The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The move came following an expose on how an officer, Stephen Kisembo, in the External Security Organisation (ESO) was involved in selling Intel to Sudan, which is the talking point in security circles, is to say the least perplexing, given that Sudan is one of Uganda’s biggest threats.
As all this was happening in the mainstream intelligence bodies, Kayihura transformed the CID into CIID.
Having been an intelligence officer, Kayihura used his networks to keep supplying critical intelligence to Museveni that the other agencies were in the dark about.
For instance, it was Kayihura’s intelligence about how renegade General David Sejusa was involved in gathering intelligence about the army, sources say,that was the basis for Museveni to order for the overhauling of the intelligence agencies.
But many blame President for the mess in the intelligence bodies.
Since Museveni took over government in 1986, critics say, he has maintained his intelligence system—the kind that he had relied on to survive as a guerrilla, instead of reforming it and growing it into an independent and professional system.
Ultimately, many feel that the objective for Museveni has been retaining power that is why he has built a fortress of loyalty instead of a professional intelligence system.
They note that the current situation in ISO is evidence that for President Museveni, if some other organization can do what ISO is meant to do as the police is doing, then ISO ceases to be relevant.
The danger, however, they add is that the police that is already struggling to do policing work, cannot be effective at both intelligence gathering and policing.
A 2009 book, Changing Intelligence Dynamics in Africa, edited by Sandy Africa and Johnny Kwadjo, which features a whole chapter on Uganda’s intelligence since independence, captures the crisis in intelligence bodies.
The book notes that the intelligence bodies like the ones in Uganda are irregularly used by politicians and remain unreformed, mystified and relatively dysfunctional.
It notes that the fraught relationship between political authorities and intelligence operatives is connected with the failure to define the proper scope and legitimate role of intelligence.
“…such organisations have thus come across as instruments for regime survival rather than [for] promoting and consolidating democracy and national interest,” the book notes.
The crisis in Uganda’s intelligence system has at one point seen Museveni and his close security operatives operate and bankroll over 20 security agencies that to critics are a harbinger for security instead of security.
With all these agencies delivering intelligence, attention shifted completely from the mainstream intelligence bodies. Focus switched to politics, with one most important target– opposition politicians or to be precise, former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Kizza Besigye.
For instance, while the Black Mamba, had been trained specifically to deal with terrorists or sieges like the West-gate type. But in 2006, the force was unleashed to lay siege on the Supreme Court and arrest Besigye.
It is under these circumstances that the man who oversaw the operation, Tinyefuza, consolidated his credentials as the coordinator of intelligence services.
But even as the coordinator of intelligence, once his critical role was done, Tinyefuza was relegated. Museveni, has always insisted that Col. Ronnie Balya, who heads ISO and Robert Masolo who headed ESO deliver reports directly to him and not Sejusa.
As a result, Uganda has failed to mainstream its intelligence. There are no career intelligence professionals. There is no proper and transparent recruitment process, which has made many people suspicious of the intelligence bodies, whose membership they claims comes solely from Museveni’s clan, critics say.
While so far, the intelligence has served to cushion Museveni against any internal threats targeting his seat, critics say, national security is the biggest victim.
In the recent past, the biggest threat to Uganda and the entire region has tended to be terrorism and many fear that Uganda didn’t pick lessons from September 2001 on the U.S and the July 2010 and the Westgate attack.
These, according to experts, offered the greatest opportunity to look at the loopholes in intelligence, instead three years after, the story remains the same, even the counter-terrorism unit that was supposed to be established remains on a piece of paper.
Experts have noted that in its current state Uganda’s intelligence system is dispersed, there are several semi-autonomous security agencies. To address, terrorism, security agencies need to be reformed so as to tighten their operations and improve coordination
As coordinator of intelligence services, Sejusa was supposed to play this role but he was not. Intelligence bodies are working at cross purpose. Sejusa himself noted that some intelligence hands had been planted in his office to spy on him.
If his office was very critical in this coordination, President Museveni, would have been very keen to replace him.
Critics also note that although Uganda has for years been reforming the Uganda Police and the UPDF, the intelligence services remain untouched and continue to staff the agencies with mere appointees, soldiers from other arms of the army and politicians.
Yet with the advancement in technology and the changing nature of terrorism, the requisite skills of intelligence professionals are much more advanced than military training.
Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda, the Kyadondo East Legislator, who reported extensively on security and currently sits on the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee of Parliament, has in the past told The Independent that there is no interest in reforming the intelligence.
“Museveni likes to fill the intelligence with defeated politicians and whoever he feels like as long as they are loyal to him,” Nganda says, “When [General] Ivan Koreta [former Commander of Defence Forces] was in ISO and he insisted that intelligence officers are professionalised, he was removed. Building intelligence requires focusing on the national threat but under Museveni’s rule, intelligence has to focus on his interests.”
He also asked; “If there is interest to reform, why would ESO and ISO still be under the Office of the Presidency?” With this funding crisis in ISO, such questions can no longer be ignored.
****
editor@independent.co.ug
WoW….. wow….. – the level of incompetence exhibited by this government is astounding…. – It will take a huge effort to extricate Uganda from the mess it is in, after Museveni is gone.
There is order in chaos. Order may not necessarily manifest as organization, at least not in the business of national security. Intelligence organs are set up to function amidst and against chaos. There can therefore not be an organized way to operate in chaos.
