Uganda: From Reagan to Biden, the Ebb and Flow of the US-Museveni Relationship

Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has outlasted six United States presidents and maintained a stable relationship, attracting investments from US firms and development aid.

In the past three and a half decades, Museveni’s alliance with Washington has defined the relationship that is mainly centered on fighting terrorism and combating the HIV/AIDs scourge.

However, under President Joe Biden’s administration, support for democratisation is high up on Washington’s agenda. This puts Washington and Kampala at odds as Museveni has been in power since 1986 and uses the powers of incumbency to hold tightly to the presidency.

If the US is to support democracy across the world – as President Biden promised – retired diplomats say it will have to rethink its relationship with Museveni. Last month’s sanctioning of Uganda intelligence chief Major General Abel Kandiho, over human rights abuses, was a first from the Biden government.

It was cheerily welcomed by opposition figures in Kampala, even as government officials cried foul. Army spokesperson Brigadier Flavia Byekwaso said Uganda was disappointed that the US, a friendly partner and a great ally, had taken the decision in total disregard of the principle of fair hearing.

Apart from former police chief Gen. Kale Kayihura, who was also sanctioned in 2019 for corruption and human rights abuses after he had been sacked by Museveni, US sanctions on Uganda government officials often focus on visa restrictions.

Due to the sanctions, the two cannot own properties or do financial transitions with US financial institutions.

When the US slaps visa sanctions or harshly criticises Kampala – especially during tense election seasons – Ugandan government officials tend to slam it as an ungrateful ally that Uganda has stood firmly with in fighting terrorism or faithfully served its other security interests in the region.

Gaddafi and the 1990s

In 1987, a year after capturing power following a five-year guerrilla war, Museveni visited Washington and met then US president Ronald Reagan. After chit-chat about Museveni’s cute children, Reagan warned him about his relationship with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. “I am aware of Mr. Gaddafi’s effort and approach to get a foothold in your part of Africa.

I want to intervene and caution that he has no worthy causes he is promoting,” he said. In his response, Museveni told Reagan that he had started fighting Gaddafi before him. Gaddafi had supported Museveni during the bush war.

In the early 1990s, Museveni was already in the good books with the US. He was used by the US to fight Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. The US government was backing the Sudan People’s Liberation Army – a rebel movement of Christian Sudan southerners, under the leadership of John Garang, who were fighting for independence that they won in 2011. By the time Bashir was ousted in 2019, he had become Museveni’s close friend.

In March 1998, then President Bill Clinton spent two days in Uganda on a state visit. He hosted a number of regional leaders, including Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki.

Together with Museveni, he described this coterie as the ‘new breed of African leaders’ who were committed to building democratic societies. A former diplomat in Kampala argues this was the most important meeting that Museveni has ever held with a US president. Clinton’s admiration of the group has turned out to be an embarrassment for the US because the group walked the path of autocracy.

The Bush era, AIDS and Somalia

Between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush, the 43rd US president, met Museveni six times. He visited Uganda in May 2002, while Museveni met him in the US five times. Since Bush’s departure, Museveni has only met a US president once: Barack Obama, during the US-Africa Leaders Summit in August 2014.

Some diplomats say amongst recent US presidents, Bush promoted Africa the most and opened the White House doors to many African presidents.

Four retired diplomats who spoke to The Africa Report say Bush’s interest in Uganda was to contribute to fighting HIV/AIDS. In the 1990s, Uganda was at the heart of the AIDS pandemic.

Uganda had also become an example to follow in the handling of the AIDS scourge, thus prompting the US to provide aid to Uganda through ​​the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPAR) program. A diplomat who spoke in confidence says “many of the meetings Bush held with Museveni were centred on the AIDS programme”.

Every year, the US embassy in Kampala releases a report that details its support to Uganda. In 2021, the US provided $953m to Uganda, with the top priority area still centred on combating AIDS.

Deborah Malac, who served as US ambassador in Kampala from 2015 to 2020, tells The Africa Report that US priorities in its relationship with Uganda have not changed significantly in recent years despite change in administrations. Health and security are key priorities for Washington.

