Commentary by Charles Onyango - Museveni enters Kenya mediation fray as dark horse – on govt side?

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/News/news210120081.htm

Museveni enters Kenya mediation fray as dark horse – on govt side?

By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
The EastAfrican

Two uneasy questions have occupied minds in East Africa over the past two weeks: One, why was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni — who is expected to visit Nairobi this Tuesday — the first, and so far only East African leader to congratulate President Mwai Kibaki, even though his victory in the December 27 poll is being disputed by the opposition and has been judged irregular by election observers?

Two, is it really true that Uganda has sent 3,000 soldiers to Western Kenya? It is not impossible, although it is improbable that Museveni has sent soldiers — particularly in such large numbers — to Western Kenya.

Security sources have hinted that Uganda got the nod from Nairobi to send security forces to escort Kampala-bound tankers from places like Kisumu because the Kenyan Police was having to devote most of its resources to dealing with post-election violence, but even Museveni’s critics would be inclined to take accusations of a massive military incursion into Kenya with a pinch of salt.

The question of the Uganda soldiers runs into an immediate practical problem. To bring 3,000 soldiers over Lake Victoria, the Uganda army would require a marine transport capacity that it doesn’t have, has never had, and will not have in the near future.

Agreed, Museveni often makes some terrible political mistakes and has become the typical African Big Man. But he is no fool, nor a man who takes outlandish gambles.

The Uganda government’s main interest in Kenya is a strategic one. It is the country’s main export and import route, its largest trading partner, and its principal source for household industrial goods. Museveni, who has been able to finesse elections and hang on to power longer than any ruler in Uganda’s history, has done so partly because he has managed to maintain decent to sterling economic growth rates.

He won’t do anything to prejudice that by sending troops into Nyanza and Western regions, where Kibaki performed poorly in the election.

The routes into Uganda would be severely disrupted, and the economy would bleed to near-death.

Museveni, a fairly adept strategist, would therefore not get militarily involved in Kenya unless the Uganda army, the UPDF, were able to secure the corridor running from the border to Mombasa, and also control the port.

The other possible goal would be to protect President Kibaki. That is something that he wouldn’t be able to do from Nyanza and Western. The UPDF would have to secure parts of Nairobi for that, and the Kenyan military, with its proud tradition and professionalisation, would not allow that. It would complicate things for Kibaki, not help him.

Mostly, however, the speculation that the Ugandan president has sent troops to Kenya is based on an image of Museveni that is no longer matched by the reality.

Because of his military support for the rebellion by the Rwanda Patriotic Army; his active engagement on the side of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army during the South’s war against Khartoum; his backing for the DR Congo rebels who toppled the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko; and his later occupation of the east of the country, Museveni has been stuck with the image of an African imperialist and expansionist.

Indeed, at the end of 1998, when the UPDF invaded the eastern DRC, the reach of the Uganda army stretched from just outside Juba in Southern Sudan — where it was both supporting the SPLA and fighting the northern Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels — through the eastern swathe of the DRC up to the border with the Central African Republic.

It was probably the most ambitious deployment ever for an African army, and spread the UPDF over an area more than 1,500 per cent larger than Uganda.

Unsurprisingly, Museveni had bitten off more than he could chew. DR Congo became an international and domestic fiasco, and in two deadly clashes with its former ally for the spoils of occupation in the east of the country, the UPDF suffered its most humiliating military defeats ever at the hands of the Rwanda army.

Overstretched to the point of snapping, and with a snowballing internal political opposition, Museveni had to withdraw his imperial tentacles. Add to that the absence of any glorious prizes to show from many years of foreign military expeditions, Museveni gradually became more inward looking.

The UPDF too changed, becoming something akin to a Praetorian guard to secure his domestic power; and, with the creeping realisation that he couldn’t militarily annihilate the LRA rebels, he agreed to enter into talks with the brutal insurgents.

Also, it is important to remember that small countries like Uganda and Rwanda get their big fix from punching above their weight, and there is nothing that satisfies the spirit of machismo more than being a military superpower beyond your own tiny base.

That is why, in Uganda, the craving for grand gestures is such that many people believe the UPDF is in Nyanza and Western to bring order to Kenya, and that the Presidential Protection Brigade has taken over security at State House and Kibaki’s home in Othaya.

The facts, however, tell us that Museveni has instead been reinventing himself in the opposite direction. In 2005, he pushed through the amendment of the Constitution to remove term limits, and effectively placed himself on the path to becoming president for life.

That damaged his reputation, which then took another beating when he brazenly hijacked the 2006 election.

Turning his image around, and beginning work on fashioning his legacy, therefore became important for the president. Museveni therefore began metamorphosing from a warrior prince into a peacemaker.

While resounding military glory always eluded him, his army has done far better when it is not shooting. Thus it acquitted itself rather well as part of the peacekeeping force in Liberia.

Having seen another “warrior president,” Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, do his international standing immeasurable good by being among the first to send a peacekeeping contingent to Darfur, Museveni offered the UPDF as the lead contingent to the Somalia peacekeeping mission, earning himself international accolades.

This remake was projected on another stage when last November he virtually shut down expenditure on all other government activities to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Queen of England in Kampala.

Museveni has rarely looked happier and more satisfied in public than he did during the week of CHOGM.

As Commonwealth chairman, he is unlikely to jeopardise his status with any ill-conceived military involvement in Kenya’s post-election crisis.

Which begs the question, why was he so quick to congratulate Kibaki on being declared winner?

It was vintage Museveni. Museveni would typically calculate that being the only president standing by Kibaki would bring him a larger dividend than if he were just one among 20 leaders doing so.

That doesn’t mean that he comes to Nairobi with the aim of making Kibaki more comfortable in State House. Not at all. There are two issues here.

One is of political character. Because he has been criticised by those who believe that he has been too hasty to take Kibaki’s side, it is imperative for Museveni to show his face in Nairobi. This is because he is a man who doesn’t like to look like he is hiding or running when under attack.

But most important, because he is the only president to congratulate Kibaki, it gives him greater credibility with Nairobi because he is the one leader who is coming into the crisis as a “friend.”

Over the years, Museveni’s actions in the region, and the continent, have become important pointers to US thinking on Africa.

It was he, for example, who played a key role in breaking the standoff between the West and his friend, Libya’s erratic Muammar Gaddafi.

Museveni may thus be the most maligned of all the mediators who have taken a shot at resolving the Kenyan crisis. But it is probably he who will have the best chance of cutting any ice with the Kibaki State House.