Kayihura in trouble

Col. Kandiho: New rising star

Before his appointment to head CMI last year, Kandiho was an officer under the office of State Minister for Defence in charge of Veteran Affairs.

With years of experience as military intelligence operative and formerly deployed under military police and the Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force, Kandiho has ousted Kayihura in a heartbeat.

His first major operation was the hunt of the murderers of former AIGP Andrew Felix Kaweesi. Some of the suspects in the case were arrested by CMI.

But insiders say Kandiho’s most successful operation in which he also overshadowed police was the hunt of the masterminds of the women murders around Kampala suburbs.

The investigation into police and the subsequent arrests appears to only have handed him a baton as the new kingpin of the security agencies in town.

His handlers say he is returning CMI to its former glory at the apex of Uganda’s security system. The military intelligence outfit was last at the top in the late 90’s to mid 2000’s when it was headed by current security Minister Tumukunde and his then deputy the late Brig. Noble Mayombo.

Its influence crystalised in 2001 when Mayombo replaced Tumukunde as the outfit’s boss. The outfit was not only central in cracking down on hard criminals and terrorists; it was at the centre of the politics and would hound Museveni’s opponents. Indeed, Col. Kizza Besigye experienced his baptism of fire in opposition politics under Mayombo.

A staunch loyalist to Museveni, Mayombo would stop at nothing to protect the President’s power. In 2001, Mayombo oversaw the brutal arrest of his younger brother, Okwiri Rwabwoni, at Entebbe airport in 2001 on his way to West Nile to campaign alongside Besigye. Mayombo would later be appointed Permanent Secretary, Defence Ministry before dying in what was feared to be a murder in May 2007.

After Mayombo, CMI was never the same. But the military kept at the centre of cracking crime. Indeed, Operation Wembley, which was born in 2002 and was the biggest crackdown on hard core criminals was a military operation. It would later become Violent Crimes Crack Unit (VCCU). By the time Kayihura became police chief in police in 2005, the force still lived in the shadows of its sister military agencies. And cracking Museveni’s opponents and preserving his power was still their forte.

Top military commanders like Gen. David Sejusa, were the ones commanding operations against political opponents. Indeed, Sejusa commanded the 2006 siege of the High Court by the Black Mamba, a military outfit, to extract Besigye and other suspects, which the court had just given bail.

But having been sidelined for too long in the military, allegedly because he was seen as an outsider by most in the military establishment, Gen. Kayihura appears to have been determined to show his loyalty through police.

Slowly, he built the police into a dominant force through training, expansion, showing intelligence gathering prowess, and overzealously cracking down on Museveni’s political opponents. But some of the methods he used, including introducing deep informal channels between the force and the underworld, have come to haunt him.

Kayihura established a police training institute at Kabalye and started churning out young officers who would soon become the centre of his power.

The old guard fought back but Kayihura’s new recruits like Grace Akullo and Andrew Felix Kaweesi soon found themselves AIGPs. Kaweesi who made his bones training recruits at Kabalye soon saw his trainees became the commanders of almost all the strategic posts in police.

Kayihura also drew from the VCCU structure for hardened men like Nixon Agasirwe who he groomed into kingpins of police. Agasirwe was reportedly a hard core criminal arrested during Operation Wembley who offered to help fight criminals in exchange for immunity. He went on to become one of the most influential cops.

With agents like that and cash, by 2010, Police under Kayihura had risen to the pinnacle of internal security. As he expanded police, his budget grew at the expense of the other agencies. When Kayihura joined police in 2005, police budget was under Shs70 billion, it has since skyrocketed to over Shs400 billion.

But while Kayihura became more influential, his enemies in security circles and the public multiplied like germs in warm weather.

Soon enough, security agencies that are supposed to work with each other, started fighting each other. Initially, it was a cold war. ISO agents compiling files against police and police against other agents.

Kayihura gained more power when he brought down Gen. David Sejusa. Kayihura exposed Sejusa who was Coordinator of Intelligence Services and Senior Presidential Advisor to be using his office to collect intelligence against security installations in an alleged plot to oust Museveni.

In the same way, ISO in March this year released its first lethal report on Gen. Kayihura. It claimed that Kayihura was planning to announce his presidential candidature in Mbarara and led Museveni to deploy his Special Forces to block it. Nothing happened.

But with the death of AIGP Kaweesi, the attacks on people in Kampala and central Uganda and the murder of women, the other sister agencies piled pressure on Kayihura. The main accusation is that criminal elements under Kayihura bumped off Kaweesi.

Kayihura has also been accused of conducting investigations in the media by parading suspects who, critics further allege, are often innocent. The worst was the publicised case of the Kamwenge Mayor, Geofrey Byamukama, who was tortured in Nalufenya but released without charge.

As the CMI investigation continues, insiders say, they have more details of the rot in police under Kayihura’s watch. For now, that the first case is over extradition of Rwandese speaks volumes about what the actual problem could be.