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Uganda The Soviet Union
As part of its proclaimed policy of nonalignment,
Uganda
established friendly relations with the Soviet Union in
1965. But
with the exception of a few years in the mid-1970s when
the
Soviet Union became Amin's main source of military
supplies, its
involvement with Uganda was relatively minor. During the
1960s,
its major aid project in Uganda was a large textile mill
located
in the town of Lira. The Soviet Union also provided
limited
military assistance to Uganda, and Amin's 1971 coup was
immediately denounced by Pravda as reactionary.
Soon after
taking power, Amin expelled most of the Soviet military
team, and
relations between the two countries remained correct but
mutually
suspicious. After 1973--following Amin's break with
Israel, the
United States, and Britain--the Ugandan-Soviet
relationship
became far more visible. Hundreds of Ugandan army and air
force
recruits went to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for
training. Soviet fighter aircraft, missiles, and armored
personnel carriers were delivered to Amin. But the Soviet
Union
refused Amin's request for assistance to meet the
Tanzanian
invasion of 1979. The NRM government established cordial
relations with Moscow in 1986, and the following year, the
Soviet
Union agreed to rehabilitate the Lira textile mill and
donated
US$50,000 worth of medical supplies to Mulago Hospital in
Kampala.
Through its first five years in power, the NRM
government's
foreign policy was a blend of nonaligned diplomacy and a
pragmatic search for economic and military assistance from
donors
across the military spectrum. But domestic problems, more
than
foreign policy concerns, dominated the political agenda.
Establishing democratic structures at the grass-roots
level and
defining and implementing RC operations had not yet been
accomplished by late 1990. Establishing peace nationwide
and
furthering the economic recovery also promised to
challenge the
NRM government throughout most of the 1990s.
* * *
The literature on Uganda, particularly on the past two
decades, is relatively small but informative. There is no
published guide to Ugandan political and administrative
institutions, perhaps because the government has been in a
state
of flux for many years. However, Ugandan government
publications
are frequently useful in explaining both policy and the
purposes
of public institutions. The most useful sources of
background
material are J. Jørgensen's Uganda: A Modern
History; G.
Ibingira's The Forging of an African Nation; N.
Kasfir's
The Shrinking Political Arena; and M. Mamdani's
Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda. O. Furley's
"Britain
and Uganda from Amin to Museveni" in K. Rupesinghe's
Conflict
Resolution in Uganda is helpful in setting out the
changes in
Uganda's foreign relations with Britain and the United
States
during the Amin and second Obote regimes. M. Mamdani's
"Uganda in
Transition" provides a useful interpretation of politics
under
the NRM government. Excellent sources for contemporary
reportage
include the newspapers The New Vision and Weekly
Topic, both published in Kampala; the quaterly
Country
Report: Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti written by
the
Economist Intelligence Unit; and Keesing's Record of
World
Events. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1990
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