These bodies seem to serve their purpose. The challenge they face is post-regime career aspirations. Loyalties seem to individuals rather than to the state. The persons that made careers out of building our intelligence organizations have either fallen out with the regime or are themselves targets of espionage. It would be self-defeating to therefore continue relying on the apparatus they set up. Gen Sejusa, Gen Tumukunde, JPAM, etc have at one time or the other been on the wrong side of the state or perceived as enemies of state. Per their background, its only casual to assume they still rely on the same apparatus for their overt or covert activities.
Obviously, the two organizations that are growing and supplementing each other are Police and SFC. I would like to believe that SFC shoulders a massive responsibility on military, domestic and international intelligence. It is not without reason that they have grown into an autonomous arm within the armed forces, to the point they are perceived to handle the most sensitive aspects of the armed forces.
Thanks to overt political actors like Dr Besigye and official opposition political parties, domestic threats have taken on a predictive pattern and are thus containable. Domestic threats are largely political in nature and designed around publicly pronounced objectives of dismantling the regime. Their methodologies have also been announced as defiance and political participation in elections. It has thus been possible to contain them with actions of Police. In fact, one could say they are largely responsible for the growth of mandate of police. The only regrettable occurrence arising out of this arrangement is that regime politicians have not risen to the task of thwarting political threats. However, both the guerilla nature of the regime and its core opponents perhaps generate locus for dimensions of subversion that necessitate a militant police with core intelligence capabilities.
It is the covert political actors that cause anxiety because resources, focus and personnel have been diverted to overt political actors. The unexplained assassinations in the city and country against both religious and political targets would only justify anxiety if we forgot that there is order in chaos and that this chaos could be a mere manifestation of threat elimination. Without insinuation, though desirous of avoiding the assumption that there is an unseen gap in intelligence, it would be my calculated guess that replacing the likes of ISO with the likes of SFC also comes at a cost in methods of operation. The former may have been trained in tracking and apprehension for justice while the latter might have been trained for justice by radical displacement; hence the seeming chaos / body count. It would be acceptable to classify this as subjective conjecture!
These traditional intelligence bodies have simply been starved of access for the simple reason that counter-intelligence may have reached the conclusion that they either gather intelligence and disseminate to otherwise non-designated persons, or could be used to funnel disinformation to those prior in their command but now classified as threats to the hold of power, yet still relying on the traditional intelligence bodies for information. Starving them of access is to thus deny opponents access, while not disbanding them is to maintain a monitoring capability over their personnel in as far as collusion with opponents. If they were totally not required, as with defunct SIB which was said to be disseminating to non-designated persons, they would have likewise been disbanded.
A regime that has survived for 30 years has not done so against the backdrop of disorganization but rather flexible interlopes among its strengths and radical displacement of its weaknesses. Perhaps those that yearn for functionality of traditional bodies are those most starved of access from the services they provided – now inaccessible from the new bases of Police and SFC whose loyalty may be the last in question. For opponents and anti-regime protagonists, a blunder would be to assume that the chaos denotes disorganization and loss of control. Such a blunder in psycho-analysis is probably what causes fatal mistakes that lead to the kind of radical displacement that gives rise to the chaos / body count.
This is the advantage or disadvantage of the overt political players as they normalise chaos to appear as political drama, and this then allows aggravated levels of chaos to go unchecked – this unchecked chaos can be seen in the political drama that flourishes alongside terrifying chaos that manifests either as gun violence and assassinations, or national tragedies arising out of conflict with the regime; with high death tolls. Whether they are then part of the superstructure or mere *useful idiots* (Russian analogy for gullible unwitting simple players in a larger sophisticated game), or whether it serves their purpose of retaining visibility and thus relevance to the current and future political dispensation, are all subjective!
What is sure is that the lakuna in the traditional bodies now starved of access has only been contained by continually engaging the threats in their own land. Keeping the radical extremists busy in the likes of Somalia, Sudan and CAR has created ample capacity for the likes of SFC to keep track of both local collaborators and those that move within borders to strike at the homeland. There would be no need of ESO per-say in the absence of a volatile diaspora group presenting a threat to the hold of power. The diaspora is either emotionally drawn to the overt political drama actors or filled with *reserve commanders* who appear to have fallen out with the regime and thus act as magnates for the radical types; for whom monitoring becomes easy. Whether the reserve commanders are also part of the superstructure or *useful idiots* is also subjective. A third alternative of *passive actors* may also apply to them but would not call for expansion of the likes of ESO.
The threat to the regime both domestic and globally appears narrowed against the office of the President and the survival of the regime; all political in nature. It is covert players that run and operate in shadows for whom no outfit can account for their containment. A calculated guess would be that they lay in wait for post-regime action or are actively engaged in laying the ground for post-regime scenarios. What is true is that the order in chaos has been held together by the person and office of the founder. In absence of one and the same, only disorganization of biblical proportions will welcome any dawn. It is for that that we the grass cannot afford prayers of comfort or expectations of relief. It will be much worse before it gets any better for our lot; at which point, worse, like chaos, be have been normalized too.
That fellow countrymen, is the world of foolery – one in which the wise like to act foolish. Remember that fools cannot engage in foolery for they lack both the wit and sadism to master foolery. Foolery is an art and science for the deviously wise!