Partners In Crime: Uganda’s Gen. Museveni Reportedly Wants To Arrest His Hit-man Gen. Kayihura

 

 

Gen. Kale Kayihura Uganda’s notorious ex-police commander and hit man for the country’s U.S.-backed dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni is reportedly being sought for arrest by his boss and may have gone into hiding. 

 

All the dirty work performed by Kayihura –political assassinations, brutal attacks against opposition supporters during elections, beatings of opposition politicians including Uganda’s legitimately elected president Kizza Besigye, and recruitment of militias called “crime preventers” that are suspected of carrying targeted killings of male Muslims, and kidnappings, rapes and murders of women in Uganda’s Buganda region– could not have been undertaken without instructions from Gen. Museveni.

 

Kayihura would have been fired and arrested a long time ago if the orders were not coming from Museveni; Kayihura was inspector general of police for 13 years. His boss, Gen. Museveni, has been dictator of Uganda since Ronald Reagan was the U.S. president. Gen. Museveni’s regime receives more than $1 billion every year in U.S. taxpayers money and weapons for his armed forces and police. This means the U.S. can’t claim it hasn’t contributed to Uganda’s sorry state of political affairs. This column has always encouraged U.S. taxpayers to contact their elected representatives to say “not with my tax dollars.”

 

Beginning in 2015 the so-called “crime preventers,” recruited by Kayihura on Museveni’s instructions, went on a crime spree nationally. In 2016 Human Rights Watch called on the Museveni regime to suspend the militia; the dictator ignored the warning. In March 2018, Museveni boasted that his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party dictatorship, not Kayihura, had come up with the idea of “crime preventers.” He did however commend Kayihura for the manner in which he carried out the instructions to create the militia. The dictator said: “I want to salute Gen. Kale Kayihura because he actively implemented it. He is a loyal cadre who actively implemented the programme when he was in the Police.”

 

This column on numerous occasions has called for an arms embargo against the Museveni regime. The weapons shipped to Uganda have never been used to defend the citizens against foreign invaders; on the contrary, they have been used to subjugate the people and to carry out Museveni’s military aggression against neighboring countries Rwanda (1990), Congo (multiple times beginning in 1997) and South Sudan (2013). 

 

This column has in the past encouraged readers to sign a petition calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Gen. Kayihura and his boss Gen. Museveni for the crimes against humanity carried out by the U.S.-trained and equipped security forces commanded by these two men. Many of the crimes carried out by Gen. Kayihura under the orders of –or indulgence of– Museveni are detailed in the online petition which is still active. 

 

Gen. Kayihura was fired by Museveni in March 2018, months before Monday’s report that he’s being sought for arrest. He had served in the post of national police chief since 2005. 

 

Yet, crimes have continued unabated even after Kayihura’s firing –unsolved kidnapping and murders of women, and last week’s assassination of Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga. 

 

It is instructive that many people in Arua, the murdered Abiriga’s hometown, believe that Museveni is behind the death of the MP who was shot gangster-style by motor-cycle riding assassins who pumped several bullets into his car. He died together with his brother who also served as his bodyguard. He was a member of Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement. 

 

The continuing crime wave proves two things; either anarchy prevails in Uganda or Gen. Museveni is still directing the crimes, which would suggest that someone else is now executing the orders which were once carried out by Gen. Kayihura. 

 

If the former is true, then restoring the rule of law in Uganda will be very difficult and will take a long time. If the latter is true, as this column believes, then there is hope for Uganda that things may begin to improve once the U.S.-backed dictator Gen. Museveni is removed from power.