From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Sep 02 2009 - 00:19:11 EDT
Revealed: how Israel helped Amin to take power
http://hnn.us/roundup/41.html#116157
Source: The Independent (8-17-09)
When Radio Uganda announced at dawn on 25 January 1971 that Idi Amin was
Uganda's new ruler, many people suspected that Britain had a hand in the
coup. However, Foreign Office papers released last year point to a
different conspirator: Israel.
The first telegrams to London from the British High Commissioner in
Kampala, Richard Slater, show a man shocked and bewildered by the coup. But
he quickly turned to the man who he thought might know what was going on;
Colonel Bar-Lev, the Israeli defence attaché. He found the Israeli colonel
with Amin. They had spent the morning of the coup together. Slater's next
telegram says that according to Colonel Bar-Lev: "In the course of last
night General Amin caused to be arrested all officers in the armed forces
sympathetic to Obote ... Amin is now firmly in control of all elements of
[the] army which controls vital points in Uganda ... the Israeli defence
attaché discounts any possibility of moves against Amin."
The Israelis moved quickly to consolidate the coup. In the following days
Bar-Lev was in constant contact with Amin and giving him advice. Slater
told London that Bar-Lev had explained "in considerable detail [how] ...
all potential foci of resistance, both up country and in Kampala, had been
eliminated". Shortly afterwards Amin made his first foreign trip; a state
visit to Israel. Golda Meir, the Prime Minister, was reportedly "shocked at
his shopping list" for arms.
But why was Israel so interested in a landlocked country in Central Africa?
The reason is spelt out by Slater in a later telegram. Israel was backing
rebellion in southern Sudan to punish Sudan for supporting the Arab cause
in the Six-Day War. "They do not want the rebels to win. They want to keep
them fighting."
The Israelis had helped train the new Uganda army in the 1960s. Shortly
after independence Amin was sent to Israel on a training course. When he
became chief of staff of the new army Amin also ran a sideline operation
for the Israelis, supplying arms and ammunition to the rebels in southern
Sudan. Amin had his own motive for helping them: many of his own people,
the Kakwa, live in southern Sudan. Obote, however, wanted peace in southern
Sudan. That worried the Israelis and they were even more worried when, in
November 1970 Obote sacked Amin. Their stick for beating Sudan was suddenly
taken away...
Posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top