandans but, after meeting little resistance, invaded
Uganda
with a small contingent of Ugandan irregulars to overthrow
Amin
and install a Ugandan liberation front as his successor.
The
Tanzanian army remained in Uganda to maintain peace while
the
Ugandan liberation front organized elections to return the
country to civilian rule. Officially, the Tanzanians were
neutral, leaving political decisions to Ugandan officials.
However, in early 1980, the Tanzanian army acquiesced in
the
removal of the interim president by Obote's supporters in
the
newly formed Ugandan army. After the 1980 election,
President
Obote discreetly distanced himself from the Tanzanian
government
and formed amicable relations with Kenyan officials and
business
people. After Obote was overthrown in 1985, the
short-lived
military government maintained friendly ties with the
Kenyan
president, Daniel T. arap Moi.
The Okello government engaged in a war with the NRM
that few
observers thought it could win. Moi successfully mediated
peace
negotiations between the NRM and the Okello government in
Nairobi
in late 1985. However, the agreement for the two sides to
share
power was never implemented, as war broke out a month
later and
quickly resulted in the NRM's seizure of Kampala.
President Moi,
together with the heads of state from Zaire and Rwanda,
met with
Museveni shortly thereafter in Goma, Zaire, but he
remained
irritated over the NRM's "betrayal" of the agreement in
which he
had invested much of his time and prestige. In addition,
Moi
feared that the example of a guerrilla force taking power
from an
established African government might give heart to Kenyan
dissidents and that the NRM government might even assist
them. He
also regarded Museveni's government as left-wing and
likely to
make alliances with radical states, which Kenya shunned. A
year
later, Moi accused the Ugandans of permitting Kenyan
dissidents
to arrange for guerrilla training by Libya.
In its first year in office, the NRM government
attempted to
reduce the cost of transporting its coffee to the Kenyan
port of
Mombasa by shifting from private Kenyan trucking
companies,
thought to have connections with Kenyan government
figures, to
rail delivery. It also announced plans to shift some of
its other
trade from Kenyan to Tanzanian routes. The Kenyan
government and
its press reacted strongly by castigating Uganda,
disrupting
supplies and telephone service, and unilaterally closing
the
border on several occasions. In response, in the middle of
1987
Uganda closed down its supply of electricity to Kenya and
suspended all coffee shipments through Kenya. It also
accused
Kenya of assisting Ugandan dissidents fighting in eastern
and
northern Uganda. For three days in mid-December 1987,
there was
firing across the border, and it appeared that the two
countries
might go to war. The two high commissioners were harassed
and
expelled. The two presidents met in the border town of
Malaba two
weeks later. They reopened the border, pulled their troops
back
from it, and agreed to ship coffee to Mombasa on Kenya
Railways,
but similar hostile threats and actions occurred
intermittently
over the next several years. In March 1989, the Kenyan
government
claimed that a sizeable contingent of NRA troops had
invaded
northwest Kenya and that a Ugandan aircraft had bombed a
small
town in the same area. Uganda denied both allegations,
pointing
out it had no aircraft capable of carrying out such a raid
and
that the "soldiers" were probably cattle rustlers who had
carried
out raids across the border for years. For its part, the
Ugandan
government claimed that the Kenyans were continuing
secretly to
assist rebels infiltrating eastern Uganda, and tensions
remained
high through mid-1990. Both leaders expressed their
willingness
to improve relations, however, and in mid-August 1990,
Museveni
and Moi met and agreed to cooperate in ending their
longstanding
animosity.
Relations between the NRM government and Tanzania were
quieter and more correct, if not especially warm. The two
governments were suspicious of each other when the NRM
took
power. On the one hand, NRM leaders believed the
Tanzanians had
supported Obote's efforts to gain power during the interim
period
before the 1980 elections and had helped him in his
efforts to
suppress the NRA during the guerrilla struggle. On the
other
hand, Museveni had admired Tanzania's progressive policies
since
his university days in Dar es Salaam. When the Ugandan
government
had asked a team of British military advisers to leave in
November 1986, it replaced them with Tanzanian army
trainers.
Moreover, both governments strongly supported regional
cooperation. Despite all of Uganda's public statements
about
developing an alternative route for its exports through
Tanzania
in the late 1980s, there was little it could send by that
route
until Tanzanian roads were rebuilt and the port of Dar es
Salaam
functioned more effectively.
Data as of December 1990
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