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Uganda after Amin
Tanzania left an occupation force in Uganda that participated in the looting of Kampala. Yusufu Lule was installed as president but was quickly replaced by Godfrey Binaisa. The UNLF, suffering from internal strife, was swept out of power by Milton Obote and his party, the Uganda People's Congress. The National Resistance Army (NRA) conducted guerrilla campaigns throughout the country and, following the withdrawal of Tanzanian troops in 1981, attacked former Amin supporters. In the early 1980s, approximately 200,000 Ugandans sought refuge in neighboring Rwanda, Congo, and Sudan. In 1985, a military coup deposed Obote, and Lt. Gen. Tito Okello became head of state.
When it was not given a role in the new regime, the NRA continued its guerrilla campaign and took Kampala in 1986, and its leader, Yoweri Museveni, became the new president. He instituted a series of measures, including cutbacks in the civil service and army and privatization of state-owned companies, in a generally successful effort to rebuild the shattered economy. AIDS became a serious health problem during the 1980s and has continued to claim many lives in Uganda.
In 1993, Museveni permitted the restoration of traditional kings, including King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the kabaka of the Baganda people, but did not grant the kings political power. In 1994 a constituent assembly was elected; the resulting constitution, promulgated in 1995, legalized and extended a ban on political party activity, although allowing party members to run as independents. In May, 1996, Museveni was easily returned to office in the country's first direct presidential elections. A new parliament, chosen in nonpartisan elections in June of the same year, was dominated by Museveni supporters.
In the 1980s and 90s rebel militias based in Sudan and Congo (Kinshasa) staged intermittent attacks on border areas of Uganda. Fighting with northern rebels, mainly the Lord's Resistance Army, continued into the next decade. In 2002, after Sudanese officials permitted Ugandan forces to attack rebels bases in Sudan, the conflict intensified, but the army failed to achieve any significant success.
Ugandan troops also became involved in ongoing civil unrest in the Congo (then called ZaIre), first (1997) helping rebel groups to oust Mobutu Sese Seko and install Laurent Kabila as president, and then (1998) backing groups who sought to overthrow Kabila. Conflicts also erupted with Rwandan troops in the Congo in 1999. Uganda claimed its only interest was in securing its own borders. In early 2000, Ugandan officials discovered the bodies of nearly 800 people who had died by mass murder and mass suicide; they had been members of the Ugandan millennialist Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. In May, 2000, new fighting between Rwandan and Ugandan forces in the Congo led to tense relations with Rwanda.
In June a referendum was held in which Ugandans could vote for Museveni's "no-party" system or a multiparty democracy. Museveni argued that Uganda was not ready for political parties, which he said had divided the nation by tribe and religion. Opposition leaders, calling Museveni's system a one-party state, called for a boycott of the referendum. Museveni secured the voters' approval, but by a narrower margin than in 1996; although 88% voted yes, the turnout was only 51%. In the presidential election in Mar., 2001, Museveni was reelected, but his margin of victory was inflated by apparent vote fraud. His popularity was, in part, diminished by discontent with Uganda's intervention in Congo's civil war and signs of corruption in the government. Uganda's forces were largely withdrawn from Congo by the end of 2002, but there was fighting in 2003 between the remaining Ugandan forces and Congolese rebels allied with Rwanda shortly before the last Ugandan troops withdrew.
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