Famed writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, in admiration of America’s 16th President Abraham Lincoln’s patient and yet determined handling of the American Civil war, in which many young men volunteered to fight for the Union asked: “Who can wonder for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator?”
Indeed, Abraham Lincoln was no ordinary leader. His best abilities as a leader impressed Edward Bates, one of three of his competitors to be the Republican Party’s first-ever Presidential Nominee for the November 1860 poll.
Of these abilities, Bates wrote: I consider Mr. Lincoln a sound, safe, rational man. He could not be sectional if he tried. His birth, his education, the habits of his life, and his geographical position, compel him to be national. He has earned a high reputation for truth, courage, candor, morals and ability so that, as a man, he is most trustworthy. And in this particular, he is more entitled to our esteem (than) some other men, his equals, who had far better opportunities and aids in early life.
Bates’ words are apt, we think, in describing our own Commander In Chief - Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who has over a fifty-year period been at the forefront of fashioning and molding what is undoubtedly one of the most progressive, people-centered national armies out of Africa. We now call this army the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF).
Indeed, one of the reasons why the UPDF has been successful in securing our territorial integrity from both domestic and foreign state and non state actors is because, as Gen. Kale Kayihura recently reminded us, its members have the right political education.
This, unfortunately, was not the case with Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic Of Congo) where the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, presided over an army that was lacking in correct political education.
By offering the genocidal Interahamwe forces sanctuary in the East of Zaire, after their defeat by President Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994, Mobutu opened the door for anti Rwandan and anti Ugandan elements to operate from his country.
Indeed because of the chaos and lack of government in the eastern DRC, in 1998 a merger between the Allied Democratic Movement, the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda and militant members of the Tabliq Jamaat Movement - all Islamist movements backed by Omar Bashir of Sudan - formed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) with their base in the jungles of Eastern DRC.
Since 2015, the ADF has styled itself as an affiliate of the terrorist organisation known as Islamic State (ISIS). It is ISIS that claimed responsibility for the October - November 2021 suicide bombings in Kampala in which scores of people were killed and injured.
On November 30th 2021, it was announced that the UPDF and the armed Forces Of the Democratic Republic Of Congo (FARDC) had entered into an agreement allowing for the UPDF led mission to operate within an agreed radius within the DRC. The code name for this mission is Operation Shujaa.
So far, and in spite of the June 16th 2023 terror attack on a secondary school in Kasese, Operation Shujaa continues to register success.
Just this past August, an ADF commander and three of his aides were “Put out of action” and 3 Submachine guns recovered. But perhaps, the other significant bit of news from August was the rescue of 31 abductees. (Profiled in our first Picture Of the Week)
Only this morning, President Museveni has informed us thus:”... yesterday, the 4th of October, 2023, our fighter- bombers paid another visit to the terrorists, quite some distance inside Congo, in the Mambasa territory area. They attacked 3 targets, 180kms, 184kms and 200kms, respectively, from the border on the Ntoroko side.”
It is to the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Air-force, the Special Duties Regiment (SDR) and UPDF in general that we dedicate today’s Picture of the Week.
Yours indeed is “a worthy cause” and your “place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
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