Given that the health sector investment benefits ordinary Ugandans, Malac says, this somehow limits actions at the disposal of diplomats when dealing with Uganda. “The biggest constraint, frankly, on our actions and reactions, was the massive amount of development assistance we provide, which, if disrupted, would make the lives of Ugandans even more difficult,” she tells The Africa Report.

Kampala supported US policy in Sudan, provided security guards to Iraq and sent peacekeepers to Somalia in 2007. Both opposition and government figures in Kampala argue that the US has failed to walk away from Museveni because he has always diligently served its security interests in the region.

However, that is not what diplomats say. Malac says Uganda’s participation in African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) “was not the paramount consideration for our bilateral relationship with Uganda, and often was only a minor factor in our decision-making about policy responses to internal developments”.

When Ugandan troops set foot on Somali soil, Uganda’s Edith Sempala had been posted to Ethiopia as ambassador to the African Union (AU). She was thus a key participant in discussions that led to the establishment of AMISOM.

The AU was looking for countries that did not border Somalia to provide troops. Another diplomat says of all countries approached, Uganda was the only country that was well prepared and ready to deploy.


Attempt to lure Museveni out of power

Nevertheless, Helen Epstein, a US public health and human rights researcher, who wrote Another Fine Mess: Uganda, America and The War on Terror, gives a different version of story.

She argues that Bush wanted to get rid of Museveni, but could not because of security interests. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush developed the Freedom Agenda as an alternative to repression and radicalism.

The programme emboldened State Department officials who thought that with Bush support, they could convince long-serving strongmen around the world to leave power.

Museveni was among the targets, Epstein wrote. In 2005, Jimmy Kolker, who was US ambassador in Kampala at the time, and the then United Kingdom High Commissioner Adam Wood approached Museveni for a deal: retire and we get you a job at the United Nations as a negotiator. They also promised to arrange a deal in which Museveni would not be prosecuted for any crime.

Museveni dismissed the ambassadors’ offer, Epstein wrote. “He didn’t kick us out. He dismissed us like flies,”  Epstein quotes Kolker in her book.

Who will kick Museveni out of power?

During the 2020 election season, Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, a musician who joined politics in 2017 and became Museveni’s main challenger, attracted support from organisations and politicians based in the US as well as some European countries. Many Bobi Wine supporters argued that this support would be the end of Museveni.

After a US Marine ship docked in Mombasa in February 2021, a month after a heated election, fake news spread widely among a section of Bobi Wine supporters that Washington had sent the vessel to kick Museveni out of power.

Bobi Wine continues to court foreign powers seeking to have them take keen interest in Uganda’s politics – a stark contrast to Kizza Besigye, who was Museveni’s main challenger between 2000 and 2016. Besigye argues that the burden is on Ugandans to effect change and diplomats agree.

“It’s Ugandans who should decide their future, not the US or any other country,” Malac says. She adds that the US must critically review the role it plays and think creatively about how it can support the aspirations and dreams of Ugandans.
The Biden challenge

After the January 2021 presidential elections, Bobi Wine was put under house arrest. US ambassador in Kampala Natalie Brown attempted to visit him and was blocked. The blocked visit left government officials fuming.

A government spokesperson accused the US of funding Bobi Wine through USAID in disregard of diplomatic norms.

To a former diplomat in Kampala, the visit during the tense time was the clearest indication that the US was not on Museveni’s side. “It was an amazing public gesture. I hope the people of Uganda recognised what was going on. That was not showing that the USA is Museveni’s ally. It was the opposite,” the diplomat says.

Months after the election, as the US continued to get tough on Kampala, Museveni hired Mercury, a US lobbyist firm, to counter Bobi Wine’s supporters in the US.

Biden held a democracy summit in December 2021, for which only 17 African heads of state received invitations. Museveni was not invited. Sempala says Museveni and Biden’s relationship is “completely strained”.

For her part, Malac tells The Africa Report that Washington’s concern over Museveni’s increasing authoritarianism over the past decade weighs heavily against a Museveni-Biden meeting.

Though Malac says visa and other sanctions on Ugandan individuals involved in human rights abuses should be welcomed, more of such actions are needed.

She also says the US should take a serious look at its Somalia policy and the future of AMISOM.  “That […] should cause a rethink of the security assistance funding we provide to Uganda,” she says.

By Musinguzi Blanshe, The Africa Report

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